Design 101: moving baseline functions into talents is a bad idea. This never happened as far as I know. What that talent will do is get to 90% popularity and then gets reworked back again into baseline. Blizzard always moved functionality from talents into baseline, never the other way around.
Anyway, come back when you hit 75 (3x25) with varian. Then we can talk.
What makes it such a trap? What would bring it back up?
Since I’m not really all for nerfing talents to bring up other choices I think making it better to compete more is the good choice we can make with it.
Does it experience better mileage on a Colo build (since HKQ is kind of non negotiable for Winblades)?
Nah. Things get cut from designs all the time. Look at all of the reworks that have happened - heroes have lost and gained many functionalities, sometimes adopting completely different roles altogether.
Doubt it. Worst case scenario is that, if the slow is as important as you say, the slow removal/cost reduction will get reverted or ignored.
Regardless, it’s a moot point - your passion for the subject has convinced me that it’s worth keeping around, even if everyone else I’ve spoken to thinks that it’s not important.
Wait, what?
I don’t know how I missed this earlier, but uh… what exactly are you talking about, here? Do you think that Varian has three separate Hero Levels?
Pretty sure he’s saying that you need to hit level 75 with Varian instead of 25 to have a good opinion, as he can be played 3 separate ways. Not positive though.
Alot of self-proclaimed experts in here it’s actually quite funny 
Anyway we no longer have heroes with 2015 designed talent-trees so if a hero is in need of a rework is entirely opinion based. If lack of talent diversity is the arguement then we could just buff the weaker ones?
This trend of reworks is getting out of hand imo and it’s a waste of resources and time for such a small dev team, I’d much rather see them working on rarely-picked talents which they were doing a few months ago
Tends to happen a lot in my threads.
I don’t always think that the solution to bad talents is a total overhaul - take my Artanis thread for example, where I only suggested some changes to underperforming talents because everything else was perfectly fine.
The problem is that Varian has bigger problems that adjustments to a handful of rarely picked talents cannot address, hence everything else.
im down to give the rework a spin, i think my only critic as it were would be to drop the baseline armor reduction on enrage.
At face value i dont like it because enrage is the sustain damage spec, which typically lends itself to needing higher ehp to function. Then there’s the idea that having -20 armor flag on all the time immediately makes you a high priority target.
Its totally plausible the additional healing makes up the ehp difference, but the sticker shock alone will drive people away from picking enrage all together, let alone being in the team fight.
Sorry one more nitpick - i really dont care for the idea of a “toggle” for enrage. Passive talents/boosts have had a bad rep for a long while as being braindead, no skill… adnosium. Not all hero’s need a bunch of buttons/activatibles to be engaging. For me, much like illidan, the joy and engagement of twin blades is manipulating the safe space in the team fight. its not a given like it is with Taunt/CS, which happen to be if your in range.
It just feels like enrage has a toggle for the sake of having another button, and unless you can instantly toggle it, and toggle it while CC’d, the actual windows to showcase intimate knowledge of a hero would arguably be so scarce as to be non existent.
You may be more interested in the backup design:
Do you think that would be more acceptable?
I still kinda just want them to combine TB and CS.
I mean, splitting Shalamayne has always been a huge part of Varians’ identity and is always the highlight of his greatest moments. The fact that you only get to see it once a game by picking TB is a little disappointing. I want to be able to swap between using CS and TB and it can be balanced with a lengthy Cd between swapping.
Not only would it be better representative of Varian’s fantasy, but it would be a nice homage to Warrior “stance dancing” in vanilla, in which Warrior players would consistently change stances during battle to take advantage of each stances’ respective bonuses and being able to use different abilities. (Intercept could only be used in Berserker Stance and Charge only in Battle Stance, ect.)
Add in a “hit” counter (like greymane) for minigame and im sold!
Its problem is really just about numbers. Overpower and quest simply grant more damage overall and scale better with his other talents. The slow bonus is nice, but not mandatory. This is why i proposed it has infinite stacks (or more stacks), so it reaches higher damage output.
