Afk in base hatting, 0 risk, shouldn’t be a viable way to play
The hat is also totally uninteractive. You can’t stun the hat. You can’t even defensive matrix the hat to reduce its damage. You can’t body block the hat. You can’t kill the hat, he will just hat someone else.
This hero is the definition of uninteractive
Abathur is the cutest video game character I have ever seen
That’s suboptimal.
It kinda works, but suboptimal. Only got about 40% winrate and fairly poor numbers playing him like that.
Thats how most Aba plays these days so get used to it. I rarely see Aba these days go away from there comfort zone behind forts and keeps and soak the lane he is in with his trait. And when all forts and keeps are gone they just hide in spawn so no one has any chance to take him out. Also when heroes like Nova or Zera are on the enemy team hiding in spawn just gets even more enforced since they can gank him pretty easy if they are lucky to find him out in the field.
I’m pretty much tired of watching Aba hiding in spawn myself since he can boost any hero without him having to think about getting ganked. LIke him hiding in a big protective burbble no one can penetrate.
I think Halls of Storm should get reworked so if you stay inside it for a longer periode of time it automatic kicks you out of it since it just a big safe zone for Abas that are affraid to comite to anything himself.
Yeah I really dislike how he can still operate at like 80% efficiency while at base. Most try to do some risky stuff, but after 1 death, they always have the option to hide is base and I really dislike it.
Some would say “but if he’s hiding in base, then that’s a win by itself!”, which is…partially true. He loses out on locust pushing (which isn’t all that useful untalented), maybe body soaking (which isn’t necessary post exp-globes), and his mine placement will have to be a bit more defensive (probably the most biggest downside of the three), and that’s about it.
This is probably the main reason you don’t see abathurs take “risks”.
But also does the least out of almost every single hero in the game.
His entire thing is to support whatever he’s hatting, minion, merc, hero or otherwise.
If he had a range on it, had to be more “risky” or even had to step foot (pun intended, he’s a slug) outside his fort to do what he’s designed to do, you would have to drastically buff him.
I’ll grant, not interacting with a hero is not fun, but you can actually. If he ever steps outside his core, simply queue up a diablo and one global ult of your choosing. My most successful being fenix who is rather flexible. Stun him with apoc, use damage ult, don’e; dead abathur. If he doesn’t step out of core, he loses half his kit, being able to put down mines and passive locust push. His downtime skyrockets and you win the game seeing the enemy team doesn’t really have a 5th player to cover lanes.
He’s the troll with the Chromie portrait, just report him.
If he do it, then he don’t use his full potencial and is basically a 4,5 vs 5 team.
That may be true, but countering Abathur is actually very simple. Have a decent wave clearer who can also take camps. Xul, Gazlowe, Guldan, Fenix, Junkrat, Murky, Probius… need I say more. All of them exert greater lane pressure than the average Abathur. Countering a hero doesn’t necessarily mean killing them.
You don’t need to. Just stun whoever has the hat on. Or polymorph, or blind. Any CC except slows work fine. Hatting someone else takes time, and usually there is only one decent AA target to hat. Neutralize that, and you’re good.
You are interacting with Abathur indirectly. This is what is unique about the hero. You’re not in a boxing match with an abathur, you’re in a chess match.
If aba had to get reworked (no reworks If possible) then turn him into Yuumi so at least he has a chance of dying. An abathur-Yuumi hybrid would be interesting. Huge range on bomb placement, risky to place himself on minions would mean he’d just plop himself on heroes mostly, other strategies
I sometimes sit in the middle of a minion wave.
I’ve almost died to minions.
Maybe the other Abathur are playing wrong.
But I have been suggesting a change to Locust that encourage him to position more aggressively.
They already made the range of Locust short enough that if you are sitting in the Hall of Storms it does nothing. If players are sitting in the HoS, then they don’t care about their Locust, and any changes you make to it won’t matter to them.
My suggestion was to make talent 1 a Locust tier.
3 different types of Locust that prioritize different targets, and their power against said targets would be more obvious.
So you’d have to position to get them to their targets.
Assault Locust would have a much shorter duration than they do now and go down lanes with a higher spawn rate, while Vanguard Locust would go after heroes and have a much higher duration but slower move speed.
I think the main point here is that Abathur doesn’t need to be all the way near his core to be safe. Most heroes cannot reach him near his forts. The Abathur player never needs to take any risks. They can, but they don’t have to.
You can body soak and hat another lane during the objective, or when the enemy is defending, and you’re not in any risk.
Aba doesn’t need to body soak, and structures can now target cloaked heroes, of which there are few. So the counterplay is minimal, and the interaction with him is almost non-existant.
Closer to 50%.
Yup.
Issue with locusts is that outside of being able to take some camps easy with level 1 talent, they cannot do anything until level 13 realistically.
That’s not true. You can sit in base and cast mines, and soak with hat without losing soak since you can pick up xp globes from 6 seconds ago.
The only thing you’re missing out on is locust and untalented locusts are garbage, they are certainly not 50% of abathur’s power, more like 5%
One thing I’d like is to have true sight removed from forts, keeps, and cores.
This will both give a decent buff to stealth (which should also be made so DoT doesn’t cancel it) and will give us a pool of heroes that are a direct counter to Aba.
A change that could go with it is to make his locust soak EXP instead of hat.
This would encourage Aba to stay in lane and risk getting ganked or fail to provide EXP to his team.
One possible change is to make locust last indefinitely, but have them die if they move too far from Aba (basically have a leash).
That could make balancing actually easier since you don’t have to worry about making locust crap in general just to prevent them from allowing Aba safe pushing, while it will also reward an Aba player that knows how and went to position.
Locust Nest could have a leash of its own in order to prevent it from being useless (there could even be some neat interactions, like position with Aba far behind the nest, but close enough that their both leash ranges touch, so the locust Aba spawns can still continue pushing using nest’s leash).
At a glance this thread is misleading; an Abathur that DOESN’T take risks is only worth half a hero at best. That said, it is all too common for Abathurs to waste their traits and sit behind walls all game and I hate it. I wish Abathur had crazy requirements to unlock before you could even play him with a special tutorial in-game just for him.
There are so many bad Abathurs out there that blame their teams for losing when they themselves don’t justify their Abathur picks by playing well. If you are an Abathur player you need to play WELL. There’s no room for being lazy or making mistakes or you’re not worth a full teammate.
all these people whining about aba. stop embarrassing yourselves and get gud 
How much experience do you have playing Abathur?