Mount Traits [Concept]

General Discussion
1

I was thinking that while the game should retain itself from adding items, it can still offer the players a bit more options to the way they play.
So the mount traits would work like: You go to the hero’s loadout and pick the trait you want to use. And during the game, you will have the trait you have picked.
They can either be all unlocked by default, or there can be like 3 unlocked by deafault and others can be obtainable.

As for the traits themselves:

  • Increases your mount speed by 5-10%
  • Reduces mounting delay by 50-100% (the latter being instant mounting)
  • Reduces mounting cooldown by 2-3 sec.
  • You can’t be dismounted for 1-2 sec right after mounting.
  • You can’t be dismounted by minions
  • You have unobstructed vision in 4-8 units radius around you while mounted.
  • You have 25-50 armor while mounted (the dismounting attack deals less damage)
  • You have 10-20% increased ability power for 1-2 seconds after dismounting.
  • You have 10-20% increased basic attack damage for 1-2 seconds after dismounting.
  • You move 30% faster, fading over 2-3 sec, after dismounting/being dismounted.

Stuff like that :stuck_out_tongue:
I’ve suggested something similar in the past, but it was quite a while ago, and the idea “evolved” as time passed, and now it’s different from what I had suggested before.

Problems I see with it are: Brightwing, Dehaka, Abathur, Falstad, Medivh, Rehgar and Yrel.

The 1-st 4 wouldn’t benefit from such change and may need a small buff to compensate. Or perhaps they can get their own versions for the mount traits.

Medivh would get lots of benefits from faster mounting, so this option should be locked for him, but I don’t believe that the other options will make him overpowered.

While Rehgar has instant mounting and is undismountable by default and he will get LOTS of value from the reduced mount cooldown as his mount gives him other benefits too. Perhaps the traits should be locked for him, and he should get a small buff to compensate for that.

As for Yrel, she has this talent, allowing her to mount instantly, which can allow her to abuse some of these powers more so than other heroes. I think that locking some of the traits for Yrel would be the best solution :stuck_out_tongue:

2

HotS is not a racing game :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
Some of these stats are too big for just a “mount buff”, if you dont want to shake balance and make game too easy, it should be like 5% ap/ad.
Probably everyone would pick minion dismounting protection though.
Also you don’t know how these changes would affect general gameplay and community, for better or worse, without extensive testing.
Maybe it would make more sense if beasts give armor, horses speed, magic mounts mana regen.
But i still think is a bit pointless, as you can’t fight on mount.
This would make a cool brawl:


But WIII remaster soon coming out so…

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3

While the idea may be good, in the end there will be little to no choice: everybody will be just copypasting the most efficient setup from the pros.

1 Like
4

And then the heroes with a fixed mount or no mount would either be screwed or be OP because they’d have baseline buffs not tied to their W key and they would trump most heroes as long as they prevent them to Channel their mounts.

2 Likes
5

RIP 140% mount speed, miss you.

I need this.

And this.

I appreciate you trying to help the game by coming up with ideas, but I don’t think some of the community will respond positively about this.

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6

I won’t mind this as long there is a penality, for example you cannot be unmounted by minions, but your mount is 5% - 10% slower as a result.

7

My initial idea was to give each mount a specific trait. However, that would force players to use a mount they may not like in order to get the trait that they want, which wasn’t welcome by the community.

What pros? :smiley:
Anyways… I’m not sure, but I feel that even they will chose their trait base on the hero they are playing :stuck_out_tongue:

Not necessarily. While they may indeed feel left behind if they don’t receive any changes, the mount traits don’t seem significant enough (or at least their uptime during the game isn’t so big) for major balancing issues. So the compensating buffs can be just something like “+20-30 HP, or +1-2 b.a.d.”

8

For that, you can still restrict certain mount types to be used. Or provide additional features. For example you can disable certain types for certain heroes, and enable types for others.

For dehaka and falstad, the dismount effects are simply also valid after using their global, even though they never actualy had a mounting part going on. The dismount by minions is simply disabled for medivh (still plenty of options remaining). And for reghar the armor is also disabled for obvious reasons.

And that means you can also add things like:

  • Shorter cooldown on the global (10% reduction), for fallstad and dehaka this is about 6 seconds worth.
  • During mounting you become unstoppable (would work on fallstad, would be OP on rehgar and so its disabled for him, and for abathur and dehaka it would be the unburrow part only - the burrow itself MUST remain vulnerable as otherwise this would become a free unstoppable cast without risks).
  • Getting interupted does not put your mounting on cooldown (limits to once per 30 seconds to allow multiple interupts)
  • Succesfully using your global heals you for 10% of your max hp.

