Kith's Gazlowe Review + Rework

General Discussion
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All concepts discussed in the Rework are free to use by Blizzard without credit.

Once upon an April Fool’s in the distant past of 2004, the Goblin Tinker was born: a joke so good that the community begged for it to become real. Blizzard, in their mercy, decided to listen, and so what quickly became my favorite Hero unit of Warcraft III was made a reality. When I learned that HotS was going to feature Gazlowe as a representative of the Goblin Tinker character, his inclusion became one of the primary driving factors of my interest into HotS.

The point is that I’m really biased.

My own personal feelings aside, it’s no secret that everyone’s favorite One-Man Wrecking Crew has always been pretty awkward compared to his peers. Even back during the Wild West of the Preseason where the strategies were made up and team comps didn’t matter, Gazlowe stood out as being an unconventional choice. At one point, Blizzard even praised players who managed to make him work in Hero League, openly acknowledging how difficult he was to handle and/or fit into a team.

In more modern times, Gazlowe is doing much better: a rework or two over the years certainly made it easier to get consistent value out of the Boss of Ratchet. However, he’s still widely considered to be one of the clunkiest characters on the roster, going almost completely unseen in professional play: Galzowe only appeared in 22 of 8,068 matches - a pick rate of 0.27% over roughly four years. In my opinion, Gazlowe is ripe for a tune-up.

However, before we get into the details of what I think should be done for the chief’s re-engineering, I’m going to review and grade Gazlowe’s current design to build my case on why he needs a rework in the first place.

Gazlowe is, at a glance, pretty Bruiser-like: he’s above-average in difficulty to put down and he’s not too shabby at giving folks the clamp. However, his melee range docks him points, as does his lack of the typical Bruiser tools of mobility, sustain, or reliable Crowd Control. At the same time, he gets a few points back for being able to redirect Non-Heroic focus to his Turrets, helping out his durability against things like Structures or Mercenary Camps.

Salvager is a good Trait with many powerful uses, but it loses big points for its clunk and even more points for its potential to be used against you. For a character that’s supposed to be the bee’s knees at zoning, it’s pretty ironic that Scrap can lead Gazlowe to being zoned himself.

The only complaint that I have about Turrets is that when they were made to obey the rules of Blind and Evasion, they didn’t get any kind of buff to compensate. Outside of that minor nitpick, however, Rock-It! Turrets are fantastic and do pretty much everything you would want a Turret to do.

I am a Laser Goblin apologist and will run Laser Build 99% of the time. However, Deth Lazor without talent investment is dangerous and underwhelming.

Xplodium is difficult to praise in a vacuum. It’s very effective when combined with other abilities, but it doesn’t stand on its own very well. Unfortunately, you’re unlikely to actually hit anyone with it if unless they’re not paying attention or they’re already bogged down in some way.

Robo-Goblin’s Passive and Active portions are very, very good, but the ability on the whole is lacking a “wow” factor and a thematically appropriate feel - there’s nothing about Robo-Goblin that ties its effects to Gazlowe specifically aside from its name.

There’s not much to say that the bullet points don’t. Grav-O-Bomb is certainly a nice idea, but it inherits a lot of clunk from Xplodium Charge because it relies on Xplodium Charge so heavily. Without a native stun to back it up, Grav-O-Bomb is just a worse version of Zarya’s Graviton Surge because it only yanks enemies rather than hold them in place.

Gazlowe in his current state is a bundle of old ideas subjected to outdated balance methodology, covered in band-aid fixes and tune-ups that never addressed the core issues of his design.

Which sucks, because I really like Gazlowe.

So now we’re on the part where I make suggestions on how to fix all of these problems that I’ve pointed out. My goals are thus:

  • Do not introduce concepts that would require new assets
  • Make Gazlowe’s abilities more fluid and “modern” without altering Gazlowe’s overall power level
  • Maintain Gazlowe’s “zoning master” and “one-man wrecking crew” identities
  • Redesign Robo-Goblin into something more thematically appropriate
  • Make Caster Gazlowe easier to perform
  • Clean up existing talents, consolidate weak talents
  • Build synergy where appropriate, but don’t rely too heavily on it

Notable changes (such as tooltip updates, cost/cooldown adjustments, ect) will be listed in bold.

CORE KIT

Salvager’s changes are focused on general functionality: Scrap restores Mana instantly instead of over time and can even be generated out of Rock-It! Turret charges rather than the Turrets themselves, opening up the potential for easier caster-oriented play via allowing the player to bypass the 60 Mana to place a Rock-It! Turret, Salvage it, and then gather the Scrap and refund 30 Mana.

On the flip side, destroyed enemy Structures no longer drop Scrap (to prevent potential snowballing) and Scrap no longer reduces the Cooldown of Gazlowe’s Heroic abilities (because it’s honestly pretty messed up that something as strong as Grav-O-Bomb can be available for every fight if you remember to mill some scrap between teamfights).

The only change that the Rock-It! Turrets received is the reduction of the Placement Cooldown, allowing players to slam down all of their Rock-It! Turrets in rapid succession instead of having to wait 2 seconds between each one.

Here’s where things get weird: Xplodium Charge’s stun has been moved to Deth Lazor, and there are several reasons why.

