What drew people to this game in terms of gameplay was that it was DIFFERENT from other mobas. That it put more emphasis on macro play and pushing lanes than micro and team fights.
Blizzard has been stepping away from this bit by bit over the past year or two, much to the chagrin of many veteran players and newer players who simply liked the way things were.
The upcoming changes are just another example of this.
Blizzard, you say you “still want to reward players for pushing”, saying now you are shifting the reward from being a “power advantage” to a “strategic advantage”
Problem with that is… that isn’t truly rewarding players for pushing any more than other mobas reward players for pushing.
My problem with this is that Blizzard is being blatantly dishonest. Acting like they are keeping with the spirit with which this game was conceived when they clearly aren’t. It’s BS.
Never heard the devs saying the game was centered around pushing lanes, i heard it revolves around bringing down the core.
Veteran players shouldn’t care because they know that pushing will still make you win the game.
I mean… if you want to be pedantic sure. But the reality is that there’s a reason specialists were the way they were for so long, and that towers had ammo for so long.
All mobas provide a strategic advantage for taking down forts.
You can say that the devs never said this or that, but the way the game was originally designed speaks for them. The game was different from other mobas because pushing didn’t simply grant a strategic advantage and people liked that, with there being plenty of posts I’ve seen over the past year of people unhappy with the other hits the game’s macro has been taking, to prove it.
And now the summons draw fire while you need to expose yourself to maximise damage, same intent different risks.
And i still await for the quote stating that the game was all about bring a specialist to push the lane to win.
I still await for the proof that you can’t do it right now with any specialist.
The only spec that was destroyed by ammo changes is locust abathur and i always said that i want locust build back.
You can’t say the game strayed from old intent if you don’t quote anything.
But I can say that uther said in tutorial that to win you have to “bring the core down”.
And? It is not allowed to make pushing harder? It is harder to kill abathur behind his fort with the fort change, the game changes with patches, it affects everyone not just specialists.[quote=“Chemötherapy-1293, post:5, topic:5388”]
The upcoming changes will make specialists even less powerful.
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So you agree you could win games with a possible landslide with specialists.
Sometimes, I suppose? But you could win games with a possible landslide of supports too. I think at one point you could even do it with all Warriors in beta?
tower ammo removal was healthy for the game
Azmodan can’t laser forever is another change
Xul / Aba / Azmo minions don’t push as hard when towers are up
Bruisers offer spell armor which encourages pushing with/escorting
Overall the changes improve the value of splitpush and to make it slightly less braindead (minions draining ammo> pushing inevitably), so much so that globals were even largely nerfed just last patch.
Splitpush is still super strong, and some hero releases over the past months/years have introduced new ways to do it, too. Ragnaros waves/Samuro S-tier splits/Junkrat post-13 soak machine/Reworked Leo and Malth waveclear and rotation speed/safety… And then the regular global cast and any waveclear-competent doublesoaker or solo laner with just solid map awareness, it’s all good. Go watch Glogan if you think splitpush is dead, go watch Samuro or Falstad backdoor games on HGC if you think it’s dead
I certainly would not say it’s dead by any means. I however feel like blizzard is testing the waters to see if the community would be okay with killing splitpush and hard macro play, and also feel I should voice my concern.
I am afraid I don’t feel you when you say the changes improve the value of splitpush. I feel that there were ways they could have made it so that the ammo mechanics wasn’t so easily drained by basic minions.
Can’t blame them to try it when people 4/5 mid at the start and still don’t understand why they get rolled with a 3 level deficit.
You can take forts a bit too easily right now but i guess they rather go the xp route than making structures stronger.
Not really. I’ve been playing since Alpha and we’ve had plenty of team fights.
But I’ll tell you what, you’re right about the changes, but wrong about the results. Back then we barely had snowball matches. Where 90% of the matches were stomp or be stomped. They focused on the forts/keeps/towers change and it completely destroyed the fun factor of this MOBA.
They’re taking away xp from forts, awesome. But that’s not enough imo, they need to bring back that second tower inside the walls.
HotS was always teamfight oriented, it was never the push-moba.
Oh sorry, I mean Hero Brawler, a name for marketing which implies a focus in teamfights. Hell, usually the first thing you do in game is a teamfight in mid and a then in few minutes again when the objective becomes available. Repeat until one side wins. Furthermore hots is literally the only moba in which you can win games without pushing at all (BHB for example).
No moba has as many teamfights per minute than hots since ever.
Reason for the new xp changes:
-making a big level lead harder to achieve so important teamfights are more winable even when behind, resulting in more likely comebacks + games that feel even
-instead of having more power in level, the winning team now constantly pressures a lane rather early in the game
It is to be seen how it will work out but I like the reason for the changes.
I suggest waiting until the changes are on the PTR and trying them yourself. I highly doubt much will change other than those 6-8+ level advantage stomps disappear.
Yeah, I feel that way, too. All those changes and reworks seem to make the game closer to other MOBAs, instead of capitalising that HOTS is different. This also shows in their hero design. The last unique hero we got was Cho’gall and that was 2 years ago. And that they are killing the specialist class.
They aren’t changing the game to make it more like LoL or DotA2. The changes promote strategic play over the brute force of never ending team fighting, which grows stale and boring. The game needs less brawling and more strategic planning. It needs teams who make choices about where and when they engage the opponent AND their defenses. That’s what makes for interesting game play, not 5v5 rumbles in mid lane or just at the objectives.