Heroes of the Storm - 2018 Gameplay Update Q&A – November 29, 2017 |
- 2018 Gameplay Update Q&A – November 29, 2017
- Heroes of the Storm Balance Patch Notes November 29, 2017
- Alarak is ruining my marriage, she likes to play heal and Alarak keeps saying 'is this the best healing you can do?'
- Reddit 2018 Gameplay Update Q&A Summary
- I don't know if this was documented anywhere, but players can now whisper you back even if you have "Only allow friends to send me messages" enabled
- Just had the first "supports are nerfed to ground so we dont need one" draft
- After the success of the SC2 themed Escape From Braxis PvE brawl. Can we have WOW boss raid PvE brawl next?
- Rexxar is forgotten.
- Escape from Braxis - Glitchless% [WR] 4:15
- Anyone else disappointed they reworked Hammer and didn't change Orbital BFG?
- Healer's Handbook Special! On Hiatus, Support Nerfs and More!
- New Brawl is Escape from Braxis (Heroic Difficulty)!
- Ep.163 TownHall Heroes - Featuring TF KilluZiion LIVE at 6PM EST
- 29.2 Balance Patch Bugs
- GCWC VODs are now being uploaded on the Heroes Esports YouTube channel
- Roll20 esports Justing 5 Man Mosh #GCWC
- Why do I get punished for people who leave (ranked)?
- Rosterpocalypse Grades: EU Edition
- DIGZaelia's at his best in escape games
- Cassia Poseable Figure
- What We Learned GCWC Day 3: Kure Finally Shoots Things!
- Khaldor get's all the girls.
- What do you think it the best play of the year in HGC? Here is THE play for me
- My First HOTS Hero Tutorial: The 3-Minute Guide to Probius!
- Is it just me or this new Hammer is very bad?
- hots.dog: updated for 2.29.2 patch with dark theme and full talents
2018 Gameplay Update Q&A – November 29, 2017 Posted: 29 Nov 2017 10:11 AM PST EDIT: Our Q&A session has now ended. Thank you to everyone who participated, and we hope you enjoyed getting to speak directly with members of the Heroes dev team today! Greetings, Heroes! We're hosting a Q&A here on r/heroesofthestorm today, November 29! The Q&A will begin at 12:00 p.m. PST, and Heroes developers will be answering questions until around 1:30 p.m. PST. We've assembled a crack team of seven Heroes developers to answer your questions about the 2018 Heroes of the Storm Gameplay Update that hit the PTR last week, including the new camera perspective, stealth rework, changes to the early game, mercenary camp updates, voice chat, performance-based matchmaking, and more: Attending will be:
Please note: We'll also be posting questions we've received from players in our non-English speaking communities so they can partake in the Q&A as well! As such, you might see a few Blizzard Community Managers posting questions (in English) on behalf of those communities during the Q&A. Feel free to upvote any questions you'd like to see answered. [link] [comments] | ||
Heroes of the Storm Balance Patch Notes November 29, 2017 Posted: 29 Nov 2017 09:48 AM PST
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Posted: 29 Nov 2017 02:35 PM PST | ||
Reddit 2018 Gameplay Update Q&A Summary Posted: 29 Nov 2017 07:22 PM PST
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Posted: 29 Nov 2017 02:47 PM PST I have this option on because most of the time players are just super salty after a game, and I don't want that aggro. But tonight I whispered someone after a game telling him that I appreciated his follow-up roots, and to my surprise he was actually able to whisper me back. Not sure if that's common knowledge, or whether it's intended or not, but thought people might like to know. [link] [comments] | ||
Just had the first "supports are nerfed to ground so we dont need one" draft Posted: 29 Nov 2017 12:09 PM PST How about you guys? Any similiar overreactions in-game? . I love golds egocentric stubborness /s Edit to clarify: I picked tank in draft and foolish as I was, trusted soneone to pick heals. I now realize it was huge mistake since 1 healer would've been better choice than 1 tank (maybe?), but our team had more issues than just attidute anyway. Threads more about draft chat being weird about healers being "useless" and "not needed".. [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 29 Nov 2017 12:09 AM PST With emphasis on the PvE component. I think brawl mode can be a fertile ground for PvE mode experimentation. And WOW boss raid is like the next best thing. I suggest 2 tiers. First tier is easy and designed for people to complete brawl quest for lootbox. Only beating first tier is enough for the quest. The second tier is much much harder. Designed only for good teams with coordination and teamwork to be able to