malthael needs a hole team comp to be build around him, malth is a niche heroe, good against comps of 2 tanks or chogals, also with noobs ranged assasins
I think you have to take a closer look. Ming barely does any damage at the beginning of the fight. Misses her Qs and her Orb only hits Dehaka for a small amount of damage. The only damage she does against Anub is with her tickle beam. The reason why Anub was nuked is the focused damage of the other 4 members, with Malth propably doing biggest part.
Almost no bruiser can survive a full five-man collapse without support. If you ask me he was focused quite a bit at the end of the fight. He had both enemy Dps and Dehaka on his trail and after that Dehaka, Reghar and Anub. All of which can do a good amount of single target dps.
Zul’Jin propably beats most heroes in a 1v1, because of his ridiculous single target damage. Doesn’t surprise me, that a single target AA hero beats Malth. It is his natural counter after all.
Isn’t really a 1v1 if teammates show up for help, is it? From my experience Blaze shouldn’t win the 1v1 because he barely does any noticable damage (If Malth isn’t standing in the fire). A lot of Blazes Abilitys can also be baited and dodged.
I am actually curious how you do it, because my general experience is the opposite. And like you
it seems ludicrous to think that I haven’t encountered good solo lane opponents since his rework.
Little Edit here. I did notice Malth to suffer a bit in 1v1 in mid-lategame, if the enemy commits to a stronger 1v1 build. Bruisers like Imperius, Dehaka and Thrall did bully me out of the Shrine on Dragon Shire. I have however yet to see a tank do the same.
As for the OP I can say, that I only agree with the point that he is squishy, atleast for a bruiser. He does however have a lot of mobility and can easily heal himself up if he is not the target of attention.
If I were to give Malth a buff it would propably be a return of the armor of TS, to make Malth a little bit more sustainable in the middle of everything.
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Well, it’s either that or I never faced anyone who is good with their Heroes while I played Malthael.
Since you aren’t in the top ranks iirc, it is safe to assume the former (so you didn’t face a good Malth).
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Kara you have 4444 posts. It looks beautiful
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I think I found your problem.
Malth is NOT a 1v1 dueling champion. Can he 1v1 decently? Yes, but if you are going toe-to-toe, you are doing it wrong. Against other melee, what you do is you tap him with an AA, then you run around like a chicken with it’s head cut off spamming Q and using W/E to refresh. That’s how you win 1v1s.
And that’s also how you do group fights. You go in, try to get your trait up, then just run around trying to juke skillshots, avoid melee tanks, all the while refreshing your DoT.
My winrate shot up 30% when I realized this, and while you pretty much go splat in 1v5 situations, 1v3, providing that none of those 3 consist of ranged AA, is actually doable.
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Falstad never actually tried to focus Malthael. By the time he stopped ignoring Malthael, he was too low and had to run away.
Junkrat is not a focused-damage hero. He’s all about poke and AoE, he struggles to burn down non-stationary or clumped up targets.
Artanis, Dehaka, Sonya, and Yrel can sustain through those three, and they all have comparable damage and/or better CC than Malthael.
Killing Malthael outright as Blaze is pretty uncommon. Blaze can sustain through almost everything Malthael can throw at him, but Blaze lacks the burst damage necessary to actually finish off Malthael. The difference is that Blaze can force Malthael to leave by wittling him down, but unless Blaze started their duel with significantly lower health or mana, Malthael will be very hard pressed to pressure Blaze out before he has to leave himself.
In fact, pretty much every time I’ve had to run from a Malthael as Blaze between lanes is because his team is coming for a gank or I have somewhere else I need to be, like at the objective. If I have the time to spare, I almost always end up driving him away or occasionally killing him.
ETC has some ridiculous sustain. With Prog Rock and Aggressive Shredding, his self sustain can nullify about half of Malthael’s maximum DPS (including talents like Die Alone). His basic attack damage is over 50% higher than Malthael’s, and he has tons of CC options to harass Malthael. Additionally, with Pinball Wizard he has much better burst than Malthael does.
With Blaze, you basically have to play a game of chicken crossed with a war of attrition. You make sure you’re always standing in or around your Oil Spills, and you chain them together carefully to maximize their uptime while reducing your mana expenditure. When he tries to dive you, you light up the Oil Spill you’re standing on. When he tries to run away, you use Rocket Propulsion with Fuel Leak to close the distance, make more oil to sustain off of, and potentially CC him in it. When you start getting low on health, close to Last Rites’ threshold, you pop Pyromania with Heat Treatment to keep yourself above the threshold. If the Malthael is smart, he will run away during this part; If not, he’ll be healing you while taking extra damage himself and is at greater risk of being CC’d and finished off.