  • I feel it is more appropriate to tie Gazlowe’s AOE Disable to something that Disables him in turn: you get a stun in an area for the tradeoff of having to stand still to charge it.
  • It makes the Grav-O-Bomb/Stun maneuver more straightfoward to perform, but much more limited. On one hand, you’re much more likely to get a group stun after the yank, but you’re not going to get a fully charged Deth Lazor off for the full duration unless you’ve already got help. Additionally, you cannot get an extra stun of your own off from a second Xplodium Charge, further reducing the stun duration you can apply as a tradeoff for the increased usability.
  • It makes Deth Lazor more powerful on the whole. Right now, Deth Lazor is pretty much only used for Minion Waves, Structures, and poke fights (and using it while poking is incredibly dangerous due to how immobile it makes you). Even if you’re only using a Level 1 version to tap someone out of a channeled ability, the stun makes it much more important to use effectively and at the appropriate time.
  • It’s more faithful to the original design of the Goblin Tinker from Warcraft III. One of the Tinker’s most important abilities was Cluster Rockets, a short channeled spell that stunned enemies in an area. I can understand the rationale behind making Xplodium Charge into the spiritual successor of Cluster Rockets by moving the channel time into the delay before the explosion (and also because they’re both rocket-based attacks), but mechanically it’s more appropriate to put Cluster Rockets’ stun into the ability that requires channeling first.

As for what I’m doing to Xplodium Charge in return to make up for the removal of the stun:

Xplodium Charge is now a short-lived mine with the potential for instant AOE damage. Like Deth Lazor, these changes come with a handful of justifications:

  • It suits Gazlowe’s nature as a zone control character better, being able to throw out large chunks of “don’t stand here” that instantly punish enemies for standing there.
  • It’s very reminiscent of the Goblin Land Mines from Warcraft III, which are cool and good.
  • While Deth Lazor inherited Cluster Rockets’ stun, Xplodium Charge would inherit Cluster Rockets’ theme of throwing explosives all over the place constantly.
  • It makes Xplodium Charge much easier to use, drastically reducing the amount of clunkiness that has plagued Gazlowe since his debut.
  • The “big mine” concept maintains functionality with Grav-O-Bomb while still maintaining viability for use with Robo-Goblin.

holy overhaul, batman

So, Robo-Goblin. Back in the days of Warcraft III, it gave the Tinker a passive called Demolisher that multiplied the damage dealt to Structures with Basic Attacks. The original design for Gazlowe’s Robo-Goblin featured something similar: Robo-Goblin multiplied Gazlowe’s Basic Attack damage against Non-Heroic targets (including Structures) by 150% (or 200%, depending on the version). However, in a MOBA that featured objectives that usually destroyed buildings for you, this turned out to be not very useful, and so the damage bonus was turned into a generic Basic Attack one so Gazlowe could contribute meaningfully to teamfights outside of turrets and scattering easily avoidable bombs.

The problem with the current version of Robo-Goblin is that it’s just so unbearably BORING: it’s a passive damage boost and an active that’s the stapled-together remains of Sprint and Hardened Armor. It doesn’t interact with Gazlowe’s kit in any way and it doesn’t really evoke memories of the Tinker’s Robo-Goblin either. Yes, it makes him into a pretty okay Bruiser, but it’s not even flashy or impressive like Odin transforming Tychus into an AOE-spamming caster. It’s just there, and it has the potential to be so much more interesting.

So let’s break down the components of what I’ve done and go over why they’re better.

Cleaving Attacks

One of Gazlowe’s core fantasies is being a One Man Wrecking Crew and there’s nothing that racks up Siege Damage like hitting multiple targets at once. Going to town on a Turret with Cleaving Attacks will beat up the adjacent Structures and wading into a Minion line or Mercenary Camp will result in much of the same, playing to his core fantasy much better than having Basic Attacks that really hurt.

On the Teamfight side of the equation, replacing the Basic Attack bonus with Cleaving Attacks is a nerf to Gazlowe’s 1v1 threat. However, it opens up the opportunity for a better performance in teamfights - the player only needs to hit two targets at once to return to the previous level of efficiency in terms of Attacks Made:Damage Dealt, and any additional targets are icing on the cake. This puts greater emphasis on Gazlowe’s positioning and target prioritization, allowing skilled players to turn this rework into a net benefit.

Additionally - and this is a fringe benefit, but still a benefit - it fits Gazlowe’s Basic Attack animations. He primarily uses wide swipes with his Basic Attacks, so when his clamps turn into buzzsaws, it stands to reason that they could be cutting through nearby targets when the arms sweep by.

Healing Scrap

One of the big things that other Bruisers have that Gazlowe doesn’t is sustain, so trading in the Armor for the ability to heal yourself off of Scrap patches that hole up pretty well. It also makes Robo-Goblin fit in with the rest of Gazlowe’s kit better via synergy and feels more thematically appropriate (via Gazlowe using Scrap to patch up the damage to his mech).

An additional benefit to Healing Scrap is that it evokes the spirit of the Warcraft III Robo-Goblin: because it transformed the Tinker into a Mechanical unit while active, players could convert raw materials into hitpoints for the Tinker via Repair. Healing Scrap follows a similar thought process of converting resources into hitpoints, further adding to the theme.

It should be mentioned that it’s intended for Healing Scrap to activate when Gazlowe uses Salvager on himself to consume a Turret charge.

Overdrive

The Movement Speed is there because it was there before and, while it’s boring, it’s not really that big of a deal. We’ll say it’s an homage to the Movement Speed granted by the Goblin Tinker’s Engineering Upgrade and call it even.

As for the Attack Speed boost, that’s there to give Gazlowe a little more punch in teamfights (or for helping to clear out some Non-Heroics) because while I understand that it’s possible to shore up the loss of the Basic Attack bonus on paper, it’s not always going to work out that way. This effectively gives Gazlowe half of Robo-Goblin’s current DPS bonus back for a limited duration while also bringing along the benefit of being less exploitable - because it’s an Attack Speed bonus instead of a Basic Attack bonus, it’s far less powerful when combined with something like Stim Drone or Bloodlust.

