Kith's Varian Review + Rework

General Discussion
41

Again, no offense to the people you talked to, but they seem bronze level at best.
Taunt is not weak by any means, but as a tank he’s pretty bad given the alternatives. He only has one hard CC (taunt) and his 2 slows are basically shared with his other specs (inbefore you change that lol). He is a very good opener tank, but his peels are not enough to stop dual diver teams (which is pretty much any tank + bruiser comp). His taunt, as easy as it is to land, is useless unless the team focuses the target you taunt. Twin blades is essentially 2/3 as good a tank as taunt is. That should give you an idea about it.

Compare this to ETC, diablo, garrosh or muradin.

2 Likes
42

Well, I maybe for Taunt and Enrage but with CS you would be neglecting you primary source of both dmg and sustain not picking Q talents.

Ahhh sorrry, I missed that. This was also the source of the melee assasin complaint.

Perhaps niche would be better word. From my expirience Varian Tank is rarely the best pick since his level of CC and threat is just low compared to other tanks.
I only really used Taunt Varian during Reign of Genji, but if other ppl said something else they may be right.

43

I agree about Taunt not being weak. People who think its weak are either using it at the wrong times or simply don’t have follow up damage. Or going in outnumbered like an idiot. No rework or talent changes can fix stupidity.

44

Assuming we play at a decent level, follow up not being there isn’t really a l2p issue. An easy way to save the taunted target is simply to dive the backline. Varian cannot stop your team from zerging his team. At that point, it is very easy to break away the focus.

After the armor nerf, I no longer consider taunt as a tank. He is clearly a bruiser by definition, very similar to Artanis.

45

he’s a niche tank.

He’s meant to be able to be a tank, but it is not meant to be his primary role.

He is probably the most niche tank, but just because a tank isn’t decent at nearly everything, doesn’t make him a poor tank.

Honestly, given the most games with Varian I can looking up “Moonshadow” find on Heroesprofile has 34 games on Varian, with only about 150 games, I’m dubious you have as much experience on him as you claim. Especially as only 12 of those Varian games look to be on his latest rework.

It isn’t going to have every game of course–but personally, I’ve uploaded ~500 games, and have about 825 games, with only about 500 uploaded.

Well, I don’t see how you could have more than ~100 varian games, and you’ve given no evidence beyond your word.

Reading what you write on Varian, I feel like I’m talking to someone who has barely played him in his current state. But, that’s just my opinion, and it could be wrong.

46

Is this supposed to make up for what exactly?

47

you’re talking as if you play Varian a ton and understand him, having claimed:

So this would make me think you have a lot of games played on Varian.
Granted, we’re ignoring here that you cannot have individual levels on Varian for each of his ultimates…

As I stated, Heroesprofile is not fully going to have everything, but when it has a whole 12 games on Varian since his rework uploaded. And no image/etc showing you are playing him.

But, your opinions on his talents seem… wrong to me.
And I haven’t seen anyone back them up.

Basically, I want:

  1. Give me some evidence.
  2. note that you don’t play current Varian much.

because to me it feels like it is the second of those.

As I noted, i could be entirely wrong, but to me it seems like you’re playing Varian completely different than anyone else I’ve played with or talked to about Varian.

Could be that how things are played in Europe–where I believe you play–and USwest (where I play) are drastically different.

You do know that he is treated as a tank for QM Matchmaking purposes, because of taunt.

48

I am currently on a business trip, so I don’t have access to my hots in-game account, here’s a screenshot from about 3 months ago

https://ibb.co/X4QXqp7

I am not sure what you are on about, from my understanding we have been generally on the same page when it comes to Varian current talents.

The W vs E debate at 10 is really a matter of taste, but in EU, please tend to focus you down pretty hard, so W is a given and E is a niche.

49

I don’t care what QM treats his as. I don’t agree with the current role system in QM, and Varian isn’t the only hero who is misplaced. I just feel that as opposed to other tanks, he has neither the peels nor the “beefiness” for a tank. His survivability is imo on the level of Artanis, and his opener is basically a one trick poney, just like artanis, only a tad safer.

50

By them reworking those heroes a few months later and bringing back their original niche.

1 Like
51

It’s based on the Protection Warrior’s Intercept which involves standing next to an ally to absorb damage meant for them.

Warbringer used to upgrade Charge into a stun and it was a total nightmare to deal with. The problem is that both Charge and Taunt are point-and-click abilities, so you didn’t really have a chance to do anything about it once you got caught.