But even though this idea is original, i dont think its going to work out very well since in most cases its only going to be a very few options that will be used often (since for each hero, its generaly just 1 or 2 things that realy work well). Which then is better to be used as trait. I can imagine many assassins going for damage, or mount speed to provide a gap closer, since that is all that matters for those heroes.
And this means even more rebalancing has to take place, since for hero A, 1 second reduction is balanced, while for an other hero 1.5s is. Better spend those resources on something else since there are plenty of heroes that already need a rework/buff/nerf.

9

I’m not sure about the part where only 1-2 things will work well. The way I see it, all of the options are perfectly viable.
Faster mounting = you no longer wonder if it’s worth to mount up, or you’ll use up more time while mounting than you’ll win by the mount speed.
Reduced mount cd = you can go to a lane (mounted), use 1-2 abilities to clear the wave and mount right back up instantly. You have no idea how many times I’ve been annoyed at the mount cooldown in situations just like that one.
1-2 Sec undismountable = you can mount up while being chased, and even if enemy manages to hits you once, you may still be able to escape. Also I’m often dismounted by minions the moment I mount up, so this will help with that too.
Undismountable by minions = you can mount freely around minion waves, and you can go from bot lane to top one (or vice versa) without worrying that you’ll get dismounted while passing the mid one.
Unobstructed vision = you can scout bushes and obstacles while mounted, without having to worry about ambushes. (I believe that this will be one of the most picked options, especially in pro games)
Armor while mounted = you can mount up to block part of (for example) Pyroblast’s damage
Increased ability power = you can burst down enemies faster.
Increased b.a.d. = you can burst down enemies faster.

So yeah… Everything seems good for some situation, and personally I can’t see a clear winner, and will be using different trait on different heroes.
As for the increased movespeed; 10% is really minor. Malthael can increase his mount speed by 20% and he still reaches a lane just ~1-2 sec before his team.
So I think this will be the most overrated option :stuck_out_tongue: But I’d still like to see it.

10

There should only be one mount trait, outside of hero traits.

I 100% support allowing mounts to give the player a 30% bonus movement speed buff when your use them. Mostly because they already do that!

3 Likes
11

Another one of those discussion threads on adding something into the game, where my reaction is simply…
Did you even think about how some of these impact interactions in the game.
And did you do any research to see how mounts have been modified over the years.

Anyhow, on to a response…

There are heroes with talents such as. I don’t believe any of them are on tier 1, so they are a fairly high power level talent.

why do mounts have cooldowns… So you cannot do this exact thing. It’s almost like unmounting is meant to be a choice. If you unmount accidentally, or realize it was a bad choice… you’re “punished” by having to wait a few seconds to mount up again.

knowing when to mount when you’re running away, and when to not is a skill. It requires predicting how the other team will act, and react accordingly.
By mounting you take an risk, informed by your knowledge.
This gets rid of that.

And has a cascading impact on how interactions work…
Can you be slowed?
can you be stunned?
can you be rooted?

These two both go together, and I’ll just quote the developer from a couple of a years ago explaining why mount movement speeds were reduced.

If you don’t understand how being minions not being able to dismount you ties in to this… Please say so and I’ll explain it in more detail in a response.

Do I really have to explain how insanely overpowered this would be?

Did you even think about it?

… again, do I have to explain this one?
Because it literally only matters if you would be hit by a big nuke, that gives you time to mount.
It’s a bad ability to add because it basically has two modes of operation:

  1. does practically nothing
  2. weakens an ultimate to the point it is terrible.

Number 1 is, whatever. Number 2… there are indeed some basic abilities which can “counter” ultimates. Mostly against triple tap, pyroblast, etc. Talents such as Varian’s “protect” or various “Ice Block” talents.

Giving nearly every single hero a way to counter such nukes is a hilariously bad idea.

Because you need to give the ability for heroes such as Chromie to get a free 20% spell power on their casts?

Because Butcher needs to be able to deal more AA damage? Or tracer?

2 Likes
12

Lunara not even mentioned PepeHands

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13

Don’t force people into having to collect mounts for unique attributes like they have to collect heroes. And would mount selections have to be added to draft selections along with heroes or taken into account when doing QM matchmaking? Having mounts with unique abilities would just make the game even harder to balance. I strongly oppose such a change.

14

Probius isn’t mentioned either :smiley: But yeah… pretty much 3 ways to solve the balance issue:

  • unique hero-specific traits
  • lock part of her traits for the hero
  • minor baseline buff to the hero

Did you even read the OP?

@PlanarChaos of course I think :slight_smile: Just because I have an idea doesn’t make me stupid. And I was even playing the game back when mounts still had 40% speed.

The only hero I can think of atm with “faster mounting” talent is Yrel. And while her talent is indeed useful, it’s not what players will be getting. She gets an increased speed, fading over time, so even if she is dismounted, she still gets benefit from it, while the mount trait version doesn’t offer such use. You can only flee from combat once you are at a fairly safe distance from the enemy, without having to worry for them catching up with you as soon as you mount.