Finally, the duration boost is there to encourage offensive use. I have VERY rarely seen Robo-Goblin’s current active used as anything more than an escape and, while there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, I do want to see it happen less.

Shoring up the rest of Gazlowe’s kit to be more usable makes Grav-O-Bomb more usable in turn. Outside of a minor Cooldown reduction to make up for Scrap no longer affecting Heroics, it needs no changes.

TALENTS

Unlike the core ability changes, alterations to existing talents will not be listed in bold (mostly because very few of the talents resemble their original forms).

Level 1 Talents: Tactics Tier

It has always bothered me that Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is based on RNG. This changes it to be more consistent while also giving a minor buff to clearing Mercenary Camps and Objectives that grant Regeneration Globes.

Unchanged.

Hired Goons is awkward (because getting stuff to target the freakin’ turrets is a pain) and Goblin Repairs is kinda underwhelming, so I smashed them together for giggles. Improvised Plating is good for players who either want a little extra durability or to spend a lot of time beating up Mercenaires. Depending on if the M/M/M Armor from Regeneration rounds down or up, Gazlowe would be getting the following passively:

Level 1: 3 to 4 M/M/M Armor
Level 10: 5 to 6 M/M/M Armor
Level 20: 8 M/M/M Armor
Level 30: 12 M/M/M Armor

Level 4 Talents: Offense Tier

Other than a tier adjustment, there’s no change to Extra TNT. There MIGHT be issues with how much easier Xplodium Charges are to land on Heroes now, but adjusting how much of a bonus you get per target and/or adjusting the maximum amount of bonus damage would be easy to tweak if it became a problem.

Unchanged except for a clearer tooltip.

Since Deth Lazor is much less likely to be used for consistent poke, it’s safe to put Goblin Fuzion at an earlier talent tier. The only real change is that the damage bonus is now delivered in parts, giving the player value for quarter, half, and three-quarter overcharges. It’s very important to note that this is for damage only - the overcharge will not increase the duration of the stun.

Level 7 Talents: Crowd Control Tier

Not much to say here other than “it’s a form of Crowd Control that the other two talents don’t feature”.

Engine Gunk is unchanged except for a clarification that it only slows its primary target rather than all damaged enemies. This is important, because Rock-It! Turret XL’s functionality of adding side-guns has been moved to another Talent and players will be able to acquire both.

Moved to an earlier tier, the slow for Heroes has been axed (we don’t need it if there’s a stun!), and the duration increased to 4 seconds because it only affects Non-Heroic targets.

Level 13 Talents: Casting Tier

Shuffled up to an earlier tier and given a little extra spice ‘cause Xplodium Charge doesn’t stun anymore.

Turret Storage with a new coat of paint and an extra whistle. Toss them turrets, Gazlowe!

Moved to a later tier because Deth Lazor stuns now and therefore is very scary! The mana cost reduction was removed because I felt that the talent was strong enough as it was with just the charge speed boost.

Level 16 Talents: Offense Tier 2

Makes Xplodium Charges into better mines by virtue of making them last longer and cover a larger area. Additionally, synergizes with the cooldown reduction from Kwik Release Charge by making multiple Heroes easier to hit at one time.

Superior Schematics had Rock-It! Turrets XL stapled to it because the original version was underwhelming and I didn’t want to get rid of the side-guns because they’re cool and good. Reminder that Engine Gunk doesn’t apply to the side-guns because it’s for primary targets only!

Being able to charge Deth Lazor while also casting other abilities makes it WAY more powerful, especially if you’ve got Grav-O-Bomb on hand.

Level 20: Storm Tier

Unchanged, despite the rework! Mecha-Lord goes pretty well with the new Robo-Goblin, so there’s not much reason to mess with it.

Unchanged.

Scrap-O-Matic Smelter in name only, this is a better version of It’s Raining Scrap (you don’t have to wander around to pick up the scrap anymore!) coupled with restoring Scrap’s ability to reduce the cooldown of Heroics (so it’s a quantity over quality alternative to Mecha-Lord and Miniature Black Hole).

Unchanged, just adding a clarification.


Well my friends, that’s all I’ve got for Gazlowe. I hope you liked it and, if you didn’t, I hope you’ll tell me why. I’ve got a couple more reviews/reworks in the pipeline so if you want to see more posts like these, stick around.

Thank you for reading. :wave:

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I’m rockin almost a 70% WR with Gaz and plenty of games, QM,UR and in Ranked when people don’t fly off the handle when I select him. I like him as he is now, what I don’t like is the stigma he has since he is/was a specialist.

Other than a few talents that need tweaked I think he’s peachy.

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That’s an impressive winrate. What talents do you usually take? What do you like about his current design? What talents do you think need tweaked?

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I shall read this later as I am making tuna tetrazzini and don’t want to be an obvious bump

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I wish to note, at the start here, I focused far more on things that I felt didn’t work, or didn’t make sense in the justification of the rework, and the rework.

This, well, is it a critique. Not sure why you would expect anything else.

Just didn’t feel like quoting a bunch of stuff and saying “seems fine”.

Generally speaking, if I didn’t respond I am either neutral or slightly positive towards a thing. Or missed it, but I think I read through pretty throughoutly.

I dunno if that is what it really was for, given they also featured Murky and Butcher. Neither of whom at the time were “challenging” to use in ranked iirc.

But I also really clicked with Murky and had an absurd winrate, so yeah.

While making a character flow better makes sense… Not being picked much in pro play is fine.

Zul’jin, Valeera, Butcher, probius, Orphea, Nova, Murky, Mephesto, Mal’ganis, Kel’Thuzad,

Rexxar, Imperius, Cho, Gall, D.va and Li Li get honorable mentions for <200 games.

