Hogger is currently wreaking havoc in QM. This is becoming more and more apparent as people become more familiar with his kit, which is to be expected. But as this is happening, the amount of strength he is showing in many different areas is very clear. Not only is he a hyper-mobile bruiser, he is also a very tanky and high-damage bruiser. In order for this hero to be balanced, there needs to be concessions made with some of his strengths. I’m not one to complain without offering suggestions, so here we go.
If you want to give him infinite damage with Hogg Wild, then there has to be a downside. Now that people know him better, there are very few Hoggers who don’t know how to pinball correctly. Having him be unstoppable for the entire duration is absolute insanity and, in my opinion, I’m not entirely sure how that passed any form of QA/QC.
Solution 1: Severely nerf the damage so that he can’t solo bosses and push lanes as easily. Let it do bonus to heroes so it still has good functionality.
Solution 2: Make him unstoppable for the first second of the spin, making him vulnerable to CC after the first second. This gives players a chance to stop him, rather than just being forced into an automatic retreat.
Solution 3: Decrease the acceleration from 13 to 9. Decrease the maximum speed from 13.5 to 11.
He is far too tanky. HOTSLogs shows that people are only taking his armor talents and I’m sure Blizz internal data says the same.
Solution 1: Dust Devil’s armor values need to be severely nerfed from 30/50/3 Sec, to 20/30/2 Sec. These are extremely necessary not only because this talent stacks with Bones to Gnaw, but because it persists after the after the ability.
His damage is currently too high, especially for a highly mobile and tanky bruiser. I think he needs to be tuned down in many areas.
Solution 1: Increase the amount of rage needed to reduce cooldowns by 1% from 2, to 3.
Solution 2: Decrease the amount of stun damage from Staggering Blow, form 150 extra damage to 100 - OR - decrease the initial damage from 140 to 90, reduce the cooldown from 12 to 10 seconds and increase the stun damage from 150 to 160.
His Heroic option are clearly out of balance. Hoardapult has an 80% pick-rate on HOTSLogs, which clearly shows how overpowered it is.
Solution 1: Buff Shockwave. Reduce cooldown of shockwave from 70 seconds to 50 seconds. Reduce the damage from 306 to 250. Decrease stun duration from 1.25 seconds to 1 second.
Solution 2: Nerf Hoardapult. Reduce slowing effect from 50% to 30%. Decrease range from 15 to 10. Decrease missile speed from 40 to 30. Increase cast time from .375 to .5.
I’m happy to have a discussion about some of the changes I’m suggesting, but I do think something needs to happen soon. He’s currently just far too strong.
His pve and pvp is really strong. Out the gate he can just steal any camp he wants to in too good of time. He might be more of a pest then murky at this point.
Also one other thing Hoardapult does not go on a proper cool down when interrupted he can cast it right away even if you do something to stop him the first time he cast it.
I understand that there are counters to him. I also understand how ridiculous it is to say “just only play X hero continuously and you won’t have a problem.”
Yes! My friends and I have been saying this for weeks now.
On the contrary, man. QM is the main game-mode of HOTS (you like it or not), it has by far the largest player base and so is the most popular mode. So that’s where they should focus the balance of the game.
Furthermore, any smart developer should know that whatever game-mode that allows for most (if not all) possible combinations of its game assets (like all heroes always available in different team compositions; greater player skill gap in a match between players; etc), is the real key to properly balance their game, nobody really should care what a bunch of other dudes would prefer (or not) in other niche modes (perhaps one thing or two here and there, from time to time), because those other modes are not a real, practical showcase of the overall game balance, but a delusion.
Only QM is near to claiming such a thing as to being the most accurate reflection of balance in the overall game, because everything and everyone goes in QM (and even so, a perfect reflection may be impossible, but is by far the nearest to it, know what I’m saying?).
On the contrary, man. Vs AI is the main game-mode of HOTS (you like it or not), it has by far the most popular mode. And no, we should not balance game around the AI or QM which are practice modes. Neither are remotely competitive modes and with loose rules of MM and the terrible MMR averaging used they are impossible to balance around. Not to mention average QM players skill level is around silver. You can’t be sure if they even have their monitor turned on based on their plays, you simply cannot balance around brainless monkeys like those.
As its name suggest, vs AI is irrelevant for balance purposes since its players never get to experience the exploits humans can do. Also, QM is not practice mode, is a competition already, not a sanctioned one, not rewarded for wining other than victory itself, but a competition already. Saying QM are around silver, is as hilariously illogical argument as to saying, most players who play ranked are silver, hence ranked players are on average silver (know what I’m saying?). The average Qm players are fairly skilled and way better suitable to talk about balance issues, as far as I’m concerned, since they suffer the worse all heroes have to offer daily, in the worst possible scenarios (comps) and they can’t handicap anything about it (as in ranked).
I do agree that QM should be considered, but it still shouldn’t be the main (or only) consideration for balance. For example, Illidan and Nova are fantastic in QM due to the lack of tanks and healers, and yet they’re considered highly situational at best in draft modes. So how should Illidan/Nova be balanced then?
Ideally the heroes should reach a state where they’re fairly balanced in both Draft and QM, and power shifts should be considered by the devs when a hero is too good at one mode, but is terrible in the other.
Also I agree, calling QM players all “silver” is silly, some of the best players I’ve seen were on QM. It is true that skill level can vary wildly in QM though.
Any smart developer will also not centralize balancing around randomized skills in both sides with randomized roles unlike 2 attackers (1 mage), 1 healer, 1 bruiser, 1 tank.
If QM changes will ever be considered in the balance spectrum then MMR should be enforced and bring back the QM force compositions which is never going to happen at this point.
A lot of community is also apparently are vs AI farmers, should the devs focus on those people too since they are apparently bigger than Storm League? Those people barely even know how to play the game basics and some of them are ridiculously high levels.