complete. Will drop something as reward each time it's completed up to a maximum of maybe 5 times to prevent abuse. The boss raid will be a ten man team. First tier is easy and compulsory. Second tier optional, very challenging and will give drops. EDIT: There's a new Heroic version of Escape From Braxis brawls this week. It is HARD and I love it! [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 29 Nov 2017 01:56 PM PST The title could be "TIL: Rexxar is a HotS hero" and it still would work. Its almost like he exists no more in the Nexus. Noone plays him, noone picks him, noone talks about him, he doesn't get patch changes, he doesn't get skins or portraits or anything. Rexxar is forgotten and forsaken. He needs some love. [link] [comments] | ||
Escape from Braxis - Glitchless% [WR] 4:15 Posted: 29 Nov 2017 06:09 AM PST
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Anyone else disappointed they reworked Hammer and didn't change Orbital BFG? Posted: 29 Nov 2017 03:54 PM PST No counter-play, enemy team gets keeps even if they are losing and turtle. Really really poor design and they had their chance to fix it. [link] [comments] | ||
Healer's Handbook Special! On Hiatus, Support Nerfs and More! Posted: 29 Nov 2017 06:36 PM PST HeyGuys, For those who don't know me or need a reminder, I am the author and compiler of this handy guide focused on all your supporting needs. Since the last major content drop, or the Kharazim guide I have taken a step away from the game for a family emergency, and have played on and off. It has been quite a while and I know the guides are quite outdated. Despite that I believe some of the information and tips are still valid for today's play. I have planned on a major update to the handbook to incorporate the double support meta, but with these new patch notes those plans have gone straight to the dumpster. So instead I will use this reddit thread to provide insight on the recent support changes, as well as being a support main in Hero League.
On the Double Support MetaTo preface this section I would like to clarify that whenever I mention double support, I am specifically refering to double healer compositions. I stepped away from the game during the rise of the double support meta and from my limited experience, I can understand why people did not enjoy it. Additionally, while the general unpopularity of the support role meant it did not trickle down the lower leagues as much as the other metas did, it became quite a hot topic at Diamond and above. And while there are many reasons why double support was the pinnacle of the meta, there is ultimately one cause for it. Blizzard's shift in support design at the start of the year, while well intentioned, gave supports as a whole too much utility outside of being healers. By the end of the year, the average waveclear and damage potential of supports and increased to the point that having a second did not provide a big enough disadvantage in waveclear, rotations and kill potential to counteract the added teamfight sustain. A second support could provide almost as much damage as a second assassin, while giving the team added utility through additional sustain and crowd control. Furthermore supports in 2017 were designed and reworked in a way that their strengths and weaknesses were too clearly defined; they were incredibly niche. The removal of cleanse from Malfurion made it so that teams that drafted him were incredibly vulnerable to burst damage. How does a team remedy that? Most simply by drafting Uther as well. Now that team has resilience to both burst and sustained damage, and on top of that Malfurion was able to provide added waveclear and damage through building on Moonburn and with Twilight Dream, while Uther could pick Holy Shock to provide additional damage. Lucio was able to speed boost more readily when the second support could handle spot healing, while Lt. Morales became more resilient to dive while also providing the team the ability to trade to their heart's content. Teams became incentivized to draft two supports that complemented each other's strengths and weaknesses on top of the reduced opportunity cost of weaker waveclear and damage potential. Another thing to note is that double supports were incredibly forgiving to play, as the team now has two heroes that can undo the team's mistakes, and that losing a support in a trade was not as crippling to the team anymore. A team with one support has much more limited sustain compared to the double support composition, while also being much more restrictive when it comes to resource management.