Some of those are due to timing of introduction. But many are not. “But they don’t work in Pro Play” doesn’t relate to needing a rework. A hero working in pro play might also need a rework.

It’s unrelated.

you should probably make it more clear that the Grade is not from the website mentioned, but a grade of your own making.

Do you want Scrap to be zoned or not?
Regular Scrap is from his own turrets. Enemies will naturally know where the Scrap is because it is where the turrets were.

Actually, same for killing buildings. The scrap drops near/where the building was.

Even if scrap didn’t show up people who have played Gazlow would be able to Zone him.

I really don’t understand these two points when put together.

fully agree.

I look forward to seeing the redesign you propose later in this post, as without it’s cooldown as such, it would be fairly strong in his current kit, probably “forcing” you to go into his Grav Bomb ult.

Would you rather they make it Change Gaz’s character model to a tank like Warcraft 3? Because it’s basically adding stuff on to your character to do more.
Like adding a tank around your character.

Personally, as someone who played plenty of War3, the theme of improving yourself as Gaz fits the Tinker well.

I would not mind a more drastic visual change, but mechanically to me it feels it works.

it is thematically appropriate :P!

You had me until there.

I think it would make a lot more sense to make it recharge abilities even faster if the mana nerf is not worth the ultimate CDR, and the dropping of enemy structures.

Or make it so that does cost mana that casting Rock it Turret takes, making it a way to reduce the amount of clicks to gain CDR on abilities, while still costing mana.

Very minor nitpick: I would find out the animation time of casting turret, and make that the placement cooldown. As that will effectively be the cooldown… Unless you mean to let people break the animation, at which point I think it might be a tad too powerful.

No. No. no. No one needs an AOE directional stun.
Bad design.
Make it a heavy slow instead, so you cannot basically interupt an enemy that is far away by casting lazer right after channeling it.

75-90% slow baseline, and make the stun an upgraded talent.

Not going to respond to your points, I agree with most of them, but I just think putting such a stun baseline is an insanely large buff that has no place.

Feels like it should be something like enemy heroes in this zone, or for each enemy hero in this zone it moves 100% faster or triggers 100% faster (number to be adjusted).

Instant damage in an AOE, even at it’s reduced damage, while combined with lower cooldown and mana cost seems a bit powerful, even with it’s relatively long cast animation.

Seems good, same with reasoning behind it.
I think it might make more sense to being a lower damage increase than currently, with a lower percentage splash, but regardless, the design towards making him want to use it to stay in battle is A+.

So just change it so that enemy globe minions drop scrap.
That way Gaz doesn’t get free snowball if he is able to deny his lane enemy their globe and steal it for himself?

I understand what you’re going for here, but I think it works much better as a capped quest, or at least changed for how his armor works:
Quest: Gathering a Regeneration Globe increases Health Regeneration by 2 per second, up to 50 bonus Health Regeneration.

Passive: Gain 25% armor against Minions, Mercenaries and Monsters, increase by 2 for each Regeneration Globe Collected.

As is, it feels very weak early, and uncapped regeneration can get very strong.

I think if you don’t cap it, you need to make it a lower number, like 1 or 1.5.

I would have noted that given instant explosion of bomb (something I disliked earlier) this - attack speed could be easy to hit if you cast a bomb in LOS blocker, and an enemy hero is outside of it fighting a teamfight.

Enemy hero cannot even dodge during the animation of bomb traveling as it would be hidden by LOS blocker.

As I noted earlier, making Deth Lazor a massive slow, and putting a stun on a talent would be far smarter…

Also, shouldn’t this be up to 4 seconds (Based on charge time?)?

Yeah. This seems like a level 20 talent…

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Isn’t saying that you’ll read it later an obvious bump? :thinking:

And I am super, super hype for it. I love in-depth responses. Thank you for taking the time to read through everything and providing thoughtful responses!

I will keep that in mind.

It definitely was. For Butcher in particular, that praise came before his rework that removed the ability to completely shut him down by killing him once. He was a terror in QM, but in Ranked where everything was a bit more coordinated, he was… not great.

And Murky got a gold star because he’s weird.

This is true! It’s not the entirety of my point, though - I only brought up his pro performance as an example, not necessarily as a complete justification. I would have gone digging through the new and old forums for topics to show the community asking for an update/rework every few months, but the thread was already a lot of work and I got lazy!

This I disagree with, though. A character going almost completely unseen is a good indicator that something is out of whack, either with the game’s overall meta or that particular character’s performance. It isn’t a definitive sign that things need changing, but it’s not insignificant either.

I felt it was pretty obvious that HOTSNerd is just a stat listing website, but I will try to do so in the future (and/or possibly edit the OP to reflect that).

I’m fine with Scrap being zone-able, actually - being able to recover a portion of the cost of Turrets and generate Cooldown Reduction is very strong, so being able to use that against Gazlowe is a perfectly fine form of counterplay. However, it’s still a drawback of the interaction and must be noted.

Each point is its own statement, not a continuation of the point prior. They’re not meant to be put together, they’re meant to be read individually.

:sunglasses:

I think Gazlowe riding around on some tank treads would be amazing, but it’s also incredibly unlikely - even before the team got reduced in size, a model upgrade on that level had a low chance of happening. I mean, look at Arthas: the community has been begging for a model update for years and, even though he desperately needs one, it still hasn’t happened.

It is true that he’s improving himeself, but I do go over why I believe the direction it takes is not as appropriate as it could be.

I understand that you’re opposed to the concept, but you didn’t explain the why of your opposition. Would you mind clarifying why you don’t like it?

The animation is a transient one (aka can be cast while moving/attacking/what have you), so its duration doesn’t really matter. Pop open Try Mode and place a couple turrets with Cooldowns off, it doesn’t break anything.

