Sacrilege how someone has even considered using what everyone has been calling an AI generated image over the original composition, and even worse that they person in charge didn’t notice the missing pandaren easter egg.
Everybody is mad that they’re being scammed once again and Blizzard was also caught using completely fake HD texture images for the classic graphics style in their latest advertising.
https://i.imgur.com/PrgTV2M.jpeg
As for balance changes, whoever decided Arthas needed a silence is completely insane. The problem with the game is that a simple spell casting or channeling bar interrupt mechanic similar to that in wow but without the follow up spell school lockout does not exist in hots.
Alternatively a micro stun would fail at being reliable because of cleanse and different immunities or will in other cases completely break the game because crowd control interrupts movement and queued commands.
This micro silence might as well be a permanent silencing effect because the instant swing cooldown matches the penalty of interrupted ultimates at 10 seconds and is potentially even scarier when you drop Frostmourne to 8 seconds.
This is the most ridiculous thing ever since 6s 50 armor group Medivh’s Mage Armor, which was subsequently dropped to 4s 30 armor before it even saw any playtesting.
I’ve suggested something different for Arthas in the previous topic linked a few scrolls above - a much longer silencing effect but only for mobility category spells such as such as Slide, Charge, Blink and Dash.
Lets not pretend as if only damage dealing casters are about to receive the rough end of the stick. This also affects BW’s teleport heal, Whitemane’s channel whose AA’s are already useless made useless by Arthas. Even Anduin’s most basic heal that has a cast time can be interrupted now, so there’s one more thing to worry about when picking Salvation, Tranquility and 1000 Cups. This is an additional interrupt vs Consume Souls and Strafe as well.
Guldan’s drain life build = rip
Morales attempting Medivac = rip
Alex casting Dragonqueen = rip
You can even permanently lock down Chen’s Storm, Wind and Fire.
At lvl 16 the Frostmourne upgrade offers too much control over the battlefield because now you’ve got two consecutive silencing weapon swings so with some luck, even without the extra attack speed from Icy Talons you’ll be able to pre-cast Fostmourne and consistently prevent build-up ultimates such as Mosh Pit from casting.
Please no. Arthas needs a little something but this isn’t it. In a vacuum the concept is perfectly fine but it becomes extremely problematic with the amount of crowd control that we already have in the game.
I dont think it will be that bad. Mura gets an even better mini stun at 7 and its not even op there.
Its pretty normal now for tanks to have a way to interrupt people. Almost all of them have something like that in their base kits.
Besides arthas has always struggled to get in range in the first place. Hes like garrosh but isnt as threatening as garrosh.
Im sure this will just end up being a nice quality of life but wont change much
Also as a wm one trick, im not spooked by this at all. A team with an arthas already enharently has less had CC than one with out.
Also the talent on the ptr says you cant silence twice with 1 D cast.
Would be awesome if they tweaked raynor’s execute orders at 20 to target buildings if no heroes are in range for yamato canon. I used to love playing raynor pve with a suicide core possibility to get 2 hyperions out on it but now that’s just 100% dead, it literally killed pve raynor for me he went from one of my favourite pve heroes to literally never ever ever played now for me because of that change
That explans why it looks so clunky with some things sticking out such as Arthas’ appearance, Kel’Thuzad (who not once set foot on Kalimdor if that is him), the archer’s arrow, the two bear gods in the upper left (none of the wild gods fought in the third war), the wardens, and some other things.
The picture just looks too bright, upbeat, and overall nice for what was going on. A far cry from art years ago.
For example: Here we have Grommash and his buddies making heads roll in the jungle.
Too many things about it feel off and it’s just sad to see such an influential piece of art being reworked without crediting Samwise, not even in a subtle way which would have included the panda face hidden somewhere in the crowd. Alternatively they could have put it in the center of attention, on top of the DH glaives as is the case with their models in-game but instead they managed to botch Frostmourne design as well.
Wasn’t really a fan when it previously did. It was a ton of hard-to or completely unpreventable damage and baiting/soaking Yamato shots with heroes to avoid losing the game was mostly impossible because the Core has a BIG WIDE model.
Yes but now it’s completely useless for that purpose. It’s a playstyle that was completely obliterated from the game. It’s sad to lose something. It could do maybe even 50% to buildings IF there are no players in range, which would make it preventable by tanking it, a cost/reward decision, and still have some use if the players just move away and it’s on buildings.
You’re comparing apples and pears because they have a similar toolkit but are essentially two different things.
Suddenly you can break Dehaka’s tongue, stop Auriel from resurrecting, end Cassia’s protected fend early and make her vulnerable to damage, hell you can even force Genji to drop his deflect.
Root + double silence vs Fenix’s teleport, he makes Malganis’ sleep that much more useless. Worst of all, being able to silence on demand, he completely destroys Azmodan who until now could stand a chance with his laser.
You don’t have to be particularly bright to imagine how potentially game breaking this adjustment to Arthas is. It’s like the latest change for Chen, does almost nothing his established role but he completely puts every other hero to shame 1v1 because the numbers are slightly overtuned.
At the same time, Blizzard has problems with Blaze doing too much siege damage and deviating from the role which everyone expects him to perform but suddenly they decide to turn Arthas into a complete menace with simple tool which only becomes more unnerving more players are around to support him. Suddenly you longer require three players achieve what you can do with only two because you have so much control over your opponents.