All the reworks which dropped baseline functions have been failures. Tyrande and chromie first reworks are very good example of that. And in any case, baseline functions were always removed completely, not moved into talents, precisely to avoid a talent getting 90% popularity.
Not sure which people you talked to, but they don’t seem to understand varian gameplay at all, nor the differences be between his 3 specs. Twin blades is not about activating buttons, but rather about moving around a lot (hence the need for a speed buff) and always changing position. It allows to counter stuff that would otherwise destroy CS and taunt. Twin blades would also lose this speed buff, making it very much a copy of illidan but without his mobility.
As I said, Varian doesn’t need a rework. There are a few talent out liners that need fixing through simple buffs. There are tons of useless heroes out there that could use your imagination.
That’d be ultra-busted.
Varian isn’t based on Vanilla Warrior, though - he’s based on the Modern Warrior and the Arms/Fury/Protection specs. It wouldn’t fit.
A failure by what metric?
Because they didn’t value the middling slow with a short duration on his Q?
Not real sure where this complaint came from!
Considering that Illidan’s mobility is much of what makes him so dangerous, I’m afraid I don’t see it.
He doesn’t need one in the sense that he’s overperforming/underperforming, but he desperately needs one in the design sense. You’ve done a great job of stating that you disagree with a lot of what I’ve presented, but a very poor one of justifying anything outside of your opposition to the changes to Lion’s Fang (which, congratulations, I reverted on your behalf).
Name 'em. I’ve got a to-do list that I’m always willing to expand.
I like Varian his strenght is in his levels.
Unlike someone like Ana whos base kit is just strong. Glad you agree on his banners. But do you think Vigilance is fine? I find glory to the aliance the go to talent. Then the shout.
But vigilance just feels underwhelming to me
We’re thinking the same thing…
I think instead of completely reworking his whole build. Just rework the parts that need it.
First off, the 3 spec talents are good at level 4 because it gives you time to decide what build you want to do. You can kind of see how the enemy plays and it also prevents everyone from countering you at level 1. If they see you go taunt, they could pick level 1 talents that counter you, and I’m sure they are fun. Varian is flexible, yes, and level 10 is way too long to be able to fill your role. Level 7 is another option but I also feel like it needs to be before your first objective. You probably aren’t at level 7 before the first objective. 4 is the best level for the spec talents in my opinion.
Another thing that bothered me is that there are much less self sustain options because of the bundling. Instead Taunt comes with a 20% health regen, and an amazing damage mitigation, Smash has no self sustain, and Twin Blades/Enrage, is the only one with self sustain. Other than that, the only other option you have for self sustain is Victory Rush, which might be the go to for Smash because of the lack of self sustain which creates the same problem you want to get rid of and that’s having talents that have unbalanced pick rates because other talents just aren’t as good.
Enrage sounds dope, increasing your dps but sacrificing your health. The only problem now is your survivability suffers greatly. You have no protection, have 20 less armor, and don’t have enough self sustain to keep you alive. Yeah you get healed more often but what happens when you need to retreat? You will need to toggle it off and hope spells don’t kill you as you try to run away. I don’t know. I don’t like that aspect, even though the theory sounds awesome.
Instead, I would suggest tweaking the strong and weak talents Varian currently has. For example, changing High King’s Quest to give different rewards like basic attack damage, maybe a health increase, and a slight attack speed increase. That way you aren’t getting insane AA damage but still don’t lose talent value. And maybe make Lion’s Fang talents a bit buffier but not so much to where they make the other talents at the same level lose value.
Also the self sustain talents need to be balanced. Making Victory Rush heal for a % of health instead of just 350 can help the tank build survive better and won’t make it seem like you aren’t getting healed as much. Just balance the percentage amount and cooldown factors. Lion heart need a better heal buff. Maybe have it give you a shield based on how many heroes you hit or just increasing the healing percentage by more instead of just by 50%.