On Support Nerfs and the Metagame Moving ForwardThe balance patch released on November 29, 2017 sees an overarching nerf to the whole support class, and while the vocal community has been up in arms about Blizzard "gutting" the support class, I would have to disagree with this sentiment. As Blizzard has explained, supports at this point in the game were pound for pound more impactful to a team's success than any other role. One can clearly see this during this meta by experiencing how miserable playing single support against double support was at higher levels of play. It was hard to win teamfights without getting an early pick, and playing towards the double support's weaker macrogame was difficult with the amount of waveclear double support compositions had. And unless your single support was a resource efficient one like Lucio or Lt. Morales, the double support composition could easily choke you out on teamwide sustain. Supports as a whole needed to be toned down in terms of the utility they bring, and these changes mean that teams have to more fully consider the risks of picking a double support composition. These nerfs are meant to disincentivize drafting double support compositions by giving supports as a class more weaknesses in terms of the macrogame, providing a much needed opportunity cost to drafting double support. Sure supports are more like "healbots" than before, but with how the game is designed, by including healing, supports will have to be "healbots" first, utility heroes second, and that is fine with me. Is double support completely dead? Probably not. As long as hypercarry compositions exist, double support compositions will have their place in the metagame. Valla for example is a mediocre hero without a pair of supports behind her, as is Tracer. Support/Utility heroes like Tassadar, Medivh and Zarya will still be picked to provide additional sustain. As far as double healer is concerned, I can see some heroes that could still fill the role. Rehgar still has decent waveclear and exceptional mercenary control, despite being a much weaker duelist with the removal of Lightning Bond. Malfurion with Lunar Shower provides respectable waveclear, while not at the same level as Moonburn, while the new Celestial Attunement gives him additional hero damage without sacrificing his utility as a healer, especially with the indirect nerf to scouting drone as a result of the stealth changes (Malfurion with Celestial Attunement and Lunar Shower provides about 475 dps at level 20). Meanwhile Lucio's speedboost still provides a utility that no other hero can provide in the game, save Medivh portals, so double healer compositions could still be built with this in mind. Do I agree with all the nerfs? No, but I believe they were made with the health of the game in mind, and are moving towards the right direction. The waveclear reduction was certainly needed considering the amount of damage and waveclear supports had. I am on the fence, but generally optimistic with the reduction of healing across the board, but am quite worried how good the change will be with the increasing number of Mortal Strike effects being added. The change I am most worried about would be the HP and damage nerfs, as supports are already the prime target in teamfights and most supports had limited tools of dealing with dive. My biggest qualms with the changes are how it impacts support players in uncoordinated play. Supports are going to become much less impactful in the overall scope of the game. Outside of Rehgar and Brightwing, supports can no longer provide a significant macrogame contribution. But again these are just my initial impressions and they could definitely be wrong without experience from actual gameplay. Overall I am optimistic on the state of the game with these changes, and am comfident that Blizzard are capable of balancing any outliers moving forward. As for the immediate metagame, my predictions are that dive compositions will become very prominent, at least in uncoordinated play. Nerfing the total health of every support means that they will become even more of a prime target than what they already are. While teams are also further incentivized to protect their support, it is much easier to execute a dive than it is to peel. Genji will become quite prominent, being a relatively safe dive hero. Because of that, the top supports of the meta would be the ones that can deal with Dive, like Uther, Brightwing and to a certain extent Stukov. If any other support is taken, they would be most likely either drafted with a Tassadar, Zarya of Medivh type hero, or are drafted into a situation where they excel at.
On Support Design2017 was supposed to be "a year of supports," however out of the four supports released this year, only Lucio has the capacity of being picked in a main healer position. Stukov is in my opinion, approaching the cusp of being viable as a main support. Ana and Alexstrasze, while being very interesting designs leave much to be desired in terms of their viability. What sets Lucio apart from the other three is that he is very balanced in terms of his strengths and weaknesses. He is primarily a sustain healer, but has a way to deal with burst with Amp it Up and Sound Barrier. He also has a very consistent way of protecting himself and his teammates in Soundwave, and his Speed Boost provides an incredible amount of utility. He is a very well designed hero in both Uniqueness and Viability. If we turn towards Ana, she is very unique in design and plays very uniquely in terms of mechanics. However, the fact that she is unable to heal herself makes her too weak to dive to be picked as a main healer, coupled with the fact that her self-peel is tied to a skillshot that is slow moving and has a long cooldown. However my biggest problem with Ana is her risk-reward factor. She doesn't feel rewarding enough as a skillshot based healer in comparison to another healer. While Sleep Dart is very rewarding to land, it is also incredibly punishing to miss, doubly so if you picked Piercing Darts at level 1, which is the most prominent talent at that tier. Healing dart as a healing ability is very skewed in its balance of risk to reward. It feels very punishing to miss a healing dart, and when it does hit, I sometimes think to myself, "why don't I just heal with a point and click ability or an aura instead. Looking at Alexstrasza, my initial impressions are that she is unique in design, but again not very viable as a main healer. With her main heal costing health, she struggles with sustaining herself. Her main form of self sustain, Abundance, feels very clunky to use, especially when using it on herself feels very suboptimal. If you use it on yourself in the backline, you aren't taking advantage of it's ability of percentage healing which is optimally used on your frontline heroes. If you use it on your frontline and walk into it to heal yourself, then you're putting yourself out of position. Furthermore, using it just on yourself is very mana inefficient and feels a lot like you're being punished for taking damage. Her alternate means of self sustain also feel quite clunky. Lifeblossom requires 75% HP to activate, meaning the first Gift of Life you cast will still cost health and moves you closer towards not meeting that threshold, while Fire Within is very specific in its requirements and doesn't heal her enough to offset the health you lose casting Gift of Life. This means Alexstrasza needs to either be facing a team composition with no dive, or a second support to be drafted, which is a shame when Blizzard has designed her very well in terms of fantasy and mechanics.
