Take any other mage like Kael, KTZ, Orphea, Naz, Jaina, and if you do a full rotation of your abilities whenever they come off CD, you’ll OOM your sorry butt and have to hearth in no time. Not ming.
All of her abilities cost a comically low amount of mana. If that wasn’t bad enough, she has a ton of good options on level 1 that help her restore what little mana she actually spends (Aether walker straight up removes teleports cost. Why?).
Here’s a test you can do. Go into try mode as li ming. Just level 1. Set a stopwatch and then start using all of your abilities off CD randomly. As soon as something comes off CD use it immediately. Do this until you run out of mana and then stop the timer.
I did this, and when using Aether walker, it took me 1 minute and 10 seconds before I ran out of mana, just spamming non-stop. This is level ONE by the way.
So why do I bring this up? Because it’s frustrating for me as someone who plays a lot of mages when I have to be very careful when I rotate my abilities to make sure I get value out of them. I can’t just spam willy nilly and hope for lucky hits. I have to be sure I aim carefully and get value out of my rotations. Li ming doesn’t have to do this.
If you whiff epicly, no big deal. You still have 95% mana left. This just feels wrong.
“But she’s always been like this” you might say, and you’d be right, and perhaps I’ve always felt this way, but I just never got around to making a thread about it till now, so sue me.
Mana tension is something that should exist in this game, and yet it only applies to select heroes. One of the biggest problems is that new releases don’t follow this at all. It’s blatant power-creep. Either they don’t have mana as a resource at all or their costs are so low, it’s as if they don’t have mana.
A lot of heroes are just problems of old design. And it just makes others situationally oppressive.
Mana not being an issue has been a issue for a while.
Li-ming can run out of mana very fast if she isn’t being conservative with her spells during teamfights, though.
Early on it doesn’t seem like an issue because she her talents are very good at mana conversation, but a li-ming that’s OOM is a lot less dangerous than most other mages that are bordering on empty, simply because her kit is more about quantity over quality.
Kinda weird you want to complain about mages mana tension when most of them have safe rotations to spam at least as long as Ming does.
Yea, some have a utility/aoe/etc ability that is a huge mana dump, but the opportunity cost of the effect is such people shouldn’t spam it anyway.
Q Cassia, she can cast for days
Ice Lance Jaina was her dominate play for similar spam
Kael has several options for curbing his mana costs and only suffers when people neglect his talents for how they play or try to over cast.
Chromie can Q for days and probably only suffers on mass E or W variations with cdr picks
Nova can either built to not really need mana, or refund a lot of what she would spend
Hanzo probably has lower mana tension than even Ming with how he builds his spam
Greymane can similarly offset his mana costs (ha!) pretty early too.
and so on
When someone asks for a test to say “Hey look, I can cast a free movement ability that has a condition to not take damage to trigger” on a test dummy, then they’re pretty much indicating how much they didn’t think this through
Factually incorrect. Teleport costs no mana regardless of any conditions. It straight up says “Teleport costs no mana.” With a period on the end.
Additionally, none of the heroes you mentioned (Cassia, Jaina, Chromie, Kael, Nova, Hanzo, Greymane) have a lower mana cost total for a full rotation than ming and most of them lack the diversity of mana management that ming is offered on 1.
Seriously though, mana addict Kael is best Kael for a reason you know, and Jaina’s mana talents are both meta for the extra spell power in her burst damage blast. In my experience, Ming has been the most mana stressed mage for a long time now.
And how many heroes can manage to kill their mana in under 60 seconds? I think you would be surprised at how few actually can. Or maybe I’ll be surprised; I will have to give it a shot myself.
Please do. A full rotation of Kael’s abilities is a whopping total of 210 mana (70 + 50 + 90). Lets be generous and cut off 70 because of his level 4 talent “Energy Roll” and make it 140. That’s still nothing compared to Ming’s 60 mana rotation with Aether walker.
A full rotation of Jaina’s abilities is 160 mana and the only way to make that cost go down is to land abilities on heroes. Ming doesn’t have this stipulation.
I wouldn’t consider Cassia nor Greymane, and even Nova, as mages, though. They are capable of decent AoE spell damage (which as far as I’m concerned is the fundamental definition for a mage), but not in a significant way, IMO.
Having said that, I agree Chromie and Hanzo have very low mana tension as well, almost by default. KT and Jaina are debatable, though, depends on build,
In the end, I agree with OP that Ming still has far better mana tension than the others.
Uh, Chromie, Jaina, Kael, and Cassia do not have to rely on full ability rotations. They can often spam their least mana abilities like their Qs, whereas Li Ming’s Q is unreliable compared to them and she needs her full ability rotation.
Again, those heroes do not need to rely on their full ability rotation. Stop stirring up drama please.
Cassia isn’t a mage, but the other 3 you mentioned literally rely on combos to be at their most effective.
Kael: Gravity lapse → flamestrike → bomb combo on an enemy. That’s a full proper rotation.
Jaina: Self explanatory… all of her abilities combo together in no particular order to burst someone down. One ability to apply chill (usually blizzard) then the other two to follow up.
Chromie: Get someone in a trap → Q and W on the spot right as they come out of stasis.
