Anduin re-rework

General Discussion
1

Posted this in another thread, figured it could be one itself.

I have a lot of problems with the Anduin rework. More than just being pretty unbalanced, there are also some new design flaws.

Pursued by Grace is a trap effect. You will likely end up taking more net damage trying to get its healing than you would if you just kept your distance.
A lot of talents feel out of place. Renew really shouldn’t come as late as it does, Desperate Prayer shouldn’t be on the self-sustain tier, Power Word: Shield should be on the self-sustain tier, and Surge of Light and Piercing Light are competing with each other on the same level instead of synergizing from different levels.
Additionally, there’s not a ton of synergy available, which makes Anduin feel even more lackluster than his poor balance state does.

So here’s a barebones concept for a rework of the rework, so you can have a rework on your rework, dawg.

Changes

Baseline

  • Pursued by Grace triggers upon any damage dealt to heroes, not just AAs.

Level 1

  • Renew moved here (from level 16), and it’s bonus heal-over-time is increased to 50% of the total amount Flash Heal healed its target.
  • Piercing Light moved here (from level 4), and now also increases the travel speed of Chastise by 80% (increases missile speed from 5 to 9).
  • Lightwell now regains 2 charges of its heal from hitting enemy Heroes with basic attacks.

Level 4

  • Evenhanded Blessings moved here (from level 1), and its healing bonus is increased to 20%.
  • Surge of Light grants additional CDR for Chastise when basic attacks hit an immobilized Hero, and now fires that extra attack at all immobilized Heroes near the target.

Level 7

  • Binding Heal now heals Anduin for 50% of the total value it healed its target for.
  • Power Word: Shield moved here (from level 1).

Level 13

  • No changes

Level 16

  • Glyph of Faith now causes Leap of Faith to reset the cooldown of Chastise and have its cooldown reduced by hitting Heroes with Chastise.
  • Inner Focus re-added.

Level 20

  • Desperate Prayer moved here (from level 7) and reverted.

New Talent Tree

Note that this does not include his ults or their level 20 upgrades.

Level 1

  • Renew: Basic Attacks against Heroes empower the next Flash Heal to also heal for 50% more of its total healing over 5 seconds.

  • Piercing Light: Chastise travels 80% faster and pierces an additional hero.
    ❢ Quest: Hitting two Heroes with a single Chastise permanently increases Spell Power by 1, to a maximum of 10.

  • Lightwell: Summon a Lightwell that periodically heals a nearby allied Hero for 50. The well only fades after healing 15 times or when recast.
    Basic attacks against heroes refreshes the number of times Lightwell can heal by 2.
    Lightwell’s cooldown is reduced by 1 second each time Anduin heals an allied Hero.

Level 4

  • Evenhanded Blessings: If Flash Heal is cast on a different target from its last, increase its healing by 20% and refund 40% of its cooldown.

  • Moral Compass: Divine Star fires Basic Attacks at Heroes close to its apex.
    Passive: Increases attack range by 1.1

  • Surge of Light: Basic attacks reduce the cooldown of Chastise by 0.5 seconds, tripled against Stunned or Rooted Heroes.
    Basic attacks against Stunned or Rooted Heroes launch an additional attack at the target and all Stunned or Rooted enemy Heroes near them, each restoring 10 mana.

Level 7

  • Binding Heal: Casting Flash Heal on an ally heals Anduin for 50% of its total healing.

  • Power Word: Shield: While Divine Star is traveling out, allies in its path gain a Shield that absorbs 128 damage over 4 seconds.
    If Divine Star hits an enemy Hero, Anduin gains a Shield that absorbs 185 damage for 4 seconds.

  • Blessed Recovery: If Anduin loses more than 8% of his maximum Health at once, recover 15% Health over 3 seconds.
    This effect has a 10 second cooldown.

Level 13

  • Speed of the Pious: While Divine Star is traveling, gain 30% Movement Speed.
    Each allied Hero healed by Divine Star on its return to Anduin reduces its cooldown by 1 second.

  • Push Forward!: Damaging an enemy Hero increases Movement Speed by 2.5% and the amount healed by Pursued by Grace by 5% for 6 seconds. These effects stack up to 8 times.

