Patch thoughts? now that we've had some playtime

General Discussion
1

I’m happy. Balance feels better than ever. Valla replaced falstad but unlike falstad she could always be blown up (w build shields made him unkillable). if you let them build a hypercarry comp around her you’d be throwing pre-patch. she needs nerfs obviously but she’s squishy enough to kill.

raynor: eh they made some bad talents fun. I’d like to see him get buffed again but the lategame nerfs were kinda needed.

sonya, hogger, mei, tlv:, falstad: THANK YOU GOD

Stitches: i’ve been seeing alot more of him in qm/ranked. I LOVE his changes. Think he’s actually niche now instead of hot garbage.

xp changes: I think they make non-waveclear heroes a lil more viable. Its unique to hots and doesn’t actually change the game too much. I’m happy with them as well.

4 Likes
2

Balance is absolutely not better than ever. Are you kidding me?

This last patch screwed up almost every hero it touched

Johannas ult is bugged and hits twice for double damage And extra stun

Lucio 20 upgrade to high five is bugged and gives him a six second cd on his ult instead of the intended 14

Valla is way overtuned now

Raynor and anduin are much weaker than before

Stitches is terrorizing qm as the ultimate cheese hero

Warhead junction , one of the worst maps ever, is in ranked rotation now

It’s a complete disaster

6 Likes
3

I do like the changes in general, as the Johanna update didn’t really impact her niche in the tank roster, but I feel that she is far more fun to play now. Her improved mobility and engage options all seem good. I do see a lot more Anduin and Stitches picks, often as a combo, so I do think their updates were effective.

Jimmy seems to be a net nerf, and hopefully they can do a little more number tweaking on him.

My only real hesitation is the loan talents. I tried Johanna’s and Jimmy’s once each, and simply didn’t like them compared to the other level 1 options. I have seen people pick Stitches’ a few times, and never on Valla, but that may be more because of the overtuning on her W build at the moment.

To me, a loan talent should be an option that improves a hero’s early game power, but with a potential cost. The main issue is that Valla, JoJo, and Jimmy never really had early game issues. Stitches was just not that good in general, so I can’t pin his improvements just on that talent, especially since I have seen people using other choices more often.

I think loan talents would have been better for the heroes that currently require scaling to be useful, such as Nazeebo, Zeratul, or Zul’jin, where it doesn’t matter if the loan gets used up by level 13 or 16, as that is when they start to come online through regular scaling or other talent options.

2 Likes
4

It’s called bugs.

The only nerf she needs is to reduce the W quest bonus from 4 to 3 damage.

No they’re not.

Who cares about QM when Stitches was almost never played for about 3 years?

One of the BEST maps ever*

Yup, loan talents need buffs.
Stitches takes it only because it gives 2nd charge of E.

5

wannabe valla mains galore. As soon as they nerf her, they will go on to play the next broken hero.

3 Likes
6

Valla is a little broken against newbs in QM, and much to my surprise the absolute dumpster fire that is matchmaking seems to have turned into a dumpster inferno.

7

Your point?

8

It does feel pretty bad when you watch all your teammates eat hooks like they haven’t had a proper meal in 3 days.
Is it really so hard to just keep an eye on the Stitches and not get hooked all the time? Just stand a little farther away when you know he’s in the fog of war and have no reason to be tip toeing closer?

9

On Anduin:

Tier 1 talents:

I believe all the talents could use a slight buff.

Liked: compared to the previous tier 1, much more interesting talent choices depending on maps and enemy team composition . So well done there.

Tier 2 talents:

Anduin’s attack range should just be based increased.

It is too important considering Anduin lacks the emergency burst healing someone like fore example Whitemane dish out in emergencies. Remember Anduin can’t heal while on the the move like most other healers; he has to stop for almost a second (.75) to cast a medium (medium-low?) heal and the other one has an even longer traveling time.

In other words, as long as increased range, exists tied to a talent that talent will probably dominate all others. That’s with even buffing the other two chastise talents, which require buffing in order to simply compete with extra range. Grant him base attack range increase, no one will complain, and buff chastise talents to have real diversity.

This is the tier where I feel there is less choice based on my way of playing him.

Tier 7 talents:

With the loss of Inner Focus, Desperate Prayer, has become a decent (yes, only decent, Inner Focus was better) much earlier replacement which helps to compensate that which Anduin lost: burst healing.

For me, I am going to miss, the phenomenal Blessed Recovery, because there is no other way I feel can “burst” a bit without taking Desperate Prayer, my go to choice now. So just to emphasize, I go with Desperate Prayer, (with all the drawbacks) out of mostly necessity, not because DP is good now. So for example, if Inner Focus, would still exist at lvl 16, I would go with Blessed Recovery on 7 and with IF on 16 like pre patch.

The loss of Inner Focus at 16 was a huge setback for saving targets of burst damage late game when preventing deaths are more important. So yea, no more saving from that incoming Pyroblast if you eat it when you were low.

As consolation and mostly out of necessity I go with Desperate Prayer now, but Blessed Recovery is still fantastic and would be my go to talent IF Inner Focus were still in the game.

Tier 10 heroics

Nothing to say here.

Tier 13 talents:

This talent tree didn’t see major changes. Still, a decent talent tree with choice. Good.

Tier 16 talents:

See my comments above concerning the loss of burst healing due to the removal of Inner Focus. (I still don’t know why they eliminated it. No one complained really about it and was active and fun to use.)

Having said that, I just love the second charge of Glyph of Faith here. Love it. Versus Stitches hook+gorge, Garrosh throw, Mosh Pit, Muradin haymaker, is godsend. Very nice.
Another good talent tree with choice. With Inner Focus back in here, it would be perfect.

