HotStorm Mechanics

General Discussion
1

There are a lot of mechanics in HoTS, but i do think there could be quite a few interesting one be added or existing ones be refined. Following a list of those i have seen mentioned on these forums or came up myself:

  • Damage Limitation: Caps damage to fixed value or x% of maximum health per instance or within a timeframe.
    • Serves as an intermediate between Armor and Protected and allows to mitigate burst damage without affecting poke damage.
    • Example: Barrier (SC2 Immortal, original version)
  • Spread Damage: AoE with high damage value that is equally distributed among all affected targets. Also possible as defensive AoE effect on allies.
    • Would create a situation where multiple bodies or close standing melee oriented compositions actually have an advantage versus this AoE.
  • Range Limitation: Creates a field that reduces the range of all abilities and basic attacks to a minimum range. Either only affects heroes within or targettting heroes within.
    • Counters poke and ranged assassins as they have to come closer to their targets.
    • Example: Dark Swarm (SC1 Defiler)
  • Damage Barrier: Creates a field that reduces damage traded over it´s borders.
    • Counter to ranged damage, both poke and burst.
    • Example: Guardian Shield (SC2 Sentry)
  • Projectile Shield: Creates a field that acts as a barrier towards projectiles (travelling skillshots) up to a certain amount of damage, but swallos leftover damage of the skillshots that breaks it.
    • Can be used to protect retreating targets against skillshots (i woud include Genji´s E in in here, even if he is himself the projectile)
    • Example: Barrier Field (Reinhardt)
  • Healing Pool: Healing that is either stationary or moving as skillshot, healing wounded allies in close proximity to the path, up to a total maximum.
    • Allows to heal large amounts of health from safe distance, but requires pre-planning of pathing as it affects the closest ally within range only even if it has full health.
    • Example: Biotic Orb (Moira)
  • Mana Shield: Redirects a certain amount of damage to the targets Energy/Mana/Whatever, as far as available.
    • Allows to safe a target at the cost of rendering it potentially useless due to lack of a casting resource.
    • Example: Mana Shield (D2 Sorceress)
  • Inverse PBAoE: AoE damage that increases with distance to it´s primary target.
    • Allows to deal high damage to highly spread out enemies.
  • Thorn Damage: Part of the damage dealt to the target is suffered by the source. May also be used with CC.
    • Makes high burst damage risky especially for heroes that are low health themselves. In case of CC very disruptive for combos as e.g. Diablo/KTZ would also stun themselves.
    • Could see the CC-counter variant as an ability on Itherael.
  • Target Confusion: All abilities of the affected targets affect friend and foe alike.
    • Can be used to delay AoE heals/nukes until the effect is over as they would also affect enemies/allies.

What kind of mechanics would you like to see, and for what purpose?

[Weird spelling in title to circumvent 20 char limit]

4 Likes
2

Seems a bit strong. For example Dehaka’s isolation hits 1 target and is a skillshot. It depends. This could either be ridiculous or weak depending on how many (I’m just gonna say blinding clouds from viper cause I’m more familiar with sc2) blinding clouds are available and how big they are.

Overall I would like to see these new mechanics. Something I would enjoy is if there was more terrain interactions. Or like if there was a map with high ground or whatever.

Mana shield would be always self casted right? Or at least if you can use it on other people it drains your own mana yeah? I like the concept of Mana shield but it could be very potentially trolly if you could cast it on someone else and then drain their mana.

1 Like
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One mechanic I would love to see in-game was already hinted at in the last AMA: Stagger. This is already used on Brewmaster Monks in WoW, where damage taken is automatically converted into a DoT, which can be self-cleansed with a charge based mechanic. This is essentially protection from burst damage, but the charges on the cleanse make it such that you have to time them well to survive an extended fight.

2 Likes
4

The effect is quite big in SC1 and as i remember the energy was sufficient to cast two of them per Defiler; for HoTS this can of course be adjusted as needed.

The main difference to Dehaka´s heroic would be that this effect is stationary and one would (in variant one) need to be inside to have the range decreased. But i can agree that this might easily be an overly strong effect if not well tuned.

Devil´s Playground from SC2, the one with the lava rising and flling, would be ideal for that.

The same can be said above Stitches hook or Garrosh´s throw, yet it seems people use those very rarely to sabotage their own team. As a selfcast on a hero with mana it would make most sense probably, but as an effect on allies it would sure create an interresting dynanic with the different types of resources out there. Imagine this for example on a Zarya while her shields are up.

Quite excited to see that one myself; especially when i am on Lunara and our Chen´s bar is all green: Abolish Magic for full health.

1 Like
5

I agree mainly it’s a tuning thing if implemented. But another key advantage it has is huge displacement. You literally can’t fight in it if you’re ranged dps. Overall, solid idea, but you need to be very cautious.

Would (imo) definitely have to be a heroic ability and still have to be regulated very carefully.

1 Like
6

Absolutely no. It makes bad teammates even worse and in this case you cant mitigate it at all (where with stitches and garrosh, heroes with a dash or jump can many times jump to safety).
Team kills in a game where a death is 60 seconds arent fun. Thats why in counter strike with friendly fire, servers often use mods to punish the teamkiller. It prevents griefing.
However, in hots, you cant punish such player at all and therefor only makes the issue worse.