That said, I’m hesitant to give Varian additional forms of CC. We have to keep in mind that Taunt Varian is a Bruiser masquerading as a Tank, and he can also masquerade as a DPS Assassin or Burst Assassin. That level of flexibility has to come at a price, and I believe that the fair price for that is either making him kind of an underequipped Tank compared to dedicated Tanks (which he is) or only able to operate as a Tank in a niche role (and he happens to fill a particular niche incredibly well).

Nah man, this conversation has been great - I don’t mind when people voice concerns about my work or say that they would have done things differently as long as they’re willing to have an actual conversation about it. I only take issue when people Kramer into the thread to tell me how dumb and wrong I am and that I’m obviously an idiot for not immediately following their suggestions.

You really need to stop doing this, dude. It’s fine if you disagree, but you don’t need to be so disrespectful about it - especially when it turns out that you misinterpreted what I said and wound up agreeing with me.

Sure is good that I said it was Taunt that was strong and not Tank Varian on the whole, then.

Stop.

There are several Tanks that are good initiators but have poor peel. Stitches, for example.

So is Hook. What’s your point?

Twin Blades is a great damage sponge because of its sustain and access to Parry, but considering that it has zero peel instead of some peel like Taunt, I’m hesitant to agree with you when you say it’s a Tank at all.

  • At Level 4, if you can land your skillshots without the increased size and speed of Lion’s Maw, Warbringer offers Smash Varian an excellent escape to an ally once they’ve blown their combo. I will grant that Intercept isn’t very useful, but you can’t win 'em all.
  • At Level 7, the extra range and/or Slow from Shockwave is nice to have, but not strictly necessary. Safeguard improves your survivability considerably after a combo dive and Bounding Stride has multiple potential uses, from pursuit to escape.
  • At Level 13, both Overpower and Juggernaut have inherent value. Overpower allows you to extend your burst by hitting multiple Heroic Strikes and Juggernaut makes Charge deal respectable damage (plus it’s Health Shred, so it’s a solid hit against more meaty targets).

Now, I won’t argue that Lion’s Maw, Shockwave, and Ravager aren’t useful to a Colossus Smash Varian focusing on a Q build, because they definitely are (and that’s intended). However, I also made sure to create space for variety when designing the other talents. There’s a reason that this took so long. :slightly_smiling_face:

That’s okay! There’s a lot to go over.

Niche is very much what Taunt Varian is. All of the feedback that I’ve gotten is basically this: Taunt itself is very, very strong, but unless you have the opportunity to capitalize on its usage, then Varian himself is not a very compelling Tank.

And I think that’s okay, personally. Varian’s gimmick is that he can fulfill three different roles, so I feel like him only being passable or niche in his performances is fine.

52

Except stiches is far harder to kill, and if his team gets dived a lot he can get the bile ult, which shuts down divers completely.

1 Like
53

-Victory rush and second wind are talents
-Shield wall is a talent.
-All his banners are talents
-Dem shout and Glory are also talents

Wrong? Perhaps. Outright? Not quite. It’s 50/50 at best.

Ok, and like I said, why not base it on stance dancing? That’s literally how he fights in the lore.

Yeah, the source material, WoW. He’s known for splitting and merging his blade at will throughout various moments in WoWs history, in essence; switching stances/specializations on the fly.

Now obviously for balancing purpose it would be ridiculously strong if he could do that in HoTs with how his two heroics are designed now. So they’d need to do a bit of re-balancing.

What I suggest is merging the two into a new heroic that would allow him to merge and split his blade on a 20-25s Cd. Both stances would now have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Arms would still have access to burst damage and good damage mitigation, but still reduce health as it does now and would lack self-sustain like it does in current WoW. Fury would give Varian access to self-sustain in the form of a baseline Second Wind and faster attacks, but lower damage like it does now and no damage mitigation.

In addition, the properties of his W would change depending on what stance he’s currently in. For example while in “Arms” stance it could be something like Die by the Sword which maintains it’s parry properties and also reduce damage taken by a set amount. While in Fury his W would become Enraged Regeneration which would increase the passive healing element of baseline 2nd wind by a large amount for a few seconds but no longer parry’s aa’s.

This is what I have in mind. Of course, I know this is your rework and I don’t mean to impede you, but I just feel like Varian could use a more dynamic playstyle. TB’s should be an epic heroic, but instead it reduces Varian into mindless aa spam hero. A Greymane without the exciting factor of switching forms or Samuro without Mirror image. What should be his coolest spec is just kinda flat and 1-dimensional.

