OP vs. Broken vs. Busted vs. Godly/God-Tier

General Discussion
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There are 5 generalized terms that clearly need to be defined. I am here to coin the proper definitions for these terms, which are often dismissed as mere rhetoric.

Broken, Busted, Overpowered, and Godly or God-Tier.

Busted:

A “Busted” hero is one that contains too many strengths. A busted hero may have an overloaded kit, far too much talent diversity, or synergy mechanics that vastly exceed expectations.

Examples include but are not limited to:
Multi-Class Heroes
*Redacted.
There should be no such thing as a multi-class hero. This is the equivalent definition of busted and creates uncertainty in the draft by default. i mean come on, people knew that wasn’t going to end well. Multi-Class and “Busted” should just be synonymous. Changes to this ave already been made a reality and will be live soon, hopefully there won’t be a multi-class.

These are examples of “Busted” mechanics.

Broken:

A “Broken” hero is one that wildly over-performs at a certain strategy, but may have utterly crippling weaknesses depending on and resulting from specifically selected hard-counterplay to the point where it becomes impossible for that hero to function as intended. Broken heroes, in a first pick draft, would theoretically have 9 heroes build around 1 hero selection and that is why these “Broken” heroes are drafted late and often permanently out of meta in competitive, but so viable in Quick Match.

Examples include but are not limited to:
Sgt. Hammer, who is nearly unbeatable without very specific counters like Chromie, Li-Ming, or Artanis; these counters by contrast make her a total liability to her team and heavily restrict her gameplay to a point where she will have no significant impact. Proof of this statement was provided by Gilly in HGC 2018 Western Clash, where she said that Sgt. Hammer was usually only viable exclusively in QM because of her broken nature of being so strong when not directly countered.
The Butcher, who’s Ruthless Onslaught(comparable to a Tyrael ult on a 10 second cooldown) / Heroic combination will delete almost anything on the roster that is not a tank, who is capable of soloing any other melee hero without the possibly for realistic counterplay, and has an obnoxious power curve because of his meat. On the other hand, put him against a properly drafted enemy, and he also becomes a total liability. Brightwing is a good example of how to hard-counter Butcher, and will make him borderline useless in a fight and he must radically change his strategy to something not usually considered to be useful.
Lt. Morales, who is obviously designed to be the best healer in the game, can be impossible to fight against without few very specific select counters to execute her where she would require secondary support abilities that would be off-meta. Things such as Kael’Thas Pyroblast, Nova Triple Tap, Alarak Deadly Charge, of which would kill her without those secondary support abilities, basically means that both teams essentially are constructed around playing with and against the single hero. Lt. Morales is a one-dimensional consideration in both QM and Draft modes, and can be either make her entire team invincible or she can rendered completely countered and virtually useless based on the available synergy and counter selections.

These are examples of “Broken” heroes.

Overpowered:

An “Overpowered” hero is one that excels in a variety of scenarios where other heroes of the same type would generally falter. OP heroes are capable of ie. damaging, healing/shielding, or CCing an enemy where not enough counterplay is realistically available.

Examples include but are not limited to:
Medivh’s pre-nerf Circle of Protection was, and still is, incredibly Overpowered. Even though CoP was not directly affected, the cooldown increase on his W served as a general and sub-satisfactory nerf to his ability to negate a capless amount of damage for allies in a large radius. Although still very strong, CoP was without question the most OP defensive ability in the entire game, and still may be. Even still, this ability could be compared to Tyrael Sanctification on a 9 second cooldown and is no doubt super powerful beyond any other supporting ability.
TLV used to be clearly Overpowered in the hands of a good player before the metashift that happened post-liming. His ability to soak multiple lanes and avoid punishment was simply too strong, and a decent TLV could carry his team to victory by avoiding the objective and getting multiple levels on his opponent, leading to an uncontestable lategame victory. After the release of multiple hypermobile burst assassins, his viability has decreased somewhat, as it is impossible to draft enough bans/picks to prevent him from being countered directly with heroes like Li-Ming, Valeera, Tracer, Genji, Mephisto, and others who specialize at deleting vikings.
Mal’Ganis currently provides more crowd control to his team than anything before him by a longshot, and it has been said “his kit is OP, just ban him” by multiple professional players. Mal’Ganis is glaringly overpowered with his mobility and CC, and if he did any more damage baseline would be considered something on another level and he would take us to the final “God-Tier”.

Godly/God-Tier:

A hero that resides in the “God” have the ability to do one OF two things(Godly), OR BOTH simultaneously(God-Tier);

  1. kill enemy heroes without counterplay
  2. are unkillable if played properly
    God-Tier heroes are OP/overtuned to the point where they have an unprecedented amount of impact on any game in the form of hero kills and damage mitigation. A God-Tier hero will both destroy any enemy under any circumstances and survive against any enemy no matter the situation. A Godly hero will do one of the two respectively.

