I never post on the forums or reddit, but this change drove me here. I am glad you are looking for feedback. I hate this change, it has made the game worse overall for me. Objectively, (as you pointed out) it does not align with design intentions of map objectives. It feels like adding a rule where the map objectives are prioritized is just another card in the house of cards being built.
I like the core changes, definitely fun and in the spirit of the game
if sustained tower dives are the problem – considering the old system for a second, the team being dove probably lacked wave clear ( drafting problem ) and was fighting a really uneven fight (learned behavior issue). Neither of these are problems with the towers or something the towers can really solve holistically.
the real problem is that there is no tool to help you be aggressive with (e.g. minion wave) for a short duration.
a simple change that i feel is in the spirit of the game might be
put the old towers/forts back entirely, fort & keep shots become buff to AOE damage when 1 hero is present, possibly ramping damage with more heroes present (could communicate this with larger effects, etc) – keep the line to show who is being targeted.
this accomplishes the goal of not breaking objectives, allowing for aggressive plays and slightly making up for a teams potential lack of wave clear. If tower dives are still a problem (i never saw it as one personally) add an armor shred up to 15-20% (or higher but would need to consider removing the slow)
The vocal minority will say they hate the new anomaly. The truth is that the implementation was poor but defensive advantage is good for the game and the majority of the playerbase. Now that the DOT issue is resolved the main thing to focus on is buffing certain objectives until they feel “too strong”. If people are complaining about John Cena again… that’s when you got it right.
Also, there is a general lack of high level skill expression and imaginative play in the community. That is to be expected once funding for competitive stopped. It would be nice for Blizz/Acti to put a few dollars into keeping some semblance of competitive play alive in Eu and Korea at the very least.
Firstly yeah I love the new core changes, like you say it brings some flavour to the maps!
I like the current tower changes, overall I think it keeps you safe but it’s still capable to get a finishing kill if you approach it right. I’d be happy for it to stay as is, though some of the points made are valid too, particularly about merc and objective pushing.
Could a method exist where mercs and objectives ‘debuff’ the towers/keeps? Perhaps mercs reduce their attack speed by 20% and objectives reduce it by 40% (as an example), so mercs push a little harder both alone and with teams, then objectives allow a harder push, but still provides some protection to defenders if someone dives too hard.
Could handle less of an armor reduction too as a lot of people bring that up, but don’t mind that anyway
I have no intelligent feedback to give, but I have to say it’s really nice to see the team ask for it and interact with the community. That’s cool, keep it up.
(and if you could pay a visit to your collegues on the Warcraft 3 project to teach them how to communicate like you, it would be nice, thank you)
When you don’t have any good arguments and are just saying that this is too punishing and that is impossible - then yes, it’s a waste of time. Yours and mine.
First: I like the current state of the aggro. after the last patch fixes it became more predictable for attackers too.
But if i would suggest a change, i would go for following: give the forts, keeps and 2nd tier towers the ability to do splash dmg to non-heroes (like Fury of the Storm) for a limited amount of time, when the ally is around. in return limit the area of aggro to 2/3 of their reach for all structures except core. I think this would help with unintentional aggro from attackers splash dmg, while helping clearing the minions faster and switch to heroes on regular ruleset earlier might help too.
Yay! I have no reason to ever come back to the game again! Thank you blizzard!!! I had quit and uninstalled the game since the small back pedaling of tower aggro with the May 6th patch.
I just have to mention that the reddit thread has significantly more intelligent arguments for removing this anomaly. If you are not reading it, please do. I dont want to repeat them as they are numerous, but i would like to mention that just because you take the anomaly away for a season, doesn’t mean it cant comeback with tweaks. Maybe we need a little time with it reverted to see the value in it as you mention.
Hello devs.
For me, the aggro thing is not a good option for HotS. All heroes are design for years around the gameplay we used to have before (spells that work on buildings, many passiv aoe kit…).
The waveclear is an important kit on a hero in this game : as a defender (to give our towers/fort the oportunity to target heroes) and also as an attaker for obvious reasons.
Thats why i like more the fact that towers and fort deal a crap load of damages when, as a defender, u succed to waveclear all potential minor targets and make your defenses focus heroes in order to punish them.
I think the armor thing is good on heroes (maybe too good) but really bad on objectivs (like on dragonshire, volskaya) where they get destroy and then dont reward enough or at all the team who gets it.
