I’ve been playing hots for a long time now, clear back when initially they let rag go lava wave in aram. When you could fight three SGT hammers and they’d all go the rotating missile (which used to do damage to structures) and even when you’d see a leoric either on your team or the enemy team just constantly push and win the game with 60+ deaths. Point is the mode has never really been “balanced” so there will always be stuff that doesn’t feel fair. However, I think what some people fail to realize is how much things like “fair” and “fun” go hand in hand. It wasn’t fun nor fair to lose the game to a missile constantly wiping your wave and slowly destroying each keep. It wasn’t fun nor fair when Leoric could suicide bomb himself into your wave all game and still win. I think Circle of Life has gotten such a pass because by itself while its still insanely strong its not game breaking… until you add other heroes to the equation. Pretty much any and all heroes that have a globe quest instantly become more oppressive and boring to play against. The whole reason they’re not seen as broken is because you have options to deny them like fighting/taking them first at generators or waves. Alex removes this interaction entirely or in most cases just adds on to it. This makes the game less fun especially on maps like Lost Cavern where you don’t even have camps to fight over. I know there are plenty of examples of abilities that make things stronger (i.e Ana boost on Valla’s ult) but those are at least ultimates you can play around and counter pick to deal with. I just think it should be either every three or other cast that gives a globe OR that she has to get a globe first in order for it to give one. That way it solves the issue that things like the missile, lava wave, and leoric all had which is how stale it made the game knowing your on a timer. (Side note: I know this will probably get comparisons to Zul’Jin Azmo Valla etc so I wanna say that their kits are built around their stacking mechanics while globe quests are just an added bonus to a kit and are meant to be strong because globes are usually able to be denied or are on a fixed rotation which circle of life bypasses.)
What globe quests are you thinking specifically?
I know stitches comes to mind but who else? A lot of quests i can think of from the top of my head have a cap of some sort.
Johanna, Mephisto, KTZ, Blaze, Imperius, Ming, and Diablo all have talents that benefit from globes throughout the match. Some are CDR, some are repeatable, but they all love globes, especially on a map where there is no hearthing.
Tyreal, guldan, and chen also have perma globe benefits.
But yeah alex is crazy good in aram. Even if you dont have globe synergies, the infinite mana is nice to.
Alex in general sucks it’s nice she has some place in ARAM though, because she’s miserable in the healer viability charts.
I don’t know about that. She seems pretty middle of the pack overall, a little worse in ARAM maybe. Think her success hinges more on your allies, so she’s probably bad if you don’t have a team that will go on circles and gets progressively better as both yours and your team’s skill gets better.
I feel like she can be hit or miss depending on your opponents more than anything I particularly do. If the enemy team can punish you easily for clumping, playing her can be pretty brutal. If they can’t then you just get monstrous healing. Circle build is pretty strong though. Once you get shields, sometimes you can just eat the damage, and getting more mana regen can let your team be relentless.
Yes but also she’s very high risk with some very obvious counters to her % based healing, if she doesn’t win her fights with dragon she won’t be doing much in the long run.
Her biggest hinder is that her peel CC isnt reliable enough that the 4 is a huge must pick due it’s decay being removed.
She has the same issues like Whitemane where they have to go big or go home and don’t provide anything outside of that with the exception of some talents that make the hero feel like it’s worth the pick.
There are 2 very common mistakes people make with Alex that make her seem way worse then she is.
First, people are simply aggressive and/or go for way to many Es. Taking any damage will destroy your ability to heal with Q so all the trading that comes with using your E on cooldown all game hurts you significantly more then it would on any other healer.
Unlike Whitemane who does have to go in to heal, Alex always has the option to sit in the very back and leverage her long range heals almost like an Ana would.
The second mistake people just misuse the circle.
You cant just use this on cooldown. You gotta hold it until the big AOEs to be used first otherwise your teams gonna take more damage then they heal. I think everyone knows this one, they just gotta put it in to practice more.
Its also completely fine to heal only 1 or 2 people with this ability. I think the dream of healing your whole team with this ability seems way more easily attainable then it actually is and your doing more harm then good by going for it every time. The Diablo might be able to patiently wait 3 seconds for the mega heal but the Valla is either gonna die or is going to miss out on dealing damage. Ideally your Q should be for the squishy backlines and the Ws should be for the frontlines.
Also also dont put your circles right behind the gate, thats prime blind spam territory.
Overall you just gotta be more patient with Alex. Its totally fine and very effective to just sit in the super backline with Q or W build and only come forward to E people who clearly cant fight back.
I understand those mistakes and I do be very patient with my plays with some heroes (I learned it from Kerrigan) and honestly she doesn’t really do much in the long run, she’s easily countered and provides very little even with timing in mind not spamming everything.
She has so little room for error and that room becomes forgiving with Dragonqueen and the lack of useful CC doesn’t help her case, being reliant on her healthbar + % delay healing + a CC that requires skillshot set up twice with built in decay, not great.
She’s overall in need of a rework as she suffers in a lot of places. I believe this is her most optimal build right now, as it buffs her best tool of her trait while also providing more valuable healing and utility both in and out.
are we still talking aram or is this alex in ranked?
I was talking about Alex in ranked. She’s ok in ARAM. 
oh lol, I thought we were talking aram.
In ranked I feel shes pretty niche but shes very strong in that niche. Shes like a top 5 healer on heroes profile : p
The issue with circle of life being described exists in regular play as well. It is possibly even more powerful there as the additional lanes and camps allow Alexstraza to complete the quest faster, and give the boosted hero even more health globes per unit time. If anything this strategy is very weak in ARAM since circle of life is one of the worst healing abilities in ARAM due to its choreographed, slow, nature and completing the quest can be near impossible if your team is losing the lane fights constantly. Pretty much all S tier, “instant pick” ARAM heroes can hard counter the healing by punishing enemies trying to get it with high damage AoE moves, and there can be many such heroes on a team.
The only strong part of circle of life in ARAM is if the Alexstraza takes the quest and if she completes it. The additional healing glob can bring a lot of value due to it replenishing significant amounts of mana if allies need mana, something that is very hard to replenish in ARAM due to the lack of the hall of storms healing and potentially having no wells left. Heroes that benefit from globe quests do get value from it as well, but that value is likely slightly less than what they could get from a regular match where Alexstraza focuses following them.
Now of course ARAM does allow other broken things… 1 Alexstraza with that quest is kind of meh, even with a Stiches to benefit from it. But 3 Alexstraza and 2 Stiches? I can see that ending up quite silly with faster than permanently mounted Stiches running around the battle field being healed thousands every second. But then again this is just another broken healing comp of the dozens ARAM has. Try 3 Deckard Cains and 2 Li Mings for example, the enemy is rooted and slowed near permanently allowing the Li Mings to constantly land burst shots on them. Or 3 Tyrande… Or 3 Kharazim… Or 3 Rehgar…