Whenever you use Kharazim’s Q, there is a single frame of casting it, when all sorts of things can happen after which Khara loses Q charge and just doesnt get teleported anywhere. Everyone near him can hear sound of using Q, but without effect. What can cause it to happen:
- CC - stuns, roots, knockbacks, stasis, etc during this frame of casting Q.
- Death of your target. It doesnt matter whether it was a friend or foe, if your target died during this cast, you arent going anywhere. Removing target from the map or putting it in stasis also causes this interraction.
- Target has blinked out of Q range. LiMing and Zera do this very often.
What does not cause this to happen: - Siliences - Alarak’s Q, BW’s poly dont stop your Q. You get damaged by ability, get cc effect, but get teleported to your target.
This doesnt sound like that big of a deal (none of my friends in diamond-masters even heared about it), but for the last 2 seasons I lose a Q charge at least once per game every game. I m just sick and tired of hearing my Q being used without seeing any effect. And about third of the times when it happens i die shortly after this sound.
I write this to a dev team, who is trying to revive HotS, and who is doing amazing job at the moment. My suggestions how to fix it:
- make it function like BW’s blink (Ideal fix, it will remove cast time entirely, which is massive).
- make it lose charge only after finishing casting (Good enough. At least Khara will be able to move to another target if interruption happens and he survives).
- make it get interupted by siliences too (at least make it consistent, so it doesnt feel as bad, i m just that much sick of it).
Also my general thoughts on Khara’s state at the moment (I m master player, who once reached GM 66. Not the top of the world, but qualified just enough to give an opinion) - he is a little stronger than average, but definetely not meta defining as Mephisto, Dehaka or Reghar.
His level 20 passive talent is very-very strong. It almost overshadows every other option. The only competition for it are instant value talents:
-2 extra Q charges - allow you to pressure heroes like Dehaka, Zul Jin, Johanna, Falstad by forcing them to use their valuable defensive buttons and continuing assault when it is convinient to you.
-A mass shield - provides a lot of instant teamfight value by allowing your team to survive something like KTZ/Genji burst or just general Nazeebo/Zagara/Tassadar aoe damage.
Ult upgrades. They dont give you enough instant value… and that kinda sucks at the moment. 7 sides’ upgrade is raw damage, but its value starts to take effect only after 2 seconds of original ult. This means you cant focus upgrade’s additional strikes into 1 target (any target will be able to run away by that point unless it is WAY out of position and your team can cc it). Thats why you cant assassinate with that upgrade, additional kicks have to go into unintended targets. The only situation i take this talent is against 2 tank team where they dont have much sustain, but my team just needs raw indiscriminat damage to kill them. So, it has its uses, its just very niche… And it is not a bad thing, i just feel like level 20 passive has much broader application and is much more reliable. 7 sides upgrade shouldnt be buffed, the issue lies in level 20 passive.
Level 20 palm upgrade. It is wierd. If the target of your ult doesnt die, you get a 5 second refund. I dont mind the fact that your target can be killed in that 5 second delay between ults, it is fair. But it doesnt restore mana and Kharazim is a mana intensive healer. I think it would be just a tiny bit more reliable if he could get 15-20 mana back after such refunds. I have never got to use palm more than 3 times in one teamfight due to this. My palm-targets walked away with very low hp, unable to continue fighting, and i was in similar state due to mana issues. It wont be that much of a buff, but at least people, who love playing with danger, will be able to use it properly and show off good tricks. (Khara doesnt have much self healing, and i think only Professional level players will be able to slightly abuse it in a very coordinated environment, but they dont take Khara very often).
This whole level 20 talent review can be compressed into 1 sentence - Level 20 passive is a little too strong. Nerfing it to 45% would do the trick.
And since i gave my opinion on level 20 talents, i want to mention level 7 talents.
All of them are very situational, but level 7 E talent is currently the strongest because of level 20 passive. If you ll nerf passive, E’s value will drop, so no nerfs are needed on 7E.
Level 7 W is in a perfect spot, it has good sinergies with level 16 unstopable and W buff, its not overpowered and not weak. Perfect balance, no changes needed.
