So they announced forever ago, so I’m not sure additional has been given out during the time frame, but Blizzard they were redesigning the class system forever ago into this: Bruiser, Tank, Ranged Assassin, Melee Assassin, Support, Healer.
Initially, my qualm with this was the lack of the specialist role (which they could have easily called siege). However, Blizzard clearly took a direction with several specialist reworks, and frankly a lot of non-specialist characters have great wave clear and sieging damage without being traded any team fight potential.
However, I still have one qualm with the list above: the assassin category. It’s both redundant and not as split as I feel it should be. For one ‘ranged’ and ‘melee’ is already categorized in game. Secondly, it fails to compensate the difference between burst damage and sustained damage, and the role of ambushers vs backline.
Here’s how I’d do it: split ‘assassin’ into not two, but three categories.
DPS (Call it hunter or marksman). These are the character that have high auto attack damage at a range (Raynor, Lunara, Zul’jin, Sergeant Hammer, Cassia, Tychus, Hanzo, Valla, Fenix, Sylvanas, Falstad, Greymane, Zagara). They’re the people you expect to be in the back dealing consistent damage.
Mage. These are the characters that rely on ability to damage to attack in bursts (Probius, Azmodan, Jaina, Thrall, Kel’Thuzad, Kael’thas, Alarak, Ragnaros, Nazeebo, Chromie, Orphea, Mephisto, Gul’dan, Junkrat, Li-Ming, Gall from Cho’Gall).
Assassin. These are your ambushers, gankers, and currently melee assassins who rely on taking out specific targets or having a specialization on the battlefield. (Malthael, Zeratul, Kerrigan, Xul, Butcher, Illidan, Valeera, Maiev, Nova, Samuro, Tracer, Genji).
I think this better clarifies each role than the previous ‘melee and ranged’ assassin deal they initially had planned.
Not all mages are burst damage, though. Gul’dan, Nazeebo, and Lunara are all sustained damage, from abilities rather than AAs. Honestly, there is no good way to categorize the heroes that will always be 100% useful, so it is better to err on the side of simplicity than complexity, especially if these roles will be used for things such as building QM teams.
Roles are for QM and I won’t feel punished for having a DPS/Mage in my team while the enemy has the other.
The only purpose of that (QM) rule is to make random teams be almost impossible to be full melee.
Plus as Hoku said, you can’t really make good categorizations for (needlessly) splitting Assassins.
Just look at your categories:
First, every ranged Assassin (except Greymane, Tracer and Genji) stays in the backline.
Second, Valla has burstmage builds (more meta atm than her AA build) same for Zul’jun and Hanzo. Tychus almost melee, Cassia isn’t as reliable for sustained dmg as the others, she also dives for burst.
Mephisto, Gul’dan, Junkrat are sustained dmg. Not burst. S bit Orphea as well since her only true burst is W and that’s a big commitment.
Plus you put a lot of bruiser lvl assassins into these categories. Not preventing the MM from making full melee teams.
Well, first off, Lunara is definitely a marksman in that sense. However, I would consider Nazeebo and Gul’dan to be bursts still. It may be ticking damage, but it’s still heavy damage that’s put on a cooldown. It’s not that I want something to be 100% suitable, it’s that the current idea… just doesn’t help at all.
Karabars, your second point is fair. Thrall is much more a hard hitting bruiser, when I think of it, and Alarak is an assassin by my definition. However, my assessment of what counts as a marksman much more goes into not what’s meta, but what their auto-attack damage is. Those characters have heavy ranged attacks that deal larger amounts of damage than the bulk of the cast. Even they have burst builds, your focus and job with them is ALSO to be taking poke shots in the back line.
Except for maybe Tychus, I didn’t feel comfortable putting him in the assassin category. He’s in this odd little niche of ‘tank killer’ that Malthael is also in. And yes, there are ‘tank killer’ talents for other characters, but tank killer is built into these two’s kits, basically.
Help what, though? Help a new player decide what to draft and when? Help the QM team-building algorithm decide which heroes should be matched against each other? Your categories don’t really help either one of those. For example, Lucio is a reasonable healer to pit against Gul’dan and Nazeebo, and fairly terrible against Li Ming or Jaina. Uther is strong against Kel’thu-FREAKING-zad, and horrible against Lunara. However, you lumped all of those mages together, which makes it actually harder to match healers to these comps, rather than easier.
No, to help a brand new player understand their role in the game. Yes, there are nuances. The hero classification is not to talk about the nuances. It’s to give a cursory understand of what the character should do when in game.
It’s not about understanding the picks, what counters them, and what synergizes. It’s “Here’s this hero, here’s a basic idea of what they’re gonna do.” Gul’dan and Nazeebo are not marksman or assassin because while their damage is sustain, it comes from abilities that go on to cooldown. You’re not going to using a nazeebo poke auto attacks at the tank.
The thing is, the current categories already do that. Does adding more options really make it easier for a new player to understand? For example, if you put Greymane in the DPS category, rather than assassin, a new player will miss out on his real strengths in a team fight in favor of poking at the tank with his ranged AAs. If you put Ragnaros in the mage category, people will not be taking advantage of his self-sustain to handle certain solo lane matchups.
Like I said, there is no “best way” to split up the heroes, every break down will be a compromise, and for newer players, simpler will always be better.
