I never thought this would even be possible, but after getting Haunted Mines back in Heroes of the Storm, maybe there is still hope for old Chromie too.
I still think the September 2018 rework removed a lot of what made Chromie unique.
I would love to see a single but bursty Dragons breath and ByeBye talent back
Old Chromie was frustrating sometimes, but she also had one of the most unique mage identities in the game.
You mean visible single W or invisibile W?
I’d prefer invisible, it was fun 
but I’d be ok with visible one as well if it was necessary for the sake of balance, the key was actually the single nuke if you managed to hit. Now with triple consecutive hits, its easy to hit, but its boring.
They reverted that a long time ago, enemies don’t see your circles anymore, like it was at the begining. I don’t know for the rest.
(But for Azmodan it remained changed, you see the AOE before it gonna land)
I think they made it that way to reward skill. A player that can consistently get multiple hits per activation will deal more damage. She gets away with it not having an AoA indicator because the damage is split. I think it’s the compromise they made. If they put it back as a single large circle, I have no doubt it would get an indicator.
I don’t remember what the patchnotes said about it.
People probably forgotten but that indicator, on top of many controversial changes has tanked her win rate quite easily to 38% and has persisted like that through “adjustments” until her latest iteration.
But overall, it achieved the worst win rate after a large substantial hero change in the games history.
I played her mostly in quick matches rather than in ranked, but as far as I remember, Chromie was polarized, she could be useless if not coordinated well with team but extremely powerful with organized teams in high ranks.
I dont think hitting all three circles of dragons breath is a big skill trait. Its just more sustainable damage for Chromie and more managable damage for oposing team. I understand the reasons why it has changed, but it made her too much generic towards most of the other mages in the game. I loved her uniqueness back then.
Landing old long-range combos felt way more impactful and rewarding than current sustained poke.
Now all we need is to revert Chromie’s long range to make her viable.
Single nuke W+Q , when highly stacked, with Temporal Loop did allow her to burst a ton of heroes to death from 70-80% HP (especially with Overdrive). It was scary to face as another ranged assassin if your team couldn’t cleanse.
I also love how cheeky she could play in QM with the Bye Bye talent. You could pretty much go scout the enemy Boss camp alone if you set up a few time traps to cover an escape.
To me the hero became completely different and much less threatening with the sequential dragons breaths.
Exactly this is what I mean.
As unique as it was (though Yrel had a similar talent) “Bye bye” had limited uses. So I understood why they got rid of it.
Also, once they had it as an option. A lot of players tended to get trigger happy with it and give up too early.
When yoùre holding a hammer everything looks like a nail.
Yea but they still could keep both Bye bye talent and the “ice block” and let players choose their preferred playstyle
I would definitely classify it as a QM talent (and a powerful one at that especially in games with no tanks or no healers).
It (imo) had no viable use in a ranked game.
I disagree , but not for purely balance reasons.
Ice block already gives an out from burst and tons of other dangerous situations. (Never been a fan of tiers where several talents have the same function).
But the issue with “Bye bye” is that Chromie is a siege mage that plays from far away, and is hard to interact with for most heroes. So it’s demoralizing that when you do manage to get her in threat range, she just pulls out a Get out of jail card and is completely safe.
And yes, I know that forcing her out of a fight is still a plus even if you didn’t get her. But NOT getting that kill feels bad after managing to finally get close to her. She’s in the backline, so getting to her is a risk. You might decide that it’s worth the risk to get yourself in that position because you’re 90% sure you can get the kill on her. But if she has “Bye bye”, the risk is still there but there’s no reward, you know she’s just going to peace out, so there’s no longer any incentive to go for that high risk high reward play.
The patch notes in 2019 did mention that they wanted to have counterplay moments for the opponents. So I think there’s no chance of this talent coming back.
Appreciate the answer, it’s actually an interesting point of view. But dont forget it doesn’t automatically mean Chromie safely escapes to base. The teleport was interruptible, and there are plenty of stuns, silences that would interrupt the cast. Honestly I really liked the adrenaline of escaping in the last second.
And like you mentioned yourself, even if she does get out, the fight is still over for her.
It was interruptable, but it triggered really fast (Otherwise it would have been useless as it would be too close to a regular hearth and not worth picking)
But most characters that have a quick enough interrupt wouldn’t be able to get that close to her. Most assassins don’t have the CC needed. I guess Alarak could use Deadly charge to dive into her and try to Q. But she can still just walk away to bait the combo, and Alarak is stuck behind enemy lines with no Counter-strike. Plus he’s not a hero you want to use for high risk plays.
While making her leave is a positive, she’s not completely out of the fight. You just bought a few seconds of 5 vs 4. But depending on what you were fighting over, her team can just disengage and wait for her. If you were fighting over a boss it’s definitely a plus.
But as it’s been mentionned. It wasn’t that good of a talent. It didn’t really allow any additional plays, didn’t raise your damage, and you couldn’t use it to steal camps since Chromie sucks at is.
I guess the one good use would be to go siege by yourself, and then peace out after you forced someone to come to you. But even then Chromie’s siege wasn’t that good.
Luckily there’s another hero that instantly teleports home. No counterplay. Not even any play. If he’s not perma CC-ed, he vanishes home.
If you mean Gul Dan, he doesn’t have to go to the Hall of storms like Chromie did. He can place his circle where he wants. But he has to go to wherever he wants to re-appear first. So you can’t just pick the talent during a fight to get away.
Gul dan also doesn’t have Chromie’s range, he has to play from closer, and he has to stand still whenever he uses life drain.
Gul’dan’s teleport is actually more reliable in many situations because it’s instant and uninterruptible once activated.
Also he has a life drain, that gives him a lot of survivability.
Deathwing also has the escape, and can land anywhere spot visible on the map.
Yrels is pretty much useless and if I’’m right, noone ever picks that as its in 20 talent tier.
Old Chromie was so much better than new Chromie.
Old Chromie was a sniper who could call in airstrikes.
New Chromie is just a weird time traveller with a gimmick. I never play her now. They destroyed her core play style.
