But you’re forgetting the purpose of it. You could place it anywhere and it would stick indefinitely until it’s killed. Think of BoE, you could place it down to attack the immortal while you team fight, you could place it to cover two zones during an objective push, hell you could use it to as cover as well.
Anyways, the upgrade would be the range increase, which makes it even more useful, to the point that it’s actually useful.
This makes it better for zoning, objectives, and map presence.
How is this any different from its current use?
I’m starting to think that maybe you should just make your own Tychus Rework. The Drakken Laser Drill isn’t even part of mine.
I didnt mean an entire grenade build. But there can be diffirences between choosing mobility, damage, survivability. And some talents can simply benefit better to a specific playstyle.
A higher range and higher knockback on a grenade can be used to secure a kill by keeping them closer, or by allowing you to get away. But if you go for run and gun, you might depend less on the grenade there.
The knockback can also be used to seperate a group that otherwise would be too dangerous to get to.
Thats why i think giving the option can be welcome.
As we have seen many times before, you can put as much detail into an overhaul, you cant predict its result. Thats why i think its safer to do smaller and easier changes first and finetune later on.
Most of the time when a hero recieved a complete rework he ended up being massively OP or UP and rarely balanced.
Given the devs stance on new releases, i dont see why this isn’t also done on purpose. There is a gradiant for sure, and i dont believe its out of malice.
I would argue that his performance would be irrelevant. Because players don’t like it when they don’t get to have a trait. That was the number one complaint for Raynor and Alarak. Even if Tychus performed really well, players would still complain that his trait is too narrow and they don’t get to use it. It’s really important in design to meet expectations.
I feel that three seconds is a long time for that heroic though. If you get the shield right away. It will likely be depleted from the damage you take during the “channel”. Unless that was the intent? But in that case, it becomes worse than armor.
Yes I realize that. however, and that’s just my own opinion. I feel that when I pick a talent to negate or mitigate the negatives from another talent. I effectively skipped a talent. Instead of getting extra value from shredder grenades, I get back some of the value that I lost on overkill. (Since I would get both if I picked anything other than “focused fire”. This would not be an issue on a character that has bad AoE to begin with, because the team would draft with that in mind. Also, players generally don’t like talents where they lose something. As seen in the case of pre-rework Alarak.
Good point. I concede it.
To me it’s mostly about hero identity. Without minigun, Tychus doesn’t really have his own identity, his own thing as a hero. And I think it’s a good thing for the game to have a natural counter to double tank comps, or super beefy tanks, without making the team wait until Lvl 16 where giant killers hide. Especially now that Malthael can no longer fill that role.
For “Finish em off”,
Overkill has a duration of 4 seconds. So , if the 4 seconds buff of “Finish em off” start as soon as overkill starts. Then throwing a grenade after overkill ends wouldn’t do anything. You’d have to absolutely use it during the channel. So in that case, there would be no synergy with “Mean machine”.
Yeah, I was talking about big red button.
I agree with your reasoning on having options, which is why I designed the Rework’s talent tiers the way that I did. However, for the un-reworked Tychus, I feel that making Concussion Grenade and Quarterback available to be used in tandem is a mistake for several reasons:
The result of combining them is that neither talent has to suffer from its drawbacks anymore, making it significantly easier for Tychus to disrupt enemy teams and/or generate picks (especially when you bounce someone into the gaping maw of The Bigger They Are…). Either (or both) would need adjusting after the move.
Now, assuming that they did get rebalanced as part of the move, I could live with being able to have both, but that leaves the same problem that we had with Lead Rain: now there’s a hole at Level 7 and too many talents at Level 1. Where do we go from here?
Small and easy changes are rarely as small or as easy as you would imagine. Consider Kael’thas’s Fel Infusion talent: the change from 5% bonus Spell Power to 4% bonus Spell Power was a big deal when it happened, and both the decision to make that change and the decision to keep it there took a lot of data collection and live testing.
Coincidentally, Fel Infusion’s changes are a good example of why I have such an issue with the current state of Tychus: small changes like these making or breaking a talent or a character isn’t good. The result may be “balanced”, but it certainly isn’t “stable”.
So? That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be the case. The reworks to Brightwing and Sonya and Stitches and Lucio were fine (and I could probably think of others if I bothered to). Even if it was the case that a rework was guaranteed to be OP or UP, the ones that were got balanced thereafter - it’s not like a character being reworked is going to leave them set in stone. At worst you’re going to have a bit of discomfort while the developers smooth out the rough edges, but after that the majority of reworks have been ultimately positive for the characters in question.