What makes a Good SupportIn my opinion for any new healer to be viable they need a few important things to be solo-support viable. They need:
These five tenants are what I feel to be the core of meaningful support design, and every healer that has been in the metagame at high level play manages to meet all three of these values in some form. The weaknesses that a team should make up for should be in the support's waveclear/utility, not in their ability to heal, which can only be remedied by another support, that would again lead to a double support meta. One more thing I want to touch on, which is a minor opinion of mine, is that supports with cleanse should be able to use it on themselves. One of my favorite moments watching esports in this game is watching when Dreadnaught cleansed himself as Uther to be able to interrupt a mosh pit. The ability to self cleanse allows for supports to showcase their mastery and skill in the role. Furthermore you cannot cleanse yourself after the stun, silence or displacement hits, so it requires the support player to be both predictive and decisive.
On Hero League and MatchmakingAs a support player this season has been the hardest to play so far, and even with my reduced playtime, I have been finding it harder to press the queue button. Since beta my main way of playing the game is in Hero League. I see it as a means to improve my mechanical skill and a place where I get games of the highest quality outside of organized competitive play. However, the quality of games at master is the worst it has ever been. There are more players that lack in draft and game knowledge than ever before. This is rooted in the fact that Hero League MMR is seeded from Quick Match, and that new accounts are able to achieve Master in their first placement games. What this allows is players who level up their heroes in groups of 5, doing placements and getting Master rank without learning the nuances of the game, how to properly draft, the fact that a composition needs some form of waveclear, or how each map is optimally played. This also results in a subset of the player base making smurf accounts and doing this just to prove that they "are a master player." Games used to be better at this rank, close tug of wars determined by which team is better skilled both in the macro game and in their personal mechanics, but now many games feel like a coin toss to decide which team has more weak players. I'm fine with veteran players placing directly into Masters, but no player should be able to achieve masters just because they got lucky in placements. The second major reason I don't enjoy the game as much anymore is how players are matched. Heroes is a team game where it isn't possible for one player to get "fed" and carry, therefore it is very important that the players in each competitive game are of similar skill. Being a player that is in Master and getting matched in a team that includes players in Platinum league with 5000 fewer points than me is in my opinion unacceptable. When queuing ranked I would rather not spend my time babysitting my weakest player, holding their hand and guiding them on how to play at a level out of their league, especially in a game that in its current state doesn't have voice chat. Sometimes these players aren't even receptive of any advice I try to give. The way matchmaking uses "average team MMR" is also unappealing to me as a player. Having a team of two grandmasters, one master and two platinum players go against a team of masters is not an enjoyable experience, despite both teams "in theory" have the same MMR average. As I said Heroes does not have a solo carry mechanic, and as such some games are decided by the weakest player, rather than the strongest. More often than not the team with the lower MMR spread will win, and quite convincingly too. I for one would rather wait longer for a more evenly matched game, and if such a game is not possible, like if I'm playing during the dead hours, then I'd rather not get matched at all. All this leads into my qualms as a support player in the game. Out of all the roles in the game, the support is most team dependant. Most supports are incredibly impactful during teamfights, but not as impactful outside of them. As their power budget is located in healing rather than damage, they tend to have below average waveclear and mercenary clear. This means that they depend on their teammates to be the main source of exp soak and contribute quite little to the macrogame. This means that a support player's success more than any other role is tied to their team's success. A support can be playing their best game, but still be held back because their tank cannot initiate or peel, or their assassin has below average targeting priority, and I understand that this goes both ways. But historically my most successful supports in Hero League have been Rehgar and Brightwing, because they are able to make significant contributions outside the teamfight. If a teamfight is lost, they can easily go soak an offlane, or do a mercenary camp to get their team to catch up in experience and are still able to pull out a win. Most supports cannot do this and this further leads into the unpopularity of the role amongst the general playerbase. I am hoping that the implementation of performance based matchmaking would be able to remedy this to some extent, and allow better support players the chance of having better quality games in order to improve.