It’s funny you say “Don’t have to rely” because, yes, it’s not ideal to always do those combos. And why is it not ideal to always do those combos? Because it costs too much mana. Throw out that combo too many times and you’ll OOM quickly. Li ming doesn’t have to worry about this.
Kael doesn’t even have enough mana to do his E → Q → W combo more than twice before he needs to hearth/well.
Yes but unlike them, Li Ming’s full combo is very dodgeable and blockable. You can’t always dodge a Kael or Jaina combo because they’re AoE or goes through enemies. Li Ming’s full combo isn’t as reliable as the rest.
If you’re standing in a minion wave, sure. But when you’re fighting on the Obj, I’d argue Li Mings abilities are MORE difficult to dodge than Kael’s not less. The Orb covers a lot more ground from start to finish than Kael’s flamestrike does.
Li Ming players don’t have to make the hard decision of “Should I combo here and risk ooming myself before the obj spawns?” You throw out your combo whenever you want, and as often as you want, no penalty. If you are low on mana, you can also pick up the level 1 that lets mana globes restore DOUBLE mana.
I think you are just clumping in together as mana cost when some of these have almost no impact on mana cost itself but instead mana regen which does little in comparison to what have Aether been doing when a snowball happens, because that’s the entire point of Li-Ming to take an advantage of a takedown to commit another takedown.
Force Armor regen barely does anything until she is below the mana threshold which by that point it’s barely possible to continue the snowballs and at best allows you to fire an extra magic missile, if you throw everything on cooldown, her mana costs are very clearly untouched if you go for this talent on level 1, same case with Power Hungry which all it does is simply empower 10% damage so I can see that but you require a regen globe and it persist for 20 seconds, its an 18% mana restoration but again none of these simply active or will be active during a snowball, a decent mana restoration but it doesn’t help constantly in snowballing the fight.
Whilst Aether Walker straight up remove a decent chunk of mana consumption, so in that case it excels in the snowball by itself as you pretty much cut down 30 mana consumptions every time you are in an attempt to cause the next reaction post level 7, added with trimulative and I can see the problem by now which is a possible 70 mana reduction which translate into a 350 mana in a mega kill attempt.
Also why don’t you mention Mirrorball too? Is it because it increases mana cost instead?
I think it’s important to mention all of the mana adjusters in her kit even those who actually increases it slightly.
Personally I don’t mind adjusting how she handles mana, if it means to improve her for the better, she’s very hit or miss in a lot of games due the fact she heavily relies on her mana bar and someone actually dying when she already has a strong kit from how her abilities function so only thing left is to improve her constant mana problem or giving her more survivability.
I don’t think it’s a problem, because lowering her mana would mean totally negating her trait. If she has low mana, her resets are useless, because by the end of a teamfight, she won’t be able to use them anyway, as her mana will be out.
So, lowering her mana means that Li-Ming would have no trait.
Then you could argue that her trait is bad and needs a change. Then why not ask for a complete rework of the hero?
If you have that kind of problem with Li-Ming, it goes way deeper than just “has too much mana” and it needs a lot of work to be done.
The change you’re talking about cannot happen without a complete rework.
Li-Ming is balanced by low damage abilities that are all hard to use, easy to dodge skillshots.
I mean low damage, because missiles won’t do much until you’re level 16, and orb won’t do much if you know that running into it negates the damage it deals.
Both of these abilities are easy to spot and dodge. Way more than those of Chromie for example.
Missiles have a small area of effect, and you often can dodge 1 or 2 of them, which make them useless.
Orb just requires people to know that you won’t outrun and orb.
Her teleportation does not even deal damage. Yeah, compared to orphea, Naz, Jaina, KTZ or KT for whom all abilities either deal damage or apply CC, she has an ability that is entirely focused on dodging.
Orphea has good cooldowns
Naz can scale pretty hard
Jaina gets an ice block and applies slow, she can deal high burst damage from any range
KT can stun, and use hit-and-run tactics
KTZ can root, slow and has high damage
So, compared to them, Li-Ming has only 2 abilities, not 3.
You could say that her lvl 7 gives her damage on teleportation, but you can only use it at the end of a fight, because it will put you in a dangerous situation, in which you’re surrounded by enemies and often won’t give you a kill.
So:
Li-Ming would not have a trait with lower mana
Her higher mana capacity/lower mana cost is compensated by having 1 less ability
Her higher mana capacity/lower mana cost is compensated by having no CC
Her higher mana capacity/lower mana cost is compensated by having low-damage abilities
Her higher mana capacity/lower mana cost is compensated by having only easy to spot and dodge skillshots
Seems kinda biased how you only point out the downsides of her kit to defend her without mentioning the strengths. If you had at least mentioned the strengths it would make your argument seem more fair and balanced.
I could just as easily say her high mana capacity/lower mana cost is NOT compensated by how long range her abilities are, how much damage they do when they hit, and how often they can be used (both in regards to short CDs and short mana costs.)
A lot of your other arguments in her defense make no sense (Not counting teleport as an ability, complaining about her going oom with her trait even though a full rotation of abilities costs only 60 mana, saying she has low damage which just isn’t true.)
