Cho'Gall nerf and talent diversity

General Discussion
1

I want to start with saying i am a Cho’Gall onetrick usually in mid diamond peaked in master and i think the recent Gall nerfs are very misdirected. Cho’Gall currently has 51.93% winrate on heroesprofile which is the the 23 highest and he is the second least played hero in the game only after Probius. What i mean by this is that he is in no way overperforming especially if you consider that he is mostly played by onetricks similarly to Probius or lost vikings which both have a higher winrate.

The changes in the PTR:

Cho

Talents

  • Level 7

    • Calloused Hide

      • Health threshold required to trigger reduced from 60% to 40%.

  • Level 7

    • Firestarter

      • Cooldown reduction per Basic Attack increased from 1 to 1.5 seconds.

Gall

Talents

  • Level 4

    • Rising Dread

      • Bonus per bounce reduced from 25% to 20%.

    • Bomb’s Away

      • No longer has a cap on stacks.

      • Damage bonus per stack lowered from 5 to 4.

  • Level 7

    • Double Trouble

      • Shadowflame’s cooldown reduction from Quest Reward increased from 0.5 to 1 second.

  • Level 16

    • Leaden Orb

      • Stun duration reduced from 0.75 seconds to 0.6 seconds.

That’s why i was so surprised to see that he got nerfed in the patch notes, and its not a small nerf either they went after his most important talent leaden orbs. And while the nerf may seem small leaden orbs is super sensitive to stun duration nerfs because it gives the enemies time to wiggle out of the orb stunlock and a small nerf to the stun duration can mean the enemy is able to dodge both the extra bounces. I understand that both Cho and Gall have very little talent diversity but that is not only because orb build is so good but because all other builds are dog poop.

Galls level 16 talents:

Leaden Orb

Dread Orb Stuns enemy Heroes for 0.75 seconds.

Deafening Blast

Runic Blast Silences enemy Heroes for 1.25 seconds.

Shadowsnare

Enemy Heroes hit by your Basic Abilities are Slowed by 15% for 4 seconds. This effect can stack up to 2 times.

Look at galls alternatives at level 16, it does not matter how much they nerf leaden orbs why would i ever pick shadowsnare a talent that slows enemies by 15% on a hero that doesn’t even have a basic attack to apply the slow with. Or why would i choose 1.25 seconds slow on an ability that has longer cooldown, is harder to hit, doesn’t have an amazing level 20 talent and only hits the enemies once. You could probably change deafening blast to a stun and change shadowsnare to a 0.5 seconds silence and they would still not be stronger than leaden orbs. I wont go over all Cho’Galls talent tiers but both Cho and Gall only have 1 good talent and a lot of trash talents on almost all talent tiers. My point is that you can’t give Cho’Gall good talent diversity by nerfing his popular talents if all the alternatives are trash you are just going to lower Cho’Galls winrate. If you want Cho’Gall to have talent diversity you need to buff his alternative builds.

1 Like
2

I’m also not in favor of these changes either.

3

Not sure where that number comes from. It has over 56% once gall gets leaden orb, both in QM and ranked. And in ranked, shadownare has even higher winrate than leaden orb, so

I guess there might be reasons.

It could be that ‘gall gets 20 and he stunlocks you on a low cd’ is not a fun experience.

2 Likes
4

i dont really think cho’gall should be balanced around having essentially mosh pit on a 12 second cooldown.

firstly, it’s up to a 30% slow for 4 seconds, which is on par with a lot of actual tank peel tools, secondly it’s on a melee character with very limited access to slows in general. Cho’Gall only has one base kit (twisting nether, technically), Cho only has TWO talents, one at level 7 (which competes with anti heal on said mosh pit, or firestarter which is a massive boost to self-sustain), and one at level 20 (which makes his basic attacks ranged and is by far the strongest talent in the tier if not in the game), and Gall has none outside of Shadowsnare and Twisting Nether.

The “difficult condition” is landing two of the easiest skillshot to land in the game, Galls’ Q.

I’m tired of people trash talking this talent, it works amazingly espicially in Gall Q build which is a very different and still very viable way of playing the character. Giving Cho’Gall a reliable slow both gives him the ability to engage without blowing his mobility tool (fist) or his heroic (upheaval if you are a hipster) freeing you as Cho’Gall to pick fights far less commitally than a Dread Orbs build would.

all that to say, I do think Leaden Orbs needed a nerf, considering that the talent essentially wins the teamfights post-16 singlehandedly. I do think people vastly underrate Shadowsnare especially, but also Q talents in general, one of which got a pretty massive buff in this same ptr patch (Double Trouble)

2 Likes
5

I agree with this. Very frustrating to play against.

I too was a non-believer until I actually gave it a try. My goodness it’s surprisingly effective. I can’t explain why but it is.

1 Like
6

Can’t wait for him to get nerfed, Cho Abba is cancer and these playhers deserve to be punished

7

Bombs away doesnt stack right now so just removed a lvl 4 talent til that patch note