Not even DVA is safe now. Girl form trying to mount robot - BONK. SORRY, MAYBE NEXT TIME (she is now dead).
Possibly the worst offense here is against Alarak, who most likely will not be able to cast his own silence if Arthas pulls off a proper ambush and manages to maintain proximity. Both abilities at 8 sec cooldown, one is instant and other one has half a second long wind-up animation. Sonya spin build is also completely useless now.
I could go on for days how strong the interrupt is against literally 2/3s of hero pool. If the devs really insist on pushing this live, please consider swapping places of Frostmourne 13 and 16 talents because a small bonus burst of damage in no way measures up to an interrupt and blanket silence. A stronger talent should by some logic be unlocked that much later in the game.
The “bear gods” are just shapeshifted druids, the small discrepancies are from them using HotS heroes in place of generic characters (blond Arthas is because it’s specifically our Crown Prince Arthas skin, Kel’Thuzad replaces the generic necromancer), and the wardens are literally in the original image since they were originally intended for Reign of Chaos before being cut.
I really do not take baseless accusations of AI art sitting down. That’s a huge, disparaging accusation and can be really damaging to the artist’s reputation. More to that, overusing that accusation can make it harder to call out actual cases of it. Unless there is proof of AI artifacts, I’d rather not throw that around willy-nilly.
I’m glad that the bug fixes will maybe slightly buff surging winds which is an underperforming talent. However, the two LiLi changes seem strange.
Free Drinks is the worst talent on that tier by far, UNLESS you’re lucky enough to get to 16 when you can combo it with two for one. The synergy was never really the issue in my opinion.
Buffing LiLi in this way doesn’t address her early game, which is where Free Drinks suffers greatly. The talent is just weird because as a sustain healer, you HAVE to spam drinks way before allies ever get close to 50% health. So in that sense, the conditional is often underutilized and requires no effective skill difference to get more value. If you wait to heal, people will just die and you’ll fall behind, which is especially more pronounced on a healer where you can’t reliably control your heals. Whenever I get free drinks, I always feel like I’m going oom way faster because I’m often not getting the free benefit, I’m also losing out on the other talents’ mana bonuses like not getting free serpents or more mana regen. And I’m still often not healing fast enough either. The conditional is just clunky.
Free Drinks should just get a baseline buff that should increase build diversity, not just buff the synergy that it already performs decently at. Like either straight CD reduction, or let Free Drinks give 10% of the healed amount to LiLi when brew is used on an ally to encourage weaving and offer more AOE healing which is what she is weaker at as a frontline healer.
Shake It Off is also already incredibly underrated. I’m a little concerned she’ll be near invulnerable now. When I’m playing LiLi and dying a lot, I’m just praying I can get to 20 because it honestly completely changes the dynamics of whether LiLi is a good focus target or not. It’s also the only talent on the tier that synergizes with her wind talents. It doesn’t get enough credit probably because it’s not super flashy in its effect.
Sorry to say this but I think you are overreacting like Arthas will powercreep to S tier because he can disjoint channeled abilities by level 13 as a talent choice when all other tanks can do this baseline as basic abilities.
Arthas is weak, he doesn’t provide anything worthy in his kit that other tanks can do it better and its ok he’s getting some justice even with this minor buff, his biggest issue is that he doesn’t bring any hard CC on the table and doesn’t do anything other than in your face tank, which isn’t helping with his outdated design, it will be ok don’t worry.
Saying im overreacting sounds so condescending and rude. For the last three posts I have been trying to point out how this adjustment gives him too much edge against far too many heroes, be it chasing them down when you previously couldn’t keep up, buying time for objective by not allowing them to cast their most damaging spells or simply beating an enemy so hard 1v1 that you no longer even need to waste 20 seconds recalling and running back. If you don’t agree with the first two you can at least understand the third argument through example of Samuro and his most recent nerfs.
You probably won’t notice it much until you start getting stomped by premades where a high level of coordination will be felt the most. You do not even need to waste both of your Frostmourne swings at once, which gives you that much more control over your opponents.
The person that thought that Rehgar, who had been dominating for months since HOTS went into maintenance mode, getting some tiny nerfs would make him not worth playing anymore because he wasn’t “fun” anymore, and using Chen, of all heroes to use him in a niche context in which he is supposedly dominating, yet still struggles to break 50%, is overreacting?
There are several clues and artifacts that lead people to believe it is AI generated, unfortunately. I still think it is pretty, but I do think they should have labeled it as such from the get go. You should be able to click on the image to take you to the commentary.
But it doesn’t really. There is still the issue of the fact that Arthas doesn’t have any sort of escape mechanism, so if he is walking into the middle of your backline to hit an auto-attack (and why is your tank allowing that?!?!), he can be focused down pretty quickly, as your team will have late game talents as well. I do like the change, as he is one of the few tanks without any sort of interrupt. Yes, it is a good interrupt, but because it is such short range, and Arthas isn’t exactly the zippiest of tanks, I seriously doubt 2/3rds of the hero pool will find it anything even slightly problematic.
Cool, might as well return ess of johan to li ming then because no good players will ever go for orb build. If it weren’t for niche situations half of the talents in the game would never be picked. Anti heal and shieldbreaker talents are the most niche thing that currently exists in the game and I’ve already counted 20 fight deciding uses for the most basic interrupt mechanic.
