The upgrade to Slowing Sands really isn’t needed when she already has a lot of viable damage amps in earlier tiers.
Blessing of the Bronze, while still okay at giving your team the edge during a team fight, has a massive cooldown and usually isn’t worth it because it heavily relies on teamates effectiveness and them making use of the buff in time.
Stuck in a loop, the upgrade for Temporal loop, is okay I suppose. Sometimes it feels unecessary as one loop is enough for massive burst damage near the end of the game but its sort of effective against high HP tanks and locking down fast enemies.
Then we have Piercing Sands… You get insane AOE, long range damage, with the added benefit of clearing waves relatively fast, as well as creating more opportunities for AOE combos and awesome burst. On top of that it makes Sand Blast way less clunky and smooth to use as nothing can interupt it.
I can’t help but feel it outclasses all of the other options, however I dont believe it needs nerfs. I think, making Sand Blast itself a little less easy to interupt like before the rework would help making this talent less of a must pick. Maybe something similar to Jaina’s piercing talent? Where Sand Blast can pierce only one or two targets, but Chromie’s echo doesnt pierce?
I would almost suggest making it like baseline, but you have to build up to piercing multiple targets. Kind of like Tyrande’s old owl quest, every x number of hits increases the number of targets it can pierce.
no offense to any players out there, but I personally think chromie is a really bad pick for any team comp in her current iteration .
she can kind of clear waves but not as good as , jaina , KT, KTZ, orphea, junkrat, etc…
she in no way shape or form can burst anyone down anymore , until very late in the game . Li-ming, jaina, KT, KTZ, Orphea, & mep all have better finishing burst then chromie for the 90% of the match.
she has severe mana consumption problems, compared to all the other mages.
and still has the lowest life pool in the game next to murky.
she just seems like she has almost zero impact on the match until very late into the game .
Time trap feels worse tbh. Its okay I guess as a very situational stasis but it really sucks how you have to manually detonate it against enemies. I wish they kept the automatic detonation while still keeping the manual one for stasis
chromie needs to be deleted. I was playing malganis and by 10 minutes chromie was doing half my health in damage with just one sand blast. not even an echo. just a single blast form her. and a 50 second cd on her most powerful ult? broken.
I agree Piercing Sands is super strong and really makes Chromie an extreme late game threat, it’s a talent that makes all of her Q build go online, just the way Ancient Flame makes Alexstrasza’s E build go online.
It allows you to clear waves, mercs more easily, and to threaten the enemy backline in TF without positioning yourself awkwardly so you can avoid the tank. You can stack Shifting Sands like crazy with it, and reach +50% spell power super easily.
You’re no longer forced to aim your shots through summons and minions, completely avoiding bodyblocks.
But heh, this is a Storm talent after all, and given how Chromie can struggle hitting a shot against some comps if the enemy tank or summoner decides she could have a hard time, it’s a good tool she can have so she doesn’t spend all game dealing meaningless poke.
Sometimes I don’t need that, because my team has sufficient wave/merc clear and I can consistently hit shots in fights for whatever reason, then I usually pick Stuck in a Loop. Not necessarily for the double loop, because most targets die after the first, but for the huge CD reduction over 6 seconds. You can throw a fearsome barrage of spells between the loops, and 6 seconds is actually pretty long.
I wouldn’t nerf Piercing Sands. I usually get a lot of value out of it, as I should from a Storm talent, but the talent proved OP only against teams that keep fighting clustered even after I reach 18, aka Living Bomb spreading professionals I guess. There are teams I struggle a lot against because they fight in a big pack, outright denying me every shot. But I know at 18, Piercing Sands will make every fight a massacre. And they get destroyed. And they keep fighting altogether. Getting destroyed. In this case, if you refuse to play against PS the same way you’d play against Living Bomb, you kind of deserve to lose. Otherwise PS brings just the value a Storm talent should imo. I must admit it is, in most of the cases, superior to all talents in its tier though.
It really sounds sexy on paper, but Chromie already has a quest on her Q if you build for it, I don’t think one task for two rewards would end up balanced. Also sometimes (most of the time) you only need to pierce one or two units to reach the hero you want to hit in the end. Depending how you tune the rewards it could become even more powerful than it already is… Basically having all you need from PS (minus the waveclear) earlier in the game. At best you’d have something that would reach PS’ power level, only adding another quest with an already existing requirement.
