Still ranting about Varian players making stupid talent choices.
Look, Varian is a fantastic hero because he’s the swiss army knife your team needs for most situations. But my holy Raven Lord do people need to stop making stupid decisions with him.
If you’re the team’s only frontline, Colossus Smash is a dumb idea.
If the enemy has 8 million forms of CC and blinds, Twin blades is a dumb idea.
If the enemy has highly mobile but squishy enemies, please pick taunt.
Dumb Varians are the bane of my existence in this game.
You can’t stop a Varian who wants to Twin Blade. I remember a ranked game where someone picked Varian and went Twin Blades into Xul/Arthas and Li Li, it didn’t end well.
I hate TB Varians not because TB is a bad pick. It’s a great pick; in fact, it’s probably the best of the ult talents. HOWEVER, it has its weaknesses.
Though, this time my ire is with Smash, though. I had a game with Varian, Murky, Azmodan, Valla, and Tyrande (Me). Enemy was Blaze, ETC, Gul’dan, Rehgar, and Nova. Instead of making the smart choice against 2 melee units and a squishy; the guy went Smash. When asked about it, he said “Trust Me”. These are words I never want to hear from a Varian player. Ever.
There’s alot of players picking the wrong talents at wrong possible times.
Heck it happens to me too sometimes and I’ve been playing since release, still do.
I got exactly that kind of Varian yesterday. He went CS and he was the only frontline but somehow KTZ thought it was me who was the problem. Spam pinged me whole game while dying 6 times himself and never laned once. Same story with KT. But yea we got no frontline against Mei but ofc its the healers fault we lost. Not KT fault that died 6 times and never took a single camp or cared to defend the lanes. Not KTZ who died 6 times ignored the lanes and never took a single camp or cared to defend against Naz. Problem was the healer.
I swere some people who plays dmg dealer just want to boost thier dmg stats while doing nothing and then think he actually did something.
The real problem with Varian is that you pick this decisive talent at lvl 4 in game.
There should a mechanism to “pick” (or at least lock and autopick) at char selection, so you know from start what Varian is playing and can play accordingly
The other thing is that they’re all universally arrogant about it. They make bad decisions and then universally blame their team for their horrible decisions.
I get blame for “not healing enough” even though we have zero peel and the tanks are focusing me like no tomorrow.
Just yesterday I was facing a solo frontline Varian who went CS and absolutely obliterated our team. His dominance relied on deleting heroes within a single charge, 100-0, solo roaming. It was an easy match for them.
Colossus Smash can be fine as a front line. It’s just, you have to use it more as an anti dive tool than diving into the backline because you’re probably not going to kill anything without ally followthrough if their healer isn’t asleep while your own backline probably get eaten. The same can be said of TB.
Spec matters, but talents, and Varians in particular, often get unfairly scapegoated when it’s just bad Varians playing badly.
It really was. Only 4 minutes into watching the game, I can see you are the main reason why the team failed. Not only are you slow on heals, but you went mercing and they died. And even after you got it, you decided to push during obj against a Naz even though he woulda been preoccupied dealing with giants. Did you know the enemy decided to ignore mercs? And look what it got them while they gladly capitalized on a healer who would rather do mercs than support their team.
What’s weird, as you keep watching, you didn’t fully top off the KTz and then you rotate to do a merc camp RIGHT after you failed the first time, and then both Kael and KTZ died. And then you do it AGAIN with Varian who overextended, but you were mercing and could have easily saved him. And then AGAIN, you push with the mercs and decide to lane against Naz when you should be going objective. Then because you come so late, your CS Varian who had been holding off the seed cap for ages because you weren’t there is low on health and is hesitant to go in, and you just face walk into the front line and evaporate, further unable to heal your team. Colossus Smash didn’t cause that, you did.
Why is it that you think the enemy team is getting zero mercs is coming out so ahead while you’re obsessed with doing them solo for some reason as the healer?
Do you play chat muted? Because you’re getting very fair and not even that toxic of criticism that could help you improve if you did.
Was the KTZ good? No, but with a KTz, he shouldn’t really be laning too much as he is getting stacks, especially when you have an abathur that can pick up stray soak.
You ended up with horrendous healing, 2.5 less than other healer, as Alex, the healer that has huge healing inflation because of the way her healing works. You rarely used dragon form or your ult, and sometimes you’re more preoccupied with pew pewing than healing your allies. That is all on you. It’s honestly astounding you think you weren’t the problem in that game.
Yeah that can work, especially in QM without healing. However, this kind of play becomes less effective if your team learns to group and your healer can be on top of the smash (usually), but unfortunately some never do, and just insist on solo soaking, and become easy targets for Varian.
So I can see how some Varians will think this is a viable strategy, because it can be, depending on the team they’re facing.
Yes. A good Varian can make use of him even when picking suboptimal talent choices.
9 times out of 10, this is not the case. Now granted, most of the time it’s not Smash, it’s TB Varians blind picking the talent and then attacking the first thing that looks at them funny.
However, the ultimate point is that a smart QM Varian can play all three styles reliably enough to not screw over his team.
If you think it’s that bad, you’re giving the talents way more credit than they deserve. TB on HP is the worst of the three in QM, but only by about a 1-2% (CS is actually the highest). I’ve won more than my fair share of TB solo frontline Varians to think it’s that big an issue. Most of the time if there’s failure, it’s more often a micro problem than a talent problem. People are just way more comfortable blaming Varian talents than looking deeper about other factors that have a way bigger effect on outcome.
Most of my experience with Varian teammates revolve around them being self centered and making poor decisions, their talent choices being the lynchpin in that grenade.
Is that the sole factor? No of course not. A great team can even carry a dead weight Varian.
Why is it you think that is the lynchpin? Wouldn’t them being bad be the bigger factor? Does choosing Taunt make those problems go away? Let’s be real, Varian, regardless of spec is more often focused on a blow up style of play. If that Varian taunts the backline vs Colossus Smash, does that change whether you get blown up?
It’s debatable, and semantics. A Varian that picks taunt is probably not self centered, even though taunt is kinda niche too (Varian is just not a fantastic tank unless the enemy has divers).
I do think if more Varians were team players, it would create a lot less frustrating experiences. My point is that the talent is usually the biggest indicator. Varian is a Swiss Army knife. He has a lot of options, and a lot of them are great… but they’re not one size fits all.