Level 7 Q… I may say a very unpopular opinion, but i think its a little bit weak, and here is why - Kharazim already has:
- 2 dashes,
- 25% movespeed on every third autoattack,
- 15% mass movespeed on W,
- Option to take Level 1 passive with cooldown reduction to get more dashes.
What Kharazim lacks:
- Any form of burst damage. Even his 7 sides can not be considered a burst damage due to its unrealiablity of target choosing and long casting time.
- Any form of cc.
What do I want to say - Khara never was, is, or will be an assassin. He has a lot of mobility and survivablity, but no burst damage or cc. He can become an Illidan, but never a Zeratul. He is a bruiser. An extra dash doesnt enable Khara to do anything new, while level 7W and 7E talents grant him A LOT of burst healing or sustained value. I know, there are combos with 7Q talents like:
-Level 13 movespeed allowing you to mimic Lucio and buff your team.
-Level 16 way of the hundred fist, already mentioned Illidan style.
But… i found out that you dont need 7Q to make them work. In fact they are better without it. Taking level 20 Q is more than enough if you need extra mobility:
- You dont need 3 charges of your Q, to make your level 13 Q work, because your dont use it on allies that often.
- And 3 charges is usually not enough to make lvl 16 Q threaten a squishy LiMing or Junkrat.
- But 4 charges with level 20 Q is enough to do such thing. While having 5 charges without sustained autoattack value from somewhere else is useless, because
- You cant use more than 1 Q charge on camps and minion waves, you have to store them in case of a teamfight.
- You dont have enough healing to support your team, because you went 7Q, 16Q, 20Q. Doesnt matter which other talents you picked, you dont have enough aoe healing.
Skipping level 7Q in favor of 7E or even 7W gives you both numerical value in mid game and mobility value in late game.
There are only 3 situations when i pick Q:
- I have to dodge A LOT of skillshots. Alarak, AnubArak, Hogger. (which is realy inconvinient, because of afformentioned Q cast time)
-The enemy does so much damage that its too painful to stand near them for more than 2 seconds. Zul’Jin, Thrall.
-The enemy has so good mobility that fighting them becomes a wild goosechase - Falstad, Zeratul, Hogger.
Every single other situation can be solved by either - playing passively with 7W. A lot of healing, which is not tied to your autoattacks and it still gives you offensive mobility, it just intensifies you to dash not directly to your enemy, but to allies who are near said enemy. Also its a mini Lucio engage/disengage, which allows you to rush your team through some enemy compositions.
- bruteforcing with 7E, which gives a great combination of damage, healing and flexebility, depending on your level 1 passive. Often times making your enemy be scared for their life is the best way to make them stop attacking your teammates.
7Q just doesnt have a place in this hierarchy, because it provides only selfish mobility, but no stats. All you have is a 2 second attack speed buff on 10 sec cooldown, which is not enough to pressure someone with, and an AOE heal on 10 sec cooldown, which doesnt provide nearly enough sustain for you to attack someone freely.
So, my suggestion, how to help 7Q:
-Add damage or healing to dashes - “Using Q grants you 1 stack of your passive as if you have made an autoattack.” This will give just a little bit of burst healing/damage depending on your lvl 1 talent. And it will benifit all Q builds because this bonus doesnt restrict you to using Q solely on allies or on enemies. Q feels very underwhelming without it. 3 charges of unstopable are not needed to your team if it is left with 25% hp and you just can not heal it back up (level 1 green/blue passive and level 4 healing totem are not sufficient enough, you need to either drop 7Q, or forget about taking 16 unstopable, because your team needs hp/damage)
Thank you for reading this post. I frequently watch people like Riot August, Riot Phreak, Thor (Pirate Software) and they always say that game developers dont see everything in the game, they are not omnipotent, and they always take player feedback into consideration. I believe that this post will somehow reach HotS devs and maybe bring light on brought topics.
Maybe I m wrong, and dev team knows better. I just wanted to help them revive this game anyhow i can. I have tried to explain myself as clearly and as argumentiatively as i can, but my English is very far from perfect. Anyways, thanks again for reading it. I ll stick a little while to explain my point of view if needed, so feel free to criticise the arguments i have brought here.
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PS. All those edits to the post are done to make this mess readable-ish. I hope i succeeded in that.