Playing Probius in QM which is not a great idea, I know, but I feel like a little CDR would go a long way, especially on his W. Maybe I’m wrong and it just requires more teamwork but I think that his W should arm in 1 second instead of 1.25. Probably not that big a deal but it’d be nice. So maybe some CDR talents for W?
I summon SamiSha.
Id like to see a decent Q build with resets similar to Medivh arcane rift except when hitting 2 heroes with initial projectile. The level 1 is nice, but the 20 really needs a buff
I’m by no means a hardcore pro with the probe. But I frequent him in QM and it feels fine tbh. Remember W is as much a zoning tool as a damage tool. If the opponent has avoided it by it not arming in time, you’ve moved them away from the location, ie zoned them.
I tend to place them preemptively than try to catch heroes standing in the W summon area (unless a, very busy fight is underway). This way it serves more as a “if you stand here, you will be punished” and I use it to keep people away from their minions in lane, away from globes or away from where allies of mine are poking them from. It’s a powerful deterrent.
Probius only really suffers when he’s 1 v 1ing, and it can be tricky to catch people with them. Again, you have to place rifts where you think people want to go. In this situation I will place them typically where I’m heading to discourage people from following me rather than try to land them on my target outright. Kite through rifts to escape or punish chasers with big damage. Similarly throw them on people attacking cannon to force them to move or be punished.
I think of rifts as mines I lay. That’s how I treat their deployment now, and I’ve tended to do better since, rather than thinking of them as something I outright throw on an enemy. Remember probius is a macro king. Lay rifts to guard your position and use spare charges to blast the wave to pieces. The enemy either risks crossing the rift to stop you pushing or they sit back as you obliterate their wave. Due to probius’ insane Tower damage as well you play this game when your minions hit the towers so the enemy isn’t just slurping up the exp, if they don’t act you can break their towers very fast, so you keep a rift on the hate to dare them to come out and play and punish them if they do.
The only thing I think probius needs is some talent reviews to remove the final traces of his speciliast/pesudo support role. Like the minus spell power on rifts is just unviable to the alternatives, and the level 20 talent for pulse is terrible. I also think the cannon could use some love in terms of the cdr talent (I’d bump it to 1.5/1.75 cdr per shot fire)
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So this one time, right, i clicked on Probius, right?
Then I was like “loljk, Gazlowe is actually a thing” and picked Gaz instead.
Probius needs some serious help imo.
Gaz’ ult, gravbomb can synergize really nicely with a lot of other heroes to make a wombo combo or
Gaz’ can actually be made pretty tough with armor talents. Along with that, his auto attack gets pretty brutal for a hero like Gaz.
The collecting scrap mechanic is a pretty nice touch for Gaz too.
Deth Lazer build can def kill another player, especially one thats asleep and not looking for Gaz in a team fight.
Its kind of crazy Gazlowe’s turrets are better than Probius’ photon cannons. I think the Photon cannons should have an AoE explosion like Fenix’ auto attack but baseline. Something to offset the fact you need to have pylons up, only have a small limited amount of pylons and no recharge mechanic like scrap on Gazlowe.
They’re actually quite different though. Sure they both violate the dignity of lanes, but they’re quite different in how they employ their zoning. Gazlowe has the strength of being a bit more straightforward to utilise in a TF, but probius definitely outdamages him if the situation is to his favour and you can get people in your rifts. Gazlowe is a better jungle (probe is by no means bad) but prob is a stronger zone and bully because you can only destroy part of his zoning (cannon) but you can’t destroy rifts so you can’t poke them off to clear the area.
They’re both decent and I’ve played both a reasonable level with some shining in some situations more than the other. I will say this though, I’ve never met a Gazlowe I couldn’t bully off a lane as probius due to superior range, the ability to delete his turrets and unlimited mana. Gaz is better at holding his lane against someone who can insta dive him however because he isn’t so fragile. He’s also a better duelist because of how straightforward he is.
