um what? have you seen high levels of play before? he is banned 95% of the time, irrelevant of map, it’s very unclear to me what you mean by people dont abn him, i mean i guess if you bronze- plat then ya he isn’t banned, but in coordinated high level play he is banned tons of time.
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On some maps like Cursed Hollow and Towers of Doom, I see more or less 100% ban rate on Abathur and that is just low diamond games. If he isn’t banned he is quickly instalocked.
There are also a few other globals in the game that can instantly gib him (namely Planet Cracker) but I find he usually perma retreats to base after first kill or anticipates it and doesn’t leave base once you pick it.
It is a kind of victory, but in a way it’s not. Since you have to hold on to it all game in case he crawls out of base, so you have no ult for the entire game. And if you do ult, then he gets out of base for two minutes and goes back until you ult again.
Arthas is a main tank who is a first pick!?
Thought he was a offlaner these days like blaze 
But what do I know.
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Yes all the time
In 2019
Would not be happy having aba on braxxis or hanamura.
It seem pretty clear.
I’m in low master atm and often fight gms players.
Wouldn’t say ‘‘tons’’
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ez push ?
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I’ve seen both, but as I mentioned his synergy does not stop with heroes like Illidan or Zeratul. In fact, you would almost have to try on purpose to create a team that does not synergize with him, whereas Arthas is somewhat niche himself.
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You do realise you are discussing with a grandmaster aba player about potential counters. And you say your reflexes are too fast? I concider to be fast. But he is two step above me (if he is playing serious)
What do you mean by counterplay? Do you mean killing abathur, or do you mean stopping him from being useful?
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Stopping him from being useful, which could be from killing him or other methods. For example, lowering the range of his abilities and removing the revealing of stealth by forts to make him riskier and actually diveable by more than 3 heroes. Or making it so that CC on his hatted target CCs Abathur as well. Or making it so that killing his clone stops him from hatting allies for a few seconds. One suggestion I’ve seen was giving him an energy resource which depletes when hatting a target and dealing damage to the hatted target would reduce the energy. I want it to be possible to interact with Abathur by any means.
If he is given energy resource, he will be useless. The difference between good abathur and bad abathur is the reaction time. Good abathurs hat where its needed immediately, bad abathurs just randomly symbiote something.
Otherwise everyone can occasionally put traps and spam q w e during the symbiote.
He has plenty of things that can be done to impact his ability to do well. Most of them are listed already.
But interacting with him directly? Not a lot of those. But then again, abathur doesn’t interact with people directly either.
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The only things mentioned as counters have been playing split pushers (which does not work if Abathur’s team doesn’t allow it) and Arthas. A well played Abathur with a team who knows how to play with him does not have ways to realistically mitigate his usefulness.
Abathur’s value requires that he has a good team. If his team stinks, he won’t be able to really body soak and he won’t get much value out of his hat and potential hat buffs. He is not guaranteed anything.
If an Abathur plays well and has a good team? Absolutely! What’s wrong with that? Abathur requires an enormous amount of microplay and macroplay. Getting high hero damage when he’s involved in most fights, ganks, etc makes perfect sense. It means he’s doing a great job.
So what? Lots of heroes can have strong synergy. This isn’t unique to Abathur. Also you’re basically saying “when Abathur does everything right, he gets rewarded!” which is how a competitive game is supposed to be balanced.
Except that Illidan is open to basically all forms of CC so not even an Aba hat can save him from many situations. Illidan’s value is also largely tied to his constant auto attacks (which means people like Arthas, Muradin and Johanna can still stuff him despite a Hat).
Tassadar can provide constant value while Abathur generally requires a hat or clone to provide value. His shield can also give characters like Raynor or Tracer some decent self sustain via lifesteal. If Tassadar takes force wall, he can also really screw up the enemy team’s ability to escape (Since the Wall acts more like a structure instead of a hero, it can block unstoppable heroes). Tassadar can also double soak more efficiently than Abathur in many cases.
TLV are mostly a meme hero though, they generally aren’t very good period. Their low HP generally means if an enemy team focuses on killing them quickly, their value becomes near 0 which has nothing to do with the existence of Abathur.
The MULE can be destroyed though. Yes, it can stall games by keeping buildings alive but it’s not just free hp with no counterplay.
The ultimate problem with posts like this is that instead of using the actual definition of counterplay (aka simply being able to do something to defend or mitigate an enemy play or ability), people just start making up their own definitions. If a hero has plenty of counterplay but not the VERY SPECIFIC type of counterplay OP wants, they will ignore it and still spout stuff like “oh yea but I was talking about MEANINGFUL counterplay!” which winds up being an arbitrarily picked list of things OP has to decide on instead of anything that makes sense. I feel like there is probably no real discussion to be had here because even if we got someone like Fan in here to list counterplay to Abathur, you’d likely still disagree and say that is isn’t “MEANINGFUL” counterplay.