It is, and having been doing Game Design and Game Design-adjacent things for as long as I have, I feel I have a pretty solid understanding of how important it is to make things sound cool and useful. After all, if an ability or effect doesn’t sound good, why would anyone want to use it?
That said, I don’t think that Armor Piercing Rounds is necessarily on the same level as Advanced Optics or Sadism. The most common complaint about the former was that it was merely a statistical benefit (and the most important part was shared with several other extended-rage characters) and the latter is only something that helps you if you’re winning (and is basically a -50% Ability Damage vs Minions if you’re not).
If I was going to compare Armor Piercing Rounds to anything, I would compare it to Cassia’s Avoidance: both Traits are relatively niche effects that, depending on the enemy team composition, can either be very effective or nearly useless. However, the reason that you don’t see many people complaining about Avoidance is because, despite its niche application, Cassia isn’t completely sunk without it. Armor Piercing Rounds is in the same boat: it’s definitely nice to have when the enemy team has any Armor, but Tychus’s high durability and damage will ensure that he’s got a place on the team regardless.
The three seconds is how long Odin currently takes to assemble itself, I believe - and if it’s not three seconds exactly, it’s very close to that. That part of the tooltip is just clarifying the specifics of the ability so nobody gets surprised by the windup when using it for the first time.
That said, Rework or no, Commandeer Odin is not meant to be used mid-fight, despite the Unstoppable and 25 Armor that it grants during assembly - it’s very much something that’s supposed to be used in advance of a teamfight to either aid in posturing or enable a push with safe damage/coverage.
That all said, why do you feel that shields would be less valuable than Armor?
It’s fair to not like talents that have downsides to them, but considering that there are two options available at that tier that are strictly positive, I’m not worried about it. Talents that come with downsides to balance out their strength are not unheard of (like Stukov’s Growing Infestation or Artanis’s Triple Strike), so I’m comfortable adding one to Tychus.
I dunno, I’ve always viewed Tychus’s “thing as a hero” as being a big, tough guy who deals lots of DPS - primarily because that’s what he was in Starcraft II. If I’m being honest, I’d even go so far as to say that Armor Piercing Rounds is more appropriate than Minigun because of his appearance there: when he’s a hero unit as a Co-Op Commander, he has an upgrade called Kel-Morian Ripper Rounds that causes his attacks to reduce the target’s Armor. Armor in Starcraft II is Ablative in most cases (aka 1 Armor means taking 1 less damage per hit), so for a high speed/low damage unit like Tychus, any amount of Armor he can bypass is a big deal.
And besides, it’s not like Tychus would be losing his “tankbuster” identity, it would just be interpreted differently. Armor Piercing Rounds is still a big deal for a lot of tanks and I can think of at least four off of the top of my head that aren’t Garrosh that it would provide value against. On top of that, it’s not like he’s losing access to Health Shred On Hit as a mechanic, either - he’s just not getting it for free anymore.
And even then, if his trait becomes a non-factor because there’s zero Armor on the enemy team, not every hero has to have a super sharp, specialized mechanic to set them apart. As long as their gameplay feels appreciably different from other characters, does it really matter how that’s achieved?
The 4-second duration of Finish 'Em Off would refresh with each new stack, as is standard for the majority of stacking behaviors in HOTS. Assuming you spent the entire duration of Overkill dealing damage to a target, you would have a total of 8 seconds (4 seconds from Overkill itself and 4 seconds after it ended) to capitalize on Finish 'Em Off’s bonus damage. Assuming you hit multiple targets with an Overkill upgraded by Mean Machine, a Frag Grenade > Overkill > Frag Grenade combo would be entirely feasible.
Interesting. I never considered avoidance as being niche. Even if the enemy team isn’t heavy AA, there will always be auto attack damage mitigated by it in every game.
This wasn’t specifically about your version of it. I actually always wondered why Odin had a delay at all. I wondered if it was for the visual aspect, like the “coolness” of it, or if it was for balance reasons. But it never felt powerful enough to give a 3 seconds warning. When I started playing Tychus, I actually thought the Odin’s auto attack hit in an AoE because of the animation.
But about the shields, because you can start shredding them during the free 3 seconds period where Tychus is rooting himself, which is basically 3 seconds of 5 vs 4 time. I prefer armor since it prevents 1/4th of all incoming damage for the 23 sec. duration. The shield would have be approx 400 hp. In QM, without a healer, shield might be better. But I think armor would have more value overall in a balanced comp. Not that I think shields would be incredibly weak though.
