I am surprised that many people defend the upcoming whitemane rework which I think is very big failure of design. However when looking at each person individually I see that nobody among these people are committed players of the hero. Their each argument such as
“She is overpowered because of no hearthstone”
“She has only one strong build”
“They gave her identity”
“She was not viable in low ranks”
“She was not viable in high ranks”
“She is prone to deplete her manz too fast”
“Her talents are now more diverse that she is now able to change playstyles.”
“Scarlett aegis needs a nerf”
“Her combat through autoattack and searing lash was not impactful enough and now she feels satisfying to fight”
“Her sustained heal is too weak.”
“She was overall too weak and situational.”
are so fatally wrong that I am thinking that people are just clueless with their problems and the enjoyment with the hero. I do not think that everyone should be able to play every hero. I almost always play support for example with few exceptions. I am looking for any reasonible argument supporting the rework from veteran whitemanes except the accesibility one. Thank you.
I have yet to see someone like that, they sound like a vocal minority.
I don’t defend it, i disagree with people saying the AA build shouldn’t exist.
The 70% of the playerbase completely and utterly clueless with their judgments and should have no say in what gets balanced and what does not. If you want to participate in meaningful discussions without blurting out said hero is OP, do so in a meaningful and constructive manner. Period.
The remaining 30% are what are left of this game. Dedicated to this game.
I am excited about the idea if the AA build.
I do not think it should come at the expense of her current builds, which seems to be the case.
It gives me 10 stacks of desperation that reworked whitemane leaves less room for versatility. Id like an addition of a sustain oriented aa build as opposed to q build without touching my beloved w build.
The rework may have not been exactly the ‘best’, it was merely disappointing and a bit possibly ‘misleading’.
They fixed the mana ‘management’ some-what, though builds are still two, of which are AA and E, but what bothers me is they said that the “E build” was improved in this rework, but how is it improved with lesser spell damage and lesser value from its talents?
A removal of certain talents too that were essentially part of E build.
The problem is their adding an AA build to every single hero they rework. AA is one of the things that’s the most similar between heroes, meaning basing builds around that aspect serves to homogenize what were and should be very unique heroes.
You don’t have to be committed with 500 levels on the hero to speak about them. And it’s also good that a lot of people who don’t play much Whitemane are talking about the rework and even support it, that means people that didn’t play her before will start playing. People stop playing certain heroes and others start, that’s just how a moba works. It is in constant change.
Again, you don’t have to even have ever played the hero to talk about them. There’s so many good coaches in sports/esports that almost never or even never played that sport/game, and they are amazing coaches.
Everyone can have good arguments and conversation even if they don’t play the hero. When you ask “I only want to hear the opinions of people that player the hero a lot”, you are just asking for people to agree with you without even have a discussion. Grow up and stop that. That’s a really childish attitude.
Darak, there are videos posted, explanations given, and all manner of things detailing why this rework is bad.
Make no mistake, we’re not against the idea of Whitemane having AA talents. Personally, I’ve been championing Scarlet Wrath as a great talent, even though it’s AA based, and think it’s really good. We’re against Whitemane playing as an auto-attack centric character.
Mathematically speaking, purely mathematically speaking, Whitemane heals for more by auto attacking, than by channeling Inquisition, provided she takes Saintly Greatstaff. (47 x2 per second, vs 110x1.18 per second).
This is a problem. It’s objectively worse to use her signature spell (big flashy effects, loud sound effects, long cooldown), than it is not to use it, simply because of one talent. Other talents have the same effect (Unwavering Faith).
A character should not want to not use their abilities. Regardless of how you feel about the flavor, I’m sure you can agree that a character should want to press their buttons over the course of a match.
Point of the post isnt a judgement. Post was targeting whitemane players, whose opinions have more values because we live with generalizations and statistics to make correct decisions as human beings. I value their opinion more about a hero with a deal of depth.
I provided bad examples in the main posts, many ones that you upvoted and a coach wouldnt, making your views worthless for me.
And like everyone is saying, if that is the problem they just need to nerf the AA talents and buff the others, it’s pretty simple. You can do exactly the same math for every single rework out there, then they get the data from ACTUAL REAL games and adjust accordingly.
That’s no problem at all, so can we stop crying because it’s not a big deal?
Yeah, no friend, just no. All opinions are valuable. Your opinion doesn’t value more than mine just because you have a level 500 on her. Big ad hominem.
Many that were right, and a coach would upvote as well. I could even say that because you love her so much, you won’t ever agree with anything that is “against” her or could hurt the builds you play.
Sometimes it’s best for people outside of the scene to give a fair judgement than the people involved in it, which is what I’ve been doing so far.
If you want my opinion again I can write it all here explaining every point, just ask.
Except Talent Diversity and base stats are the problem here as well.
All of Whitemane’s spells were made worse. Inquisition lost 21 total base damage (3 per tick), and Searing lash lost 7. One talent gained minimum damage for searing lash, but there were two talents (one being the same talent) that lost potential damage on it.
Inquisition lost damage, gained cooldown, and its only talent to make it a better ability is on level 16.
Whitemane’s main spell damage increase was removed entirely.
This is where the problem lies. All of the talents designed to make you want to use your ABILITIES were removed or weakened. This is a problem. Even if you nerf down the AA build’s talents and buff up the ability build’s talents, the AA build will still be stronger, because her talents that improve her abilities do not contribute to increasing her healing, and said abilities are incredibly weak in base stats now. The loss of Fanatical Power in particular means that she can no longer fix the effective base stats of her abilities.