  • Enchanted Boots - Lion’s Speed: Gain 5% Movement Speed. This bonus is quadrupled while Leap of Faith’s is off cooldown.
    Allies pulled by Leap of Faith are healed for 280 over 4 seconds.

Level 16

  • Holy Nova: After Anduin catches Divine Star, it explodes, healing nearby allied Heroes for 105 and damaging enemies for 150.

  • Glyph of Faith: Leap of Faith gains a 2nd charge, and casting it resets the cooldown of Chastise.
    Hitting Heroes with Chastise reduces Leap of Faith’s cooldown by 7 seconds.

  • Inner Focus: Activate to reset the cooldown of Flash Heal and increase its next cast’s heal by 40%.
    Damaging enemy Heroes with Divine Star reduces Inner Focus’ cooldown by 8 seconds.

Level 20

  • Censure: Chastise Stuns for 0.75 seconds and its Root duration is increased by 0.5 seconds.

  • Varian’s Legacy: Basic Attacks burn enemies for 87 damage over 3 seconds and Anduin heals for 50% of the damage dealt.

  • Desperate Prayer: Activate to instantly heal an allied Hero for 540, but kneel for 2 seconds, unable to act.

This should make Pursued by Grace more than barely useful, bring Q build up to snuff with W build, make E build an actual whole build, and allow some better hybridization with his early talents.

Level 1 and 4 talents now have a lot of cross-build synergy.
Renew benefits from Moral Compass (easy and safe HoT proc) and Evenhanded Blessings (more healing on HoT).
Piercing Light benefits from Surge of Light (more casts of Chastise) and benefits Q and W builds (+10 spell power means +10% healing).
Lightwell now benefits from Moral Compass and Surge of Light (extra attacks means extra charges of its heal).

Level 7 is now a true self-sustain-themed tier since Desperate Prayer didn’t fit in but Power Word: Shield does.
Binding Heal got a fairly large buff because it was so bad.

Inner Focus is back on level 16. I know a lot of people loved that talent and it works well as a capstone to Q build, so I figured “why not?” Hopefully that combined with the other small buffs to Q build doesn’t make it too strong.
Glyph of Faith is pretty underwhelming as it is, so it’s gotten a bit of a buff and now synergizes with E build.

Desperate Prayer makes for a decent burst-heal talent, but it just feels out of place anywhere but on level 20. It’s been reverted to its pre-rework state.

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Disagree with desperate prayer. That talent was awful at 20 and needed to be moved. As for it being on sustain tier i lile the change. You’re not getting beat up as anduin every game. You should be rewarded with extra healing for being able to give up the heal. Binding heal just needs buffs lol. His trait talents could use some work though.

I think he would be op if he got old pursued by grace baseline. That’s alot of extra healing. This rework has helped his early game alot. Small changes will get him higher, not bigger ones. Anduin will always heal himself with w. This adds up alot over time so him taking dmg to get healing to allies from PBG is a good tradeoff and pretty much the trademark of aggressive healers.

3 Likes
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I didn’t usually pick it just because of playstyle preference, but it had a 25% pickrate and the 2nd highest winrate of his level 20s. It was fine up there, and it’s doing much worse down at level 7.

I think that defeats the purpose of themed tiers.

If you don’t have to worry about taking as much damage, then you can pick PW:S for extra shielding for allies.

I proposed both of those.

Binding Heal heals Anduin for 50% of the amount it heals its target for. That’s 135 at base level (up from 115), and that also synergizes with Evenhanded Blessings and Inner Focus, meaning some casts could heal Anduin for up to 176 at base level, or even 193 if he picked and completed Piercing Light at level 1.

Lion’s Boots (his entire level 13 tier, actually) is doing okay, so I left that alone, but Glyph of Faith at level 16 now works with E build, so he now has a talent for Chastise between levels 4 and 20.

The nerfed healing value stays. It just now procs from all damage like it used to, so it isn’t basically useless.
If the heal value needs to be decreased a bit further, that’s fine, but if it’s left to only proc on AAs then its healing will need to be much higher than it is right now.