It doesn’t really define the strong difference between tanks and bruisers, much to the point where my early time was spent unaware that Artanis was not a tank (New to MOBA) and that going what I thought was a solo tank build (keep in mind was before rework back when shield overload was a lvl 16 talent) was not a good idea, or that Zarya is not a good tank despite her impressive shielding capabilities.
It doesn’t really define the WIDE difference between a ranged DPS backline in a ganker like Tracer.
Hell, it’s not even good at defining a traditional support. You know how many times before her rework I was told “Tyrande, your healing is awful!”, and that’s not even getting into Tassadar, Medivh (who isn’t a support though he should be), and every other hero in the distinctly wrong category.
Yes, there’s a bunch of asterisks, and frankly, I think characters being considered multi-class should be more of a thing because of it (e.g. Greymane being a marksman and assassin, and Thrall being both a mage and a bruiser). However, Blizzard has already discussed re-categorizing this, so are you against the dev team’s decision of breaking up the categories further? I’m talking about one decision to split ‘ranged’ and ‘melee’ assassin being absurdly vague. Again, literally every other MOBA uses these categories, but putting them in hots is suddenly too complicated?
When you joined, most tanks and bruisers were just simply “Warriors” with a symbol of a Shield.
But now it shows the difference already with the role symbols:
You won’t think Artanis is a tank anymore.
They reworked Tyrande to be a classic Healer, again, well defined in the new role system. Tassadar and Medivh are Supports (new support-support, so not a healer). It is clear.
Why should Thrall be a “mage-bruiser”? Because ability dmg and cd? So Sonya and Chen are mage-bruisers as well?
In an idol team you have: 1 tank to protect, 1 healer to heal, 1 ranged assassin so not all your main dmg source is locked into melee and 2 flex which can be extra protection, dmg or supportive powers, depending on your needs.
Not that complicated but unneccessary.
HotS has more wildcards than the other mobas.
Let’s use Mage Naz as an example. "Our team needs a mage -someone with burst-. Newby picks Naz since it said he’s a mage and mage = burst, even he knows this little “rule”. Your team has no burst.
Let the game have basic roles and use the ingame description for the details.
Personally, I am not thrilled with the breakdown, but it is better than it was, especially as they move forward with the changes to specialists and removal of that role. For new players specifically, I would rather see fewer roles instead of more, but better explanations in the mouseover tooltips when you select a hero to purchase or select. So while Alarak and Murky would be in the same melee category due to the fact that their AAs are melee range, hovering over the character would give a brief explanation of their purpose in a team comp.
“Melee assassin” would indicate to the new player that your job is to primarily kill people, and you will often be close to an enemy to do so. That is really all they would need to know to decide whether or not they should consider picking that hero, then they could see more details for each one.
And no, literally every other MOBA does not use the categories you listed. The last time I looked into LoL, they had 5 roles, as opposed to the 7 that would be in play if your options were used, of which only two were assassin based. Maybe that has changed in the past few years, but I am pretty sure that they weren’t broken down by damage type, but rather where on the map and in the team they were played.
Yes, I’m aware the NEW system clarifies the difference for the most part. My point was to counter the idea that the current system is fine (It’s not, hence why Blizzard is changing it).
Again, you keep griping the complicated nuances, but even Blizzard’s proposal doesn’t fix that at all. Murky is a melee assassin? Vikings are support? Yes, I get that from a differing perspective, these categories make sense, but a glance, they don’t.
This is also considering that the ‘ranged’ assassin is so hilariously broad and out of place. Nova effectively has the same job as Zeratul and Valeera, kill out of position and weaker targets. Yet, she’s considered a ‘ranged assassin’ because she has a ranged attack. Same with Tracer and Genji, who are considered ranged assassins… because they have a ranged attack…
Finally, if we’re talking about necessity, none of this is necessary. Frankly, you could suffice with no classifications and just put descriptions if you want to be concise about it. Though, your second point I will grant, but even the wildcards don’t fit into Blizz’s new implementations. Heroes like Lost Vikings and Abathur fit into a category all their own.
The only 3 things i disagree here are
Blaze tank
Alarak melee
Tlv support ( i would put them as bruisers but it is pretty hard to classify them and that is a personnal opinion)
False. LoL has 6 categories: Warrior, Tank, Mage, Assassin, Marksman, Support. I think you’re thinking jobs, which hots really doesn’t need because of shared xp as well as diversified maps. The only reason they have six is because support is an all encompassing role. Smite has 5: Warrior, assassin, mage, hunter, guardian (furloughing support entirely by weaving their ‘healers’ between guardians and mages).
This makes sense, honestly, as healers in hots play a much more significant role. Hots, however, is the only moba to not separate its DPS from its mages and assassins. What does that amount to? An assassin role that’s 3 times as large as any other category in the current system.
Like I said, it was a few years ago the last time I looked, so I am not surprised I got it wrong. However, your is still more complex than it needs to be for HotS.
No. It’s not burst if you can shield/bubble/heal through some/most/all of it. It’s the exact opposite of burst. The fact that it can be very heavy damage at times (e.g. - Naz late game with 175+ stacks) is irrelevant.
Then i do not see why he shouldn’t be matched with heroes good at laning who are mostly in the bruiser category.
Picking Alarak and being matched vs all those melee + sonya+ thrall+xul+dva was so balanced before that he got a matchmaking rule. why revert it when it was an issue before?
Bruiser, melee and ranged has all Heroes that are good at laning. He’ll probably be put against Heroes with good laning capabilities. And it’s not like Blaze is a lane bully or something.