That said: I could honestly live with the placement cooldown being cut down to 1 or 0.5 seconds instead of 2, but I’m a fan of “go big or go home”. There’s not a whole lot of difference between 1 second and no cooldown where Turret placement is concerned, so I figured why not cut it completely?

Kael’thas has one, ETC has one, Auriel has one if you’ve got a talent and a wall handy, Imperius has one, Mal’Ganis has one, Orphea has one (kind of), Rexxar has one, Thrall has one. Granted, some of these are Heroics and some of them require moving into range, but also none of them involve standing still for three seconds first.

I personally don’t think it’s that much of a buff. I mean, yes, it makes Deth Lazor much more valuable as a skill, but it also comes at the cost of cutting Xplodium Charge’s stun, an increased cooldown, and the new vulnerability of losing the charge if Gazlowe is stunned/silenced/displaced instead of “lol it goes off anyways”. On top of all that, the maximum stun duration is 0.5 seconds with no method of increasing the duration - and you still have to wind up the charge for 3 seconds to get to the full value of that half-second.

For comparison, Kael’s Flamestrike deals 345 damage (64% more damage) with a 7 second cooldown (41% shorter cooldown). Granted, Flamestrike has a short delay and Gazlowe could eat some Scrap to make that cooldown go much faster, but they’re still pretty comparable in usability and impact.

I’m glad you like it! I was worried that you wouldn’t from your feedback on the review of Robo-Goblin, haha.

I can live with it providing increased Basic Attack damage down the line thanks to Mecha-Lord, but I don’t feel that the base effect should passively increase Basic Attack damage. Robo-Goblin in Warcraft III didn’t increase the Tinker’s damage against anything except Structures (and even the extra Strength it gave was purely for the Health/Health Regeneration because the Tinker was an Intelligence hero), so it feels weird to me that it does so in HOTS.

It’s not about the minions, it’s about consistency. For starters, I want to make the talent perform more consistently, and “you gain Scrap from Regeneration Globes” accomplishes that. Secondly, given HOTS’s general design trend of trying to get heroes out of the lanes and into objective fights, I feel there’s too much emphasis on lane minions specifically for the talent. Every Mercenary Camp and almost every objective gives a Regen Globe at some point, so I want to tie into that a little more.

It’s intended to be - on both parts.

As for it being weak early, Gazlowe has several tools that allow him to take camps easily (most notably, his Rock-It! Turrets) and adding on to that seems like overkill to me. The intent is that the player should rely on using turrets to absorb damage when stacks are low and then shift to using the turrets for supplemental DPS when they have more stacks. The shift is supposed to come around the time that Bosses spawn so Gazlowe can take them alone in a timely manner.

As for uncapped regeneration becoming strong - sure, if you do a ton of farming and the game runs extremely long. The thing is, Health Regeneration is an inherently disadvantaged durability type: it’s only genuinely useful against sustained damage and only wins out against Maximum Health if you’re going up against Health Shred with an insane amount of Regeneration. Uncapped Health Regeneration Quests are not that strong unless they’re on a character who is already very durable, such as Johanna (rip regen master/laws of hope) or Stitches.

This is true, but the other reason that I chose Attack Speed as the Xplodium Charge’s Crowd Control upgrade is because it’s not as strong as a mobility reduction: an Attack Speed reduction isn’t going to help you chase someone down, only reduce their damage output.

After all, the player could also take Engine Gunk and apply a 20% Movement Speed reduction instantly or semi-instantly (and without warning, if the Rock-It! Turret is in a bush), so I feel the potential for an instant application of reduced Attack Speed isn’t really a big deal by comparison.

And again, I disagree.

Nope. Dimensional Ripper freezes Non-Heroics and Structures for 3 seconds no matter what charge level it’s at, so the reworked version does the same (with a little bit of extra duration stapled on for losing functionality vs Heroes).

I’ll file this under “maybe”. Level 16 talents are very strong in general and sometimes comparable to Level 20 talents.

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May I suggest collapsing the thread a little with this because it’s taking a lot of space for a topic.

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More specifically this can be used for the core kit part.

Edit:

It looks the horizontal rules are having an issue if being used a lot in the thread so some of them might bug out and never get rendered in the first place :sweat:, I suppose in the meantime use a rule image as a replacement as shown down below for the updated example that I wanted to:

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Or it just means a character doesn’t work well at the top most level of play where people are likely to play “perfectly”.

Especially given when he was picked, his winrate ended up 50% (granted, 8 of 16 is, very poor).

While heroes like Li Li and Mephisto have got well under 50% winrate (51 of 134 and 17 of 42 respectively). That doesn’t mean that they need reworks. Even Mal’ganis got hit worse, with 12 wins of 31 games.

I think if you tried to use this lack of games as well as low winrate for these heroes in pro play to try to justify, even a bit, a rework, it would not go over well.

If Gazlowe had something like 4 wins in 16 games, I might see it.

I though it was pretty obvious after clicking the link, but I almost skipped it and it did confuse me at least. I went back and clicked it after you started to grade other abilities.

I’ve got a friend who mentions it whenever one of us ends up picking or queueing as Arthas. Hahaha.

Agreed and a fair point. Especially given how you changed it does indeed seem to fit better.

Mana is generally meant to be a resource you have to manage. Giving him free mana regeneration when there are builds that can skip turrets (especially with net buffs to mine and lazor you have in this) feels bad.

I think making it an easier way to reduce cooldowns for a cost both:

  1. keeps mana a resource you have to pay more attention to.
  2. makes it easier for players with less apm/micro to be able to play Gazlowe.