Small changes won’t fix the design flaws, though. Anduin’s kit has fewer synergies and is much more rigid now, and personally I don’t enjoy him nearly as much as before. Small changes may eventually make him balanced, but they certainly won’t make him fun again.

Most heroes just AAing Anduin for 1 second will deal as much or more damage to him than he’ll heal himself with Divine Star. If you step up to make a basic attack and heal an ally for 26 health but take 200+ yourself, your team is net losing health.

If we compare the current state of Pursued by Grace to similar effects for other aggressive Healers, such as Kharazim’s Transcendence or Tyrande’s Mark of Mending or Elune’s Chosen, Pursued by Grace is a joke, healing for barely 1/4th or less of those other effects.

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Ok so firstly, you broke the game. I am pretty sure these changes would make Anduin too good.

But more importantly, I don’t like how this really feels like forcing Anduin into 3 extremely narrowly defined builds with no wiggle room to ever make a meaningful talent pick past level 1 when you start your build. The only exception is Q build which maybe gets a meaningful choice at 20, and level 7 where pretty much any build will have a tossup between power word shield and blessed recovery.

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Look at it from a different perspective, PbG is such a small portion of anduin’s overall healing that you don’t have to force yourself into dangerous situations if you don’t want too. You’re still a perfectly capable healer even if you stand way back conservatively.

AAing on Trans khara or tyrande is a significant percentatge of their overall healing. If they don’t get in there and land AAs their healing output suffers big time.

I’m backing Shadowmere here. Why does it need to be themed?

I’ve had many games when the enemy team just cant get to me so being “forced” into picking more survivability felt like a throw away talent. It’s nice to have an option that’s different to personal survivability.

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Possibly, but I don’t think anything except maybe Inner Focus will be too strong.

The only talents that got buffed are ones that are already bad (his Q build is terrible, his E and Trait builds don’t exist, and most of his passive and active abilities are a joke), while his W talents, which are doing mostly okay, were left alone. The baseline buff to PbG will likely be enough to carry his W build up to par.

Not at all:

You can mix and match a lot better with his level 1 and 4 talents. There is a lot more opportunity for early hybridization now.
You can lock your build in as early as level 4 if you want, or you can wait until level 7.

Then what’s the purpose of having PbG at all?

That’s the issue. As it is, it’s basically useless and might as well not exist. Why keep a mechanic that often punishes us for trying to use it?

So we either remove it or we change how it functions so it’s not just a comically worse version of Transcendence or Mark of Mending.

Kharazim doesn’t necessarily rely on Transcendence for healing. Iron Fist Kharazims can heal for pretty impressive amounts despite relying only on Breath of Heaven and Spirit Ally for their healing. Transcendence isn’t mandatory.

These heroes are also designed for AAing like that. They both have high attack speeds, and Kharazim has good mobility to get into and out of fights reliably, too.

Anduin is not designed to be constantly AAing in teamfights. His attack speed and range is too slow and he doesn’t have much mobility, on top of his basic attacks not providing enough healing to be worthwhile. He’s just not meant to be as aggressive as Kharazim or Tyrande, with or without PbG.

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Flavour I guess?

It’s one of those moments when i wish HoTS had a DPS addon like WoW where you can breakdown how much damage/healing came from what spells.

Total number off the top of my head, I’d imagine that PbG contributes ~10 to 15% of Anduin’s total healing. Is that really a bad thing? Guldan has a talent that increases his spell damage by 15% and it even comes with a downside.

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I agree with some points.
As I see it, if they made Persued by grace work as before it would be a long way to make him better. It would make light well and Varian legacy way more attractive picks while bumping up his numbers witch is needed.
I agree that power word shield should go to the self sustain row. Maybe put prayer of healing on 16 and renew on 1 (or the other way around Idk)
But just making Persued by grace work on every instance of dmg would go a long way to make him better.
If they don’t intend to change anything else then his numbers need some buffs, specially before lvl 10

1 Like
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That’s some weird way of thinking. I would say, a healer player that does not aa at all is just a very very bad player in general. And you don’t need any extra effects on aa’s to need to do it. AA’s do damage, so if you don’t aa - you’re losing damage. The healing from aa’s is just free extra for something you should be doing anyway.