Maybe make the armor debuff tick directly at -25% max for a fort. And -10% max for each tower who hits. With this way, objectivs dont get crush like nowadays, but the team in defense can punish super fast a hero who dive carelessly.
By the way, core changes are super cool I like it a lot. But I think some don’t get as threaning as they should be like in Tomb of the spiders. And plz put the same debuff when the core hits like every fort and towers. It make no sence that the core hits less than a tower at this point.
Anyway thx for the good work and community talk you do.
Sorry for the bad english and i hope you will always try to make this awesome game still thrilling as it deserve.
I cannot commend the team enough for asking for feedback on this issue, more of this please! It gives a better idea of your guys train of thought and also insight as to what you’ve tried already internally.
IMO i believe option 3 is where the core of the issue lies: You want to punish people who chase after heros under the structures but without downright annihilating them either. I think 2 good examples of this highlight my point: Tracer and Muradin.
As an attacking Tracer you want to dive under towers, smack enemys a few times and if it’s not enough, then retreat. If the towers decide to target me first as i dive in with my team, i should be punished for this as an assassin. However if a Muradin does the same atm, a much tankier hero, he wont survive more then 1-2 extra shots before he is toast. I don’t believe this should be the case. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
On the other hand, if we’re deffending against an invading force as Mura/Tracer (just to keep the examples similar) 5vs2 we should be able to rely on the towers atleast punshing fast assasins who takes 1 too many shots because their tank isn’t tanking them.
I guess my feedback boils down to:
Finding the sweet spot where you make sure squishy heros who overstep like Zerathul and Tracer gets punished without getting 1 shot while tanks can in fact tank the towers without their healthpool dissapearing within seconds because of a shot and something else happening at the same time to them, like ricochet at lvl 16 from tracer hitting Muradin from the building
Just to get to know me better i mainly do supports/ranged dmg as i am not much of a diver myself.
I have not yet read others’ posts, as that will take a while, but I still want to give some input:
Option - Structures prioritise objectives:
I like that one, though I only have subjective input. To me, it just feels odd having structures ignore the big boss to shoot puny heroes. Especially on the Diablo maps, the objective has this air of “Let us march for hell’s gates”… And then the heroes hide like cowards as they might draw structure aggro which is lethal. Then there is the opposite approach highlighted by Hoku: Intentionally drawing structure aggro to let the objective live longer. While it’s an interesting tactic, it also makes the duration how long the objective lives volatile.
So yes, please have structures focus objective bosses.
Option - Towers work as they did in the past:
I am a big fan of this one. You highlighted well how much smaller the safe area of the map is right now. The laning phase now revolves almost exclusively around your own half of the lane, which is pretty boring. Also, just like in the option above, it feels cowardly to push with an objective but staying back since one might hit a hero and immediately get targeted by 2 towers.
Option - reduce armor shred speed:
This is something that I played around with. In my opinion, the armor shreds too fast. Say you push with an objective (see the common argument here?) and you stand slightly behind the enemy gate. You accidentally hit an enemy hero - and all of the sudden 1 fort and 1-2 towers would like to have a word with you. Even if you realize immediately and back off, you are guaranteed to eat 2 shots per structure, giving you -30 armor in less than 2 seconds. That’s too harsh. Letting the debuff stack at -3 or -2 per shot would be much more manageable.
I think you can already see how my 3 preferred options all revolve around similar situations and applying them all would probably be overkill. Still, at the current state, getting targeted by 3 structures is devastating and will pretty much require you to hearth, even with a healer around. That’s not fun. And there is a good chance of this happening during an objective push.
I would say increase the Hit Points of Structures in order Objectives will be more important then just pushing lanes and structures as per says, or increasing Spell Armor to make them more tough against mage with High Range.
According to Nexus Anomaly, i like all changes you ve made. But still need improvements, yes games could be longer about 5min more but the game will be more team based. Try to tweak the game in order it will not lookslike to other Moba, HOTS is HOTS and in HOTS we need everyone in the team to win a freaking game
Strongly support option 2. It would keep objectives like TotSQ and Garden valuable early as it is currently very difficult to get value from them when towers are still up.
Concerning dive, heroes like Illidan and Genji can counter the damage from all 3 sources anyway with their abilities so it would not affect too much.
Increased potential for skill and playmaking in the solo lane and late game pushes is surely never a bad thing. The complexity bump seems pretty minor, the aggro changes made it much more complex themselves and only having one structures range and aggro to consider seems to me to offset it entirely.