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Yes, like other heroes with Supportive abilities he requires a good team, unlike say Thrall. And he is guaranteed the ability to soak like a madman, stop rotations, and provide vision, as well as everything I said regarding using his clone to dive and forcing valuable enemy cooldowns.
What’s wrong with that is that you cannot stop him. If an Ana is healing out of her mind your entire team could focus her. If Deathwing is on the enemy team you could position yourself far enough away that he can’t hit you. If Abathur is playing well, none of this applies.
The synergy Abathur provides is much, much higher than others. Illidan jumps from bottom tier hero to a pretty good one if accompanied by even a mediocre Abathur player and Illidan is not even Abathur’s best hat target. And it is not just that he is playing right and rewarded, it is that you as his enemy cannot contest him from doing so because you cannot interact with him in any way.
Abathur can always soak a lane because of his globals. But I do agree force wall is amazing, specially the level 20. Tassadar also has one of the lowest health pools in the game and is very susceptible to getting bursted so you could CC him and kill him to stop him, whereas Abathur could be sitting around in his base if he felt like it. Additionally, Tassadar’s utility comes at the cost of high damage, while Abathur provides great utility AND damage.
You cannot be serious saying that it is destroyable. I mean, yes, technically it is. But that is entirely the Abathur’s fault for placing it in front of the enemy team. I would wager less than %1 of mules used are destroyed because it is placed way, way behind the fort.
I defined my definition of counterplay almost exactly as you did. The only point so far to counter him has been to split push and that is not a viable strat, specially in the late game where that means the person pushing would have to expose themselves to ganks much more and a late game death could make them lose.
There’s that phrase again.
So condescending.
Such an easy way to dismiss half of all conversation.
OP is claiming Abathur Symbiote makes even Lucio deadly, but I remember all the people complaining that Abathur is a bad pick because you’re lacking that 5th body and that he only counts as half of a hero.
I remember that not much more than a month ago people were saying the XP globes made Abathur useless, and then the slight change of last hits granting XP made somehow turned it into a buff.
These forums are so baffling.
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I don’t see how it is condescending. The game should be balanced for people who know how to use the heroes they pick. I said that because even I’ve seen Abathurs who somehow have 0 xp and damage, but that doesn’t mean that those players should be taken into account when balancing and designing heroes. Even the most broken hero possibly designed would not have %100 win rate because of bad players and because it is a team game. Should Medivh or Hanzo be buffed because noobs can’t play them? Of course not.
Lacking a body can even be beneficial as it makes it harder to get stacks. And during the laning phase he makes the solo lane a “1.5v1” lane so it matters a lot less that he is weaker during the beginning because teams can’t just sit at mid brawling all day.
As for the xp changes, people do not handle change well. It takes time for people to adjust, and I have had these thoughts about Abathur since well before his rework. You can’t lump the entire forums into one as if it is one person.
Actually Abathur was buffed with these exp changes. You have 6 seconds to catch exp from a wave, while before you would need to be really perfect in time.
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It’s just bad phrasing in my opinion.
You can see a Silver level player saying “if he knows what he’s doing” X hero should never be hit.
It’s just an excuse to avoid talking about real events or numbers.
It’s the “no true Scottsman” thing.
And no, the forums aren’t all one person.
But its clear there are conflicting views on the same subject, which is part of my point.
People frequently act like their view is the only possible one, and that they have concrete evidence it is the case, without trying to provide much of that evidence.
His win rate isn’t particularly high, his pick rate isn’t particularly high, his ban rate is 11th so there is a bit of an argument there.
But given this information it doesn’t look like there’s nothing that can be done against him.
His impact is lower than other heroes, so counterplay is a bit lower too. He can be useful SOMEWHERE on the map, pretty much at all times, but that also means they balanced him so he HAS to be useful somewhere on the map at all times.
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Abathur is the most team dependent hero in the game. Obviously a team that knows how to take advantage of Abathur will do well, but there aren’t a lot of teams out there that fit that bill.
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He does have counterplay…So many that your team has to actually make up for it at least until the first set of forts are down.
Abathur struggles a lot in the early game, that it if his allies aren’t patient, it could cost them the game through sheer tilt. It just seems like he doesn’t have counterplay because you don’t directly counter him, no in the sense that Cassia can poop on a Butcher or that CS varian can delete a fenix. It’s much more subtle.
Now if you’re looking for a hard-counter, it technically does exist… but it such an odd counter that it doesn’t really feel like a counter. The Lost Vikings. Abathur struggles against composition that can:
-apply constant pressure and force an ally to back
-keep up in levels,
-and have Globals.
TlV fits all 3 criteterias. The only area Abathur does better than TLV on average is applying Teamfight pressure. While your average TLV player has difficulties doing this very thing, a good play can actually assists in a team fight, just not as easily as an Abathur can do.
The main issue with a TLV vs Abathur matchup is the fact that it’s so team dependent that it can also be argue they go even against each other and that it’s not really a counter. Aba and TLV mains would have to apply input on this since this is simply me conjecturing off of experience.
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