Yeah, this is my problem with Probius. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve only ever played games where everyone knew to never stand in a Probius rift. And at that point, what am I supposed to do? I can get clever and drop a rift in a choke point-like situation, but those aren’t around everywhere.
I gave Probius a chance because I loved the fact they put a SC worker unit in the game, but if people dodge rifts… Probius really doesn’t have a fallback option like Gaz does with all his stuff I listed above.
Even if I lane against a Probius (rare, I’m sure you know not a lot of people play Probius lol) I just walk around rifts, or keep an eye where Probius currently is and move through when he can’t reach to detonate.
The only problem I’ve ever had with a Probius is catching the little bugger.
Yeah it’s definitely an issue and takes some time to learn. I tend to lay out my rifts defensively and less aim them at people and more where I’ll nuke minions and such, and hold off blowing them up. Most enemies e, oect rifts to go boom pretty quickly. Either you zone them for 9 secs or they get careless and you blow it up when they cross.
It’s late game where it becomes the biggest issue. By this point everyone has their talents and such as you’re very very fragile. You need a strong front line to unable to you rift the field and your team needs to work with you, ie not keep moving the fight around too much. Sure I’d had situations where I’ve got some insane late game probius loop nukes but equally I’ve had games where enemies steered clear, fortunatley my allies followed them up and punished their positioning. If your allies do not work with you though, yeah it can suck hard.
I usually lean on the fact that probius has a strong early and mid game and thus hopefully I can secure enough of an advantage in first few tfs and my lane to allow us a late game which is smooth by level advantage. If that doesn’t happen however yeah, he’s not the greatest late gamer in the final moments as his talents still fixate on zoning and defending, not pressing an advantage. So if an objective is key to your late game, happy days. If its a hard push map, yeah, the pace of the push can mess things up a lot.
I personally want the opposite, I want him more to be about zoning, base defence, and a supporty utility role with his pylons being a big part of that. With Tass becoming more of a mage if he loses force wall I’d love probius to take it
If probius could get force wall instead of R2 I’d happily sign.
Then you are zoning them hard and winning the objective because nobody is pushing through the rifts to get to the point
Photon Cannon is kind of a trash ability. Probius has a very strong kit with W and Q plus null gate though
Probius has routinely been a top winrate hero.
The main thing is that you have to determine both your and the opposing teams strength at the start of the game. Does the enemy team have heavy dive? Well, by placing rifts defensively, you prevent them from diving, and can steadily poke em to death. Does the enemy team have poke? Well, pick solid poking talents, such as return on Q, and the various shield talents to soak up enemy poke to win the poke game.
For Probius, you’ll need to adapt to the game you are in.
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Sadly though, I’m lacking valuable damage contribution for a team fight. Zoning is potentially really useful and fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but it can’t be the only contribution I’m bringing. Especially since damage is iffy because I can’t force people to walk through rifts, unless there are very specific circumstances.
Photon cannons are doofy though. This makes me very sad because their original counterpart in StarCraft 1 + 2 was a very useful defensive/offensive structure.
I think this is a good point. I also think, though, if we are going to build a team and play around a certain hero/heroes there are better ones to pick for that than Probius right now. Aside from, y’know, the fact that there are a bevy of heroes that’d shine when a team supports their playstyle, like Hammer.
Ok so, for various reasons win rate is an extremely deceptive statistic. Getting into it (I won’t get into it too deeply), I think winrate is a composite of total experiences rather than a reflection of a hero’s potential, right? There are circumstances that can occur that will make us draw superficial conclusions about a hero if we rely on winrate. I’d rather toss the entire metric out and objectively compare a hero with another hero that as closely as possible resembles that hero in role and abilities.
This approach allows me to make a comparison and almost “grade” both heroes on their capabilities. Almost mentally assign scores and average them to produce a final rating. Now then, the problem does become how well do I use each hero and in what circumstances do strengths AND weaknesses become magnified for each? Which is why I play a lot of games ^.^
You see, what I’m getting at is it’s my belief it’s generally better to play a “well rounded” hero (in terms of Probius vs Gazlowe, Probius being niche and Gazlowe being well rounded) since niche heroes have to operate within the niche, and niche gameplay always, always has a conceptually simple gameplay counter.
