Actually the not fun arguments will never be a good arguments to balance a game. By listening to that Genji and tracer will also got a nice rework with no more mobility. And there is a lot of counters against a protected hammer comp.
Maybe in early game, but starting from mid game you will be down to 1/4 of your life each time she lands her spell on you.
And I guess you never played against a good Kel’Thuzad past level 10 you will just not be able to be in siege mode even behind your walls.
I am bit tired by those « unfun » posts which are only targeting the heroes with the most diversified gameplays. I don’t want this game to be Heroes of Raynor…
And most of the time it is done by people who saw their main hard countered by the « unfun » hero.
A good protected hammer can hard counter tracer which is perfectly fine and well designed.
Siege tanks have always had higher single target dps when out of siege mode.
Yeah, which doesn’t belong in this game because there are no flying units, or needing to expand to defend multiple resource locations.
Against a Terran that went Siege tanks you know they’re playing defensive, you can more easily mass expand, contain them to a smaller number of bases while taking over most of the map.
Neither of those are options here.
Because, like with Illidan, it requires the whole team to build around her, which just doesn’t happen that often with PUGs.
And in co-ordinated play, they can take teams that counter that sort of centralized focus.
Which makes her pretty bad outside of QM.
I don’t want to make her worse, I want to make her a bit more generalized so she will be less horrendous to play against in those QM situations, and more desirable in those organized situations.
Except that’s not what I suggested.
I suggested a long cooldown on siege mode, and a short duration.
This would allow tank mode to be buffed so she can be a better hero overall.
But the cooldown and set duration means siege mode can ALSO be buffed.
She’ll be buffed in tank mode, and siege mode.
And that new siege mode will be even more scary (like base , to the point where paying attention to when Hammer sieges will be a very important part of dealing with her, rather than now where you just do your best to make sure she can’t siege anywhere important.
Not all auto-attackers are “generic auto attackers”
Lunara is pretty different from Sylvanas who is pretty different from Tracer.
I imagine Hammer could be significantly more durable than she is now, being one of the slowest heroes in the game, and that is something that very much embodies Terran Mech compared to Bio.
It’s slow, but durable.
You design around fun, then you balance around top level play.
But first it should be fun.
And while fun is subjective, in a game where you choose your comp before the game rather than building it in the game like in Starcraft, ultra hard counters are much less acceptable as they can create situations where there are no options besides wait to die, and that is never fun.
Uhh, once you’re in mid game, laning becomes less important. Also, you didn’t read the post. I was responding to prerework Hammer where you basically just stayed out of siege mode. With AA mobile build it was super hard to land spells because I just dodged nearly everything unless you time looped. And by then I would have completed the regen quest for more HP, so it wasn’t nearly as bad, and I would just regen my way back to health.
Also, yes, I’ve played against a good Kel’Thuzad, and they make me cry. But old Hammer only got to play with Kel’Thuzad for a tiny amount of time, and I was rarely in siege anyways.
The only way to avoid ultra hard counters is to have only generics heroes, with the same panels of spells.
It is perfectly fine to have ultra hard counters to heroes which are by them self’s ultra countering an other panel of heroes.
1 - A good tracer will counter Kel’Thuzad who will not be able to approach to land his chains without risking a. Death penalty , add a team drafted to support her and KTZ will just be a dead weight.
2 - A good KTZ will counter a hammer who will not be able to use it’s siege mode anymore, add a team to protect and support him and hammer will also be a dead weight.
3 - Finally a good hammer will counter tracer who who’ll not be able to approach hammer’s team without taking constant dommages, add a team drafted to protect and support hammer and tracer will also be a dead weight.
In all of these 3 cases, for these 3 heroes, there is a terrible unfun situation. All 3 a are hard countered/countering due to their unique specificities.
The only way to make it « fun » for all of them is to remove their specificities while buffing their generic capabilities.
Your a right, sorry I misunderstood your post. Yes true if I remember correctly the main complains where linked to the difficulty to counter a team center around her old design.
Don’t know, that’s means we will scarify a lot of game diversity. As per me this is perfectly fine to have niche heroes, only useful on few situations. I think it is possible to balance hammer with its current design.
Also I love to see, even when playing against, these kind a heroes mastered and hard carrying a game. I think it was the case for old Gazlowe: terrible played by most of the players but in the rights hands he had the potential to hard carry. As a result he get reworked and most of the Gaz mains are now disappointed as he lost a bit of his identity.
That’s not true.
You can have heroes with a higher skill ceiling and more play-style defining talents.
By making heroes less blatantly predictable, it is harder to just hard counter them.
Take Zul’Jin for instance. He’s an auto-attack hero, generally weak to blinds. But can talent into rather potent ability damage if there are too many blinds. His mechanic of doing higher damage when hurt still carries over to his Guillotine, and Recklessness talent, and there is no other ability in the game like Twin Cleave, which can take a fair amount of skill to land Wrong Place Wrong Time.
He still remains unique.
