In my opinion, heroes which only count for a partial death when killed (TLV, Murky, D.Va, Misha) shouldn’t give full stacks to any heroes who benefit from hero kills (Illidan stacks, Artanis stacks, Butcher meat, etc.).
This makes sense to me for the same reason that it makes sense for these heroes to not give full experience when they die. They tend to die more often and more easily than normal heroes, so are not “worth” the full experience, nor in my opinion the full stack amount. I think the stack amount should scale to the experience amount given - e.g. Murky should give 2 or 3 meat instead of 10 to The Butcher since he is only worth a quarter of a hero kill.
On paper this makes sense, but you’re essentially buffing TLV, Murky, Dva, and Rexxar who are consistently picked in competitive play (well excluding Murky), while also nerfing heroes with an already abysmal pick rate and win rates. Also it’s just part of the counter picks, in that it provides some dimension of risk to annoying strategies like win trading.
I mean, of the four, I feel like Rexxar and TLV are the only ones who are somewhat often picked competitively, though relatively niche. (I’m not sure if you mean high GM SL or if you mean in tournaments.) I haven’t seen hardly any D.Va players lately. It would be a (relatively smallish) buff to these heroes, but I seriously doubt it would overtune them, except maybe Rexxar and TLV. Perhaps they could use some compensatory smallish nerfs. And competitively, nobody will pick e.g. The Butcher to counter a TLV, for example.
It’s like when they changed stealth to be clearly visible but then counterbuffed all the stealth heroes. I think the change would make the game more consistent. The developers obviously don’t think these hero deaths deserve a full reward for the other team, else they would be worth full experience on death.
The downside of having those heroes. That will never change. If you pick TLV and the enemy goes butcher, that’s YOUR fault. Same thing with people stacking off you like ZJ or even DMG like Falstad Qs on TLV or Samuro/nova clones
They don’t when it comes to exp because that’s a permanent disadvantage to those heroes if their deaths had full exp, and would ruin their premise. But to just completely obliterate their counterpicks? Just seems unfair. Even if we’re talking about consistency, there’s a lot of lore and technical related consistencies that are ignored for the sake of game balance, and I’d consider this as one of them. Why would I then ever pick the heroes that benefit off of a lot of deaths, ever?
Are you saying that, currently, you believe all heroes who benefit from hero deaths are only viably chosen as a counter to Murky, TLV, D.Va or Rexxar? I feel like this is not the case. Furthermore, I agree that some of them (The Butcher, for example) are currently underpowered heroes. In my opinion, this is a separate issue. I agree that some other heroes deserve buffs.
To be honest, after TLV get jump The Butcher has a hard time killing them anyways. I don’t think The Butcher is a viable counter pick to any of the four I mentioned. I’m also not talking about stacking on-hit effects like ZulJin autos or Falstad q’s.
Its funny you mention this, I had a player pick Murky out of spite (this was clear and the COC refrains me from revealing how clear it was) into a butcher.
It was bad and the Murky wasn’t terrible, just not the right pick for a butcher when we were missing a bruiser.
Even if a TLV player dies more. The Butcher won’t be in the same lane as every TLV who dies when they die. So that’s not really an issue.
As for giving less stacks. That would often make talents useless. A hero with a baseline quest would be penalized if there’s a D.Va and a Murky on the enemy team for example. That doesn’t make sense to me. You already have counterpicks.
D.Va and Rexxar being solo laners, it will act as a nerf to their opponents and/or their talents.
They don’t want those deaths to be counted as full because that would make people completely stop using those heroes. Not to mention that an average Murky player would constantly make his team lose by providing a free XP lead to the opponent every game. Death rewards don’t act the same way, since the hero who benefits from it has to be there when it happens. While XP is gained by your team no matter what.
The problem is that you’re nerfing heroes which aren’t that competitive anyways.
So clearly there’s nothing wrong with stacking heroes against TLV, Murky, D.vA, and Misha.
In fact, because of this, it’s more logical to make the REVERSE argument. That most of these stacking heroes need MORE stacks against NON-partial heroes.