This has 2 issues

  • to make it effective, it has to deal high damage, teamfight value is important on abilities.
  • if an ability becomes too powerfull in 1v1, its again broken.

You cant realy balance a lot on this, so there has to be a side effect in place here:
Lets say an ability becomes like:

  • Deals 300 damage to its targets
  • Damage is spreaded acros targets
  • Each additional target that has been hit increases the damage by 100.

This means against 1 its 300 damage, against 2 its 2x200, against 3 its 3x166, 4x 150.

And some suggestions i have is:
Mana stalling
temporarily removes all of your mana except for x, which then restores at a rate of y per second.
Basicly a soft silence, but is mostly to stop combos. So if a hero has 500 max mana, and his abilities cost 50 each. If this sets his mana to 50 and then it restores at 75/s. it means for 1 second he can only do 1 ability, and then has to wait 1.5s to be able to actualy finish his combo.
And as it in the end doesnt remove any mana like a mana burn would, its not going to be a permanent issue against mana heavy heroes. Mana management would still be fine for those.

Damage staggering
Instead of directly having the damage applied, the damage is converted to a DoT, which allows healing to be performed before the full damage has been dealt.

Idealy this would be a trait of a hero where he is able to remove all active DoT’s and potentialy even gain some alternative buffs (damage increase, self healing/shielding).

void walking
This probably would only suit an ultimate. All targets hit by this ulti enter a stasis state where they can walk and attack, but they can only target objects that are also put in this void state. People in the diffirent state are shown as being in stasis to each other though.

This is kinda like the void prison on that, but as combat can continue, it can be used to isolate an enemy into a 2v1 state and negate any potential influence from a support.

2 Likes
7

The idea here is to have a strong spell against one or two targets, that has the drawback of being bad against multiple targets. So as long as you hit the isolated targets you deal strong damage.

Could work.

Well will have to see how they implement this, as they announced – in a roundabout way – it for Chen already. It is going to be interesting for sure.

Would the user be in this state for it´s duration? This would essentially be a sort of taunt with a twist; an intereseting one for sure.

1 Like
8

I demand credit for that if it ever gets added to the game!

Trait - Every damage done to Bob becomes dot (damage over time) over 2 seconds. (active only with Ashe nearby)

It was me, all me!

1 Like
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When asked what they have up for Chen during the AMA the devs responded they experimented around and found the results to be “staggering”. Which is given the usage of the word and Chen´s role/theme quite the indicator. It should be linked somewhere in the AMA recap thread.

10

But I was first!

3 Likes
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The idea here was a relatively large AoE. Kinda similar to artinis’ Suppression Pulse. And it would affect everyone in it, this includes your teammates, minions, mercs and structures. Map objectives are excluded and will never be usable in this void state.

This also means structures can go into stasis and prevent blocking to attacks. Although they will still not be able to be walked through (to prevent weird collisions). Just like players also keep their collision.

If you suggested this at least 1 year ago you might be the first, but there is still a big chance you werent.
I can remember me posting it on the old forums aswel (this is the 3rd or 4th time i repeated the stagger suggestion). And i suggested that for the first time when someone made a suggestion for a male d3 warrior, and this was at least a year ago.

12

I just now realized this is technically already in as Kharazim´s Seven-Sided Strike is only really effective if there is one target in range and is otherwise distributed among the targets.

Still would like to see more like that or similar effects.

13

Great thread and would love more interesting mechanics implemented.

Couple of ideas I like so far:

  • dark swarm: creates an area where range attacks can’t happen or are weakened. I’m all for abilities to help out melee characters cause I feel like range characters often have an advantage.

  • interactive terrain from sc: high ground advantage and destructible terrain to give different advantages.

  • Reinhardt shield mech

  • Moira orb. Was just thinking abt this today cause healers need new mechanics

Couple of mine I want to add:

  • feedback: does instant dmg to a target based on the amount of mana they have. Supposed to be a counter to mages and maybe supports. Can add another effect if wanted like a stun or silence against the target.

  • spell breaker: take an enemies buff like armor or movement speed and apply it to an Allie, or take a debuff on a team mate and place it on the enemy.

1 Like
14

Most of these sound more like a singular ability than a mechanic…

If you want something in the game, using a hilariously overpowered unit from Starcraft BW is not the best way to push it, lol!

Regardless this sort of function takes away way too much of the enemy power/control and I think would be a poor mechanic in a MOBA.

As a healing tool akin to spirit link seems okay.

As an offensive ability it gets a bit hampered as it would have to delay it’s damage in order to deal it’s X damage divided equally to all targets.

Feels more like an ability than a mechanic

insert sarcastic comment about it being in the game for % damage already being capped on units with enough hp (aka just bosses/objectives).

Seems fine.

Feels more like an ability than a mechanic.

No.

Don’t we have this on Voskaylya foundry or however you spell it?

Or am I misunderstanding.

More of an ability than a mechanic…

Pretty sure you could do this in engine if wanted?
Again sounds way more like an ability than a mechanic.

Not sure if I classify this as an ability or mechanic.

But we do have deflect on Genji, which while not what you are exactly asking for, is similar.

So i’ma say an ability, not a mechanic.

Or a mechanic that already exists.

Pick.

Sounds more like an ability than a mechanic.