New Kerrigan is WEAK

why is kerrigan ‘weak’ now? Cuz math.

pre-rework, the typical build was what? sharpened blades, fury of the swarm, bladed momentum, double-strike, aggressive defense.

a q, aa, w, aa, e, aa combo might run something like
210 + (120+90) + 114 + (120+90) + 326 + (120+90) for ~ 1280 dmg (using lvl 0/1 numbers)

current kerrigan actually runs a slightly different combo:
q, aa, w, aa, e, aa, q, aa, e
130 + 115 + 165 + 115 + 25 + 115 + 130 + 115 + 180
for ~ 1090 damage
… but that’s not counting for talents like i did on the first set.
lvl 4 talent choice adds 125-180 extra damage, lvl 16 adds ~190 - 420 damage.

So the whole combo has a higher yield but… the damage is spread out over a longer period of time. The time from e starting and its pulse going off (intended to combo off q) is a few extra seconds an enemy is alive, and while the damage from painful spikes is comparable to the damage double-strike provided, its damage added on after the stun combo, and not during, so that’s more time after the initial set for kerrigan’s attack damage potential to be realized.

as she is right now, she is arguably a bit overnerfed from the backlash patch from her fury one trick, when well, really, part of the biggest issue of that set was how much was stuffed into one talent. Kinda a telling issue when q procs Fury for aoe attack damage where I single attack could match the shield generation of the Siphoning impact talent, which doesn’t include the attack potential from aoe hits.

If anything, the fury talent should have kept up the aoe attacks either baseline, multicharged on the q (two attacks) but reduced the assimilation from shields to compensate for aoe damage. Instead of one over-performing build determining her balance, it should have been reigned in, and then the rest of the options rebalance around that instead.

anyway, tl;dr, kerri is ‘weak’ because her combo dynamics shifted to demand more keystrokes and a few extra seconds of time to see it realized. The extra time allows more room for error or adjustment by the enemy team, so players that don’t pick up kerrigan’s new combo timing could find themselves doing ~50% less damage than they would be before.

3 Likes

HOTS isn’t a well designed game. Her hero blueprint (a dive melee assassin with NO escapes) isn’t viable. But at this point, the game is on its way out. No grand reworkings of old heroes will ever take place to make them viable. She’s obsolete, has been for a long time, and that will never change.

1 Like

If you think this kerrigan is “weak”, that’s purely l2p issue. She’s actually one of the strongest heroes atm. And she’s also extremely fun to play (if tactical high aggression with little escape is your cup of tea), fits a lot of comps, and has no real hard counters, apart from varian’s shattered throw (but a lot of soft counters).

Kerrigan is currently sitting at 65% wr in master btw (over 4 weeks), tied with jaina for 1st place. The low pick rate is just a result of her being a really hard hero and also a melee mage, who need adjustments in other picks (which ppl don’t like doing). Also ppl are tunnelvisioning into the W build, which is OK sometimes, but is also a very niche build = another reason for her low pickrate.
The Q build is also very strong (imo the strongest atm) and fits much more comps (but doesn’t fit games where you risk losing early, since it has big ramp up time for quest completion).

The rework made kerrigan much much less niche, gave her 2nd ultimate (I actually almost always play ultralisk now) and at least 3 different viable builds (Q, W, double pulse, defined by lvl4 talent choice; also 2 very different ultimates; so technically 3x2=6 builds).
I give 10/10 for the rework (and subsequent balancing of talents) - made her harder to play (+), gave her more builds (big +), but she still feels exactly the same when you play her (and that’s the most important part; I really hated valla’s or tyrande’s reworks since they made them feel like completely different heroes). She may need a small nerf here and there still, but overall she feels close to being balanced on all builds.

P.S. My kerrigan stats in HL: 17-4 last season (pre-nerf), 34-11 this season. Played mostly double pulse build last season and mostly Q build this season with ultralisk.
So that makes for 51-15 total in HL after rework (77% wr) (in diamond-master ranks).

I’ve used her pre-rework on and off too, but she did feel a bit more meta-dependent and not fitting every draft (mostly because of lack of 2nd more universal ultimate), but she was still playable in every game; e.g. I did that in 2017s3 for an OK result in HL (28-14, 67%).

The fact that she CAN be picked in every single game without giving much credit to opponent draft and still maintain over 70% winrate means she’s not as niche as you may think her to be - just need to learn how to play her in different situations.

P.P.S. After lvl16, the Q build still allows the QQQQQQQQQQQ clear of infernal shrines skeletons. So even this small, but insane niche has been retained for her with the rework.