Examples include but are not limited to:
Release Thrall was God-Tier and had the ability to annihilate entire teams. It was obnoxious and he could destroy all 5 opposing players by himself. This is an unforgettable example of a god-level hero. Killing Thrall was nearly impossible, and he could wipe anyone.
Glitch Kael’Thas was Godly and capable of auto-winning against anybody else. There was absolutely no possible way to beat a glitched Kael’Thas. He would use living bomb over and over and you would be permanently shoved out of lane, unable to contest him. This was happening at the same time that people had the level 1 Ice Block exploit, which cost like 100$, but this made Kael’Thas almost invincible whilst destroying your lanes with absolutely no possibility for counterplay. Without the Ice Block cheat, he was mortal.
Pre-nerf self-AH Rehgar was Godly. If this was not true, then it would not have been removed. Giving Rehgar the ability to cast Ancestral Healing on himself, whether it be a ‘bad’ decision or not, made him borderline unkillable with his Ghost Wolf talents and definitely qualifies him for this rank.
D.va is Godly. I still can’t believe she can do what she does. She can take 5k damage, eject and get another 1k health, then instantly respawn for 5k health again. She is absolutely worthly, considering how invulnerable she is with her Unstoppable, and anyone who attacks D.va in Mech form is a troll. If you think you will accomplish anything by blowing attacks on this hero then you should uninstall the game. And, if you died out of Mech while playing D.va you did it wrong. This hero, while has very low targeted damage, is basically invincible and is capable of making game-breaking boss-steals with her mostly uncounterable area denial. She is so hard to kill that there is no way she can’t earn a spot on this list.
Release Li-Ming was a Godly hero, in the sense that she could repeatedly perform team wipes with her outrageously OP talents. She was not invincible, but there was almost no counterplay to her insane ranged CC/DPS combination and everyone knew it. Definitely one of the most OP heroes of all time.
Release Samuro. Absolutely God-Tier. Never forget. This hero was probably the most fitting for this title, as he was completely invincible and could solo-instagib pretty much anything 1v1 with his insane critical damage, including tanks. I have never to this day seen anything in any game ever as stupidly overpowered as release Samuro, not even release Thrall. At least you could kill release Thrall 5v1 if he went afk. Samuro was invincible and there was nothing you could do to stop him even as AI. I don’t even understand how it was possible a hero with no self-sustain or %hp damage could be so insane. Its still a debated topic, but I think release Samuro, in a 1v1 scenario where he had the element of suprise, was the most powerful and unbeatable thing ever in the game.

Now surely this topic will spark some debate, but have fun with it and don’t get too serious. This is really all hypothetical and for my personal reference, I very specifically have been labeling heroes as “Broken OP” or “Busted OP” or just “OP” or “Godly/God-Tier” and people think it is all the same thing. It isn’t for me, I mean very specific things when I use these words, and now you know.

Feel free to chip in.

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What about heroes who are considered balanced but also rely on extremely broken talents to maintain viability (I.E. High Inquisitor/Wormhole/Art of Chaos).

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I just call those ‘must-pick’ talents, I never really considered putting those heroes in their own group, but I think you might be right about that, they probably need a category to make people aware of what is basically a very stiff metapick.

I guess you could invent something because I really just call heroes with must-picks ‘one-dimensional’ heroes, but I think it would be unfair to call Zeratul “one-dimensional” just because wormhole is the best choice on only one talent tier, because he can retain versatility with that talent.

I guess you could call them Sticklers or something lol

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I am sorry dude but I stopped reading when “D.Va is Godly” that’s the best joke of 2019 right here and we are not even halfway through February.

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The Lost Vikings is God-Tier on opposite day.

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Sorry, best joke of the year so far goes to General Motors.

“We didn’t shut down any of our plants, they were just unallocated”

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That wall of text is a huge eye sore. Those terms all mean the same thing, but people tend to be hyperbolic so they make up new terms to describe the same thing.

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Attacking D.Va’s mech makes you a troll? She has to charge that little trick where she gets a new health bar. If you let her stay there unpunished, she’s gonna get it faster. Also, she has no other way to get her health back, so you rinse her HP and force her to back off or die.

What do you think about Orphea’s Eternal Feast for boss steals, Stukov Flailing Strike, Falstad Gust, BW Emerald Wind, Zarya Expulsion Zone, Kael’thas Phoenix, Gul’dan Horrify etc? I know they’re Ults but the CD vs charge rate is similar.

Interesting to define these words to specific ways
a hero can be… too strong.

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actual meaning of these terms:

broken—overpowered. can also mean underpowered; use context clues to figure out which one you’re looking at
busted—overpowered
overpowered—overpowered
godly—extra overpowered. or regularly overpowered and the poster just wanted to sound dramatic because being dramatic is fun

tldr they’re mostly interchangeable, ya silly

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I did not say D.va was a hypercarry, I said the amount of health she can get in 1 rotation makes her absolutely Godly. It is undeniable that D.va is probably the hardest character to ki

ll 1v1 in the game, even with %hp damage. If you don’t see that we can’t keep talking at each other.