I can try to go into more why I dislike it if you like. Tried to keep it concise… Sometimes I get a bit rambly when I try to write long things.

Fair enough, thank you for the clarity!

That can only hit one, or with his spheres 3 targets. And a much lower range than Deth Lazor. I’ve dodged plenty of KT stuns as Zagara and heroes with summons by using Hydra/similar when he has casted it at me.

A lot lower range than Deth Lazor can reach, and also involves ETC getting into enemies.

Single Target, smaller AOE, and does indeed require a wall.

Do you really wanta compare the range of these? :stuck_out_tongue:
He also does put himself into the enemy team/damage for the ability to hit multiple targets.

Has to put himself into the enemy to do so.

I’m not seeing this one myself…

Which is conditional, requires Misha to get close to the enemy and overall it’s ranage is far shorter than Deth Lazor.

It’s a root. It is effectively a 100% slow.

Yes, but I think even the short stun from “instantly casting” Deth Lazor (where it’s range is indeed close to many of these abilities) allows very easy disruption of channeling or casting animations right off.

And when it is charged, it outranges these abilities by far, and can be used to safely be far away and spam lazor. Especially with the zoning potential of bombs on yourself and the mana you can (with this current suggestion) freely from turret.

It just doesn’t feel healthy for balance on Gazlowe, or the game. and I feel a heavy slow combined with a talent to make it stun later would be better.

If my earlier words in this post were unclear, the issue is the disruption you can easily do. Once you take the talent doubling it’s cooldown, it is ~1 second to reach it’s max range which is crazy strong for a stun that cannot be blocked and hits everything in the AOE.

Yeah, that’s fair overall. I think perhaps it might make more sense for each hero reduce it’s time by 1.5 seconds perhaps?

So it has about 1 second if a hero walks in, or you cast it on them, and if the enemy groups up it instantly fires?

Just feels like that kind of AOE damage (which is often used on minion waves) in lane with less mana cost and cooldown.

This would also put it’s timer when a hero is it set where Flamestrike is–1 second.

With the upside of being able to instantly cast it, and it’s much larger AOE than a baseline flamestrike.

It’s an improvement. tbh, I was kinda worried you would just replace it with something else. Happy to have been proven wrong, both in keeping it and making it fit Gazlowe better!

I think you point out earlier why.
Actually, being 100% damage versus buildings, and splash against not buildings seems like a fair thing?
Both fitting in with it’s Warcraft 3 roots?

I don’t think this would be a massive buff, but I could easily be wrong there.

Making it by the one minion makes it about consistency?

I just think that tying globes to scrap means overall his early game in lane balance will be rough to get right.

As he will often be able to get double globes (hence double scrap) and all that it entails. Especially again given it gives him more mana, making him less likely to need to mana his mana.

Fair enough. (also applies to the longer explanation given).

And I still disagree with your disagreement! :stuck_out_tongue:
There is also the fact that Deth Lazor already is getting a large buff to talents as you’re able to take Dimensional Ripper AND Goblin Fusion at separate tiers.

I feel like you’re really violating one of the goals you set:

anyhow, back to it:

Why does this talent have such a low pick rate currently 0.0.

also the fact it comes 6 levels earlier for not hitting heroes might be a fair enough trade off as is. But this is something that would be easy to see based on live performance, so it’s not a big issue.

I’m just trying to figure out why in the world it’s pickrate is so low per hotslogs right now…

I give this additional suggestion to a Gazlowe rework a 0/10.
It doesn’t do anything to address and issues brought up by OP.
=P

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Which, in my opinion, is a solid indicator of an issue. The primary complaint from the community about Gazlowe is that he’s very clunky, and given that pro play is very focused on characters that can smoothly execute their abilities and tactics, I think that Gazlowe’s pick rate is a reflection of that. I don’t think that his unpopularity in the professional scene is an issue in and of itself, I just feel that it’s a clear symptom of the underlying problem.

It’s good that I’m not doing that, then. :wink:

In a more serious vein, going back to your original point:

There are all good reasons for these characters to have low pickrates: some of them have counterparts that are more suitable for professional play (for example, why pick the quest-reliant Zul’jin when you could get a more consistent performance out of Valla?), are very difficult to fit into a composition because so many hard counters exist for them (Cho’gall cries in a corner), or they simply haven’t been around for very long (Mal’ganis, Mephisto, Orphea are all less than a year old).

Gazlowe is set apart from the others by virtue of seniority and consistent community complaints about his lack of smooth gameplay. While it’s certainly true that he’s not the only unpopular pick, that doesn’t mean that I can’t use his pick rate as an indicator of an issue.

Sure, I can make a mention.

I’m really glad you think so. To be honest, Robo-Goblin was the thing I was worried the most about making changes to.

You’re welcome to go into further detail, but you don’t really need to. I’ve thought about it and I agree: making self-triggered Salvager only give the Cooldown Reduction instead of Mana and Cooldown Reduction is the more balanced option. In all of the details that I had to keep track of, I kinda-sorta forgot to factor in that converting a charge rather than the unit itself means bypassing the placement cost of the turret.

I’m not going to go over all of these because I don’t want to nitpick (and also I don’t want to make this post any longer than it has to be - Quote blocks take up a lot of space!), but my overall point was that AOE directional stuns are not as rare as your initial assertion made them out to be. I would also like to mention that your descriptions of the drawbacks of the example abilities helped my point: they, much like the reworked version of Deth Lazor, all have drawbacks in some form.

With a talent, it’s not single target.

Crushing Jaws, the heroic that isn’t Eternal Feast.

Sundering stuns, my dude.

