[PTR] Whitemane Rework

General Discussion
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A thread to discuss the Whitemane rework on the PTR; i´ll start with my first impression after looking at the changes as presented ingame (there seem to be some differences to the notes). I will update this once i had a chance to play her, but usually my oppinion does not change much after.

Talent Tree

Base

  • Weapon
    • Damage from 60 to 55
  • Desperate Plea [Q]
    • Range from 7.5 to 8
    • Mana cost from 30 to 45
    • Compounding Mana cost from 60 to 45​
  • Inquisition [W]
    • ​ Damage from 350 to 329
  • Searing Lash [E]
    • ​ Range from 8.5 to 8
    • Damage from 82 to 75
  • Clemency [1]
    • ​ Now available baseline
    • Now costs 75 Mana

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Righteous Flame
      • Changed Functionality: Increase the damage of Searing Lash by 25%. Increase this to 50% if the target is Stunned, Rooted, Silenced, or Slowed
    • Pity the Frail
      • Changed Functionality: Enemy Heroes hit by Searing Lash reduce the Cooldown of Inquisition by 1 second. All of your Healing is increased by 25% on targets below 25% Health [ingame says 30%]
    • [New Talent] - Inquisitor’s Prayer
      • Quest: Hit Heroes with Searing Lash
      • Reward: Each Hero hit grants 3 permanent Health and 2 permanent Mana. Heroes hit with the second strike count as 2 hits
  • Level 4
    • High Inquisitor
      • Removed
    • Unwavering Faith
      • New Functionality: Gain 20% Basic Attack range. Each active Zeal buff increases your Basic Attack damage by 20%
    • Martyrdom
      • Moved from Level 1
      • Changed Functionality: Increase Desperate Prayer’s healing by 10%. Each active Zeal buff increases this by an additional 10%
    • Indulgence
      • New Functionality: Gain 5% Movement Speed. Each active Zeal buff increases this by an additional 5%
  • Level 7
    • Intercession
      • Cooldown from 60 to 45 seconds
    • [New Talent] - Scarlet Wrath
      • Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes increase the duration of Zeal by .75 seconds
  • Level 10
    • Scarlet Aegis
      • Cooldown from 60 to 90 seconds
    • Divine Reckoning
      • Cooldown from 100 to 75 seconds
      • Added Functionality : Restore Mana equal to 25% of the damage dealt to Heroes​
  • Level 13
    • Self-Righteous
      • Removed
    • Guiding Light
      • ​Removed
    • Subjugation
      • Moved from Level 20
      • Damage reduction from 75 to 50%
    • Lashing Out
      • Moved from Level 16
      • Removed Functionality: No longer grants bonus damage on the second strike of Searing Lash
    • [New Talent]: Saintly Greatstafff
      • Zeal heals for an additional 100% from Basic Attacks
  • Level 16
    • Harsh Discipline
      • Moved from Level 13
    • Shared Punishment
      • Added Functionality: Enemies affected by Inquisition lose 10 Armor
  • Level 20
    • Judgement Day
      • Bonus damage from 30 to 50%
    • Fanatical Power
      • Moved from Level 7
      • New Functionality : Activate to grant target ally a permanent Zeal. Only one Hero can have this at a time (15 second CD)

Discussion

First off, all the mana restoration talents are gone and her Q cost has gone up, whereas she will be able to heal for 8 seconds with reduced efficiency due to damage reductions, and thats it. Unless the enemy only hits one or two targets, which is illusory.

The mana restoration on the new Divine Reckoning is insufficient and too late; this needs to be baseline on lvl 1 or a talent choice at level 7 latest. The duration increase on basic attacks might help out a little, but if so make it a mandatory talent for all longer fights, which is in itself bad.

The Basic Attack build looks nice, though the basic attack decrease should have been part of a talent, not baseline. I can definitely see me taking this quite a bit in any case as those talents look very nice.

Why was there a need to decrease the overall damage of Searing Lash both in base and in Righteous Flame and the removal of the bonus damage on the second hit? The range decrease is also nonsensical, it already was a risky ability with it´s previous range. This makes the more demanding playstyle less rewarding. Apart from that i like the quest and the CDR being one tier earlier.

The talents for Inquisition look good, especially as the damage reduction comes a tier earlier on 16.

Pity the Frail needs it´s condition raised to 35% at minimum, so that one can actually get allies out of danger.

Her new level 20 talent Fanatical Power looks pretty strong, but also comes very, probably too late.

Summary

  • Whitemane has been heavily nerfed overall
  • At least in regard to her E build i find the fun of playing reduced
  • Her mana management was an integral part of her gamplay and must be reintegrated via talents or baseline before this can go live.
  • Her Q-build is still the only one with any interaction with Desparation stacks, which is sad
  • Her Cleanse is still rather boring and still only interacts with her Q build

We’re hoping these changes will secure Whitemane a strong, healthy spot in the meta.

I do not see how limiting builds and overall weaking a hero will achieve this.

