I get a sense that the PTR is not really for testing gameplay, but for when they are particularly concerned there might be bugs, hence the PTR Bug Report forum. Consider that most updates just go straight to the live servers without using the PTR. It is only on the live servers where they can really assess gameplay.
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eh. I like the concept but do think they can be something of âtrap talentsâ if they arenât careful. For example, I would have all loan talents be the fourth in their tier. That way the risk that someone picks it solely because nothing else has synergy with their build is minimized.
Though, maybe Iâd change it to something a little more elaborate. Like, gain 10% health instantly and another 1% every level, up to 20%. Lose up to 6% of this bonus on death.
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Your timeline conveniently skips the testing cycle.
The loan talents will put a target on you just like Convection does for Kaelâthas. It remains to be seen how these will play it. I, personally, donât like their implementation, since it costs balance elsewhere.
Theyâre going to be traps in low elo. Itâs not uncommon to see your tank die 4 times before you even hit level 10.
Winning with those players is already hard enough, but now they will also have no talent on that tier after 5 minutes have passed.
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Again, thatâs not true. Every loan talent has a permanent passive effect as well. Johannaâs gives physical armor, Raynorâs gives stacking damage on his trait, Vallaâs gives extra basic attack damage via a quest, and Stitchesâ gives a second charge to Devour.
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Easy answer to the topic:
To fully destroy HotS. Blizzard could not accept HotS to beeing a failure compared to Dota and LoL and they switched strategy now from HotS beeing a game for everyone to a game for pro-players who are grouped up. They dont care about those bronze, silver or gold ranks getting 5 death withing the first 7 minutes loosing all their âloansâ .
They dont understand that HotS will never be an e-sport title anymore and instead of closing servers they âre-workâ great and loved heroes to make more people quit the game. Why does it hit Raynor and Valla for example? They are heroes from the first day, i bought my first skin for Valla with real money right at the beginning. Most of the players unlocked those heroes and play them. So easy wayâŚdestroy them and those players quit. Thats the intention.
If Blizzard really wanted to IMPROVE the game they wouldnt âreworkâ heroes they reworked some time ago where they really got awesome. Raynor ist really fun and Valla is awesome as she is NOW. To âreworkâ hides the fact that they want to delete her.
So much wasted time not even to program this but also the time people made conferences and thought this would be a good idea. Why not foucs on something useful in the last month? Maybe switchting chrismas boxes to summerboxes?
Edit: âGuys here and at blizzardâŚdo you really think loans will help the game? Do you ever play on ranks gold, silver, bronze?â Some guys here think that youâll get punished when you die is fine because they think it is YOUR fault when you die. They are wrong. They dont see whats happening on those low random ranks. Sure, you can stay back, play safe and i had severals lost games with 0 death on my side only hiding at spawn point when the last 3 keeps went downâŚso 0 death, loan saved, game lost. But when you go out there, try to win in your random group, you ALWAYS risk a life, especially as melee assassin or when your ranked group dont take heal. So think about it. And dont bring it live! I really dont understand HOW guys can get those ideas. Do they really want making them loose their own jobs? Youâll see the numbersâŚwhen enough people quit the game after this awful patch going live, wellâŚsome more employees not needed, right? Or is this decision made by one of the bosses to break this sâŚstorm loose to justify someâŚfiring in the future time? Who knows 
Raynor RIP, Valla RIP RIP 
(this really hurts meâŚvalla )
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Ok, for fairness sake, they will have âhalfâ a talent after 13 deaths.
Better than a permanent 0 stack Convection Kael.
It somehow looks like an inverse quest where you lose stacks on conditions. This is bound to be either snowbally or frustrating.
Definitely; trade-off talents like Alarak has are fine with me though.
This is simply not true.
Hereâs how Johannaâs loan talent reads in the patchnotes:
(New) Divine Fortress [Passive]
- Loan: Instantly gain 20% maximum Health. Every death reduces this bonus by 5%.
- Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes grant 8 Physical Armor for 2.5 seconds, stacking up to 40.
âEvery death reduces this bonus by 5%.â
Loan talents can only lose the bonus they grant. Johannaâs Divine Fortress talent grants 20% additional maximum health, and 1/4th of that bonus is lost every death.
You cannot lose more than the bonus granted by the loan talent (and if you can itâs a bug).
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I havenât tested it, but I am certain that is the case.
Loan talents are just reverse-quest talents, and just like quest talents can only gain progress after being selected (unless specified, like Zanshin is), loan talents can only lose progress after being selected.