So tired of your unfounded claims. I jumped from consistent 54% winrate to 61% winrate with Chromie, guess what happened in between? The rework. And I learned to play with it instead of throwing BS on the forums. Aaaaand I’m having a blast with her current iteration.
She’s got poor waveclear compared to other mages before PS, but the advantage she has over them is her range. A Chromie in lane is much safer than a KT or KTz trying to clear a wave assuming they do it without help. Even considering that, you don’t really draft Chromie to stay in lane and clear waves. In laning phases I’ll use my W almost only to help with waves in lanes I find myself in but above all I’ll rotate in order to finish my Q quest as fast as I can.
What does Li-Ming doesn’t have so she can have this huge burst potential? Waveclear. Hers is abysmal, not even as good as Chromie’s.
Mephisto doesn’t have that much burst, I’m sure Chromie is more bursty than him.
In the end, they admitted it themselves, the whole point of the rework was to tune down her burst potential to make her damage output more smooth and spread out in both space and time, making her less “feast of famine” and more of a zoning, poking hero that will allow her mates to finish off heroes before she can consistently do it herself. That said, she still deals consistent burst. W+Q deals a ton of damage on a single target and Temporal Loop still allows you to single handedly remove someone from a fight even though it happens less frequently. After you get Shifting Sands at 14 and Piercing Sands at 18, your burst becomes insane and you can delete heroes just the way you used to be able to before, with the added benefits of the rework.
Knowing when and how to use Fountains and Hearthstone, I rarely fall short of mana if the fight doesn’t turn out to be an infinite poke war where neither of both team engages. I usually tap the fountain at around the same time I’d tap it with other mages (around 2 minutes in), and always B before the first objective. She does feel more mana hungry than most mages, but I usually pick Mana refund/increase talent with them whereas I don’t with Chromie.
She has huge range, two self stasis options (including one that can put enemies in stasis so she can escape), a talent that basically gives her a permanent speed boost (kiting intensifies) and health regen to compensate for it. Unless you’re consistently dived upon at max range and your team does nothing for it, it shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t die that much in games, unless I’m locked up behind my tanks or pursued to the point the hero that killed me will likely die to my team right after.
There’s no time trap build anymore. The most you can do if you want to get the most value out of your traps is picking slow on time trap + bonus damage on slowed targets talent. Which is my go-to combo and works pretty well.
If she has stacked up Shifting Sands, she can take away huge chunks of health from tanks. 50% is exaggerated obviously, but she packs a huge punch in every Q after 14.
BotB is better now. Its irrelevant what happens on the other side of the map, what happens during TFs is more important. At this point of the game 8s is a lot.
But since they buffed 1 Q by 35 dmg… Even with close nerf it deals more damage.
It didn’t have a lot of counterplay and it was a really powerful (near) perma teamwide buff.
It wasn’t bad at all, it was actually way better than piercing sands. But it was a talent that did more for her teammates than chromie. You don’t directly see the impact of the talent most of the time as you do with piercing sands, so it doesn’t feel as powerful. It was still the better pick by far though. Teamfights become very hard to win if botb chromie doesn’t die.
Chromie has more HP then Junkrat, Tracer, Valla, Tassadar, and several other heroes.
While Chromie can no longer clear a wave with a single W, her Q and higher AA damage does give her solid wave-clearing capability. In addition, she is a beast at taking merc camps now, especially once she completes her lvl 1 quest.
Chromie has predominately been a ranged poke hero, and she is, by far, stronger at then then she has ever been. Yes, she can no longer just R someone and then delete them with a Bronze Talons+Q+W combo, but R is still a burst ult - It’s just burst to multiple targets rather than one.
Chromie has mana problems at early lvls, yes, similar to most other mages. Not any worse.
Note that right now, the predominant build is her Q build, mainly because it affects two aspects of Chromie - Her Q (Solid poke, hefty damage when quest is complete), AND her AA (Once her quest is finished, she’s in the top 5 heroes for AA damage, and she can dish out that damage at a higher range then any other hero except Sgt. Hammer. Even higher if she picks Bronze Talons at lvl 5)
Not to mention that it greatly benefits her lvl 14 tier - 3 stacks of Spell power rather then 2, 9 seconds off on her burst CD rather then 6, ect.
W is just garbage atm - CD is far too long even with the lvl 5 talent, damage depend on landing all 3. The lvl 5 talent is more for getting huge mana returns then the CDR, so you can fire off more Qs in a prolonged skirmish.