So if the enemy team has a good/efficient answer for my niche hero, it’s advantageous to play a hero not almost fully invested in that niche, like Gazlowe.
Yes exactly right, which is why I claimed what I said above in this post. I’d rather sacrifice a bit of niche for versatility to contribute in other areas should the enemy team prove (through gameplay, remember, not draft) adept at countering my niche.
My damage with Probius is really hit or miss, but that’s not necessarily because I’m not contributing. It just varies from game to game depending on how I’m pushing and if I’m joining team fights. In games where I’m heavily involved in team fights, it might not be the highest (I almost never pick pylon overcharge), but it’s also not shabby either.
I don’t really see Probius as a niche hero. He’s got counters certainly, but it’s rarely a make or break situation. He works well in a lot of solo situations, and is always going to be helpful in the main group by setting up a zone for relentless aggression. So you can easily rotate if you’re struggling.
That’s a terrible way to optimize your win rate. Setting aside whether Probius is niche, which is debatable, you would pick the niche hero who has a higher win rate (which Probius does), in the cases he excels at, and then play a more generalist hero in the other cases. If you just pick the generalist hero all the time, you’re missing out on a lot of the advantages of the niche heroes when they excel.
As someone who loves both Gaz and Probius, and does really well with both, my Probius win rate is still LOADS higher than my other heroes, which still confuses me to this day. But that’s just my personal experience. All the more surprising when you consider that my initial win rates with him were about 40%.
But that just highlights Probius’s main problem. He has a high skill floor, and a gameplay style that is dramatically different from your standard hero. This makes him difficult to pick up.
Mmmmm, no. You misunderstood what I meant.
So, when analyzing a hero, I do so because I’m not thinking of playing that hero in an established and well-drafted team. Should I play with my 5 man well drafted team, I no longer am analyzing my singular hero, I’m analyzing our team and theirs.
Having a consistent team that drafts well isn’t the common experience, so I focused on the common experience.
In a practiced and well drafted team, any hero is going to shine equally because they’ve theoretically drafted well and support each other. Drafted games like these come down to limiting mistakes (no matter how small) and working as a team.
I’m pretty sure OPs thread was about QM? I could be wrong. But versatility has certain advantages in QM because you never know what you’re going to get… It’s QM.
Most of my games with Probius are in QM, but I also play ranked with Probius. I’m more hesitant to play him in ranked not because I’m worried, it’s just I tend to play a lot more support because I don’t often trust other players to do it if they aren’t experienced at it.
Probius is great in a draft. He has a few problems against solo laning against some heroes, but beyond that, a good healer and tank with some setup basically eliminates any of those weaknesses in team fights.
Right, we agree on this. The concept of the draft allows us to attempt to seek advantage merely through composition. Drafting well potentially does this for any hero.
Again, you’re right. However, again, this isn’t a Probius specific trait. It’s ideal for the vast majority of heroes.
In QM and lower ranked leagues, there are for sure what’s called “carry heroes”. These heroes are ideal mainly because of versatility, followed by survivability. OP refers to QM, and a versatile hero can be adjusted to cover conceptual weaknesses of a comp (versatility/utility) or less skilled players (survivability therefore damage output) dying or not doing enough damage.
Shining examples of these carry heroes are Arthas and Thrall.
You need to put the rifts in a place that forces them to walk through it. W build is by far the best option. They cant just avoid it forever, you are getting a lot of value by either dealing insane burst or cutting off their options.
That’s only half of the struggle, right? You also have to be in position to detonate which is what MetDBlck meant by needing a team to help force the enemy to play Probius’ game. Probius is a delicious target for dive heroes.
In a team fight, they don’t have to avoid it forever. If they avoid them long enough to gain the upper hand in a team fight by dropping 1-2 of your heroes that’ll be solid.