Anduin was the most fun character to play, my main (~600 matches, lvl 95) and the whole reason to play HotS.
To play old Anduin you should’ve understand how to position yourself in order to be able to heal your team safely. You had a variety of builds with interesting mechanichs, where you should’ve known how each ability interacts with other to make it more effective…
Now what we have is an autoattacker, which makes it super boring to play.
My question is “why”? Was this nerf made to make him less effective? Less interesting? I liked the challenge, where you had to think 10 steps ahead of your enemies to get a good position to heal teammates that don’t always listen to your advises and to not get killed in the first seconds of a fight.
I am hoping that there is still a chance to get old talents back… I am wondering if other players are happy with the nerf or are they as disappointed and sad as I am?
The only part of this rework Anduin actually needed was a rework for his level 1 talents, simply because Bold Strategy was Pursued by Grace plus half of Renew, which was simply and objectively better than either PbG or Renew alone.
Some of the changes are okay or good, but as a whole this has removed most of the fun of playing Anduin for me. The new organization of many of his talents is absolutely atrocious – Renew at level 16 and Desperate Prayer at level 7? Gross.
You’ve got this backwards.
Anduin’s early game talents all took a ~3-4% hit to their already sub-par winrates. Most of his lategame talents only took a ~1-2% hit.
His early-game was nerfed. His late-game remained mostly the same.
The only exception is his W build, which got improved across the board.
I was about to say I’m pretty sure Anduin is better lategame worse early game. Reassuring to see the stats lining up with my personal experience on this one.
They might not be the best, but they are better than you and your exaggerations, that’s for sure. I mean you think TLV is for bots and you want hard carrys in this game, but ignoring the fact that this game has already crazy hard carrys like The Butcher, who would be s tier in LoL or Dota 2.
But on topic:
I am not an Anduin main, but I didn’t feel that the current changes are just nerfs. Fountain talent on 1 for example is a significant buff and I see people pick it always like there is no other. It’s basically Lucio’s boombox with a smaller radius on 1 not too bad.
And when I recall my last games in the last month I’ve seen more Anduins than the other 6 months before patch… he seems pretty popular and strong, at least in my personal experience.
It’s just rework hype, that will go away with time. Anduin feels decently powerful but I feel like he’s missing that small piece to really put him up there with healers like Stukov and Uther.
I’ve said it a few times before but he severely lacks play making potential. He has a decent bit of utility but nothing that can be used too aggressively if you don’t count Lightbomb.
Being a good defensive healer is fine if you got the right comp for it but in most games if your team can’t secure kills then all the healing in the world isn’t going to do them any good.
Yes, but when it comes to their baseline kits I feel like Anduin is just missing something. Lightbomb is good but you also give up a really good ultimate to use something that is telegraphed and might not always work. At least Divine Storm is instant cast so it allows you to get surprise picks. Not to mention the fact that Uther can flex as an offtank or support while still providing lots of mitigation to the team, something Anduin doesn’t have without a talent despite the fact he’s literally a Priest and the most notable part of a priest imo is power word: shield.
This is the reason why Uther and Stukov are top tier picks. They have amazing play making potential (Uther with his stunlocks and Stukov with his extremely powerful CC talents) and it lets their team get picks lategame and win, something Anduin cannot do because Lightbomb is extremely telegraphed, and his E is actually so slow it’s painful.
Instant cast, but for melee range around Uther while Lightbomb can be casted on a target Anduin choose with more preparation. I would say both are comparable with different advantages or disadvantages.
It’s more about knowing how to use it. It wombos really hard with many ults.
With FS Johanna being popular right now you can get insane value out of it if everyone is on the same page. Having teammates who are reactive helps a lot too. It hurts to watch someone get tagged with Lightbomb and walk away from the enemy team for a full second before finally realizing and turning around.
But usually I don’t whiff, just plop it on a frontliner and watch them do work. Especially ones with engages like Leap Sonya.
It becomes risky when you try to use it to save a squishy (yourself included) and they die before it explodes.
E isn’t the worst CC ability anyone could have. It has a fat hitbox and travel speed is fast enough to catch someone running away in a straight line from you at a certain distance so I don’t hate it. 1.25 second root ain’t too shabby, just use it as self peel or follow up and it works most the time.
The low CD and shield on lightbomb is really nice, I will admit. I do like lightbomb a lot but I feel like it’s difficult to justify over his other ultimate.
Maybe in lower elo, where people have no idea how important cc is and usually can’t interrupt Anduin, but that shouldn’t be a problem for higher players. It’s really easy to interrupt, it’s even the perfect invitation for some other enemy heroics like Gazlowe’s bomb. I love it, when I see Anduin is using his heroic and then I instantly cast bomb after that.
