Anub'arak the overpowered bug

This hero is played 4/5 games in ranked mode.
If to believe hots logs, it’s the 3rd most popular hero after Diablo and Kael’thas.
Yet the win rate of Diablo is 46% and Kt’as is 51%

Anub is at 57% Carl!!
He’s really easy to play, has mass stuns, dive, escape, shields on 3 sec if you take talent, not to mention the 60 sec cocon which basically win you the team fight most of the times.

Why does it take so long to nerf this hero?

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I think right now is another one of Anub’araks “Good Times” this means the meta shifted in his favor for a while. Anub’arak by far isn’t OP, in fact, most of the time with 'arak, it’s “Not So Good Times” But here, it’s his time.

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It’s because of his 60 spell armor every 3-6 seconds that’s to blame honestly.
Ever since the armor changes, he has risen significantly due to the buffs he got in compensation.

Thankfully even though he is overtuned, he doesn’t feel awful to play against because all of his skills can be dodged and have counterplay. Cocoon is the only frustrating skill because you’re completely at the mercy of your teammates.

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So easy to play with diablo yet all i see are ranged mains everywhere .
If we are to believe we get a big balance patch soon he may get changes along with it.

That’s probably because his cocoon basically allows him to remove the OP ennemy heroes from the fight, like Kael’thas or Diablo.

I hear bans are different in NA and Asia server. Is that true? People bans Kt and Azmo mostly in NA right?

anub is broken
and rexxar too but hes not played every game

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He’s not a bug, he’s a feature!
© Hoku

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He has been my go-to tank for almost 8 months now, not long after they removed his baseline spell armor, and changed his level 1 Nerubian Armor talent. He has been strong for quite a while, but there was always a perception that he was strictly an anti-mage tank, and that he was weak to AA heroes. I actually made a thread on this not too long ago.

At that time, AA heroes like Fenix and the reworked Raynor were very popular, so Anub’arak was pretty much ignored, even though people who were dedicated to him could still do well. As new mages such as Mephisto and Orphea were released, and with the rise in popularity of traditional mages such as Jaina, people who had been ignoring him started playing Anub again, and realized just how strong he can be.

In terms of nerfing him, he really hasn’t changed much in a while, other than the nerf to his damage, but people still aren’t used to countering him, which makes him feel even stronger than his base kit suggests. For me, the only really problematic talent is Rewind at 20, which can make him not only extremely oppressive in terms of CC, but it also makes it such that he can always have an escape available. I wouldn’t mind seeing some talent adjustments, but I don’t think a wholescale nerf is necessary.

And regarding ban patterns, a lot of that will depend on the rank involved. In lower leagues, KT and Azmo are commonly banned, and as you move up the ranks, you see more of a priority on tanks and healers, including Anub.

(And yes, Dr Logan, I did use that line in the Sami’s April Fools’ thread. I am surprised you remembered!)

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Anubarak always been strong vs spell damage. This is nothing new. He was always balanced around his strong CC/spell resistance with vulnerability to AA damage.
In other words, you got hero with big strenghts and (1) big weakness. You break already good hero by removing his weakness - reduced W cd + extra W cd reduction. You know, shield works vs AAs too.

Its funny how people like to throw hotslogs stats left and right whenever possible, but always forgot to post Anubs :smiley:

Anub was far from ignored. He was still performing very well. Most of his changes in last year were completely unnecessary.

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I meant ignored by the player base, including at the highest levels, not by the development team. It was only very recently his popularity spiked, and he was never picked or banned in HGC, even though he had already gone through those changes at that time.

Thats what I meant as well. He wasnt, he was still very popular, creeping near the top. But he was in his proper spot.

Situational (not really niche tho), but very good.

In my experience, he was seen as niche. I don’t have exact numbers, but I never had him banned or picked out from under me when I wanted to play him until this season (pre-season, whatever they are calling it). Even as recently as just over a month ago, most people on the forum still saw him as highly situational.

Even in the highest tier of play, when Earth was drafting him in EU, most people were questioning the pick, seeing Anub as anti-mage/anti-dive, rather than a decent all-purpose tank. Given his current popularity, I would say that that impression has actually changed.

Even in SEA league, no one really ban Anubarak. I see people banned Murky more than they ban Anubarak.

I hope that people will leave Anubarak alone as he is current my only Tank that I like to play. Diablo rework is no longer my favorite tank so I kinda abandoned him for quite some time.

Anubarak is a problem right now. His winrate has consistently shown that, and he is preforming extremely well at pro level (nearly tyrande/maiev levels of popularity). I think he does need some changes. I don’t play him enough to be exactly sure what those changes should be though.

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I would like to see his Heroics reworked so Cocoon isn’t a must-pick.

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Cocoon is ridiculous.
In order for other ult to compete with already ridiculous ult, it has to be equally ridiculous if not more.

Pass.

Well he is definitely banned frequently in Asia (KR and Taiwan server not talking about Oceanic servers Australia and Singapore since those are pretty dead), and yes we don’t ban KT and Azmodan as much (especially since the last round of nerfs to Azmodan).

If you are interested you can always check out Rich’s youtube videos to get an idea of the Asian server, although bear in mind his latest ones are no longer subbed. Although the biggest issue right now is the recurring lag spike that crops up that has yet to be addressed.

I think they’d just look at the CDR talent for W honestly, since I doubt they wanted that to be utilized heavily as a way to deal with AA heroes. Other than that I don’t see why wouldn’t just do some slight slap on the wrist cooldowns with his CC, although I think they are already in a good spot. Aside that, it is just primarily his cocoon heroic (it has such a short cooldown that you can more or less use it to gank during lane phase and still have it up for objectives), but again its an easy enough fix with some slight added cooldown or just lowering the health threshold or reducing the time you spend in it (nothing too extreme really).

Yeah well what is there to be said people only take notice when look at the stats and from there actually try to experiment using him. Otherwise, as we’ve seen people were just more fixated on which heroes had the highest ban rate rather than which heroes were strong in the meta, or were being slept on. Now that people are taking notice of his consistently high winrate you see a bunch jump on the bandwagon now.

Wait till they discover old reliable tanks like E.T.C!

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That’s what I mean - rework both Heroics. Bring Cocoon down and update Locust Swarm to be on similar grounds as Carrion Swarm.

Mb, just noticed heroics

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