TLV is, as they should be, has the potential to be the strongest pick in the game if it were an artificially intelligent hypercomputer like deepmind controlling them. idk how much starcraft you play, TLV is hard especially after the hypermobile burst meta came in. but played perfectly, i’m confident that TLV could achieve 100% winrate on 3 lane maps with channeled objectives.

i have almost 200 viking games, and i sit at 52.6% qm winrate, which i believe is healthy for such a difficult and off-meta hero. i did have almost 60% winrate before li ming was released, but mistakenly kept playing them. TLV was definitely OP before they introduced all the burst mobility. You have to account the curve as well, I went from having a terrible winrate to getting a super high winrate, and it balanced out. when i was in my prime with them, i won many more vikings games than i lost, that is a fact. TLV, at one time anyway, was definitely OP at outmacroing the enemy. if you’re good, he’s OP. if you’re bad, you don’t even notice. that is how TLV are

but that is exactly the point, no one can down her health bar, cc her, then eat it again and kill her, its impossible by any one hero. and thats before she pops her second mech. she is literally unkillable in a 1v1 scenario. she is absolutely godly.

she may not be able to kill you, but good luck killing her 1v1 on silver city and that goes for anybody…

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I understand that if she comes to the fight with her E ready, she has too much potential health to effectively down, unless she has been heavily CC’d and bursted.

However, when talking about a 1v1, she doesn’t get the kill, and doesn’t have the sustain to stay in the fight. She is forced to be very passive in the solo lane for this reason, so that she can get her E before losing the mech. She’s an interesting character for sure. Can’t stay in the fight long enough to be the tank, but brings a different utility than most. I guess like “broken” characters, if she’s in an ideal comp she could be a terror.

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they overlap, that doesn’t make them the same thing

this is its current usage. for example, i said that Alexstrasza was ‘broken’ meaning she needed more talent diversity. this needs to change, because it is not reasonable.

they overlap, that doesn’t make them the same thing, this terminology can become quite manageable but right now it is misused and we need to be more specific for the sake of blizzard.

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LOL. okay.

So having the ability to not have a “single talent path” == hero is busted? okay. lol.

I give this trolling attempt 6/10. Couldn’t quite nab a 6.5/10.

Valla has three different “aoe spellcasting”, “AA” and “single target burst spells” … But she is busted?

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no such thing as “too much” talent diversity. talent diversity itself refers to a heroes viable talents vs overall talent pool. a character with low talent diversity may have only 1 real viable build but one with high diversity often has 2-4.

no? Having mechanics that exceed expectation doesn’t make someone busted lmao.

kinda sorta. looking at master stats, most talent tiers have Falstad with one talent that has a roughly 50% pickrate. not quite as much talent diversity as you’d think based on your post.

it’s not at will. he has to commit at level 4 and that’s that. on top of that, his team is largely at his mercy due to his draft being able to fulfill 1 of 3 roles, meaning if draft is built around Varian going colossus but he goes taunt instead, things could get messy very quick.

if a hero can be shut down, especially with hard counters, they aren’t broken. period.

that speaks more for lots of QM players being bad and just assuming their poor play is the result of an enemy hero being strong than it does for competitive players just refusing to draft busted heroes. Try to remember that if a hero is busted, Master players will still BAN them. Popularity is a mixture of both picks AND bans thus if a “broken” hero’s popularity is low in skilled play, it means nobody is picking or banning them. Meaning they probably aren’t broken.

if that was the case she’d be extremely popular in masters, yet she isn’t.

who cares? We saw that Hammer was seeing strong usage in pro play in late 2017 up until like mid 2018. Some random person’s words don’t mean more than combined pro stats.

one of the worst heroes in the game.he sees no real play in Master League and had a pro popularity of 0% (in reality his usage was in between 0% and 1% which means nothing). Try telling master league players, Grandmasters or former pro players that Butcher is an example of a “broken” hero and you’ll be laughed off the forums.

for the first time in a long while, I can’t bring myself to respond to the rest of this post. rather than try to sensibly define anything you’re just throwing out characters that hurt your feelings and labeling them as “busted” or “broken” to justify your poor play, even when data straight up proves that you’re lying.

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I’ll grant, I generally agree with these definitions, but the examples are rather subpar.

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So according to the post…
Lunara confirmed Broken hero?
haHAHA:smirk:

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Er, I don’t agree with the OP at the point, but expanding the duration from 12/23/18 to the present… in ranked (TL+HL) Masters I’m not seeing any talent tier which has one “dominant talent” with over 50% pickrate.

And, even than, a 50% pickrate for a talent isn’t problematic, if the other two talents aren’t that lopsided.

There are some tiers on Falstad (and Valla, who is another good example of everything being pretty viable) where it is lopsided towards two abilities, but even at it’s worst there isn’t a case where there doesn’t seem to be two competitive (by pickrate) talents.

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Yeah they do and I don’t see who died and made you an authority on the matter either.

You have an opinion on the matter, one I don’t see the need for.

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I would say Lunara fits the OPs definition of a Busted hero moreso than a broken one.

The weaknesses she supposedly has I never seem to encounter playing her, at least.

Oh, man, I just caught the OP comparing judgement to Butcher’s charge. I might need to go through this one line by line and rip it apart…

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yeah, i was bouncing between Broken and OP cause both fits her.
Maybe she’s Brokenpowered :rofl: