I’m sure the topic of changing talents has been beaten to death here, but the fact that they can’t be modified in the slightest even after a mistake is really annoying. So I propose the following QoL improvement
Allow people to undo their last talent pick, going back only 1 talent tier, only while in the fountain, out of combat, and the talent is not being actively used. Players may due this up to 3 times per game and only once per talent tier. Once they proceed to the next talent tier they cannot undo the prior one.
This will allow some subtle flexibility in builds and the ability to undo the dreaded misclick. It will still pretty much preserve the game as is while adding in more of the item shop buy-back element that many other MOBAs have, and some additional strategy and depth.
The devs have specifically said in the past that they don’t want players to be able to benefit from a talent, then undo it and pick another one. For better or worse, you have to commit.
Hey, this is a reasonable request that has been made several times before.
The devs actually did listen to feedback and made favoriting talents doable.
However, I feel that reversing a talent that you misclicked or decided you didn’t want later is just problematic. There are many different builds you can go for in HoTs, and it’s made dynamic in that way to explore your choices. If you picked a bad (perceived) talent then just roll with it. It might introduce new choices.
Right and the dev’s have never gone back on any game philosophies and changed them on them ever…?
Regardless players would still be expected to commit, hence the fact that they can only undo once per tier, and only while it is their current highest talent tier. Moreover, they could also make it so that once a player benefits from that talent it becomes locked in. This would still be forgiving talent misclick, without changing the game playstyle.
If LoL added shop undos before leaving fountain, HotS can add a short talent undo window as well with some limitations and improve the game without changing the core idea of talents being locked in. As of now picking the wrong talents can be so frustrating it makes the remainder of the game pointless to play. Moreover in LoL and DotA, one can sell their hero’s items, albeit at a great cost to discourage it except in a strictly necessary case. Since talents are essentially hero items in this game there should at least be some system for flexibility, albeit with a heavy drawback, like only once and only under very specific conditions.
I propose making the icons even larger to avoid misclicks. Massive panels come up on your screen. Something so large that not even get a knock on the table by your kid brother whilst you are mid-sneeze could prevent you from picking the correct talent.
Out of curiosity, how often do you pick the wrong talent? For me it’s about once every 200 games.
Same, and on those rare occasions I pick the wrong talent, it usually means that I’m tired or unfocused and shouldn’t be playing Hots.
No backsies for the wrong talent, unless there was say, a one-minute window where that selected talent would be disabled, until you either changed it, or waited the one minute for it to be active and locked in.
I think the above isn’t needed and would be cumbersome, but I can’t think of another method for a talent undo to work in a manner that would prevent players from exploiting such a feature.
Pro tip, you can bind select favorite talent to a button and then just favorite talents mid game during down time to plan out your build. Not only will you never select the wrong talent like that, you can also easily pick your talents mid fight.
You can still miss click though… as they aren’t automatically picked just because they are favorited. I would like a system where it does, but due to the variety of compositions you can face… you might want to change certain talents even though the rest of that favorited build remains the same.
if your clicking on talents you arent high enough level to take you favorite them, then you can use the “quick Talent Selection Favorite” option under hero management in hotkeys. Beyond the very first talent its impossible to miss click with this technique.
This will never happen until the game doesn’t have heroic picking contest where 2 heroes withhold it because they are both aware that they can counter each other if someone else picks the other.
A big issue with changing talents that hasn’t been mentioned yet has to do with how certain talents are counters to others, and so on. A lot of times I will hold a talent pick, especially a heroic, until I know what the enemy team has selected. With the proposed system, it could be possible to bait out a pick, then change yours, leaving the enemy team with a sub-par talent.
While there have been a few times I knew I picked the wrong thing as soon as I did so, usually when playing Blaze and going with an offlane talent out of habit, rather than a tanking talent when I find myself as the only front line hero, it doesn’t happen often enough to justify the addition of such a “refund” scenario. Mistakes are honestly part of the game, whether it is selecting the wrong talent, facechecking a bush, or failing to recognize a win condition and pressing ahead for victory.
On something they said they would never do? I don’t remember that heppening.
You pick a talent, and you can change it 3 levels later. That’s the opposite of committing.
I’d be fine with something like a 3 second window to undo a selection. But as a player, I adapt to my opponent’s talents with my own. The game requires me to do this to perform (People who don’t even look at opponent’s talents will perform worse) this is a part of the strategy of the game. And you’d be punished by reaching your next talent tier first, because the opponent can change their picks accordingly but you can’t.
Being up a talent should always be an advantage. And being able to change talents several minutes after the fact makes for a completely different game. There may be games where that’s a thing, in which case that’s what you’re looking for, not HotS.
Best thing you can do is use shortcuts to select your talents instead of clicking them, that way you can never misclick.
Never understood why they didn’t make that option. I mean, I wouldn’t use it, but for people who want to it would be nice.
I have a random thought that might solve most of the issues: Delayed Pick.
It can be a completely UI thing. When you pick a talent with a single click, it takes 5 seconds to activate. During this window, you can change your choice (and restart the timer). Selecting the same talent again finalizes the choice early.
This would eliminate misclicks, otherwise changing little.
Can also be made optional, although awkward situations aside (like holding back a talent not to reveal it, relevant to 0.001% of the players, or leveling up mid-fight), that window hardly matters. Then again, if it does, just Ctrl+00, Ctrl+11, etc.
I actually had this in a game vs a premade. I had not picked my ult yet and neither had Auriel on the other team. It was first about a min later when I picked mine she picked hers. Talking about being watched.
There is also the issue with talents that require long periods of investment to get any sort of return value (this would mean that screws up would have to be caught immediately and thus it would be a moot point midcombat if we went by OP). Swapping from one talent to another would mean a clean slate which could do more harm than good. Even a level of two later then swapping could be detrimental in the long run unless some sort of additional mechanism was implemented that would carry over the progress.
If not, then this could be easily abused. Say I play QM or some game mode for the first time as Valla, get thumped a few times after taking Creed of the Hunter, to then swap to either Puncturing Arrow or Fire at Will depending on mood and enemy teamp composition. Not only do I negate the progress the enemy team had accomplished towards my own, but there is a good chance I just screwed over my teammates as well. Not to mention any other problems that could arise.
Even that aside as others mentioned it could just become a bait best as people try to goad others into using counter talents. Accidents do happen, but this would just add a layer of complexity that HotS does not need.
The talent swap idea just opens the door to an entire madhouse that should remain locked.
There are probably more times I’ve been pleasantly surprised by my mistaken picks than not. I might still have preferred my original pick, but they’re not game breaking. Sometimes it definitely hurts, but talents aren’t supposed to be sacrilege insta losses if you pick the wrong one. If you don’t get one bonus, most likely, you’ll get another, probably equally good bonus.
Games are so short and you can already queue favorites up.