Tier 20 talents:

Not much to add here. Probably buff chastise talent a bit? Adds a .75 stun to chastise and .5 second to root. Decent for interrupting channels, but other than that, lacks flavor in my opinion. Other tree talents are just better imo.

Overall mana tension:

Some other Anduin players can give their thoughts here? I “feel” a bit more mana tension, not a lot, but certaintly doenst feel as comfortable as pre-patch. Not a major concern at all compared to other healers, but I just mention my own experience.

TLDR:

Good job overall. Tier 1 choices are fantastic compared to rework, albeit I feel they could use a slight buff.

Weaker late game burst healing with the loss of Inner Focus that is being mitigated with the earlier and decent -for early game- desperate prayer. Decent early game, worst late game. Second charge of Leap of Faith on 16 is more “oh wow thanks Anduin” which is always appreciated.

Still not a fan of chastise builds to be honest. Too slow for my taste. Maybe buff its travel time a bit?

Feels like slightly better early , midgame, healing. But slightly worse late game. Oh and please, give him attack range baseline.

Yes, I think Anduin is more fun to talent now than before the rework. Buff, tweak, nerf accordingly. Thanks for reading.

1 Like
10

Also against masters in ranked. Especially when they are grouped. Whats your point?

11

Overall it’s a very good patch. Stitches is viable outside of his old very niche comp, which I think is the biggest thing for this patch.

The only things I dislike is Joh and Lucio being bugged, but bugs can happen. It’s just sad that it takes so long for them to get fixed. And also sad that instead of just fixing the 3-4 bugs on W build falstad, they nerfed it when it wasn’t necessary at all.

But besides that, very very good patch. I agree balance feels much better overall.

1 Like
12

another bug for the list, in aram Execute Orders makes Raynors respawn timer about 5 seconds

13

I liked the Raynor rework in general and I loved the Valla rework (except for the overtuning), but I really don’t like the Anduin and Stitches reworks.

Stitches no longer has a real basic attack build, which was my favorite build.
The change to Renew has made Anduin a lot more boring in the early game and Pursued by Grace might as well not exist anymore.

14

I love the Stitches rework: Now I feel like an actual threat. To me it was an instant fun/playability boost without changing how I played him.

Johanna is weird for me. For her tier 1 talents, even though Laws of Hope looked like a buff from its previous one, Zealous Glare is the only one that really shines (no pun intended) in my actual plays. I’ve heard similarly in several places, like the BadBenny’s comment about her changes. On paper, I love the fact I can now pick stronger engage before Heroics, but I haven’t felt the real oomhf from it yet. I still need more time on her, too bad I play all tanks.

I haven’t felt any change to Mei’s nerfs at all on me, which is a win/win I guess! She gets toned down for people to have more fun vs her, and I get to still play her :smiley: . Personally, Her strength lies in the range of her abilities, which most, if not all other tanks would die for. She can peel without being physically in danger, or engage at crazy range, giving her the surprise factor even without the bush.

Can’t talk much about non-tanks, since I don’t get to play them in my group. I have trust issues, and get Malthael’s slight head tilt when I let that role go. All I know is Valla bans have been up there, and Raynor sees less play, and Anduin doesn’t feel like much of an impact… maybe people who didn’t play him are trying him now, so they aren’t too good at him :man_shrugging:

For now it’s a good patch in my eyes. Just hope they fix the bugs.

15

They gave him the Medic treatment. Improved early game at the cost of what was their very powerful late game.
Anduin had some nutty builds and while his abilities can be a little bland you’d find yourself always doing some actions because it was just nonstop with him.

His healing took a big hit and while some builds did improve and he’s got a little more utility his numbers are just a little bit too low.

1 Like
16

This isn’t really a bug since ARAM has lower death timer. That’s working as intended. Around level 20 heroes in ARAM have like 35 second death timer instead of the normal 60-65 sec, and the level 20 removed 30 sec of that.

It just depends if blizzard wants to remove this talent like they did with lava wave or not.

17

Talking about improving early game, I like that part of the patch the most. It feels like Loan talents and the changes give more options to play early game where there are many “scaling”/late game styles.

The group has a healer main, unfortunately I’m the only one who plays Anduin. Guess it makes me still excited even weeks after the patch lol.

18

It’s always been there, they just weren’t so blatant with the execution before. Usually it’s just talents that benefit laning and talents meant for teamfights, or ones applicable in all places.
Like Press Forward on Imperius is clearly meant for laning, it’s very difficult to keep it active during the teamfight phase, at least when compared to more trait healing and armor on E.

Loan Talents rub me the wrong way because they’re loudly proclaiming what the intended use is and then just slapping a bunch of stuff into one talent.
Raynor’s was the best executed among them, taking a meme quest and actually giving it some value before the 12 minute mark, but the rest seem to be needlessly excessive when they’re on talents that seem to be fine in their own right.

My opinion could be skewed because I believe every hero should have their own niche (or a lack of a niche is their strength by being a generalist). So it just peeves me that with each rework and patch they work toward blending every hero together so that identity matters less and less while making heroes interchangeable for most given situations.
When you have an expansive roster it should be utilized so that every hero has a distinct purpose. Not trying to make a hero good at everything just so people can have fun with the one they enjoy looking at the most.
Maybe I’m just a scrooge but that’s how I see it.

19

You need Holy Renewal with Zealous Glare and Blessed Hammer to get multiple synergistic value. Blessed Momentum is a good standalone talent, but Holy Renewal fits the build better.

20

yep but the talent says that it “sets” the death timer to 30 seconds.
when apparently it instead “reduces” the death timer by 30 seconds.
:upside_down_face: