ARAM players who play blame game - I'll pick who I want

General Discussion
41

I had near back-to-back morales games earlier this week. Both took similar builds with an emphasis on grenade, but one was on the winning side, the other on the losing, and others who could watch the game would likely agree grenade build wasn’t a deciding factor.

On the one that lost, I could count instances where the grenade spam knocked enemy heroes out of deathwing’s and mephisto’s aoe, but they didn’t knock anyone out of a root or stun, so while meph cdr is hard to tell on the fly if those kits were make/break moments for chaining another attack, 1 case was a distinct moment of saving an enemy as they were knocked away from something that was going to kill them. Yea, that moment didn’t make/break the game and the saved hero was on the retreating side anyway, so it’s just another nuisance than ‘trap pick’.

Play and build wise, the choice of grenades is that it’s a fairly safe way to contribute damage while also padding shields. It simple gives players something to do while playing a hero with limited contributions.

On the game I was playing with a medic, I was malf and while some of the grenades knocked them out of root/cc combos could have lead to kills, since aram can be constant combat, it arguably could be observed that sometimes letting enemies get away can be better than killing them, and those didn’t cost the game, but it is a similar instance of what I dislike about the talent choices: it tends to encourage mindless spam.

In watching the replays, the medic that lost their game had only 1 case I observed where running ‘oom’ cost them a fight, and it wouldn’t have been a game-breaking one, with the arguably more deciding factor for medic being that they took shield-range instead of beam range and end game battles ending up zoning them out from being able to heal their greymane, so they lost that battle and map momentum. That’s not something grenade quest/build was going to change.

In a myriad of games people could also put to scrutiny in the replay, it’s likely that cases of knockback or reduced energy recovery don’t define or lose the game, and in many cases of victory, it likely doesn’t determine the game as the usual factors for medic are going to be based on other things, and less so the knockback.

So the particular talents, in isolation, are likely more successful as a factor of ‘luck’ where any other picks could have been in games that were won. It’s not directly a case of ‘denying’ the stats, it’s the observation that how aram games are won or lost is generally not in the hands of medic and some players just want something to offset some of the tedium of being ‘forced’ to heal, so they may as well toss grenades and shoot for dings

42

You’re arbitrarily defining what portions of grenade have more value. They ALL make a difference. In particular, the CD reduction after 15 hits is probably the biggest one, which allows you to synergize with the other grenade talents that much more often. You can use the grenade for poke, and if the enemy still chooses to engage, it’ll be back up relatively quickly, while giving you a bulkier shield so you can be more aggressive with positioning. I mean are you able to calculate the amount of damage that you don’t have to heal through because of displacement, or the times it may interrupt a channel because it’s not on CD? It’s simply impossible really to account for, which is why looking at the stats flattens the noise.

Everyone has an impact, and yes, some will have a bigger impact than others, but casually just dismissing medic and attributing any sort of factor that doesn’t conform to your bias as simply luck doesn’t make any sense. And sure, I can see people picking the ding talents and playing grenades sub optimally, but even if that’s the case, in most games where they are being played, and it’s STILL not hurting them, I just wouldn’t be so bold to make such a statement.

43

I think you’re the average player too much credit. Reduced CD does allow synergy with other talents, but it also can cause players to spam it or not use it when its actually needed. Sure, it’ll come back quicker, but most players like to spam abilities to try to feel useful and if you’re spamming it, chances of you messing up someone’s play are higher than normal especially if the CD is lowered. I doubt most players are able to use those grenades to bump enemies into CC or into damage they otherwise wouldn’t have been hit by very often, and that’s a skill issue entirely.

Even you, a proclaimed skilled healer main, did say you messed up KTZ’s combos so how could you expect lower skilled players to not do that? Did it cause you to lose the match solely because of that, or that specific KTZ to not get stacked solely because of your grenades, no, but to say everyone uses the grenades proficiently which brings a lot of value if you can actually cast it effectively and thus makes it not a trap talent is far from true.

A talent that allows you to spam an ability that has the very high possibility of messing up other players and requires high skill to use effectively is considered a trap talent. The ‘trap’ is that it can be effective if used correctly so it has value, but used incorrectly can often make things worse than better. I think a grenade that allows you to mess up other teammates combos more often unless used perfectly fits that description of trap talent.

44

The point is, EVEN if people sometimes and will mess up, grenade still benefits in ways that are often invisible to players that it still overall doesn’t negatively affect the outcome of a game. And that is born out in the stats. For some reason you just focused on the messing up the KTZ part and ignored the whole paragraph about when grenades benefit the team. And that’s what often happens when people are solely just focused on how grenades personally affect you and not the larger and very diverse ways it also benefits.

