If he doesn’t have that tanky shield though, his win rate is going to plummet. He has no escape at all. Unlike Jaina he can’t even place himself into Stasis if he suddenly comes under heavy burst damage.
That shield is all he has in terms of defense. Not taking it is a huge gamble.
If you want to deal even more damage than KT, take Kel’thuzad. He is the ultimate glass cannon with no escapes or defenses at all (Shifting Malice at lv20 barely counts), and has nothing but skillshots.
But he is also much more team dependent. He is unplayable without a good front line.
even 1600 shield that in theory he can have on 21 (with 60 globes) is low.
It also nearly triples his Mana bar with that many globes.
Psst actually as per HOTS logs despie popularity it is not best winning talent on lvl 1 in KT arsenal (but is close) as per Heroes profile it is his best talent but despite that all talents need burst to make him have this 50% winrate at least. Right now Mana addict appears to be meta talent and kinda meme talent like PoA for Artanis.
I would say slightly more than double as on 21 he has 700 mp 700*3=2100 so it is far from tripling.
You seem to forgot KTZ have lots of CC plus both of of his ults can be used offensively and defensively. Can get armor of Archlich on lvl 4 as well which gives him a chance to run away from chasers and survive chase. Not counting chain that with glacial spike is much more effective stopper than KT gravity lapse.
Depends on how long of a time period you filter from and which leagues. In all leagues, in last 5 patches, it’s doing considerably worse, at a lower pick rate, so it can’t even be treated as a niche talent.
Fel Infusion can be seen as a legitimate niche talent with some usefulness, it has only slightly lower win rate than the shield, with a low popularity.
Even by last 10 patches it doesn’t change much, except Mana Addict becomes even more clearly the better choice (the only choice to put him close to 50.0% in all ranks).
Convection is just objectively a bad talent.
Taking it leads to thousands of unnecessary losses statistically.
Though I do think it has some non-competitive uses, for example I frequently pick it in Aram for fun.
(In master+dia, same thing: Mana Addict 2-3% higher WR (52.66% after 10 last patches), Convection and Mana Addict same popularity %'s)
Thanks for data, shapeshifter. Yeah you are probably right about convection being objectively bad and still I like to pick it sometimes, because I like the risk reward playstyle. But I guess it’s also a reason that I am currently in silver and there you don’t need extra survival options, because a better positioning is already enough to be good.
It’s not complete dead weight - it still wins ~47% of the time.
If you can make it work for yourself and enemies in your current rank never dive you, go for it.
Once you feel enemies start actively hunting you down to reset your stacks before you get to 20, consider switching to Mana Addict. If you feel like you could really use more mana in your late game fights, consider switching to MA.
I think Convection can work in those ranks and games where people don’t even try to focus Kael at all, and he can safely end games with 0 deaths frequently.
I don’t think its a bad talent per se, I just think its unreliable.
It gives Kael’s Q 200 bonus damage if you complete the quest. That’s a pretty decent chunk of damage. It doesn’t scale at all, but I think the only talent that can maybe match it’s burst is the Q talent that deals 8% damage.
Its just very unreliable because it asks for you to be able to hit Q’s and not die, which can be difficult in some situations. If you can’t complete Convection because you keep dying, you probably would have benefited more from Mana Addict’s shield.
Once every 10 sec for the price of reducing effect of stun/flamestrike. In that time decent Chromie would deal more dmg with her Sand Blast even if you somehow managed to spread living bomb on 2 targets (which would be pretty hard unless you are playing with well coordinated team with mix of displacement and CC or against total morons). (I am talking about hero dmg as ofc to avoid spreading living bomb enemy will prefer to wound structure or minion than spread it again)
My problem with KT is not damage all alone but the fact you need to choose meta talents to succeed in serious play aka killing all fun with builds.
yes, if you’re a grandmaster playing against and with other Grandmasters perhaps?
The fact is some people make “off meta talents” work for them on heroes they play. Years ago when I played Murky, when MotM was the meme ult, I was doing nearly 70% winrate with it.
That the damage is over time is not relevant. No one is going to waste a defensive ability on one living bomb, unless it’s going to land a killing blow. And you don’t need any special condition to spread it. When you’re fighting over an objective, you don’t always have the luxury to walk away. It deals good damage so it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t spread. But if you really want it to, just wait for your tank’s CC.
That’s not what nerfing means. You would be nerfing them if you made the abilities weaker than baseline. In this case, you’re just not powering them up. You can’t have all your abilities powered up. But if you don’t mind spending more mana, then just don’t empower your LBs. It’s your choice. But you can’t chose not to make them free then also complain about mana issues.
Have you ever taken all those talents together on Jaina? And if you don’t like KT’s range, Jaina needs to be even closer. KT has a stun baseline, Jaina has nothing but a slow. You can’t interrupt abilities, and people with speed buffs will still catch you.
No it doesn’t. Because KT doesn’t need talents to have his stun. And you are never going to pick all these talents together on any of these mages.
Let’s not compare a tank and a mage. There’s no point.
You complained about the range of his spells, why would you want to put him in AA range?
(Also using D for Q and E is usually just not worth it.)
Not sure about that, but the general idea is that point’n’click abilities/effects are somewhat weaker than skillshot ones, and aoe ones are weaker than single target. So… makes sense?
That happens even in Masters (without coordination), so dunno what lvl of play are you referring to here, where do you play? What lvl?
Again where? Even in Masters you can play “non-meta” picks to win. I saw Convection being completed and winning in high elo way more than I’d like to accept
Also, you mostly talked about problems that can be tweaked with talents (mana, high cd on Trait, andsoon), which is pretty weird to me.
Talent that has pickrate over 60% in all leagues and highest/almost highest winrate is Meta or Meme talent (PoA is e.g. meme talent). Let me give you example - it was back in time when Ragnaros Lava Wave was considered waste of talent. I’ve chosen it. Despite my team won this HL match and despite me having most siege and player damage as Ragnaros I got reported by 4 people - aka Sulfuras Smash was considered meta.
I am currently at Diamond 3 and on recent 5 matches while enemies were not chained CC bomb spread I think just 3 times. It happens on Master yes but I met masters that with skills was worse than my cousin on low plat. (aka they got carried most likely). It also can be applied to convection thing - it kinda pains me that e.g. Auriel with her Repeated offence gains 310 dmg after hitting 6 targets, not loosing stacks on death. While one can explain that flamestrike is AoE one must remeber that one is assassin so it is his job to destroy people. (power of Auriel lvl 4 talent was even memed in one of HoTS moment - aka vibes of Old Tyrande that could snipe Assasin with one shot)
Yeah I can agree with that but that is point - KT have long CDs for not that outstanding damage and as every mage should have a way to deal dmg more consistently.
yup but apparently Ignite is better (both in my opinion and player base opinion - and data on hots logs and heroes profile)
Like, it was WORSE than it’s normally been when exp globes first came out, but, it was never considered a waste. (Nope, this was just me not remembering how exp globes worked on initial introduction).
Lava wave has NEVER been considered a waste of a talent. Some specific team compositions excluded, where Ragnaros was drafted specifically for his stun.
I’m honestly not sure you’re in the same universe as most the rest of us, which makes discussion difficult.
