What do you guys think about the mechanics for the core in Alterac Pass?
Personally i love it because it’s different to the other cores and also reminiscent of the final boss fight in WoW’s Alterac Valley. However, i do feel there’s room for improvement.
The victory condition for all maps is to kill the core. However despite this simplistic goal, there are actually multiple ways to accomplish this feat which opens up versatile gameplay. Unfortunately for Alterac Pass, i feel the boss mechanic limits this interesting variability.
Here are the main ways to kill the core on a standard map:
Win the objective in a fair fight which results in the core dying
Capture a boss and push with it to victory
Distract the enemy long enough to allow winions to kill the core on their own
Winions put enough pressure on the core forcing an enemy player to retreat and defend. This creates a numbers advantage elsewhere on the map allowing you to either win the objective or secure more kills
After getting the core to low health in a previous attempt, you could finish it off by back-door rushing.
Sadly, i believe options 1 or 2 are the only real ways to win Alterac Pass 95% of the time (a stat based on my personal experience). The other alternatives are incredibly rare by virtue of Alterac’s core mechanics.
Here are my issues with the core:
With 40 armour, the boss is still too strong to take down after killing just one keep. Realistically, you need to kill at least two keeps. Even with multiple dead enemies, i still prefer to use that advantage to kill extra keeps over trying to end the game
With high health regen, there is little reason to retreat and defend. Any damage the winions do will be recovered easily. Even with two keeps down the core can fend for himself and recover in time.
Here’s what i propose:
Reduce the armour from 60/40/20 to 30/20/10. This makes the boss still vulnerable even with one keep down.
Reduce his health regeneration. This makes damage to the core impactful, meaningful and something you want to try prevent.
Buff his HP. This compensates for the nerf to his armour and health regen.
Anyway what do you think? Are your experiences similar? Do you often find yourself in games where the core dies after one keep?
I don’t like your ideas, AP map is already really snowball-ish, when you can kill some enemys, get the objective and one boss in time. And now you want to weaken the core more for just a little more health as compensation? No, thank you.
I prefer that they empower the core, keep and towers instead to make comebacks more a thing, because currently comebacks are really hard to make, except enemys are cocky and do a lot of mistakes. I don’t know what you’re winrate is in heroesprofiles is for second to 10, but my winrate is around 30% over 1000 games that means a comeback is usually possible at 30% of the time… I don’t think it’s right.
Alterac is one of my favorite three lane maps bc it snowballs the least. I have occasionally won with only one keep down but its very rare. I think this is good. Alot of the other maps snowball too easily.
Though the map does suffer from offering a weak early objective and low camp timers. The higher mmr strat is to just cap camps on cooldowns and ignore first objective until 10 or whenever you get a significant level advantage. They should imo increase camp timer to reduce its importance.
I would say the low camp timer are that low to give the objective more weight, because it’s like you said weak early. That’s what makes it balanced, even though Hogger can really well abuse it to get his brothers.
To me, the layout of the map is what creates variety in gameplay and which heroes can be drafted. Because the camps and bosses have more impact on what happens with the objective, and because getting multiple keeps down is essential, this map is second only to Cursed Hollow in terms of the importance of rotations and allowing for some impressive boss/camp invades. This aspect is where I feel versatility comes into play.
i like that the core is a person instead of a building and i’d like the devs to emphasise that a bit more. They should give the core more special abilities when you fight it so that it feels more like a raid boss fight and that you’re fighting a sixth hero in the final battle. Atm the core just has a charge and a spin to win which is a bit meh. Nerf and balance the core as you please.
For a part i think its good to have a tougher core that remains strong with just 1 lane. So i think the armor part as it is now is fine. (also, i wouldnt bother mentioning the 60 armor, as with all keeps its an invuln anyway, i would just say: 40/20 instead).
What i however would do is split the core into 2 parts: a quickly recovering shield. A slow recovering healthbar.
The shield is generaly enough to not get hurt by minions on their own. But for the health regen it can be made slow enough to take several minutes to recover.
This enables point 5 a bit easier.
Another thing that could be done though is that the objective mercs whenever they are near the core will always reduce the armor of the core regardless of the number of keeps remaining. If each of those mercs removes 20 armor, its effectively worth a keep on that. But yes, this again makes it more objective oriented.
Only you didnt mention point 6: Wipe the enemy team and push the core. With 40 armor that core still resists quite a bit. And this is especialy important post lvl 20 for comeback potentials since it still enables a team that lost all 6 forts and just killed 1 of them to normaly push a core already (even if they dont kill it, they put it to dangerous health value).
just killing people and going for the core to end, is easy, a smart team can end with 1 keep kill with objective + boss. it puts more strategy than just “most/all of them dead? bumrush keep, then core and win”. this map rewards the team that plays the best more, not very much snowballing and i like that ALOT