There, I said it. It’s overpowered in today’s HotS. Unless you specifically draft Ming to laser it open, it makes every single teamfight 4v5 and dictates the flow of the fight so that the enemy team has to focus all resources on opening the cocoon prematurely rather than attacking enemy heroes.
He is picked or banned in 72% of games this week only for his Cocoon. He is a walking Cocoon thrower, that’s it. Not for his intended role as an anti-mage with Spell Shield or long range stuns.
If you don’t want Anub’arak’s popularity to hit 99%, Cocoon should only last 4-6 seconds.
I will pick Anub every single match until he’s nerfed because picking him in draft is like tossing a very weighted coin in your favor.
Oddly enough, though, his popularity has only risen recently, where Cocoon hasn’t seen changes in forever. What makes Anub strong is his self-sustain with W, as well as his lockdown potential. To me, Rewind is far more problematical than Cocoon, as Cocoon has at least some counterplay, and no, you do not need a Li Ming to burn it down. Any fast attack hero can do the same, she just tends to be the most popular, and easiest to draft. Tychus, Tassadar, and Tracer all melt a Cocoon, too.
From popular heroes to break cocoon:
Diablo lightning breath
KT W
Ana DoT
Azmo laser
Jo burning rage
Zera cleave DoT
Arthas E
Artanis laser, fast AA, burning rage
Sylv W DoT and Q charges
Ming laser
Muradin burning rage
stitches burning rage
Need we go on? There is ton of abilities and talents that burn cocoon.
Just you know, asides from LM and Tracer, DoT damages also melt through the cocoon like hot knife cutting through butter. And this game is hardly lacking those heroes like Blaze, Ana, Malthael, Lunara, Nazeebo, Chen, Sylvanas.
If he had no Cocoon and just Locust Swarm and some other mediocre ult, he would not be picked and banned every single match.
Also lots of the heroes mentioned above that “burn” through cocoon have to get in close melee range to do it. Not viable above gold MMR where you will die doing so. Only safe way to burn it against competent enemies is from a very long range.
Yes and no. If you look at the mid-season brawl, his popularity was 11%. When the HGC Finals rolled around, his popularity soared to 51%. Cocoon didn’t change at all in that time period.
What did change was his W and how it could be talented.
Here is the site I used to find this information, and you can play with the Tournaments drop-down list to see how his popularity changed over time.
As people have said before cocoon has been fine for years the way it is without making anub top pick and ban. Its extremely important to his kit and makes him special/pickable but he didnt become overpowered until they reworked his w last month. Let him have his moment in the sun he will be nerfed next patch.
4 months ago was the last time he got a buff in any talent(s).
1 months ago was a nerf.
And even his “OPness” was before that 4 months ago in terms of top tier/pro play.
Anubarak can spam mini shields with 40 spell armor without even talenting into W.
He is thus less threatened by AA than before.
Tinkering with W may be a possible angle for nerfs.
Also he also was good before he was most likely not picked enough like garrosh and stukov once were.
Just wrote in another thread what the biggest problem of cocoon is:
It completely disables your ping, instead of pinging “break this” or “attack cocoon” you literally ping “empty pings” on map
And frankly that’s like super amateur mistake by Blizzard side, as if they coded the cocooned hero to be turned into a doodad and they couldn’t make an “engine” that pings a doodad, like, literally see no other reason not to have fixed that yet tbh