I’m honestly not that worried about it. Yes, it’s an easy disruption, but there are many such abilities that disrupt channeled skills (like Tychus’s Frag Grenade). Deth Lazor at its base charge stuns afflicted targets for 0.25 seconds, which almost isn’t there.

When charged, yes, but that requires a not insignificant period of dangerous immobility first - even if Gazlowe can make the area slightly safer for himself by placing turrets and bombs first. I’m also not convinced that Deth Lazor can be spammed effectively without drastically undercutting Gazlowe’s other levels of performance. You could use Scrap to constantly fuel the laser, but that would leave him with no turrets to place and few opportunities to place Xplodium Charges, something that would hurt the rework a lot more than the live version.

I’m not unwilling to make a change to assuage your concerns, though - I’m perfectly fine with jacking up the Cooldown so if a player wants to constantly use Deth Lazor in that fashion, they’re going to have to invest a lot into it. 22 Seconds is probably fair. Maybe 24.

1.5 seconds with Hyperfocus Coils, yes, but that’s also at a very contested tier and (ideally) at the stage of the game where laning has lost most of its importance and Gazlowe no longer has the opportunity to constantly and comfortably poke his opponents from a safe distance.

I haven’t forgotten, I was just saying.

For some time, the Dev Team has been trying to pull emphasis away from Heroes being adept at raw siege and further into being effective at clearing waves and letting Minions/Objectives do the job. The reworked Robo-Goblin doesn’t have any specific damage bonuses against Structures for this reason, and I’m hesitant to give it any because of that trend. Gazlowe is going to wipe out minion waves much faster than before, so giving him anything more than that feels like overkill.

It’s not just the Caster Minion that gives Regeneration Globes - Mercenary Camps and (usually) Objectives do as well. Again, this is trying to pull emphasis away from the lane and more towards team efforts or strategic moves.

I don’t think so. He’s got to win the lane and gather the globes, and that’s not a sure thing. Even with the improvements outlined in the rework, it’s not like Gazlowe is going to instantly win every lane he walks into.

I honestly don’t think being able to get both at once is that much of an issue. Goblin Fuzion and Dimensional Ripper fulfill two completely different purposes and while having both does make Deth Lazor more versatile, they don’t have much overlap outside of massively increasing Gazlowe’s strength against Non-Heroics and Structures (and if you’re using Deth Lazor to fight those, then you don’t have your Very Important Stun to threaten Heroes with).

Two reasons:

  1. Because it’s competing with Goblin Fuzion (which is really good) and X-Tra Large Bombs (which is also really good).
  2. Gazlowe already has Rock-It! Turrets to soak Tower shots and Xplodium Charges to stun Minions and Mercenaries. Adding a 3-second stun for buildings and gribblies isn’t really that impressive given the context.

Plus Sylvanas does the same thing for free and Arthas can fart out a dragon to do the same if he’s feeling cheeky.

I appreciate the idea, but I don’t think I will. I know it’s a very long topic, but in my experience (and I’ve been posting design documents on forums for about eight years now), putting stuff underneath collapsibles is a quick and easy way to get it ignored. People already skim enough as it is, so I don’t have any qualms about formatting this in such a way that’s most likely to get something to catch their eye.

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I normally run a Laser build, with ult depending on if we need the wombo, or if I might have to solo boss or take some hits for squishier folks.

I think the most important talent is 100% mana restore on scrap collection, placing turrets and popping them to keep your CD’s ticking faster.

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While turret Gazlowe is fun and impressive at times it relies on the enemy team not destroying your turrets. I look at them as mana/CD orbs that can block skill shots, draw aggro and do a few points of damage here and there.

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I’ll be honest, I have zero games with Gazlowe. He’s never interepopsted me as a hero. Too reliant on setup. I have however played with more than my fair share of goblin boys to recognize the inherent strengths and weaknesses of his kit. I’d just like to say I appreciate how thorough you were with detailing the issues you found with his current design and the ways in which you would change his kit and talents to fix that, without a complete overhaul of his entire design. Your rework actually makes me want to try gazlowe now, so I can see for myself how your proposed changes would fit into his design.

Disclaimer: I’ve had a lot to drink while typing this. So I’d like yo apologize for any typo mistakes as auto correct can only fix so much on a phone at 3 in the morning. I’ve been reading this thread on and off at work, and there’s some really great ideas going on here.

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Same here. I love, love, love the laser build.

I can see that viewpoint. I feel the most important factor in choosing between the two Scrap talents at Level 1 is whether you want to focus on the early game or the late game. Scrap-O-Matic Smelter is the much better choice early on because you don’t have the extra Mana/Mana Regeneration from levels to sustain constant casting, but Break It Down!'s cooldown reduction means that you can spam spells an order of magnitude faster - something that’s made much easier when you’re rolling with 690 Mana instead of 500.

I agree that Turret build relies too heavily on your opponents for me to trust it completely, but I think I put a little more stock in them than you do.

I’m still very interested in hearing what you like about Gazlowe’s current design and what talents you think could be tweaked.

I’m happy that I did a good enough job to inspire you. :slight_smile:

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Cool! Happy I explained by issues with it clearly.
Also, regardless of this rework as a whole, I do think this is a change that should just go live.

As it would be a way to make non-turret Gaz play a bit smoother!

Same with Robo Goblin change, really does feel more like what it should be.

Like, this is what kinda gets me here.
You’ve got it compared to ultimates even, regarding drawbacks.
And now like doubling the cooldown as a suggestion?

It really does seem to me like just making it do a massive (90%) slow and upgrade to a stun on a talent does more.
Or make it so it starts at a massive slow and charges up into a stun.

I suspect this is just an area where we solidly disagree, and there isnt much meaningful words either of us can use to change the others mind.

It would be impossible to really do so either way without testing of such a rework I think.