1 Like

The success of the rework can be seen from her talent diversity too: I can see only 3 talents that should never be picked atm:
lvl1 assimilation mastery (smells like a talent to make kerrigan into solo laner, but is not best even for that)
lvl7 queen of blades (could probably work as pure dps talent for double pulse build, but doesn’t seem to practical - this one I will have to test still tho)
lvl13 psionic barrier (most of the 4 seconds would be wasted to your opponents being stunned and you also need to grab 3+ heroes to even compete with spell shields of other heroes (which are also very niche talents))
lvl7+lvl13 could make a build tho, but the gameplay would be weird - you would use E outside of combo most of the time and then often not even have it up when you have a possibility to combo. But I guess with some numbers buff to the 2 talents, it could give a yet another different playstyle for kerrigan - not a bad thing, if this was kept a niche build. This would be a build vs multiple mage comps, but I can’t imagine you would be able to grab multiple heroes consistently vs opponents like that - heavy mage teams tend to be more ranged and play a more spread out game.

All of the other talents are used and good (although lvl13 chrysalis is very niche too, since the double shield talent is just so powerful).
Well the ultralisk lvl20 uphgrade is not really too useful, since most value comes from initial stun. Feels like a dps talent too, but for that the aa talent is probably better.

1 Like

I would say there are a few very important things on the way to becoming great kerrigan player, that is not limited to just some niche combo-kill situations:

1)learn to use W and E outside of combo (not randomly of course; butshould happen pretty often) - get good at W stun timing (it’s similar to tyrande’s stun, but timing is still slightly different)
2)always remember to apply pulse damage, which often means you need to save a Q to reach your target for that (or 2 Q’s if you play double pulse build)
3) use low hp minions/summons/buildings/heroes as means of travel as often as possible (also as free sources of shield)
4) climb “ladders” relatively often (long Q-chains to travel long distances very quickly): get a good understanding of Q range and damage so that you can see “ladders” in advance and reach far-away targets very quickly consistently and not get stuck on a minion that refused to die even after Q-aa
5) learn ultralisk timings well, since that’s a very effective and pretty much the only long-reach stun ability (skillshot) to catch running targets, where there are no “ladders” to climb; it’s easy to hit a melee ultralisk after combo, but if that’s the only way you use it, you’re losing a lot of value and flexibility

That’s not a single target build combo, so migh as well add a few more heroes into the mix if you want some truer numbers. Also, add an ultimate.

A typical single target combo would be with Q build (talents: 1121x1x) and ultralisk:
Q-Q-Q-W-E-aa-R-aa(+ultralisk aa+pulse from E)
That’s the minimum almost unavoidable damage combo.
Assuming 0 lvl16 Q stacks prior to engagement, it’s 3654 dmg at lvl20 (100->0 hammer, samuro or anyone with less hp (almost half hero roster)).
With full 8 stacks (e.g., coming from clearing 2 minion waves): 4420 dmg (@20) (100->0 rehgar and lower, ~2/3 of hero roster).
[counting lvl20 values makes more sense, since that’s where it matters and not all damage scales with level (lvl4 quest doesn’t)]

P.S. At 8 stacks, even the super simple Q-aa-Q-aa-Q-aa “combo” (2.5k dmg) is very dangerous for all squishies (e.g. that’s over 95% of ming/tracer/valla’s hp and glass cannon ming just dies after QaaQaaQ).

1 Like

Math is a from of ‘proof’ that can intentionally use fallacies (wrong steps or incorrect application of techniques) as part of the teaching/learning process.

the point of the numbers I used was to demonstrate from where the perception of kerrigan being ‘weak’ might have come by establishing that familiar combinations can yield lower results.

My hypothesis for where the OP’s assertion derives wouldn’t be from lvl 20 stats (not all games reach 20,) so the format of what numbers I used is intentionally skewed to indulge the idea that kerrigan might be “weaker” by constricting lower common denominators as a point of comparison between their perception of old vs new.

Its kinda why I also left out aoe plugs on the ‘old’ set-up as the fury + double-strike procs just convolutes the comparison for the audience.

2 Likes

Thank you for bring back the point of the conversation. I wanted to talk about stuff like this. Pick rates doesn’t mean anything, no do win rates, since there are a ton of heroes and flavors to choose from.
I think I see now that perhaps her style changed from burst to …slowly kill something. Does that still count as all in if you’re kinda of squishy and time to kill takes 5+ seconds?

People are also more likely to choose heroes that they consider strong. You’re completely ignoring a basic part of why people play video games.

That actually sort of proves my point for why pickrate is almost negligibly useful in determining the balance state of a hero.