Kel’Thuzad, Hammer, and Butcher are essentially the worst designed heroes in the game, in my opinion. So I don’t think it helps the discussion much to mention them. Numerous times I’ve said what I think should be done about Kel’Thuzad, and I’ve recently gave a short of idea of what COULD be done about Butcher.
Tracer has mobility and range to help her with her ‘counter’ of CC, which counters everyone. She’s weak to ranged attacks, but again she has high mobility and slightly better self healing than previously.
People don’t typically see Tracer and feels they absolutely NEED to hard counter her the same way one does with Hammer.
I’ve even taken down a Tracer as Jaina… granted, part of that is exactly what I’m talking about. Talents like Frost Armor, which might not prevent much damage from Tracer does inflict Chill when she shoots you, allows you to Jaina to more easily land spells, and do more damage with the first spell (since it will also get the bonus damage) It by no means guarantees Jaina can beat Tracer, but it can shorten that ‘hard counter’ gap.
Sorry mate but Zul’Jin is far to be a good exemple as he is typically a generic AA heroes. He is a Raynor 2.0 with a « spell built » which is also relying on his AA. As a quick remember his spell built has been nerf as player fought it was unfun to take a guillotine on the head and loose as a result most of their HP: Guillotine did back more dmg and had a shorter CD of 30 sec. (It was perfectly fine for me).
And you are exactly making my point here, the only way the have no unfun situations is to have only generics heroes with no diversity.
Jaina is the first and most generic mage, She stands in the middle of CC, burst and peel. Same for zul’jin, for Raynor, etc…
So sorry for the lack of creativity but I am not sure creativity is about less gameplay diversity.
Lastly on the higher skill ceiling, I agree. But people are also complaining about that and as a result all the high ceilling heroes have been nerfed to a point were a good illidan will carry as good as an average Raynor. So this is also causing unfun situations for another community of players. That is why i am against unfun balance.
You think Zul’Jin is generic.
Your opinion no longer matters.
You think Jaina is generic?
Is there another hero in the game who slows with every ability and does bonus damage when the enemy is already afflicted by that slow?
Yes the gameplay is generic, facing a Zul’Jin don’t need to be manage differently than facing Raynor. They both have different traits but the counters are the same, even their basic abilities are quite similar: 1 to increase dommage, 1 to heal, one which doing spell dommage with a bit of CC. When I am drafting I will not try to counter differently a Zul’Jin from a Raynor.
You justes describe her trait here, and as far as I know all the heroes have a different one. What is more important is the result in the gameplay diversity. And all the heroes you dislike seems to be the one with uniques mechanics.
Well you are bronze. I guess you’d never understand how very far off that is.
Which does actually explain a lot.
You like stuff that other bronzies have no idea how to deal with.
Haha i don’t know where did you found this information, which is totally wrong by the way. I am platinum and mostly always have been a quick match player and never tried to rank up.
That just show that you base your thinking’s on the wrongs informations mate, I guess it should also apply on the rest of your argumentation ?
And even if was bronze the argument which is about knowing nothing because you are a noob only in bronze is just equal to: I don’t have any arguments so I will just be a jerk
Zul’jin isn’t generic at ALL. He’s AA, AP mix, his trait, the several builds, his W forces a midrange positioning sometimes, yet aa+net means you may want to be a little closer, and lvl 1 quest means killing everyone once is unique.
Anyhow, Hammer is difficult to balance at its current iteration. Either the damage is sufficient, and the range is oppressive (every time she is buffed, this happens, then she’s nerfed back into obscurity). OR, like now, her damage is insufficient, and she’s a liability.
I quite like Fawxkitteh’s idea of making D a high cd upgrade with new abilities for a rework. Im not sure how to do this, but I like it.
My lazy rework would involve lots of numbers tuning, really, with the following changes as well:
Q W stay the same. Her E is lame; and her team should be protecting her - not her. If you want an independent % aa, go with raynor or Tychus. If you want to protect her, get ready to protect her. Instead, I would put Napalm on E (tune dmg), so that she has some AP and not just a left click. Then you could build her either towards AA, or Abilities. Give her a new cool 2nd ult. Her trait would also upgrade each of these abilities while in siege. Maybe more mines, bigger W, and napalm would slow some.
Anyone complaining about Hammer needs to seriously look at how easy it is to counter her and keep her out of siege mode almost completely by so many characters. Any character with an AoE target ability will counter her siege. Jaina, Ming, KT, Chromie. Any type of relocation will also stop (and probably kill) her. Stitches, Garrosh, Arty.
Nevermind that she is self rooting in siege and it takes time to unroot/ move.
It used to be +damage at range, and all siege would do is add range and splash.
Now the damage bonus is tied to siege mode, so not only do you have to be in siege to get the bonus damage but she also gets the bonus damage point blank.
A whole lot of her traits affecting autos are now siege only, further making her utterly reliant on being in siege.
That said, rework did add her armor ability so it wasn’t all bad, but it did pigeon hole her even more.