I must admit though that I never played pre-minigun Tychus. I knew about it, and i always thought his minigun iteration was better. I’m not saying you,re wrong on your point of view. But HotS players in general demand a clear visible trait for all heroes. Tyrael is doing fine right now. But there are always threads requesting a rework to his trait. Because, even at high levels of play, we have to admit it usually doesn’t do anything.
Ok, I guess I misinterpreted it. probably due to the way unrevealable effects are worded similarly. It felt like the 4 seconds would either start as you use the ability or 4 seconds after it ends.
This is true, but a very ability-focused team isn’t going to be dealing much Basic Attack damage for Avoidance to counter - for example, a 40% reduction to Kael’thas’s 65 damage per hit has significantly less value than a 40% reduction to Hanzo’s 198. Additionally, Avoidance doesn’t work when Cassia isn’t moving, so any team that has lots of Crowd Control will also reduce its value.
This isn’t to say that Avoidance is bad, of course - I just feel that any effect that can be described as “has very specific situations in which it generates significant value but otherwise has a minor impact” is niche. Armor Piercing Rounds is intended to be the same way: very strong in a few situations (Garrosh, Cho’gall, Hardened Shield derivatives), effective in some (ETC, Uther, Block effects), and weak in others (no Armor/Physical Armor effects).
It’s definitely a balance thing, although IMO it hasn’t needed the wind-up ever since it changed into a transformation instead of being a vehicle with its own health bar. However, I can understand why the wind-up is there when you consider that Odin basically turns Tychus into a combination of Kael’thas and Sgt. Hammer while it’s active.
You’re just as vulnerable during the current wind-up, though. I mean, yeah, you have the 25 Armor during it, but the Shields would be present for the same amount of time and they’re intended to give Tychus roughly the same amount of durability (20% of Tychus’s 2k health pool is, as you say, about 400).
Ultimately, Shields are more flexible - 20% of Tychus’s maximum health is going to give a consistent amount of value regardless of how much current health he has, but Armor is only going to give full value if he casts Commandeer Odin at full health. Additionally, since Armor doesn’t stack anymore, switching to Shields would give things like Devotion or Safeguard the opportunity to generate value again instead of being overwritten by the passive Armor that the Odin provides.
The Pre-Rework Minigun (the name hasn’t changed even though the original mechanics were massively different) had two forms:
Anyways, history lesson aside. I’m very familiar with the community’s position on Archangel’s Wrath and, as a matter of fact, I’m one of the people who shares the general viewpoint that it needs to be changed or replaced. However, I don’t feel that Archangel’s Wrath is useless necessarily, just that it’s a problem because it’s directly opposed to the rest of Tyrael’s design: he’s a tank/bruiser/semi-support hybrid focused on protecting and buffing his allies and Archangel’s Wrath is… a post-mortem suicide attack.
So, within that context, I don’t think it’s very fair to compare Archangel’s Wrath to Armor Piercing Rounds. You’re not wrong that it’s possible for both to get no value under the right circumstances, but at least the purpose of Armor Piercing Rounds is consistent with the rest of the Rework’s design (aka enabling damage dealing).
Nope, 4 seconds per the last Overkill damage instance - just like how Valla’s Hatred works with Basic Attacks and Blaze’s Meltdown works with Pyromania.
A friend of mine brought up a good question over discord:
Given that Garrosh would arguably be the most affected by the Tychus Rework if it went live, why not show the math behind pre-Rework and post-Rework Tychus versus Garrosh for the sake of comparison?
So I’m here to do that. All values will be assumed to be at Level 1 since Tychus and Garrosh scale at the same rate.
10.2 seconds sounds like a big deal, but it’s honesty a lot of time. Granted, it’s much better than the Time To Kill that other Basic Attack users would get, but that’s still plenty of opportunity for Garrosh to react (run away, use any of his abilities, ect).
5.07 seconds is significantly better and much more competitive, but that involves adding a Heroic into the mix.
The Live version (which does not ignore Armor) fares significantly worse in the Basic Attack department, but has better times when factoring in any Talented Minigun. Adding in the Drakken Laser Drill Heroic further improves Tychus’s performance, although Garrosh’s Armor takes the edge off.