The difference between me and a worse player is that I will just have a higher win rate than someone who is less skilled. It doesn’t mean picking grenades suddenly means they’re going to go in the negative compared to the other talents. The stats include different types of people who pick Morales, that includes good players, as well as the “bad” players who chase dings and it’s STILL the highest win rate in ARAM. It’s clearly not a trap talent by any metric other than arbitrary frameworks you’re shoehorning, which is what you’re doing. Now people could have made the argument when Tassadar was at 43% win rate, while I had like a 55% win rate that he was a trap hero, and I could definitely see that point, even if my personal experience said otherwise, but that’s why it’s important to do a sanity check with the stats to see if your experience is representative. Grenades just aren’t anywhere close to being considered a trap talent if the average player is still doing well with it.

Xenterex’s, the stats are just just luck point is silly, because then, using the same logic, wouldn’t you then just discount that Azmodan or Zuljins have high win rates? It’s just silly argumentation. If the grenade talents were truly trap talents, it would be captured in the stats. There definitely are trap talents out there, I mentioned one, but grenade’s perception of being this annoying ability that ruins everything is more often than not just confirmation bias.

1 Like
45

I didn’t ignore it, I just said that even you used grenades in a way that would mess up someone. A lower skilled player will do that much more often than you even though sometimes they’ll benefit their team in other ways like knocking them into damage or cc or away from safety. I’m not saying they’re never used in such ways. The reason I pointed it out was because you do it as a high skilled player meaning others are highly probable to do it as well while not using it as effectively also. You can’t say a lower skilled player only uses grenades in a way that benefits others super often to offset the times they mess up their teammates, because that just isn’t true.

The reason it is considered a trap talent is because the vast majority of talents have limited pullbacks other than the loss of the other two talents in a tier. Valla picking her gambit talent is an obvious one because the more you die, the less value the talent has so the ‘trap’ is that you gain power, but can lose talent power if you die which can lead to you playing too safe, or getting punished if your positioning/micro is a little off. It has a positive win rate but that doesn’t mean its not a trap talent. Valla can still win a lot while taking that talent and having more than 5 deaths, because of the rest of the build can help her power through the loss of attack speed.

With Morales, ding chasing leads to players messing up teammates because they want the stacks. It disrupts other players much more than Valla would, especially with skill shot heroes and that’s where her trap comes into play. Morales can still win while disrupting others often, but because the talent can lead to more harm done than good at times, its a talent where it relies heavily on your skill to use if effectively, other talents generally don’t rely on that as much because most talents don’t disrupt as much as that talent allows Morales to do.

Its a trap talent because Morales is incentivized to pick it and spam it to get a lower CD which allows her to use it more often and possibly screw up other’s plays that much more often. Stats alone just don’t tell the whole story.

46

I never did though. In fact, I said people will and do mess up. The thing though, for the average player, it doesn’t really matter in terms of negatively affecting their win rate in comparison to the other talents on the tier.

In the grand scheme of things, grenade still has a host of other uses than the very narrow band of how it messes up other people’s skill shots.

I mean think about it. If someone knocks someone out of a skill shot, think about what ALSO happens:

  1. You slow them down, so even if you miss, allies have a brief window to catch up.
  2. You generally push someone back, although sometimes saving an enemy, which is still neutral in the game state.
  3. You generate energy/damage/shields.
  4. You get whatever debuff from the 13 talents.

For “messing up”, that’s not too shabby, and hardly “screwing things up”. And that’s why even with players who don’t utilize grenades the best, it’s still not that bad. That’s not even accounting when the grenades actually work well.

47

It may, but at a lower skill level these things are less likely to occur. It may not influence win rate much if they annoy their teammates, but saying that because the stats are a certain number doesn’t mean it isn’t a trap talent.

The trap refers to letting the player do harm from a talent that should do good for the team only if done well. Most other talents don’t do ‘harm’ if they’re misused, but this one definitely can.

48

no

You don’t seem to understand what I’m presenting. Your concern is an “invisible benefit” and my is a “invisible handicap”

The “luck” I said earlier is just standard devation. Your concern ln stats is that grenade isn’t the worst, therefore it’s not a trap. However, HP is not the end-all of the stats and it’s more a baised one than “random” but we don’t know how much if that is “bais” (results of select players more than others) to adjust the estimations of the sample. However, what is visible is that the desparity between the choices is low enough that standard deviation could pit grenade at the worst, but that still isn’t my point, it’s just what you keep repeating.

Since you want to use HP stats, the have a column that uses some weighted averages to predict the influence a hero has on the game.

ZJ and Azmo have some the highest influence, while medic has one of the lowest (without being actively detrimental, negative) So the postes winrates of individual talents may not mean much, and the handicap of what negativity could be there is laegely offset because other heroes can, and do, overpower her influence.

You seem to have taken my “trap talent” argument intona strawman to hoist a positivity bais, and then fault me for it, as indicated by examples that do not actually reflect as “by your logic”.

You seem to be using too much of a tl:dr hardline conclusion instead of actual statistical analysis.