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Taking renew and then NOT taking evenhanded blessings in this talent setup would I think be highly ill advised. Likewise Moral Compass could grant virtually endless lightwell, while Piercing Light’s faster chastise projectile would make chastise so good that coupled with Surge of Light you suddenly become a mini-tank. 13 maybe you have some good choice, though obviously with W build you’re going to be going for SotP. And for 16… actually for 16 you might just see Glyph of Faith completely dominating this tier, but assuming there aren’t any number-adjustment related issues you will always inner focus Q build, always Holy Nova W build, and always GoF chastise+trait build, except for maybe if you needed GoF on W build.

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I agree in general, but there are caveats.

Healers should be throwing out AAs whenever they “get the chance,” yes, but that does not mean they should always be AAing just because it is physically possible to.

Healers should not always be constantly trying to AA (unless the majority of their healing is tied to that). They are high-priority targets and don’t deal much damage, so most of them can’t afford to be standing up in the frontline during teamfights. There is a risk-reward calculation here, and the risk increases faster than the reward the longer you stay on the front lines.

Instead, Healers should be AAing opportunistically. If you see an opening, such as when someone has blown all their abilities, or they’re retreating, or they’re distracted attacking a teammate, you can step up and throw in an AA or two, then back off before they can punish you for it. Make those AAs when its safe, not whenever you possibly can. That’s how you maximize value from your AAs as a healer (and as Mages).

This is part of why I loved Renew as an early-game talent – it actively encouraged this kind of play. You make attacks when you safely can to optimize your healing and get a little extra damage value, but you don’t have to place yourself in harms way for long periods of time.

PbG in its current state, however, does not encourage this style of play. If it healed for a lot more (like, 2-3x more), then it’d be worth it, but 26 is a tiny amount of healing. If you’re AAing constantly, you will take far more damage than PbG heals, and if you’re only AAing opportunistically then its healing value is negligible.
Either way, PbG provides almost no value, which I don’t think should be the case.

That’s why I think PbG, if kept baseline, should proc off more than just AAs. It already received a ~26% healing nerf, why make it so that lower amount of healing is also much harder to get?
This would mean that if you land a 5-man Divine Star, you heal a teammate for ~130; Varian’s Legacy will now provide healing to teammates like it used to; Lightbomb can grant that ~130 healing for a teammate if they land a 5-man stun; etc.
It wouldn’t be a massive buff, but it’d be enough to make the effect feel like it’s actually there.

12

Depends on the opponents’ team comps and what build you’re planning on going.

If your opponents have a lot of CC or dive, it may be risky to walk up for AAs to empower every Q, so Moral Compass allows you to more safely proc it from further away.

You can pick Renew with W build too, since W build is still plenty strong.

Or it could be paired with Renew for easy bonus healing.

Or if your team has a lot of CC aside from you (such as a Tank) you could pair Surge of Light with Lightwell for more duration on Lightwell.

Piercing Light’s +10 spell power also works well with Q and W builds, so this talent could work great with any of Anduin’s builds.

Glyph of Faith isn’t very good right now, and this buff isn’t even that big.
You’d mainly pick it with E build, which is Anduin’s peel build.

I’m far more worried about Inner Focus synergizing with Renew and Evenhanded Blessings too strongly – a cooldown reset and up to 60% more healing on the next Q, plus 50% of that total amount over 5 more seconds from Renew.
That one Q would heal for 240% of the untalented amount, and it would come right after one that healed for up to 180%, meaning after only 1 cooldown, Flash Heal could heal for 420% of its untalented value, and it could do this once every 20 or fewer seconds.

That’s how builds usually work.

Levels 16 and 20 talents are usually capstones to possible builds, either to finish locking them in or to trigger extra synergy with earlier talents. By the time you reach level 16, you’ve probably already settled on your build.

Besides, it’s not like cross-build viability is any better with Anduin’s current state. You already pick Holy Nova for W build and Renew for Q build, while Glyph of Faith doesn’t fit any build (since he doesn’t have an E build).

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