Ideas for talents and talent tree/build re-structuring

Everyone can admit that there are a lot of inconsistencies that can be addressed and improvements that can be made throughout multiple heroes’ talents and their tree. Here are some of my ideas:

Abathur

“New level 4 talent: Heroic Symbiote hosts gain 10% spell power.”

Commentary: Abathur is currently designed to support melee or ranged AA hyper-carries, but I think it would open up a new depth to him and the game if he could also support mage or spell damage-based hyper-carries. I would recommend removing Needlespine if you want to stick to 3 options for that tier.

Arthas

“Icebound Fortitude is now baseline.
New level 7 talent: Using Death coil on an enemy hero reduces their healing by 30% for 2.5 seconds.”

Commentary: Icebound Fortitude is widely-regarded as a mandatory pick for him on that talent tier, much like Into the Fray was for Garrosh. it is so important for him and considering that Arthas is situational at best, could really help him out. The new talent is simply a replacement for Icebound Fortitude but I figured it would be a good idea to give him the option for some additional utility in his tree.

Mal’Ganis

“Changed Functionality, Frenzied Assault: Each enemy hero stunned by the third slash of Fel Claws grants 30% increased basic attack damage for 4 seconds.”

Commentary: The current version of Frenzied Assault is an interesting idea, but it falls short compared to the other two options by quite a wide margin. I like the idea of AA build Mal’Ganis, and I think this change will give a decent reason to play it.

Muradin

“Adjusted Functionality, Perfect Storm: If an enemy hero is killed within 3 seconds of being hit by Storm Bolt, increase it’s damage by 30.
Added Functionality, Healing Static: Each enemy hero hit by Thunder Clap heals for 5% of your maximum health, increased to 8% if you hit 3 or more heroes.
Adjusted Functionality, Thunder Strike: Thunder Clap deals 300% additional damage if only one hero is hit.
New level 16 talent in place of Imposing Presence: Hitting an enemy hero with Dwarf Toss resets the cooldown of Thunder Clap.”

Commentary: Perfect Storm is still an underwhelming talent, and his other level 1 choices are superior by a pretty sizable margin, but I think a bigger reward for takedowns will help out a lot. As for his 13s, Bronzebeard is still quite a bit better, but some minor changes will help bring the other two up to par. As for his 16, he is in need of another interesting option, as Dwarf Launch is almost exclusively the talent to pick.

Illidan

“Rapid Chase is now baseline.
New level 7 talent: Dive grants 15% spell power for 4 seconds.”

Commentary: Illidan, with all his dashes, is actually not very mobile and he is often left in weird spots between engages and getting cc’ed. This change should smooth out his engages and escapes and leave him in less-awkward positions. The new talent is to replace Rapid Chase, and I think it would help synergize with his more ability-oriented sustain build.

Imperius

“Changed Functionality, Blaze of Glory: Gain a second charge of Solarion’s fire.”

Commentary: This may seem a bit drastic, but it is competing with two quintessential talents in their respective builds.

Raynor

“Adjusted Functionality, Ace in the Hole: Deal 15% increased damage to stunned or slowed heroes.”

Commentary: At this present time, Ace in the Hole does not even compete with the other 2 talents at the tier. This should bring it back to being a good-to-very good talent.

Thrall

“Maelstom Weapon moved to level 4.
Frostwolf Pack moved to level 7.”

Commentary: Have you ever noticed how clunky Maelstrom Weapon is? It is a fun talent and quite good when you stack it up, but the problem is that it comes too late in his tree. Frostwolf Pack at 7 will also open up some interesting W build playstyles for Thrall to compete with Maelstrom now being on level 4.

Xul

“Adjusted Functionality, Reaper’s Toll: Reduce the cooldown by 3 seconds and the mana cost by 25.”

Commentary: His Q talent on 4 is just a little too weak, even in Q build, so this change should help.

That’s it for now! I’m sure I missed quite a few, but these are ones I feel very confident about. Hopeful that the devs will pay attention to these ideas, take something positive out of this, and maybe implement some of the ideas.

I think this is a little strong, especially for a level 1 talent. How about:

Adjusted Functionality: Hitting heroes with Storm Bolt increase its damage by 2, if the hero dies with 2 seconds of being hit by Storm Bolt increase its damage by an additional 10.

Storm Bolts damage already gets increased by AA’s, so I think the combination of AA’s, hitting Q, and killing heroes hit by Q would be a decent increase to its damage. I think 30 would stack too quickly. This way, you get rewarded for hitting Q, and aren’t denied Q damage if the hero doesn’t die, but its not so much that you can get insane amounts of Q damage.

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Abathur is already a moderate spell damage dealer. If you want more spell damage go his own ability upgrades.

Compared with a little area damage with high cooldown? Or an ability that requires enemies be predictable to even get any advantage of? The current one seems pretty reasonable to me…

It is entirely for his ability support builds rather than auto attack. It boosts all damage not just his auto attack damage like Veteran Marksman does and to everyone who meets the requirement not just non heroes like Exterminator does. It is a flat 12% increase to Penetrating Round damage and boosts the damage from Raynor’s Raider by 12% as long as you keep auto attacking a target.

It also has utility use due to the reliability of the slow applied. 10% might not be much but is more than enough to proc other hero talents that benefit from slowed targets. This turns him into Jaina with that respect.

Would need to swap the other talents in the tiers around. They have already been grouped by theme with 4 being utility and 7 being damage.

It is already a borderline OP build in ARAM. What this does is reduce it from ~2 seconds during which the enemy does not have -75% healing so can actually heal to ~1 second they do not.

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Btw didn’t mean to post two of these messages. When I posted the first time it disappeared, and I couldn’t find it anywhere, but I guess it just didn’t process until today.