Recently I have been noticing that Bruisers are having a hard time trying to reach the backline, but Alarak, Zeratul, Samuro, and Quira are doing a fine job. All of them are melee assassins and all of them are good against mages and AA assassins, they are able to reach them and punish them. However, the rest of the melee assassins are performing not quite well.
Maiev used to be great but recently I have not seen many Maievs doing great things. I don’t know if the recent talent changes have something to do with her current state but I would like to see her on the top spot again.
Illidan is a little better now but more tiny buffs would help to finally make him a viable option.
Kerrigan is still in a weird spot where she can do interesting things but Alarak is just better.
Valeera has a similar state than Kerrigan. Zeratul just does a better job and there are few reasons to think on pick Valeera.
The Butcher and Gazlowe still feel like part of a different game, there are still trapped on HotS 1.0. They are more unidimensional heroes than Kerri and Gaz even cannot find a real spot on the melee assassin clan.
Murko is just plain weak compared to the other melee assassins, with tons of weakness and counters and few reasons to actually pick him.
In my opinion, if all the melee assassins are placed in a good spot with changes, reworks or buffs then I think we would have an interesting meta-game, but this is just my opinion, what do you think?
The meta is always going to constantly change, the total number of possible team / talent combinations is so vast that it’s physically impossible for the playerbase to have played every hero combination.
That said, melee assassins have always filled two niches: Duelist (usually as ambushers) and backline divers. So it really would be no surprise to me that in a meta where killing the backline becomes a priority that melee assassins see a strong pick rate.
That said, you only have 5 slots on a team. Tank / Healer / Ranged Assassin are 95% guarantees, which really only leaves the last 2 slots open for the last few roles. (Support, Bruiser, Melee Assassin, or a doubling over.)
Melee assassins are the hardest to properly balance since they are either really strong or really weak. They also have high skillcaps compared to other heroes. Making most peoples performance with them rather underwhelming.
That feels like an accurate ranking of the current team fight strengths of Melee Assassins, but I’m confused by your point about Bruisers. You are recommending that underperforming Melee be buffed to the level of the best performers?
You also state the Bruisers are underperforming in this task. Would you like to see the meta team comp have Melee replacing Bruiser in the two flex slots?
I don’t think it has to do with talent changes, but the fact that all of the melee assassins you listed have a safety net. Alarak doesn’t have to commit to staying in melee, and Zeratul, Samuro, and Qhira all have potent escape mechanisms. Maiev, Kerrigan, and Butcher tend to be all-in, and the current meta heavily punishes all-in heroes what with all the CC and burst damage. I believe that is why tanks like Diablo are struggling as well.
Yup, while he is labeled melee his all abilities are some form of ranged. Even Counter Strike sends a very long ranged burst of damage if triggered.
That is why Alarak is such a powerful generalist, he can even be first picked without counters, unlike real melee heroes like Illidan or Butcher who are very easily countered and super niche picks.
On the topic of Butcher, what if the attack speed boost he gets when he completes his trait quest was moved from being locked behind the quest to baseline? It helps with his lackluster early game all the while he’s still the same exact hero when he reaches 200 meat.
The last thing we need is maiev buffs… If we still had hgc she might even get further nerfs. She is in a fairly good spot right now. Considering how stupid her base kit is, I’m glad she’s not in every match.
In general melee assassins tend to snowball games while ahead given the risk/reward nature of their kits. Something of a li ming effect. Because of this, they can be challenging to properly balance and tend to get unfun complaints because of roflstomp capabilities while ahead
Kerrigan and alarak are both opportunists, but alarak is stronger at starting a fight than finishing one, while kerrigan is the opposite (the nature of her combo is different)
I think samuro is mostly a l2p issue and he usually gets complaints whenever he’s decent. If valeera or nova got meaningful buffs you can bet the forums would be pissed.
Valeera is mostly fine. I wouldn’t compete her to Zeratul as she’s not much of a dive hero. You can definitely play for ganks and abuse her invis for a bit of a campy playstyle early game. Works ok. I think if people played vs val more this wouldn’t be nearly as effective. Typically in fights she just waits to follow up on the tanks engage with a silence or to peel. Zera is much more harassment/squishy deletion oriented
Yea I agree with this but whenever butcher becomes slightly decent he gets hit with the nerf bat (remember right after the last rework?) so I’m not sure it’ll actually happen
Not really when reworked kerrigan qhira and Qbuild zeratul made melees too easy to play and accessible to any casual player they kinda broke the game.
Also note that even non accessible melees create teardrops to the max as we can see with the nerf alarak zeratul samuro threads.
Meanwhile we have something ridiculous like jimmy getting buffed.
Pleasing ranged dps (the biggest demographic) is the key to balance and the devs always understood that.
