So, I normally get Gathering Storm on Falstad in ARAM. It just got nerfed into absolute uselessness. Stacks were giving 2 damage/stack…and now it is .02%. Yes, you can use the explosion for more reliable/faster stacking, but the mana return has been reduced as well. So a build that was already high mana usage, has become even higher, and because the base damage has been reduced, even though another instance of damage has potentially been added, the stacks have been nerfed so hard it isn’t worth it.
Say you had 100 stacks before…that was 200 damage, on top of probably around 250 damage if you were stacking well. That would mean 450 damage going out, 450 damage coming back, for up to 900 damage/player. Now 100 stacks is a 20% increase on about 160 base damage at the same point, and 200 explosion damage. So… that lets say 400 total for both hammer hits, and another 240 from the explosion…or 640 total. Keep in mind with just base damage before it was 500, and now it is about 520.
Yeah…So base damage was slightly buffed, but the talent went from being a huge damage buff to a small one. Conclusion, despite the patch notes not mentioning it, Gathering Storm has been nerfed to about 25%-30% it’s prepatch effectiveness. Oh and lets not forget the mana return was also nerfed.
It is almost like none of the devs did the math on it…
Ok? And, that has what to do with any point I was making?
lol?
You know you can sidestep the hammer most of the time right? Fal had to struggle to do mage level damage, and relied on the other team’s bad play as much as his own good play to get stacks. Fal was at best a mid/top pick, depending on what the opposing team’s comp was. Pretty much every mage was a better choice before he was nerfed into the ground.
The problem is damage though. The explosion is nice but that damage doesn’t make up the difference. The new gathering storm needs a significant buff to the scaling and probably the mana. New Falstad has some serious mana issues considering the overall nerfs to his early game.
I wouldn’t say Falstad was problematic. He was strong but not stronger than Li Ming, ZJ or Chromie in ARAM.
There are plenty of heroes better than Falstad before these changes. He was a decent hero that could do really well depending on what the enemy team got for picks. After these changes I don’t think he’s very good in ARAM anymore. You can probably get by with the hammer build but it’s significantly weaker. His lightning and AA builds are probably too risky for ARAM but seem okay in regular games.
Instead of making up estimates, let us do calculations based on more accurate (within rounding error) numbers for level 20.
Before patch:
With 100 stacks it would deal a bonus of 200 damage. The base damage at this level is 265.13. As such each hit from the hammer would deal 465.13 damage. The BOOMerang would deal 361.54 damage. This brings the total damage to…
465.13 * 2 + 361.54 = 1,291.8 damage per cast.
After patch:
Exploding is now baseline and gives stacks and so on average hammerang will gain at least 3 stacks in the time it previously gained 2. As such for fair comparison 150 stacks are assumed. This means it will deal 30% more damage. The base damage at this level is 175.29. As such each hit would deal 227.88 damage. The baseline explosion will deal a base of 208.16 damage at this level. However it deals an additional 75% damage from BOOMerang that stacks additively with other bonuses for a total of 105% damage. This raises the explosion damage to 426.73 damage. On top of this BOOMerang will now debuff the target with -15% spell armor to further multiply all damage as long as the player explodes it before the first hit. This brings the total damage to…
(227.88 * 2 + 426.73) * 1.15 = 1014.9 damage per cast.
1 - (1014.9 / 1,291.8) = ~0.21or 21% less damage than before.
20% damage reduction hardly makes the skill less viable. Especially since this is not factoring in damage from other spells or allies that benefit from the -15% armor for 3 seconds after the explosion. For example a level 20 empowered hinterland blast deals ~1,500 damage so from the negative armor alone that is an extra 225 burst damage if used immediately after hammerang. Additionally it is likely that the stack count will be even higher than 150 since explosions are more likely to hit multiple heroes than the line the hammer travels.
Is it a nerf? Kind of. Does it make it not viable? I doubt it makes much of a difference and if anything it may even make the build more consistent. Hammer explosion with BOOMerang even does more damage, and that can potentially hurt more targets than the line does.
Yeah, about quarter efficiency I’d say. While the baseline AoE is nice and must be reflected on the overall talent strength, you probably aren’t consistently looking at more than 25% damage increase by the end of the match. And unlike the previous iteration it now scales with level. That being said because the base damage is so low you’d have gotten the same payout with around 20 stacks previously, which really wasn’t super high either.
On its own it’s an ok skill but it just can’t match either the raw damage of the dishonorable discharge or the overall utility of frequent flyer.