Shattering Throw needs to provide more than just stuff against shields because you need to give players a reason to choose it instead of just the enemy having shields. That I agree with. It needs work. I like what you did with that talent but its only to shields your way and without the enemy having shields, the same problem as before. Devastator isn’t going to get picked without the enemy having shields.
I’m not saying your rework is completely horrible. There are parts of it I liked like the ability to activate Victory Rush, a toggled attack speed increase, a wider Lion’s Fang. That stuff is cool and I think Victory Rush is my favorite because it means you don’t have to rely on staying in battle. It just boosts your health a bit to get you out of hot situations. I mean, Qhira has a burst heal that’s pretty good so why can’t Varian?
I think making Varian gain armor or unstoppable when taunting would help. I think the armor used to be part of Taunt but I don’t remember.
I enjoyed reading your rework and you have good ideas. I just don’t think they’ll work together with Varian much in that way. That’s just my opinion though.
No it wouldn’t, just have a CD to moderate how often he can swap.
No he isn’t, he’s based on the 3 Warrior specs that have been around since vanilla, none of which are exclusive to the modern WoW. The only “modern” warrior ability he has is CS. It would totally fit, you just lack vision.
Unfortunately I don’t like your rework this time , I liked other reworks you made but not this one
Think Active of Enrage becomes better if it no decreases Armor , but
blocks Talent: War Machine
Basic Attacks heal Varian for 1% of his Maximum Health.
Unlike the other options, it can lead to multiple activations of Taunt in a row, leading to chain CC. It’s more of a “potential value” than “immediate value” kind of thing.
This would be a fair point if the Varian player didn’t have the entire draft phase and/or a loading screen to give thought to their place in the team.
What talents at Level 1/4 do you think counter Taunt?
I feel like you’re discounting Parry and Lion’s Fang way too much. Parry in particular gives Varian the ability to ignore Basic Attacks for up to 2.5 seconds. That’s amazing. Lion’s Fang doesn’t have stellar healing, but an accurate Smash player would be able to get it off every 3 seconds and heal off of multiple targets.
Maybe. The one I’m most concerned about is Mortal Strike, if I’m being honest - Smash Combos can put out a lot of damage and one of the few ways of surviving that is dumping healing on the target, which Mortal Strike cleanly counters.
I mean, again, I feel like you’re discounting Parry here.
I’d be alright with changing how Enrage works - either reducing the Armor or changing the cost to it - but regardless of the change, I want the core concept of trading defense for offense to remain.
A better Lion’s Maw and Lionheart would certainly help, but that doesn’t solve the underlying design issues that Varian has on the whole - hence the reason that I’m pursuing an entire rework instead of just talent rebalancing.
Honestly, there’s not much to do with the concept outside of that. It’s like Morales’ EMP Grenade Talent: it’s just there to bust up shields and nothing else. There’s nothing wrong with a talent that’s powerful but has a narrow use case.
I’m glad you liked parts of it, at least!
It gave Armor once upon a time, yes, but I’m not comfortable adding anything else to the Taunt spec. It already gets the original Shield Wall, I don’t think it needs anything more than that.
I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I believe otherwise - rather strongly, actually - but I appreciate your feedback all the same. 
Greymane is reasonably balanced because he doesn’t have any sustain or defensive skills outside of Disengage and no CC. Varian has multiple forms of all three. Unless you completely tore out everything about Varian (either the original or my rework) and redid him based on that concept, he would be ultra-busted - every fight would open with a Smash Combo and then switch to Twin Blades going ham on the weakened target.
I’m aware of that. It’s my understanding that you don’t swap freely between them these days. Is that inaccurate?
If you’re really that upset about it, make your own Rework. You are free to use my formatting and images as a template.
That’s a shame. Any particular reason why?
There’s actually a whole list of things that I’m considering changing it to. In no particular order: