Blizzard really needs to do something about team comps in QM

General Discussion
1

I’ve played 3 games with a team comp that is meant to be wrecked.
Maybe it’s my fault for playing QM. But I’m not going to play Valla, Qhira, Murky or Jaina (which I haven’t played in a while and wanted to get back to) in ranked.

So. Valla game: not tank, and I’m vs a Valeera. The Ragnaros in the team decides to stop playing and stays in base 5 minutes into the game, because we cannot win a teamfight.

Qhira game: we have a Diablo and a Blaze, vs a Raynor and a Tychus. Still won because I died focusing them, getting 1 for 1 before the teamfights started. No fun. When I failed, Diablo and Blaze got instakilled by those 2. Our KT was not really a match for the enemy KTZ.

Murky game: I’m on Towers of Doom vs a Genji, a Zeratul, and an Abathur. We won because my team also had an Azmodan which carried the game, being helped by the other people in the 4-man.

Jaina game: I play with a Li-Ming and a Lunara, vs a Genji, Imperius, Abathur and Artanis comp. Our Reghar is laning when I’m not (which is stupid because I can double lane without a problem as Jaina, and we’re not lacking in the xp department thanks to that) which means he doesn’t heal, and our Deathwing (who is the only one who looks like a tank) died alone as soon as he could, taking 1v3s.

So to make it simple: squishy assassin vs anti-assassin. Tank comp vs anti-tank comp. Murky vs murky hunters. Mage comp vs dive comp.
And the problem could have been easily solved.
Wait for a tank to appear in first game. I would have waited, instead of having a 15-minutes long losing-the-game waiting.
Exchange Raynor or Tychus for Diablo or Blaze (none were in a premade).
Give another map to the Murky. Though that’s the one I’m the least troubled by, as I could somehow play.
Exchange a diver for a mage.

It is easy to balance team compositions when all you have to do is literally exchange 1 person from a team with 1 person from the other team. The 10 people playing do not even change.
It’s not the first time it’s happening.

No need to mention the fact that I’m forced into laning when I play a team fighter, because the enemy team knows how to play and not mine. That’s secondary and happens all the time in QM.

2 Likes
2

Hots players love to argue against forced roles and for “muh team comp” freedom. You reap what you sow

2 Likes
3

As I said, maybe it’s my fault for playing QM.
Still, the teams could easily have been adjusted to be fun for both team. Because I’m pretty sure that losing you time playing vs a team comp you can wreck is no fun. I have done it, and I can tell.

From another Qhira game today, I was vs 2 mages and they had no one to peel. I can tell you it was not fun. Not once did I think “hey, I played that well!”. Because it would have been harder to lose than to win.

Which is why I’m playing more and more ranked btw.

4

It prioritizes low que times over match quality, which isn’t always fun if you’re solo.
Playing Valla with no healer and tank against a Valeera probably fits that description.

I find I get better solo games in Storm League.

5

I feel for you. I rarely touch QM anymore because it’s a horror show of terrible comps and grossly mismatched teams where either smurfs stomp or one team plays into a team full of its counters and gets stomped.

TLDR: Skip to the end at “new strategy”

Fixing it, however, is a challenge.

  1. We must remember that above all QM must be quick and must allow you to play what you choose. That premise cannot change. So any change to the matchmaking algorithm has to be broad enough to maintain that.

How does it work now?

  • Generally, it sorts all heroes into six categories (tank, bruiser, etc), then creates two teams of equal numbers of players in each category of similar skill level (using an internal metric for judging skill).
  • The actual composition is determined by the volume of demand of players at that particular moment. If they’re overloaded with ranged assassins (and they always are because everyone wants to be the low-skill, high-output character racking up all the kills with minimal effort), you’ll get 4 ranged assassin vs 4 ranged assassin + whatever role is next on the list, usually resulting in a no-heals, no-tank meat grinder dumpster fire of a game. But it’s fast and everyone plays what they wanted.

What usually gets suggested has been tried.

  • Forcing a tank and healer into QM is the most common suggestion to get around dumpster fire comps. The catch is no one wants to play healer or tank. They’re thankless jobs if you’re learning. They’re high stress to play. You’re constantly focused. You don’t get to sit in the back and face roll dps and kills. Etc. So, queue times shot up sky-high, even with the bonus exp for playing them. Blizzard deemed the wait to be too long.

We need a new strategy that accommodates both the players’ desire for a semblance of a functional team and Blizz’s desire for fast matches where you can pick what you want.

  • Group tank, bruiser, and melee assassin into one category within the algorithm. Group support and healer into one category within the algorithm. When creating a comp, force it to match at least one front line class for each team and one heal/shield class for each team. Pseudo-tank + pseudo-heals, but with a much broader inclusion criteria to help keep queue times low.
  • Keep in mind that it would NOT match a tank vs a melee assassin or healer vs support. It would select one class to fill the requirement and both teams would get a member of that class. For example: tanks and melee assassins are scarce and so are healers at that particular moment, so the game matches two teams of bruiser/support/3 ranged assassin. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least a semblance of workable and it’s fast and players get to play what they want - but now with a higher chance of a workable comp and decent game.
  • The algorithm otherwise retains its current function: still matches classes, still matches player skill, still offers incentive for high-demand classes, etc.