Anyways these are my opinions on the game in its current state from the perspective of a support player. If you've made it this far, congratulations and thanks for sticking around! I hope that this information/opinion dump has to some extent made up for the lack of new support guides and content for the last few months. As usual I am open to any questions, concerns and civil discussion on this or any of the topics related to Support play in general. You can always (maybe) find me on twitter @ZeroMax_Hots, as Zeromax1 on twitch, or on HeroesHearth as ZeroMax. Moving forward I am planning to update what I have in the Healer's Handbook to coincide with the more recent changes to the game (RIP Lightning Bond), and do plan to add more support guides once I have better settled into the changes and the game stabilizes after a very interesting set of changes to the overall game. So expect more to come soontm. So until next time.
Cheers,
tldr; Relax. Changes are good for the health of the game. Better matchmaking pls Blizz. More support guides to come soontm [link] [comments] | ||
New Brawl is Escape from Braxis (Heroic Difficulty)! Posted: 29 Nov 2017 08:09 AM PST Just updated on Chinese server. Havent tried it myself yet because I spent too much time grinding before last one ended. *Just finished my first run, we all picked OP heroes (Varian, Valla, Gazlowe, Sonya, Rehgar). It was a PUG but everyone seemed to know what they were doing. It was actually not that hard and we finished in 9 min while going slowly at first. Mobs just do more damage and bosses seem to be sped up (Stukov's shove and Diablo's breath were like going at 2x speed). Number of mobs and spawn patterns are still the same. Overall still fairly easy with good players using good heroes, but considerably more difficult otherwise (get 1-2 of those people who wander aimlessly, or pick useless heroes like Morales, and you're likely to fail). EXP is the same and you only need 1 win to get the loot box reward. [link] [comments] | ||
Ep.163 TownHall Heroes - Featuring TF KilluZiion LIVE at 6PM EST Posted: 29 Nov 2017 01:23 PM PST Hosts: Guests: Time & Date: Topics:
Missed the episode? [link] [comments] | ||
Posted: 29 Nov 2017 12:22 PM PST What I've found so far:
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GCWC VODs are now being uploaded on the Heroes Esports YouTube channel Posted: 29 Nov 2017 02:01 PM PST
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Roll20 esports Justing 5 Man Mosh #GCWC Posted: 29 Nov 2017 07:07 AM PST
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Why do I get punished for people who leave (ranked)? Posted: 29 Nov 2017 06:22 PM PST Can't believe that if some guy wants to rage quit in the middle of the match the rest of the team is supposed to take a loss for him... every other ranked mode let's you at least surrender or leave unmarked. [link] [comments] | ||
Rosterpocalypse Grades: EU Edition Posted: 29 Nov 2017 02:06 PM PST
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DIGZaelia's at his best in escape games Posted: 29 Nov 2017 05:31 AM PST | ||
Posted: 29 Nov 2017 02:53 PM PST EDIT: I'm aware I forgot her eyebrows. I even thought "I mustn't forget eyebrows this time." Forgot them anyway. Derp. Here's another 3D-printed figure, this one poseable unlike all previous Heroes of the Storm prints. I hesitate to call it an "action figure" because it's not quite that durable. Information
Previous Heroes of the Storm-derived models in reverse chronological order:
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What We Learned GCWC Day 3: Kure Finally Shoots Things! Posted: 29 Nov 2017 12:41 PM PST
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Posted: 29 Nov 2017 04:34 AM PST
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What do you think it the best play of the year in HGC? Here is THE play for me Posted: 29 Nov 2017 03:55 PM PST
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My First HOTS Hero Tutorial: The 3-Minute Guide to Probius! Posted: 29 Nov 2017 01:43 PM PST
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Is it just me or this new Hammer is very bad? Posted: 29 Nov 2017 02:57 PM PST I don't like this rework at all. Putting all her strength into the Siege Mode, during which she is extremely exposed and vunerable, makes her at best good last pick in 0,1% of games in HL. I just don't see it. Almost everything couters her now. You want to have cdr on "Z"? Attack in Siege Mode. You want bonus anything? Go into Siege Mode. Problem is that a good Hammer wasn't in Siege Mode that often before rework. Maybe they wanted to change it but they (at least in my opinion) failed terribly. [link] [comments] | ||
hots.dog: updated for 2.29.2 patch with dark theme and full talents Posted: 29 Nov 2017 08:00 PM PST hots.dog is a stats website released a few weeks ago. The data is from hotsapi; please upload games there. There are some new features since the last announcement. First, I believe hots.dog is the first site to have updated full talent descriptions and icons for the new patch. Check out the new Sgt. Hammer icons. Shiny. In addition, some minor things:
Feedback welcome. Enjoy. [link] [comments] |
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