Thank goodness it isn’t!
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I mean, Blizzard nerfed his Locust build into the ground, and mines are situational at best.
Not sure what you expect from the slug. There was a high risk, high reward style of gameplay with Locusts but that’s gone now. You can still globally soak lanes with your hat and you can’t soak XP from bushes anymore so really, there’s no incentive to go into a lane at all.
Sometimes if I’m REALLY bored I’ll solo a camp by placing a bunch of mines on it then burrowing to it to blow them all up, but like, why?
Abathur used to be a disgustingly high skill cap hero, but now, meh.
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How about
No
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Body soak while supporting allies, usually during objective.
As with TLV, I don’t really see the heroes as exclusively XP machines.
I could just hat minions, but that’s 4 seconds where I’m not hatting allies (or minions in a different lane)
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You really only should be doing this during an objective or something where the entire enemy team is fighting. You’re just asking to get ganked without any escape otherwise.
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Well maybe if his siege and body presence is rewarded more, he’ll take more risks. But it was the player base who wanted him to be more supportive and thus his hat was allocated more power.
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Yeah that’s why I said usually during objective.
But there can be a lot of value gained from making yourself obvious.
Enemies sometimes drop doing something valuable so they can go after the worm like a fish, and then you just deep tunnel out. They spent all of that time trying to gank you, with nothing to show for it, being put out of a useful position.
Sometimes you will get caught, but good mine placement and map awareness reduces this drastically.
Which is why I’m really not fond of Abathur players who stick a boatload of mines in one spot. There’s a lot of opportunity cost invested there, for little, unlikely, returns.
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I rarely do that from time to time but when I see folks choosing characters that lunge at their opponents in ranked I’m always worried and concerned my teammates will fly trap themselves. One of my tactics to these days is to leave a camera showing how my teammates are doing and just spam buttons in another lane so none would take the piss on me for not laning. I’m well aware that my locusts does more damage when close to opponent base I just think I got to keep my teammates alive to divert their attention.
They’ve mostly fixed the nerfs they gave it now… the issue is it doesn’t do anything until level 13.
I think this idea that jumped out of my head the other day might help:
The issue is locusts don’t push lanes enough to warrant being forwards.
I still don’t like exp globe anomaly simply because it makes bodysoaking risk/reward not as rewarding AND more risky specifically for Abathur.
I am not sure what to think about it, because it sounds very oppressive to me, because then your allys usually don’t need to check for Aba’s lane and also get supported by Aba’s hat. Otherwise I would demand Azmodan’s D to be buffed to the same way, because his commander should be comparable to locusts and he is only strong at 13 as well, when you buff his presence. Do you want that? I am personally think that would make Aba or Azmo too strong, because they could do both things: soaking and teamfighting at once.
My problem with aba is that he just makes balanced heroes op and the already overpowered ones become even more of a joke with the hat.
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well it’s a 5v4 game with aba, so he better make one of the heroes he hats “op” (although he really doesn’t, if we’re being honest).
if you guys want aba to “take risks” then buff his locusts. i’d love that 
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I don’t think that would make a difference. If Aba is close, they would either die to minions or towers. If he’s far, they would die instantly at a certain range instead of timing out at a certain range.
That’s a good point. Maybe, hat should suffer damage penalties on their target? Obviously not boosts since that’s going to be oppressive, but.
Are you telling me that an on demand shield and healing over time, + 25 attack speed at 4, instant and possible burst healing at 13, + 40 movement speed or 40 slow at 16 and double symbiote or + 35 hp shield does not make his targets op?
Oh and no need to be close to where he is, just completely global and uninteractive.
His entire kit makes decent heroes totally oppressive to play against becouse it nullifies the key balance points each hero has when its created.
Just try it, go to ranked and if a good map shows, get a friend to play him and pick cassia, gm, sylvanas, samuro or zeratul.
He has around 55 wr and is in the 10 most banned heroes in master and diamond using third party websites.
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When he hides in spawn then what counter play is there to stop him from wreaking people with his hyper carry.
Halls of Storm should kick people out of it if they stay inside it for too long imao.
There should be no reason for people should be allowed to stay there after game has started unless they need to heal up.
Halls of storm should not be a place were Aba can hide all game and make every global ults vs him useless.
People saying its a free win if he hides in spawn need to figure out he can still wreak your team while he hides there if his team is decent enough.
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Good abathur players do take risks. Its really the only way he really truly shines. Otherwise your team is just failing vs a meh aba
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6 second cooldown if he sits on the hero, 4 seconds if he leaves and comes back.
You’re supposed to leave and come back, but if you do you aren’t making use of Adrenal, which is why I very rarely pick it.
Not really.
Most people just think they’re in a 1v1 when they’re in a 1v2.
At high level they just know that his strength is being able to suddenly make a 1v1 into a 2v1 without warning, and to make it harder for the same to occur against your team with mines placed in rotation paths.
If his team is “decent enough”, your team is decent enough to just CC the hyper carry and focus them down.
If you just sit on one person you’re playing him wrong.
His greatest strength is being global, being essentially the fastest hero in the game. You give that up if you sit on one person the whole time.
What’s the counter play?
Just kill the minion he’s on if they’re stupidly having him solo lane.
If they aren’t, it’s the fact that a 150 shield and 132 health heal every 4 seconds (or 6 if they sit on their ally…) is less than the health of having a second hero there. It means single target attacks and CC are more effective against the two.
The health he provides, and the damage he provides, isn’t as strong as just having another hero there UNLESS it is over an extended period of time.
He has a lot of opportunities to provide those benefits, it is constant, the entire match, unlike most heroes.
And that means he MUST always be doing things in order to make up for his decreased immediate effect.
He can make up for this somewhat with Ultimate Evolution, but by taking that he certainly isn’t on your hyper carry “making them OP”
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They would die, but that would imply that you got value out of them.
The point is that this tweak would allow for easier balancing.
Decreasing the locust duration would make Aba position more aggressively, but it would also not provide the value since they would die on their own.
Leah range would allow both to force Aba into taking risks while allowing those risks to pay off.
that’s what makes his design very unique/different from other characters and that’s not something i think they should change, you can sit in the back and play the game almost like an rts/strategy game like sc2, besides that if you go the locust build you will definitely need to go out and take risks
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