But truth is, beyond maybe Illidan, probably not true.
If they didn’t give full stacks then ya what some others have said, essentially you’re buffing those other heroes indirectly.
If I’m playing a hero like KTZ, Maive, Whitemane, and others who benefit from grouped up enemies you better believe I’m getting stacked faster(as KTZ), taking bonds of justice & pindown with Maive, and Lashing out with Whitemane. If I ever see Samuro, Rexxar, or Vikings it’s an exciting moment while playing some of these heroes. There’s nothing wrong with this but that’s where the counter play comes in - They get the numbers advantage(which generally increases their ability to split push, soak, and cause disruption) but their numbers have a disadvantage too allowing any hero who benefits from grouped up enemies or utilizes stacks to thrive(provided their actually countering that number advantage).
You can also prevent them from stacking faster too while playing Vikings, Rexxar, or Samuro. For instance if I’m playing Samuro and I see a KTZ I simply don’t use mirror image around him. With Vikings, I don’t keep them in the same area at the same time save for important team fights around objective and even then I’m keeping an eye on that KTZ’s stacks so as not to give him more(the same would be true for if Maive is present and she’s stacking with bonds of justice).
Stacks don’t really matter in this game. Most stacking mechanics get the hero fully stacked before endgame in an equally balanced match except when it’s an all or nothing pvp mechanic like garbage medivh
It seems that most here favor the status quo. I’m somewhat disappointed, but I can understand the appeal of receiving lots of stacks. Let me make a few replies based on the comments.
You see, though, that player death experience doesn’t count the same? That is the point. Why do you think that player experience should not be the same but stacks should be?
My whole post is arguing that this downside ought to be changed. If you believe it ought not to be changed, please provide a reason.
I understand where you’re coming from. However, I would argue that the experience amount given for each character on death (e.g. 1/4 a hero for Murky death, 1/2 (I think?) for D.Va mech, etc.) is meant to reflect how often those heroes generally die compared to a “normal” hero. So by reducing the number of stacks given per hero death to the same ratio, it would simply normalize the number of on-death stacks one might expect to receive from these heroes, just as the amount of on-death experience is normalized.
This would mean that heroes who stack on player deaths could no longer hope to receive overinflated stack amounts from heroes whose mechanics imply they will generally die more often and easily, but instead, they should expect to receive a “normal” amount of stacks from them. I don’t view it as “these heroes would receive fewer stacks” but instead as “these heroes currently receive many stacks against these four heroes in a way that is inconsistent with other design choices.” This might eliminate a weak niche that a weak hero like The Butcher might have, but in my opinion, The Butcher should be buffed in other ways to compensate.
Other meta heroes with on-death stacking mechanics, like Falstad auto-attack build, will continue to be strong after this proposed change, and definitely wouldn’t just become “useless.”
I don’t think this distinction is very strong. Yes, you receive experience when a hero dies regardless of where you are, but an enemy hero generally won’t die unless some friendly heroes cause them to die. Since a hero like Murky is designed to die often, heroes will more often than normal be near him while he dies. So I think stack rewards work very similarly to experience rewards - they make you or your team stronger and should both scale to the hero who is killed (normal in most circumstances, less in these four cases).
I understand that I somewhat primed you to think this by bringing up mostly weak heroes like The Butcher and Illidan. But there are others - Artanis stacks, Diablo souls, Falstad auto-attack build, Alarak sadism, all relatively strong heroes in some cases. It would be a mistake, I think, to label all on-death stack mechanics “not competitive.” At the same time, I agree this isn’t a huge change. It only directly affects four heroes and their matchups.
Yes, I agree that stacking can be easier or harder depending on the allied and enemy team composition, which is good, healthy, and fun. However, what I’m trying to point out is that in these cases, heroes receive stacks in a way that is inconsistent with other design choices, which I am arguing should change.
This post is already too long, I apologize. I just didn’t want to see the thread die without being able to respond to some of you. Thank you for reading.
Please continue! 