Overall, the two are comparable with only a few seconds’ difference between them. The most notable difference is that the Live version is more tactically flexible, thanks to both the Drakken Laser Drill being a separate unit and also having the opportunity to skirmish better thanks to “The Bigger They Are…”. Outside of Garrosh, the Rework fares a bit worse against other Tanks: none of them rely nearly as heavily on Armor and not having Health Shred until Level 10 is a pretty significant impact on Tychus’s performance against them.
Ultimately, I think the Rework’s pros outweigh the cons - Tychus would become slightly better at handling Garrosh, but have a much more evenly balanced performance against the rest of the roster.
Would you mind explaining (ideally, in detail) why you feel that way?
I find this talent counter-productive when facing heroes like Cho’Gall, or Leoric, because I can no longer finish them off. They start out-sustaining my damage when they drop below 35% HP.
I do know how powerful it is in other situations tho. I melt heroes like Anoob’alarak before he can do anything.
But I’d rate it A+ or S- at best due to the fact it can actually hinder you in some situations.
I actually think that this is a really good talent when you have completed Dash. You become like a Tracer, with longer range Blink. Using it 3 times in a row actually gets you a whole screen distance away, and it’s great when you are playing against dive heavy compositions, or against heroes who think they can escape from you. I’d actually rate this as a B- it’s not so bad talent.
Actually 25 armor increases your effective HP by 33%, so getting 30-35% of your max HP as shield would be more appropriate. From my experience, Odin is mostly used in the beginning of a fight, and not so much as a panic button midfight, so getting the full benefit seems better.
And also, the current version is receiving 33% more effective shielding/healing due to the armor.
But also, why did you increase the delay to 3 sec (from 2,5)? Even now it takes too long for it to assemble.
This seems like a terrible talent. Run and Gun’s basic range is so short, that this will be useful in very limited amount of situations. Like if you get in a Mosh Pit, you could escape from it, UNLESS ETC is right next to you, in which case the range of Run and Gun will not be enough to get you out of its AoE.
I do believe that you should at least travel double the usual distance when stunned/rooted/silenced for this talent to be worth taking.
This could just increase his damage. It’d be similar, apart from the fact that you’ll need 0,28125 seconds to get the full bonus instead of 0,246094. But the game engine works a lot better with time amounts that can be divided by 0,03125 than it does with time amounts that can’t do that. Why is the current version of Master Assassin the way it is now is a mystery to me… maybe players don’t notice the difference since the damage just happens on the next frame, instead of between the frames, or maybe the engine works differently than the ones I’ve worked with…
Oh, and his 2-nd heroic wouldn’t be as efficient with this version of the talent 
I’ll never take this talent. At the very least it needs to also add some damage to Run and Gun.
Apart from these outliners, the rework seems good.
It actualy would depend on the task it has to perform. But for a level 20 this feels rather weak. Especialy since its very unlikely to disrupt much as you are forced to get close to the enemy. Microstuns are generaly better for earlier talents.
And with that, 0.15s isnt actualy possible. Frames are 0.0625s long (16fps) which means the stun can only last 0.125s or 0.1875s. Its the same reason for zarya’s cooldown reduction talent having that odd number.
oh jeez i forgot to reply to these posts like a month ago!!!
The Bigger They Are… never hinders Tychus’s damage output. It might be less efficient than a permanent In The Rhythm Minigun, but even against Garrosh (the character with the strongest defenses against The Bigger They Are…), it still shaves a full two seconds off of the Time To Kill from Basic Attacks (which isn’t factoring in Overkill or Frag Grenade).
Tell you what - I’ll add a disclaimer that bumps it up to a B- with Dash.
Sure, I’ll bump it up. I don’t remember why I chose 20% specifically.
This is true! However, I personally prefer effects that are easier to understand at a glance. For both Tychus and his opponents, it’s much easier to gauge how much durability Odin would grant when quantified as Shields rather than “takes 25% less damage”.
Because I was spitballing the cast time. I remember making a note to go back and track down the actual cast time, but never got around to it - at the time I was just ready to be done.
It’s supposed to be situational. It’s intended to allow the user to dodge carefully placed skillshots, not be a be-all end-all escape option.
It could, but I like high Attack Speed.
That said, Master Assassin works the way it does right now because the Quest Reward is an extra Attack per Second, which means an extra hit of Minigun.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. The two extra attacks per second would be two extra Heartbreaker hits, both for damage and for extra duration.
I’ll take a look at it.
Thank you!
It’s mostly there for when Tychus gets dived.