While the playstyle you’re accustomed to with Whitemane’s hasn’t fundamentally changed

This is fundamentally wrong as detailed above. There needs a lot to be changed before hitting the live servers in both numbers and functionality.

Well, there´s quite some good, but definitely a lot do change also.

What do you think?

19 Likes
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There has been a lot of changes, too much to list but I’ll give one.

Her overall builds has been… diminished to two builds.

In PTR, she has two builds, AA Healing and somewhat decent ‘burst’ healing from E build.

While in the live, she has 4 builds at most.

21 Likes
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In other words her rework sucks.

17 Likes
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Not necessarily, she feels more solid now but the rework was dissapointing. We lost mana juggler mechanics and a her new talent tree is quite unbalanced, some talents are ridiculous good and others are lame.

5 Likes
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I havent played her in a while but I actually like these changes to her. Her playstyle felt pretty much boiled down to spam your heal then hit someone with your W preferably enemies but allies in a pinch. This seems to be more aggressive and interesting than what we have now.

3 Likes
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oh dear, I enjoy Whitemane as she is on live, and expected a minor talent shuffle or QoL fixes.

(edit) I was a huuuuge fan of pity the frail at 1, the searing lash cd is cool but 25% bonus IF they are below 25% sheeeesh

1 Like
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Only thing i’d like to see is Lash-Root as baseline.

13 Likes
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I don’t like E with less range and having to wait for level 16 to have the CC combo.
Have to play her to assess the rest.

7 Likes
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I don’t know why, bit for me it feels like WM (her new AA build) just got Tyrande’s Elune’s Chosen with some Malf’s talents… or more like Khara 2.0…

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Had to play her vs Ai as QM queues reched 3000 seconds. The AI instantly retreats on any damage so i could not test prolonged fights, but from the mana usage i have seen my fears seem justified.

The mana restoration needs to come back for both playstyle and viability in longer fights; adjusting Q costs is not a solution.

Her AA build is really neat, but her E build got more boring (though not bad) and needs its functionality back.

10 Likes
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Tyrande/Kharazim, version 2.0. With Global Q on 20 lvl - Abathur 2.0, healer version.

2 Likes
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I understand cutting costs, but why did they cut almost every “increase” and “decrease” in the patch notes? It is so awkward to read…

10 Likes
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Not playing much Whitemane tbh, more of a Tyrande/Alex person myself but here’s the “catch” overall IMO

I think the main difference from this is they removed Fanatical Power which gave her a very risky but really powerful in right situations Mage build where main goal was not to heal allies but damage opponents rather… They also gave her some utility in terms of armor reduction and making her more of a team-based/gank-support type of hero

Which kinda increases her impact but reduces her solo value, making her more of an another option of standard healer… Which IMO is probably more healthy for the game (in a way) but could see why/how some people would dislike that though

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yeh, i’m bummed out about the mana too…

i mean as she was imo opinion she was the best out of combat healer,

i understand that mana needs to be an issue in prolonged encounters, but in her case her mechanics seem to deal with that, the Q spamming having further increased requirements…

i think the issue lied with Inquisition awarding the mana instantly as soon as casted, what it should’ve done is have the whole mana recovery spread out over the entire channel. That way you’d have to commit and do a full channel, no more cast and immediately break away with full mana gain to boot.

No mana recovery is pretty bad

8 Likes
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my question is y did we get another aa healer? her current heal style is unique. let see for healers that can go aa, anduin, khara, tyrande. that was 3/12 did we really need to make it 4/12? healing can already be boring, and hots already had some of most interesting healers now u are just making it boring.

14 Likes
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I must disagree with this part. Whitemane was one of the best healers DURING combat, and not so great out of combat :stuck_out_tongue: When there are no enemies for her to hit with E and W, she needs to rely on her Qs to heal, and they are bad… perhaps you are referring to Clemency, but it was also insufficient healing tool, and casting W on an enemy hero was strictly better.

9 Likes
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i am talking about out of combat healer compared to other healers i guess, and yes clemency, out of combat i’m assuming there are no enemies around to use E and W on, plus if there’s no enemies there’s also no dmg being taken by your team… to me it felt good topping ppl off in some down time.

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ehem… fighting against boss :stuck_out_tongue:
I find it difficult as Whitemane to heal my team when we are doing boss.
Not as difficult as it is with Malfurion, but still harder than it is with most other healers.

20

that’s not out of combat you’re fighting a boss… come on man, you should’ve said out of team fights

EDIT: i also said during down time

but you know what, let me be very specific, so it’s not misunderstood.

Ofc in combat she can also use W on enemies and E so healing output is greater than out of combat, it goes without saying. But that’s not what i was talking about.

the team fight is over, no one died, maybe the opposing team is gonna hit some fountains, if i get about 30 seconds of down time, with clemency and desperate pleas i can get most of my team up and ready for the next skirmish, even more if i have the talent that also gives me a heal when i use desperate plea… I dunno i always felt the topping off process is nice… also if my team has zarya and junkrat and the like which don’t use mana, i got them to not even tap a fountain, they can maybe use it for next skirmish