The talent diversity is poor, her abilities feel bad to use, and it will take hefty nerfs to her AA talents to make her abilities desirable to use, at which point her overall character strength is even further into the gutter.
I can see 2-3 builds there, so diversity is fine. If AA build is too strong, then nerf it and the other talents become more attractive. I can also see builds mixing AA talents and W/E talents. I really think people are overlooking some things and not seeing others, especially the whitemane mains. Like I said before, sometimes it’s better for someone outside of the situation to judge and see things better.
I’m definitely excited to play her again and try everything out.
Well then, lets go over a bunch of the talents to prove a point.
Righteous Flame. Minimum damage increased. Maximum Damage reduced. Base ability damage reduced.
Martyrdom. Lost 66% of its potency.
Lashing out. Damage reduced. Ability base damage reduced.
Shared Punishment. Brings damage up to where it used to be. Armor reduction is nice. Put on the same tier as the talent it had synergy with.
Harsh Discipline. Moved back a talent tier. Now on the same tier as the talent it had synergy with.
Pity The Frail. Healing threshold cut from 50% to 25% to make room for the cooldown reduction on inquisition. Cannot take Lashing out and subjugation together so spamming damage reduction isn’t available.
The only other build combo that isn’t “Already existed on old whitemane, we just made it worse” is her Auto Attack build. Other talents got shuffled (Subjugation got moved to 13, which is a huge plus, and another one I actually defend).
Check the wiki for her current setup. You’ll see exactly what I mean.
Have you ever thought that Blizzard actually had the intention to nerf her damage? That is a possibility. Maybe their data was showing that she was doing too much damage with those talent and they had to be nerfed. Maybe their plan for her is to not do that much damage as a support, so they nerfed and changed talents on most tiers.
Yeah AA build was introduced and because the other builds were really nerfed, it may seem right now that it is the only build. But as I said before, they can always nerf it like they usually do with every hero release/rework. It’s not new that they need some data before getting the hero in the right place.
If she was doing too much damage, why does she have an incredibly abysmal pick and win rate. Why was she designed and marketed as the healer who deals damage. Why is her ability damage now among the lowest of all healers without Fanatical Power and talent combinations. Why does she have no utility baseline in her kit?
And why does she have a talent that literally doubles her auto attack damage and almost every talent in her kit relates to her damage in some way, as well as her core mechanic being centered around doing damage.
If they nerf the AA build, then all her other builds perform worse than release anyway, and then she’s just worse off than before. Not only do I play Whitemane, I actually tested this on the PTR.
You’re making a “What if” argument to defend your point, and beyond that, you’re making it disregarding what Blizzard themselves have said.
Well, Genji is exactly the same so…
Blizzard might have changed the idea of what they want her to be. Who knows. As they said, they are okay with killing a hero’s fantasy or changing it to be another thing.
I mean, karabars did some testing and she was doing 5-7k damage around level 20 in just a couple seconds, that is definitely not low. Other supports can’t even get close to that in longer times.
That I really don’t know.
Well, that we will only know by testing. One thing is doing maths left and right, another one is real gameplay with real people in QM/SL and testing different situations.
Game is definitely not defined by maths. Just look at in how many reworks people said X thing would be busted or X build would be too good, but in real situations they were not great? This could be the same situation. Blizzard definitely needs testing from real games, just like we all do. In theory some things seem OP, in practice sometimes they are not.
I’m talking about all the possibilites and also using what Blizzard said about reworks/whitemane rework.
Anyway, in the end the rework IS happening. The best we can do is to test everything possible and give the feedback to Blizzard, so with our feedback and the data from games, they can change her again if needed.
Oh, and by “we” I mean the whitemane mains, the people who played her sometimes and the people who never played her. All feedback is important.
Yes, she can deal a lot of damage overall. Reckoning has always had that factor, and with judgement day buffed and several targets hit, as well as her crazy buffed autos, it’s not hard.
But it doesn’t change the fact that’s only her auto attacks. Her abilities don’t hit anywhere near that. Her autos are hitting for crazy damage with full zeal stack, and I’ve legitimately posted videos showing exactly that. That doesn’t change that her spells are godawful in this version.
Things get put on the PTR to be tested and give feedback. I’ve seen more blizzard representation on the subreddit since the PTR dropped than I’ve seen in weeks, had replies directly to my statements, and have even had videos made and posted just to show how much of a mess it is.
Personally, I want them to delay the rework, rework it into something that will not be a one build disaster, and put it back on the PTR so we can take a second pass. I’ve already written up my own version of the rework using a lot of their ideas and put it on the subreddit, so it’s not that all of the ideas are bad, but it’s that the numbers tuning is godawful, things got taken out that shouldn’t have been, and two of the new talents are incredibly toxic in their current design. This is not some blanket refusal of everything and desire to see her exactly the same.
I am not against Whitemane being reworked. She needs a rework. I am against this rework in particular. Because it is not a healthy rework that will make her more interesting and unique while offering better talent diversity. Her talent picks are less diverse. Her role is less unique. Her abilities feel worse to use. This is not simple napkin math. This is my thoughts after actually testing her. There are good concepts here, such as Inquisitor’s Prayer, Scarlet Wrath, her new level 20 active. But they’re chained to a mistake in how to balance her base stats and abilities.
Asking a ranged hero player to maximize damage by using AA is something that should be learned outside of silver along stutter stepping, not something found in mid diamond master league.
There is nothing wrong with a hero whose concept is maximize damage to use AA extensively nor have a AA build.
Blizz putting AA builds is not concerning ,players making pikatchu faces at the concept of being expected to have to use AA and use their judgement to know when to go use AA is.