or aram without any other option…
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I’ve never seen all blaze mirror. Should be cool.
His wave clear will still be fast enough, especially on maps where double soaking isn’t mandatory. I expect he will drop off on Towers of Doom, but on most of the rest of the maps he will be fine. His wave clear was toned down, not gutted like his siege.
And as noted, he still brings excellent team fight utility as a second front line, where he won’t always be the immediate focus target. Flanks from fog of war has always been his specialty, and that doesn’t change.
He may no longer be S tier, that would be Hogger and, well, Hogger, but he will still be a strong A tier. On a map like Tomb of the Spider Queen, I expect he will still be a decent first pick.
As an offlaner. He will now be a garbage tank.
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The buffs for Chen and Thrall are too much in my opinion.Yes, they should buff under performing heroes but in a resonable way, not break them.
I like the buffs on Cassia, they seem decent, i wonder how a Fend build will feel.
The buffs to Valla’s Strafe and Multishot are nice and needed i say.I love Strafe but i admit it’s weaker then Rain, so the bufff is cool.Also the reduced mana on Multishot is very good, since i like Multishot build and i always go low on mana really, really fast with that build.
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W is/was her highest mana cost ability. If I was in lane, I wouldn’t use it on minions unless there was a reason I REALLY needed to clear quickly. After I started doing that, I had no mana issues.
After getting the slow on it, it was mainly to peel or kill secure, or to steal some skeleton kills on Infernal shrine.
So you only Q and auto attack the minion wave???
When i do that it takes for ages to kill all the wave.With a W with some stacks it is much quicker.
I always thought its better to use W on the wave and Q on sigle target or the 2 mercenary camp.
Interesting, I always thought that Piercing Arrows was the meta pick for level 16 talent for Hanzo, so I’m a bit surprised that they nerfed Giant Slayer. Perhaps it was a little too good on an AAA build, they probably are doing those nerfs based on data but interesting nonetheless. Apart from AAA build I also liked to pick it for a W build for some surprising burst. Might be still worth picking for single target damage, tough Piercing Arrows looks even more solid now, for that better wave clear and also those pierces in teamfights (less single target damage but more overall damage than Giant Slayer probably in Teamfights).
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Im pretty happy with just about every balance change here.
Blaze has been an S tier offlaner for a long time so changes were deserved. I think hell still be good in the offlane but his mid game team fighting will be brought down.
Flame stream dealing its bonus damage to structures being removed is the only think im eh on here. Not because the change is unwarranted but because i know that even alot of the people who do play Blaze find him boring and i think this change will hurt their souls a bit.
Cassia changes are good. Fend is one of those abilities where casting it is often a bad but maybe a wopping 70% boost will make it worth its jank : p
Would have been nice to see some changes to grounding rod sense its one of the worst talents in the game but oh well. Cass players (me included) are gonna be happy with this.
Chen getting buffs to every talent is his niche duelist build. I bet its not gonna be niche anymore. Good changes.
Hanzo and mephisto changes are warrented. Hopefully meph will still be good at high levels with his best build nerfed. Hanzo will be just fine tho.
Genuinely excited for the Thrall buffs all-round.
And then I dont think the valla nerfs are going far enough. I think were all a little tired of her over shadowing evey other auto attacker by now. I would love for our cassia overlords to raise up but valla is still going to be very strong after the patch.
All in all its not much but what’s there is a solid 9/10. Thanks for still updating our game!
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That’s the utilitarianism effect. Greatest happiness of the greatest number.
It was (stil is) super annoying to deal with. He just sits there, killing your towers while being hardy gankable from lvl 1.
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No thank you. Valla is at least tissue paper. Cassia back pre-nerf was genuinely unfun to face. We don’t need a repeat of that.
Someone know when this patch will be available to play ?
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Once 3 games have been played on PTR
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Can you reduce the CD on Auriel’s Ray of Heaven heal back to original 3 seconds or give us the talent back that reduced the CD by 1 second?
Her healing is so predicated on the damage her teammates deal, even if she is able to spin the crown well enough to utilize that playstyle, her overall healing output is curbed by the 4 second CD on Ray of Heaven.
Too often have I been sitting there with a full energy bar and nothing to use it on because the only spell that requires energy is her heal on a 4 second CD. I watch my teammates die because of the CD alone and no way to mitigate damage with any other ability (Crystal Aegis doesn’t heal, so you better have that Ray of Heaven up when it pops lol). Other healers have multiple ways to heal or mitigate damage and if they don’t then they are usually high throughput like Lt. Morales. Auriel is unusual in that she is the one healer in the game that only has one overall ability that can heal her team. Sure, it’s AoE, but on a 4 second CD, it is a liability.
I now play against Auriel knowing I have a 4 second window to kill any hero on the other team unimpeded, especially if she takes Resurrect (on a 100 sec CD which makes it all but useless outside of coordinated play).
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Seen it and it’s pretty funny when they both uses the stun, definitely a must watch.
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I’ve had this idea of reducing her CDs to 3 secs like you mentioned for years, at one point any Auriel player who well-versed enough will hit the ceiling of no problem harvesting energy but prohibited to heal coz the 4 seconds.
Her mitigation tier is on 13 but do rely on one aiming skill and can’t help much on spell damage.
Still these are her weaknesses, if we can have the former 2 secs on her heal, to me, she’s the best healer in term of healing hands down and may confidently say her team would be unkillable past level 16 if Auriel do know her game.
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Many characters suffer from some form of restriction and that is perfectly fine.
Malf heals for almost nothing before 16+20 if there are no heroes to hit and Whitemane is even worse in this regard because of her mana inefficiency.
4 sec window healing is ok if you ask me considering she doesn’t need to worry about mana at all. But then there’s an issue with resetting the health of mercenaries to game her resource acquisition. Such loopholes don’t exist for other two healers.
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That´s both funny and sad.
Even back in the day there would be 1-2 days of PTR when everyone and their goldfish tried to get a game there, then empty. I guess it´s the later now permanently from the start.
PS: Yes i´m aware vs AI exists.
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The 4 second cd can seem more an issue since Auriel has the fewest buttons for saving an ally. She’s the only healer that doesn’t respawn with resources to heal and she gets the fewest buttons for saving an ally, so she gets doubly-punished if her team falls behind.
Perhaps she could get a talent that uses energy to clear cc, and is either greyed out without enough, or it stuns/roots her if used without enough energy to use.
Or change her lvl 16 “Will of Heaven” to have on-attack cdr instead of 10% attack damage increase.
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I mostly used ptr to try out new heroes in AI. It still had maybe 20-30 people online on it at best when game was poplular. Now Im sure ptr is 100% empty.
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I think that would push her from niche to OP.