Pickrate is a matter of perception.
Winrate is a matter of statistical reality.
If the two conflict, winrate must, by default, be the correct value because it is the objective measure.

Sure, there are plenty of heroes people consider “strong” or “weak,” but there are quite a few heroes considered “strong” that are actually weak, and quite a few that are considered “weak” that are actually strong. There are tons of people who still think severely underperforming heroes like Li Ming, Genji, Diablo, Garrosh, Tracer, etc are strong or OP, but these are statistically some of the worst heroes in the game.

If you’re talking about “unfun,” that is another matter entirely. I think a lot of people falsely equivocate “unfun” with “too strong,” which is why heroes that tend to be frustrating to play against often end up with people demanding nerfs to them despite their often average-at-best winrates.

but thats typical blizzard they rework a hero and after that they nerf it to the ground and the hero gets weaker thant pre-rework.

The >4k dmg combo I listed takes <2 sec to execute. If killing a full health hero in 1x1 in <2 seconds is not burst, then may I ask what is?

And if you want something faster, a slightly damaged valla can be killed with just QQQ, which would take <1 second to execute.

Kerrigan is in the exact same spot she was pre-rework. Same winrates, same pickrates, same awful talent diversity. They didn’t accomplish anything with it.

4 Likes

minus her 7 and 10 having options.

*psst, bladed momentum isn’t king, but it still comparable to the top pick and ultralisk used to be considered a terrible heroic, but now its taken more than maelstrom

its almost as if the most popular build choice is the one that requires the least amount of adaptation to the rework changes :open_mouth:

they kinda did achieve something with it, they made Kerrigan less fun. The only thing that really needed the rework was the Ultralisk ult. Otherwise she was fine. She was never that dependent on the W+E combo to be successful. As someone said, those skills had (and still have) viable uses on their own.

For me, it feels she’s just more niche. Without Fury, she feels overall weaker in teamfights, weaker at pushing lanes, and weaker at mercing… Losing that talent strips her of her versatility.

And for some reason which I can’t put my finger on, it feels like her Maelstrom ult is weaker than it was in absolute terms, not just relative to Ultralisk.

The change became a longer time to kill with smaller attacks, thus the change by adding charges to Ravage. This is really unsatisfying.

She used to be able to do her combo: Pull, stun, AA, leap, AA, and do a sizeable amount of damage. Even be able to leap long distances to catch a running low health to finish them off.

Long jump was removed.

After the combo, she has to run, AA, or die.

Now, she needs to last hit things to build the damage up in order to do any damage that is noticeable with Sharpened Blades.

Her shields are pretty much wet noodles now. Takes a VERY long time to build them up. No one is going to spend that much time building up a shield, since she will die before then.

Both her ultimate’s are weak.

Removing the passive cleave ruined her wave clear. She has to peck her way to MAYBE a kill. Last hitting is pretty much required to build up her damage to what it once was, or to even be taken notice. So what is her place now?

At lvl 20…and must hit with all attacks. What does she do between 1-19?

1 Like

I take bolt at lvl20. What does that have to do with the damage? :S I’m confused.
I only listed lvl20 damage values since that’s what ppl usually think in - lvl20 hp values, lvl20 damage values, lvl20 kill potential. Scale down 4%/level, if you tend to think in different lvl values. Almost everything scales 4%/level, so the effect will be exactly the same at any other level, just the values different.
The full combo comes online at lvl16 with the Q talent. But even the unbuffed values are heavy enough (so lvl10, since 13 is just survivability). Q kerrigan is a monster killer (to be rightfully feared, focused, denied or run away from) from the moment you finish the quest. Other kerrigan builds are strong from lvl4-7. And it’s still kerrigan, she still gets a lot of lvl1 kills. Fighting all mid vs a kerrigan is bound to not end well.

Even 16 for coming into her own is a problem, as she used to have become powerful/useful already at level 4/7 before her rework.

Now with the rework it requires more skill and time to achieve the same outcome as before, while being frustrated by ults that feel weak.

This make the character feel weak overall and way too much of a risk for what is basically an all-in melee assassin. High risk=moderately low pay-off. Not fun to play for anyone.

Before she used to be high risk=high pay-off. That worked better.

More skill is not a problem. It’s become more work for less pay off. I agree with you in that regards for sure. It’s really high risk with very little pay off. She already required much skill to pull stun at the right moment and leap to chase down low health players.

1 Like

Win rates aren’t everything. Especially with such a low pick rate. Blizzard probably has the tools to do a deeper analysis into her average stats per league which are infinitely more valuable in a team game like this.