Yes, but it just does seem to make Gazlowe an even stronger laning hero.
I rarely see or play against a Gazlowe that loses the lane.

That is my issue with the change. But given the other changes to his kit, I think adding it in as regeneration globes and changing it to enemy mage minions could be a nerf done later.

Fair enough reasoning!

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I feel the same way. Honestly, I’m very doubtful that the HOTS team will accept this Rework enough to implement it in its entirety - despite being (what I believe to be) better designed, there’s no precedent for such a thing happening and there’s little reason to set one. However, if they could take some of the key ideas from it, I’ll consider it to be a victory.

I didn’t compare the reworked Deth Lazor to any of the Heroics directly, I just pointed out that there were multiple linear AOE stuns present in the game to counter your assertion that their mere existence is bad design.

For the abilities that I did allude comparisons to (Power Slide, Misha Charge, ect), I only pointed out that they too have limitations - and I did so to compare those limitations to the reworked Deth Lazor’s massive windup.

Your primary concern is spam, which is an understandable one, and jacking up the cooldown by a significant amount would solve that problem. Sure, Gazlowe could use Scrap and Break It Down! to massively increase his casting rate, but that still doesn’t address the primary drawback of its windup and the immobility it imposes.

Why, though? Because it would be less of a counter to channeled abilities?

I’m also starting to feel like this is the case. However, I am still interested in hearing why you feel a slow would be better.

It can happen with enough pressure on Gazlowe himself. He’s particularly vulnerable to characters with good waveclear that can rip through his health pool quickly - I’ve been clowned on by Greymanes before and I’ve clowned Gazlowes as Tychus. Illidan is also a concern, thanks to his ability to ignore turrets and having enough mobility to easily bypass Xplodium Charges.

That said, I would argue that the current version of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is stronger for laning purposes. A 15% chance to get Scrap per Minion and 7 Minions per wave puts Gazlowe’s likelihood of getting at least one Scrap drop, but I’ve had waves where I’ve gotten up to four - and that didn’t require me to outplay or outpressure my lane opponent. I feel the potential for Gazlowe to take advantage of outlaning someone is significantly less troublesome than the potential to be rewarded (sometimes massively) just for being there.

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Yeah, that is more likely.
Even just implementing a direct turret to scrap would go a long way to making him feel more “smooth” when you’re not going a turret build.

I’m struggling to find the quote, but I recall a developer post a long time ago talking about something similar, Roots versus Slows. Or maybe it was Stuns versus heavy (90%) slows.

The gist was being able to not do anything is generally less fun, you feel like you lose control of your hero.

Given this stated rework has Gazlowe has more potential to deal burst damage, I don’t see how it being a massive slow (with the option for a lazer build to also get a stun) makes his combo/ability to setup for massive damage much worse.

That being said, it might be interesting if it is “just a stun” to have an upgrade like Junkrat’s sticky trap. Which makes it a massive longer slow instead.

I’ll try to dig up the quote, but it is hard. Maybe I’ll see how useful the search function on the old forum is still.

Yes, but you also get waves with zero.
You wanted to make it more consistent.
By making it more consistent it will generally tend to be better (imo), even if it just tagged the mage minion (or every 7th minion killed in a medium-ish AOE around Gazlowe?).

By allowing potentially doubling it seems like the talent is being buffed a lot, or at least you’re forcing a larger response to a laning Gazlowe. In my experience playing against Gazlowe, he seems to dominate his lanes fairly well.

This is something where I’m probably being on the safe side, as I feel this is a talent where it would be easy to buff it to make regeneration globes drop scrap. If it did end up being undertuned as I suggest it.

Actually, I wonder if you could make it so “friendly regeneration globes drop scrap” which would enable taking of camps/objectives/etc, but kill my fear of laning power. But that seems a very finicky way to write the ability.

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I’m familiar with the quote and it happens to be the primary inspiration behind moving the stun from Xplodium Charge to Deth Lazor. That said, I’m just not convinced that it’d be that big of a deal - at the absolute most, it will only ever be half a second and, at the shortest, it will take a second and a half to wind up. It’ll be an amazing tool for initiation and ambushes and maybe even some teamfight dogpile followup, but overall the cooldown and the charge time will keep it from being used for much more than that.

Because stuns have utility that slows do not. Namely, interrupt potential.

It’d be pretty easy to clarify friendly globes only, but that runs into the issue of making Objective globes (Sky Temple, Battlefield of Eternity, etc) less valuable, which undercuts the original goal of making the talent perform better for non-lane related things (with a specific emphasis on Objectives).

The other thing is that Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is substantially weaker than the current version because the reworked version cannot be combined with the additional mana from Scrap-O-Matic Smelter or the additional cooldown from Break It Down!. It loses a significant amount of value when it cannot be multiplied in impact from one of those two talents, so I’m honestly not that worried about substantially buffing in the way that you believe it is.

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Absolutely not a fan of your idea to change Robo Goblin to stop dealing 100% more damage to Structures because, at least based on your wording, it may now start to only affect Heroes/Minions alone, which is bad.

HotS team did a splendid job (read: atrocious) of making sure to kill off nearly every source of fun that pertained to Siege damage, so having one of the few remaining ones removed is not something I’d ever support.

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I like most of it, but I noticed something that could be better:

For a while now I’ve had this idea where Gazlowe places ~some device~ to charge his laser for him. And it seems you aim to achieve something similar with this talent.

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I wish something were done with his talents so he can pick the extra laz0r dmg at 13 and still be able to spawn bomb below his feet whenever he is stunned or rooted (currently the two talents share same tier and cant be picked at the same time).

It would make laser overall more attractive if he wasn’t guaranteed to die for standing still and charging.