While reduced mount cd can indeed be useful, it will be a “waste of trait” for good players. If you don’t like it, then just don’t take it. However, if a player is “bad” as you describe things, they will take that trait and will miss out the bonuses from some other, more useful trait. So they will still have a disadvantage, even if their “weakness” has been covered.

Just consider mounting as getting 30% speed buff. So yeah, you can be slowed, stunned and rooted while being undismountable.

And while I see the point of the devs why they reduced mount speed, I still have to say: Players will still have tough decision making, as they will have to sacrifice another great trait to just get this “easier decisionmaking ingame”. Hell… even the devs said the change wasn’t significant… you will only save up to 1-2 sec of traveling time trough half of the map.

Ofc I know how OP unobstructed vision can be. That’s why I limited it to just 4-8 units around you. So you can still get in danger, but you still get some benefit from the trait.

As for the armor, it can work like: get 5 armor every second after mounting up, stacking up to 75. This way it will not be so useless, and it will be unable to “block” abilities like Pyroblast.

The ability power and increased damage last only 1-2 sec, so they would be only good for 1-2 abilities/basic attacks. Furthermore, you can dismount the Butcher before he reaches you, so he may not even get a single hit before the bonus expires. The b.a.d. damage is better for ranged heroes, which usually don’t deal all that much b.a.d.

2 Likes
15

I don’t think you are stupid.
I just do not believe you put the time into considering the various ripple effects of things you suggest would result in. Perhaps I am incorrect.

I lack time now, but will have a response in some 6-10 hours clarifying some points I made… instead of some simplistic responses to abilities which I should have not done.

The Lost Vikings were not mentioned either, lol.
They need some Rock n Roll racers (well, one Rock n Roll racer) to help bring them back to relevance!

2 Likes
16

I just wish to reiterate, my belief is that you did not spend enough time considering the consquences or changes in the game that many of the things you suggest would cause.

I did not mean to say or imply you were stupid. My apologies.

Hanzo can also instantly mount, but it is tied to his trait. It also gives him a burst of 20% movement speed when mounting any time for 5 seconds.

But the point is players will be getting extra movement speed. Something that was patched out.

No, the movement speed is only when mounted. If you are dismounted your movement speed instantly becomes 100%.

I’m not against QoL changes, but what we’re talking about isn’t a “get your workers to mine minerals ASAP when the game starts”. We’re talking about understanding if you should dismount and do things, or continue to your original destination.

But that is not how mounting is implemented.
How it is implimented could be changed, but that would also require changing how at least two abilities work. Yrel’s and Hanzo’s. And I am sure there are more with odd interactions with mount.

Even at 4 units, that is super powerful.

so, like almost every other

So enough to give tracer even higher burst damage later on.
Or let dragon blast (er, whatever it’s called forgot sorry) nuke for even more.

Yeah, butcher was a terrible example of me to give.

Hanzo? Fenix with aoe attack? Zul’jin? Artanis with charge active? varian with Col. smash?

Honestly, adding this into the game would just be messy. There would be a couple of optimal choices depending on the hero and the map.
as you note in the opening, some heroes need to be looked at individually because of how they could abuse parts of this.

It also appears from my knowledge, to be something that would require a hefty chunk of developer time. For something that doesn’t really need to be added, and would limit design space for new heroes/reworks.

I understand the desire to have something like this. I would love to be able to “tinker” with each hero to adjust some small aspects of how they work, to make my life easier, or just to make a hero better at doing something.

17

I’m liking some of these ideas, while some not so much. As a rule of thumb, I don’t think mounting should have any interaction with damage, because due to how diverse the hero pool is, the effects can be either extreme or inconsequential.

I think a passive 5% increased mount speed is ok, 10% is too much, I like the reduced mounting delay and can’t be dismounted by minions as well.

The unobstructed vision is too op, maybe if it were just increased vision range it would be nice.

Don’t touch the mounting cooldown tho, and armor gives too little value. Think of adding value when you’re on the Mount, and not the befores and afters.

18

Generally more vision = less fun, imo.
If they removed watchtowers, the game would require much more game sense.
The mount changes would make the game easier and more rushed, nothing positive, i know that you want to give people different general feeling about mounts but it just feels really like buffing each hero. And making game that is dynamic even more dynamic is not necessarily good change.
Is how you see people already complain about characters like tracer or genji. Genji got extended jump from mount and now he also get bonus ap as well.
Don’t you think Blizz team didn’t considered it when they come up with mount idea?
I don’t think there is really much we can do with mounts, except character unique kit based, if there was something they would already implemented it in WoW.
What if we give mount abilities, like beast can stomp and requires more hits to dismount and you can jump with horse a little bit, something like this, it would feel like mount is doing something.
Also 2 man mounts, is perfectly possible.