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I think talents like Wizened Duelist are already close enough to such loan talent. But with a major advantage that doesnt create too much issues.
The major diffirence is: the bonus isnt permanently lost, but has to be reobtained. But reobtaining can be difficult.
To get this to become a loan talent, rather than starting at 0 stacks, it could just have been 10 stacks, or even full stacks. That way bad plays are going to quickly reduce the bonus again, while good plays allow you to stack/preserve it in case they died.
For johannaâs 20% hp, this could be a 5% reduction on death, with 1% recovered automaticly every minute that she is alive (too many deaths and the bonus just wont recover). While potentialy even the additional condition can be added that she has to hit punish against 3 targets to gain another percentage (allows faster recovery).
I like the idea of being able to regain the bonus on loan talents. Thatâs an interesting concept.
In terms of game design Raynors level 20 talent Execute carries him. Without it heâs a poor hero with it heâs powerful. So instead of reworking him to where he can be a good hero all around without a level 20 talent, they nerf his base stats balance talents around and try to force feed us his giveâem some pepper when its not a good trait to begin with. So without his execute and without a straight up buff heâs a goner.
Iâm literally thinking about downloading league because on top of the poor game design, a toxic community of players who donât care to play well, and unbalanced heroes in qm like Li-ming and butcher this games dead. They canât even be bothered to remove the christmas event after being up for 6 months.
Vallaâs Creed of Hunter got a major buff and by 2 deaths it works exactly as the previous iteration while at it the DPS per hate increase is a buff instead of locking it to 100 AAs = 20% damage, the loan talents are actually fine in balancing power, especially when some of em target really terrible ones that have been in constantly under used or considered terrible (in that case Raynorâs Veteran Marksmen was never picked and it always around him being a macro hero or the CC and as mentioned Vallaâs AA is considered super niche as it get out DPSed by W build and she has been mainly picked for either W or Q depending on being a 4-man or racing respectively).
I think to assume they are bad is really an understatement especially when the patch hasnât been out for couple of days.
Loan are high risk but also high reward in the right execution, it rewards players for properly taking their own risks with and punishes those who over judge what they can and cannot.
And people feeding out of their minds with certain heroes is nothing common, vegetarian butcher or sad sadism alarak or galaxy brain convection with 0 stacks Kaelthas or touchable untouchable tracer (especially pre rework lmao) are things that still persistent in punishing people for taking large risks, so what exactly is the problem with loans in this process?
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Butcherâs trait kind of already is a âloanâ trait (though he doesnât get stuff in advance as a loan). And plenty of people fail to take advantage of it.
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Nonsense. They cancelled Heroes of the Dorm and the global championships over 2 years ago. Safe to say they fully recognized this even before then.
This wall of text really makes no sense at all. They want to delete Valla? Really?? All the complaining without having even tried it out in a live game.
Oh, and by the way, the game is available for free. FREE. And you moan like they owe you something. No one is forcing you to play, or even pay for it.
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Exactly. There are many, many examples of things in the game now where you lose benefit when you die, such as Animal Husbandry with Rex, or Alarakâs entire set of extra damage bonues. Why havenât people complained about all of these things that have already been in the game for a long time?
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The issue then is that, unless the talents were shown to be significantly underpowered, they would have to tone down the maximum power of them to balance the benefit of regaining them, and Iâm sure people would howl even more about them.
I think the big difference is that no quest already in the game causes you to lose something and be unable to regain it for the match.
AFAIK the only thing that costs something permanently similar to Loan Talents is Alarakâs âHasty Bargainâ, but that one is very different because you have to manualy activate it, so itâs not punishing you for dying.
(there are other talents that have a negative, such as Li Mingâs âGlass Cannonâ, but it doesnât repeatedly make you weaker).
Personally, Iâd be perfectly fine with Loan Talents if they provided a means to recover what you lost. Like I said in another post, Raynorâs kinda does this, since the (uncapped) quest component and the loan component affect the same thing.
I think youâre looking at these talents wrong. They do not make you any weaker, they just make you less strong. Thereâs a difference. You donât lose anything by picking a loan talent.
Being able to regain the benefits would defeat the purpose, since youâre getting a benefit thatâs way above the talentâs tier. It would just be an overpowered autopick if you could regain the bonus.
Also, comparisons to Convection arenât fair. Itâs a trash talent that gives you no benefits whatsoever until you finish a difficult quest. Loan talents give you an immediate benefit, making it harder to actually lose the effect by default.
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