54

Since Taunts viability is IMO the biggest problem in current Varian, I would like it to be mitigated but it’s you rework :joy:

I would further add that saying that Taunt is very strong is IMO overstatement since it’s only adventage is the Point-and-Click nature. Otherwise it’s just a Storm bolt on longer CD.

55

That’s not how it works. You made a statement that was factually incorrect. You could’ve claimed otherwise if you were nitpicking about the categories (for example, saying that most of Varian’s sustain comes from Talents, which is actually true). Unfortunately for you, you didn’t - you claimed that most (see also: more than half) of Varian’s sustain, defense, and crowd control comes from Talents.

I know that you don’t want to be wrong because being wrong feels bad to you, but you whether you like it or not, what you said was wrong. Eat the loss and move on.

The point of any Rework that I do is to work with the existing material and stay true to the original design and its goals. In this case, Varian’s original design and goals were to represent the three Warrior Specs from WoW, and I know this because the developers held a Deep Dive Panel and spent 20 minutes explaining that:

Varian’s malleable weapon was used as a way to justify his design and gameplay mechanics. If they wanted to make a stance dancing Warrior, I’m sure they could’ve, but they didn’t choose to, so I’m not going to try and go off the rails and try to push Varian into becoming something that he was never meant to be.

No, the source material Varian from Heroes of the Storm. If I was writing up a Hero Concept where I took inspiration and information from pre-existing games and stories, that’d be different, but again: the point of any Rework that I do is to work with the existing material and stay true to the original design and its goals. Varian is already here and the goal is to improve on that, not make changes so great that the Hero in question becomes unrecognizable.

Also again: if you really feel that Varian should be a stance-dancing Warrior instead of a Hero designed around picking a Spec and adapting to that playstyle? Make your own Rework and stop trying to get me to change mine.

56

That’s pretty debatable. Stitches is a bigger wad of hitpoints, sure, but Stitches doesn’t have access to Parry or a dash that can target allies.

I won’t argue that Gorge and Bile are pretty good peel, but they’re still lacking compared to, say, ETC’s or Muradin’s.

What ways do you think it could be mitigated?

That’s a pretty significant advantage, though. For extremely mobile, dodge-happy characters like Genji or Tracer, that’s a major, major selling point.

57

What if we scrap Twin Blades completely and pretend they never existed?:thinking:

58

That won’t stop it from existing.

59

There are a lot of tanks that have stuns that are annoying to deal with. Mal’ganis, Diablo, Muradin, Johanna, Blaze, Anubarak (2), and I can’t think of anyone else. That’s not including their ults. I’m not saying every tank has to have the same kit, but a basic ability stun through a talent or baseline is very good for a tank. I understand it could be completely busted with his current kit but that’s what a talent balancing or slight rework could fix.

I completely agree. Adding that stun to the talent would make every build have a peeling ability where it could be broken. However, I have an idea. They could change the Warbringer talent to give different effects based on the spec you chose. For example, with Taunt you get a stun, with Twin Blades it could remain a slow, and for Smash it could give you a small amount of spell power or a shield or something.

Okay, Okay, I see you. I do like that. But there’s already a banner that adds armor. 20 armor + 50 armor is 70 armor. That’s insane armor. And if they don’t stack then the banner becomes almost useless. How about this? I don’t know how this would work mechanically but you could take a percentage of the damage your allies take and Varian gains armor for a balanced duration. That way the whole team doesn’t become Garrosh and you still gain that peeling ability. Again, just an idea.

Well who is Varian taunting? A tank? If you have proper follow up, you can delete that target easy.

Probably not, but 2 things.

  1. Most main tanks have the ability to do so and still can’t save their teammates. So what’s your point?
  2. He isn’t meant to be used as a main tank. Its tough for Varian to peel for his team in general. The only thing I can see helping a team dive in that situation is the Banner for armor which can reduce the damage taken by 20%. Other than that, he can only stop 1 hero from attacking the backline and only for a second. That’s when the main tank comes in and defends and peels for his team, while Varian is a more offensive tank.
60

Additional hard CC either in talents or tied to Taunt. Maybe mini-stun on Critical Strike or some kind of active.

But how many heroes require that? Not many and they are still as badly affected by any other CC as long as you can hit them.