Never have I said Malthael is not a good solo-laner. The ease with which he can Mark an entire minion wave, let alone the fact that he can keep the entire wave Marked indefinitley, makes him a very effective solo-laner.
I said he’s not a good duelist, which denotes two heroes fighting each other with no other participants nearby, which tends to happen between or at the edges of lanes.
This would go a long way towards making TS viable. As it is, there really isn’t any reason to pick it. Giving it something like 25 armor would be a huge improvement (yes, I said 25 armor, armor stacking isn’t a thing anymore so that much would be fine).
For reference, Malthael has a 54.0% win rate and is the 8th highest winning hero in the game.
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Cool to see you posting here. Its appreciated!
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Nice to hear from a dev on this!
Just curious, is that overall, or just for SL or QM specifically?
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To be fair, despite however make him sound, he really is considered one of the strongest solo laners in the game as we speak, and its considered a decent pick in that case in a ranked environment.
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It is great to get such info. What would be even better though was an official site where one can look up those numbers any time and for all heroes 
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And? I’ve said he’s not “bad” overall. He’s just not good at the things he used to be picked for, which is single-target kill pressure and teamfight presence.
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A bit off-topic, but
may I ask the winrate regarding Whitemane’s?
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it’s a teaser xD
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There’s an incongruity between his talents and base kit. His most viable build (q) wants him to pick off targets separated from the group, but his survival is at its highest when clumped up around minions and multiple non burst heroes. He needs adjustments to his trait damage or its talents in order to make him this fully realized melee aoe sustained bruiser blizzard has been pushing him to be, without putting in the necessary effort to make that work, for the last two years.
His W build is also super reliant on a melee heavy enemy team to function. The aoe W radius is quite small, often only hitting 2 heroes. He also has to lose last rites to chunk off 24% of a target’s health in 5ish seconds and burn a long cooldown to do so. Which is still less than the 33% damage you usually get out of last rites on a lower cooldown that is available sooner and sooner the more you use it.
You just can’t compete with Last Rites. Tormented Souls needs to do more than just apply his trait and reset wraith strike. His autos are already great at spreading his marks. That’s why it used to be such a strong ult. He had trouble consistently spreading marks on targets before. Tormented Souls made him an aoe monster. Now he’s balanced around having his trait on everyone all the time and TS’ only benefit really is the W reset.
It needs to do something like ramp up the damage amount or increase the ticks enemies around him take from RM. And then heal him for a percentage of the damage done to heroes. Something that makes him a threat to an entire group that can’t be burst down in 1.5 seconds. I should be just as scared of a malthael warping into my group as I am when sonya leaps into a fray or thrall charges in after a sunder. Instead he’s like a gnat buzzing in my ear that won’t go away.
Stating he has a healthy winrate doesn’t mean you can’t address the fundamental flaws in his design. There’s always room for improvement. You can’t change the base functionality of a melee single target dps into a cleave AoE dps without also adjusting his single target talents to fit with his “new” identity.
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Hell, id take them just posting the winrate list on a dedicated thread on the forum monthly. May bring more people here!
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Die Alone is an earlygame talent to increase his sololane bully potential if necessary (which btw can be used in tf-s). It is a perfectly balanced talent.
It’s purpose is to make Malthael be talented a bit out of his original niche.
W build doesn’t need heavy melee enemies.
Massacre is a W talent, but you don’t need it to have a W build or for it to be effective.
LR is a finisher, TS is and opener.
Choose whichever you and your team needs more even if you went W build, but believe me when I say, that TS is good even without it.
I don’t think so.
And imo one of the reason why Malthael seems to be worse than he is, is because ppl refuse to pick TS when it’s the better Heroic because its bad reputation and because ppl value dmg over utility.
Dam dam dam dam, case closed. The dev have spoken.
what melee damage lol! he doesn’t nuke people at all! everything you said about him is actually backwards.
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54% winrate in what though? in high league gameplay? if thats the cause it should be high a winrate for malthael automatically due to him not being picked much, he would be played to counter a team who picked higher HP heroes so he would have the higher % chance of winning even though he isn’t picked much compared to other heroes.
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