I checked my notes and it’s supposed to be 0.25. It’s not because I typoed it and never caught it because I was juggling so many other things, but I’m going to bump it up to half a second based on WereElf’s feedback.
In the current state it does since below the treshold you deal less damage than you would when you didnt take the talent. If a hero has 4000hp, and for easier calculation tychus does 200dps by default (at 4 hits per second, so each hit is 50).
Normaly using minigun, you would deal 50+100 damage per hit.
But with TBTA, above 35%, you now deal 50+160 damage per hit
But below 35%, it becomes just 50 damage.
This is its counter productive part.
And if im honest, i dont see the issue on this talent here at all. Its one of the best designed talents in the game because it changes the hero quite significantly in playstyle, but not enough to make it feel awkward.
As tychus normaly already has to stay back, this talent does synergize a lot when pulling in a full health hero (in such way it becomes a huge danger to face).
That damage alone justifies the added weakness. Its almost like hammer sieged up and by that isnt able to properly dodge anymore. It gives some extra dynamics to a hero.
Imagine if hammer would normaly be unable to permanently siege up, and instead it would only siege for 10 seconds, with a 20s cooldown after unsieging, but in exchange does gain +50% damage during siege. Its kinda like that.
No, it does not. I know this because I went through and did Time Trials for each and every hero available in Try Mode (aka everyone but Cho’Gall). Not a single Time To Kill increased after picking up The Bigger They Are… - not even against Garrosh, who enjoyed huge amounts of Damage Reduction due to his Trait giving him Armor for all of his missing Health. You’re welcome to pop open Try Mode and check for yourself.
If we’re looking at it from the lens of maintaining a steady DPS, sure. However, in terms of Overall Damage Dealt and Time To Kill, The Bigger They Are… is more efficient pound for pound. Yes, it stops working after a certain point, but it does so when the target is well into the “vulnerable to dying” range.
It’s fundamentally incompatible with Tychus’s character design and stated design goals. Everything about his visual design screams that he’s a sustained damage dealer and his goals claim that he’s supposed to be the “Tank Buster” Assassin, but The Bigger They Are… tunes Minigun into a burst attack that’s actually more effective against squishy characters than it is against tanky ones (while still being a significant upgrade against tanky characters).
And it does this at Level 4.
I challenge you to find a Hero who can beat a ~4 second Time To Kill against Valla at Level 4.
Im not talking about time to kill from full HP. Im talking about time to kill below 35% hp there. And then it makes a diffirence. If it doesnt then there should be a patchnote soon because that would indicate a bug.
From max HP the TTK indeed barely changes, but thats not always going to be the case. There are usualy just 2 cases in which tychus matters: Initiating the damage, or finishing the kill.
For the first one TBTA is a lot more reliable by providing a massive damage bonus.
For the last one TBTA actualy hinders because you are missing the % based damage.
And depending on your tychus playstyle, i the reduced damage for finishing off an enemy can definitely hinder you, and by that act as a counter productive part.
3 seconds of massively increased damage is still burst, not as much as other situations, and with ITR this slowly turns into the sense of sustained damage. But for a part its still there. TBTA just makes the burst happen more heavily in exchange for weakening the sustained damage part.
In both cases the result should be somewhat similar: You are going to deal your damage while minigun is active. This is your burst. Wether its 3 or 7 seconds doesnt matter.
The only reason why many still consider tychus as sustained is because they are used to ITR and TTS. During those times going for sustained always exceeded the value of TBTA.
But as that synergy is removed, you cant self sustain as much anymore. And now exposure due to your range gives a risk, focussing more towards burst to get better survivability.
His ultis however are both still sustained damage.
Conditional to happen, but li-ming can do this if she gets a reset from her trait.
Dont take this too serious though I just wanted to try the chalenge here
And even then, beyond level 10, kelthuzad is capable of exceeding tychus on that part.
If you’re relying solely on Basic Attacks, sure, but I’ve found that Overkill and Frag Grenade kill low-health targets just fine. I think you’re falling into the same trap that a lot of people have - thinking that Minigun is Tychus’s only tool.
I was talking about his visual design, chief - specifically the part where he’s got a big rapid-fire weapon instead of something that implies burst damage like a shotgun or a sniper rifle.
Sure, but that’s Li Ming’s job. By the team’s own admission, Tychus isn’t supposed to be able to do that.
Not talking about Level 10. I’m talking about Level 4.
Maybe thats because im used to the tf2 way of balance where the heavy with his minigun is the biggest burst of damage (after the sticky bombs) you can find in the game.