Kael has been a priority ban for nearly 4 years

This 100%.

Kael’thas can be countered by not grouping up when he has living bomb out. The only problem is that living bomb is out so frequently that you spend the entire game dancing around your own teammates as the enemy kael turns your allies into weapons against you.

It’s frustrating to have to adjust the way you play on such a massive scale compared to any other hero that it’s better to just not have to deal with it at all.

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its not as if blizz doesn’t make any “don’t stand in the fire” type of jokes of their playerbase, right? Right?

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Blizzard, the moment HAILFALL actually said something people agree with, you know you NEED to act.

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This.

Even if you can split to prevent the bomb separating to your allies, doesn’t mean your allies can.

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over the past month, Kael’thas has 2602 picks and 317 bans in Master League, meaning he is picked more than EIGHT times more than than he is banned. on top of that, he barely fits into the top 20 most bans heroes in Masters.
Meaning this isn’t an issue in skilled played.

Now that those facts are out of the way:

The majority of players means absolutely nothing when it comes to hero balance. if skilled players have no trouble, it means it’s on YOU to get better at the game. It’s not up to the devs to hold your hand and nerf everything you feel is to good due to your lower level of skill.

and a large chunk of those players are straight bad at the game. they’ll blame comp for their loss, meanwhile in the replay they spend 20 minutes afk laning and feeding. These aren’t the players whose advice you want to listen to when balancing the game.

This isn’t a valid criticism. It might be a reason for a ban (chromie was banned in master league pre-nerf due to being annoying) but it isn’t valid criticism for the devs to make changes to the hero when bad players are the problem.

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He’s got a 51.1% win rate, don’t see a problem.

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As someone who climbed from Gold to Master in one week on smurf account, I can assure you that “Kael priority ban” is only a thing in lower leagues. Past plat no one bothers to ban him most of the time.

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I suppose if the four years was people stuck in a time bubble since late 2016. Nobody in their right mind would ban Kael when there’s four to six permanent bans.

Kael’thas isn’t one of them btw

Oh right, Gold League. I forgot they can’t even play better than bronze players. Yes, I am saying those in Gold got carried there.

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No…KT is actually pretty balanced for a mage. He is a melee-ish mage first of all, which means if you don’t spread the living bomb and have some1 like garrosh, arthas, diablo and some strong burst, he’s nothing. He can’t attack from a super far range unless he picks the flamestrike one on lvl 20.
If they ever want to do something about kt, it’s probably nerf the ignite talent at 16 cuz that’s the truly annoying one for me. It says middle applies LB but almost everytime someone gets hit they get a LB.
Still i ban him sometimes on maps where people are forced to group for fights, like Infernal and cursed hollow. But if it’s Dragon shire or warhead then just avoid fights and win with strategy.
Like Halifall said, i’m not scared of him, i just don’t want to deal with that kind of annoyance

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Its a shame that we nertf every high skill hero and every hero who takes advantage of the lack of skill of the opponent.

All that remains after are 10 old Jimmy the Laynors and a bunch of ppl crying out its impossible to carry even if they are more skilled than their peers in their eyes.

Either learn to play their counters, counter their play, ban them or pick them up yourself if they are so strong.

RIP Nova, one who ate overextending squishies who didnt know where the minimap was.

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I recently started playing HL on my alt account, and got placed in gold since that’s apparently the highest you can place the first time you play HL.

I was surprised to see Kael actually be a priority ban, haven’t seen that since 2015. The enemy team picked him one game, and I couldn’t believe what I saw… That Kael put a living bomb on a siege giant, the bomb lasts it’s full duration, hits a Sylvanas and Tychus who are both at around 90% hp, and then jumps between the two a few times, killing Sylvanas and getting Tychus down to 10% hp.

I’m sorry to say this, but gold players should not have any say in the balance of the game. You have a LOT of room for improvement, stop blaming the game for your own lack of game knowledge.

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People don’t get it, especially the so called “masters” players who are lecturing everyone on how easy it is just to spread out. The point is that if you are playing a melee hero and you have another melee on your team, you have to be in proximity to each other if you are trying to attack the same target. Of course you will spread out if you have a bomb, but you are giving up damage for that repositioning.

Secondly, there are times where you must retreat to the back to avoid dying. That forces others of your team to reposition to avoid the bomb. Thirdly, there are chokepoints which make fighting against Kael very hard. And finally, the living bomb indicator is bugged. Many times you’ll see nothing but hear a bomb, or other times you’ll see an indicator but have no sound. The times you see nothing but hear a bomb, you have no idea who the bomb is on.

Avoid spreading the bomb isn’t too difficult, but it’s having to do it in the first place which means you are not in the position you want to be in and the more likely it is you are out of position. This is why Kael is banned.

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Why should people care about what people ban in platinum and below?

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We have very different definitions of “melee”

Because that’s just how this game works. People don’t care about self improvement when they can just cry for nerfs week after week until that hero get changed.

I think he’s frequently banned because potatoes cant avoid spreading his W like the flu. Maybe if Blizz gave Kael’s W an indicator like they did Junkrats mine while it’s midair, he’d be less devastating in low ranks.

(Fixing his visuals on Sky Temple may be a good idea while they’re at it)

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Wouldn’t KTZ orpeha jaina or guldan be as threatening in those situations? At those high levels?

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The selective outrage is amazing. GrumpyKitten said it best. Most of the things you listed here - aren’t strictly to unique and Kael isn’t even in the best mage in a lot of those situations which you described.

People just see high ban rate and complain.

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Priority ban where? Potato leagues?

Ok, truth to be told, on some maps (Hey Braxis/Shrines) he is good due to how fast he clears the objectives, but otherwise, Phoenix is bad ulti and Pyro got so many counters its not even possible…

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I agree with that statement because many lower player rather ban him rather then improves on the behaviors that enable him ( like hugging each other with living flames )

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