Edit: muh speling.

6

I understand your frustration, but I don’t mind it in QM really, because I usually see it more like a challenge to win with a weird comp and I also play heroes there, which I didn’t mastered yet.

For me it’s a nice fun mode to play some heroes I am willing to play now, even though I suck with them, so I also put my expectation low and that’s why I don’t mind, if I have an unfavoured team comp.

7

QM doesn’t care about team comp in terms of the actual heroes.

And it is better that way.

Unless you want freaking hour long QM queues.

The fact is that player skill with a character is going to have a lot more impact than the actual characters in most games. There are few hard counters in HotS/MobA games in general.

2 Likes
8

You realize the game does have a level of baseline role mirroring in the matchmaker?

5 man stacks and super extended queues aside, you cannot play as a bruiser and end up against a team without a bruiser, unless both teams have tanks. I.E. both teams have a frontline.

Being more strict in how big the frontline has to me isn’t going to make queues faster, or necessarily result in higher quality matches.

Especially not when we consider there are some healers who can frontline well.

9

Then how is this possible?:

https://www.heroesprofile.com/Match/Single/?blizz_id=1174623&battletag=Yusuke&region=2&replayID=34520488

Why enemys get a bruiser and we don’t? Or does this system treat melee assassines as bruisers?

10

Thrall is treated like a melee assassin for QM matchmaking purposes iirc.

That changes it because him and I believe one other bruiser didn’t work as they wanted with new roles.

11

Interesting to know. Do you know exactly to which bruisers this change applies? If I remember this game it was tough to play this match against Thrall on Braxis as Genji, especially when he gets supported by Abathur, but fortunately my team comes ganking and we played better overall.

12

Great news, QM team comps has a fix. Play draft.

13

But it isn’t as easy as that, as there are just too many variables that go into a “good” comp. For example, Diablo and Blaze vs. Raynor and Tychus. If you exchange Blaze for the Tychus, now the Blaze/Raynor team has superior wave clear, as well as boss/objective damage. Diablo and Tychus have better engage, but Blaze and Raynor have extraordinary defensive and mitigation tools. Blaze and Raynor have better poke and stall. The list goes on.

If you had gotten stomped on the team with Diablo and Tychus, you could easily have complained about how unfair the teams were for completely different reasons. It is simply impossible to make 100% balanced teams in any reasonable amount of time, especially without a large player base.

Ragnaros.

1 Like
14

Sad news, the fix removes your ability to play the hero you want to and has a longer queue time.

Of course. I specifically acknowledged that in my last bullet point and hinted at it throughout my post. Mirroring is good and I don’t want to eliminate it. I just want it to mirror a front-liner and a healer/support into each group, rather than mirroring a dumpster fire comp.

15

Trying to fix something that is by in large fine, with a fix which would include queue times.

Sadly anything actively increasing queue time is a no no. Although I think many players in QM are simply impatient.

16

I could have, but probably wouldn’t have. Because what I look at right now is only obvious problems in the team compositions.
Fine-tuning like that is something I would only expect in ranked. And I would say that Blaze/Raynor having better waveclear is not that important when you’re playing on Battlefield of Eternity.
The problem here is having 2 heroes known for being anti-tanks versus 2 tanks that cannot do anything about it.
Raynor is not “known” for being better than Tychus though, and the same goes for Diablo/Blaze.

Once again, I’m not looking at some fine observations of how a team comp could possibly be a bit better than another. I’m only looking at “Is there an obvious hard counter that we cannot do anything about in the enemy team?”
In that case, there were 2.

17

Malthael, Ragnaros and Thrall. It also looks at Gazlowe as a specialist still. It’s like when they changed roles, they didn’t change the algorithm to count heroes who became bruisers that were not already tanks as bruisers and it still counts them as their old role for purposes of mirror.

Also anyone ever notice if you play Azmodan or Zagara you end up on a team with three heroes who used to be counted as ‘specialists’? Like you’ll get Azmodan, Zagara, Sylvanas or Azmodan, Murky, Nazeebo.

18
  1. Do you have a list of the full rosters?
  2. Who are you claiming hard counters who in context?

Because like, valla has an AOE ability that has longer range than valeera’s initiation except maybe Ambush. Which allows you to vault away as no silence/stun. For example.

The problem is, the community that plays QM overall, doesn’t want to wait. :frowning:

I would enjoy a return to the stricter MM with tank+healer in each team in QM.

That being said, a lot of subjective opinions here and claims of hard counters that aren’t hard counters truly. Like raynor hard countering tanks.

Tychus is a counter, but not a hard counter. I’m honestly not sure there are hard counters in HotS that just counter a whole role. Except maybe Biotic Grenade?

It will negatively impact you and the enemy team an equal amount over many many games.

Uh.
No, I think most people here enjoyed call of the nexus QM matchmaking.

But a lot of people who play QM don’t like queues to be even a minute. :frowning:

19

Confirmation bias.

That being said, Zagara and Azmodan are both “ranged damage dealers”.

20

NO WAY, THEY ARE?!

HOLY CRAP I THOUGHT THEY WERE MELEE TANKS.