QM matchups per hero

General Discussion
1

The game isn’t supposed to care about win rates. But whenever I pick Ragnaros in Qm, I am put in the dumbest matchups.

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There’s nothing we can do here. All our heroes are fodder for Butcher and Tracer, and we can’t out-macro them on a two lane map against TLV and Azmodan. We can’t race the immortal either. No race, no teamfight, no macro. It was kind of a depressing game.

If I pick Tracer on my main account, I’ll be put against the only Illidan I’ve seen all day, along with Diablo and Brightwing.

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2

Tried a 2nd game.

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3

I think you might be looking too far into it, while battlefield of eternity in my opinion is viking’s best 2 lane map, vikings is probably overall disadvantaged by being on one, pairing TLV with another macro focused hero I have also found disadvantages both as one of them is sat doing something arguably worse then another hero could have otherwise done (EG azmos lieutenants aren’t used to their full macro potential or vikings is focusing more on teamfights), I may be alone in this but I also find ragnaros to be a pretty strong competitor in lane to viking and lava wave especially on a 2 lane map essentially leads to the enemy team’s macro to become virtually worthless in the lategame as you are capable of teamfighting while keeping even with a viking splitpush or mopping up one of azmo’s lieutenants.

I definitely understand being frustrated with QM’s matchmaking but I don’t know if this is strong evidence that there is a forced 50% system in place other then the expected matchmaking system running in the background.

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4

the trouble with melee assassins is they lack “rules” for matching them, so they end up in a void of awkward matches to skim whatever other surpluss remains to fill the match.

Tracer might not be matched as a “ranged” assassin so she may similarly end up in odd-comp voids that are usually offset by players being in a party with her.

As far as the first game goes, you have plenty for dealing with butch/tracer, but usual mm qualms see it as 1 v 5 with allies of little-to-no help.

Most of your available tools are going to use heroics to fend of regular engages, so it can feel a bad time, but talent choices make a big difference in standing to fight compares to everyone running from the changed target and getting picked off one-by-one.

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5

I like the phrasing here, it means at least a few of you understand how it really works.

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6

There are only 2 lanes, and there will always be enemy heroes in both, so lava wave wouldn’t give me anything. With Azmo’s demons they don’t need a minion wave to push a srtucture, and we can’t challenge them for merc camps. Butcher/Tracer can kill anyone of us whenever they want, so laning agressively was impossible as well.

Well, Maybe I’m missing something obvious but:

Ragnaros: If I don’t see them coming, I’m dead. Ragnaros is a sitting duck, He’s the target dps will always go for. (And I totally get it, when playing assassin, I go after him too) He has no counter to Butcher’s stun before 20. And absolutely no defense against Tracer, especially if she took “Tracer rounds” lvl 1. And I won’t be killing her unless the player does something stupid.

Probius: Never seen a Probius be a problem for either Butcher or Tracer. His counterplay is to die so the game ends faster.

Murky: Can dodge either Butcher’s E or Tracer’s bomb with bubble, but not both. Whichever on the player chooses, they still die.

Zagara: Nothing in her kit lets her defend herself against either.

Nazeebo: Gets iceblock at 13. See Murky.

I have played Tracer with a Butcher on my team severla times in QM. And usually, I just have to follow Butcher and we eventually win (Usually with one of the the opponents going afk after dying a few times.)

7

So weird how Phase presents each of the counters in a 1 on 1 situation or against a group, but can’t possibly imagine how the group can help each other. Like I hate Butcher as Probius without a healer, but come late game when you guys should be grouping, a Butcher CAN charge me and I might die, but if he wants to enter a warp rift and wall with allies blasting him, he can.

A murky can counter Butcher and Tracer by octoing. A Zag can maw a charging butcher. A Nazeebo can wall a Butcher. Naz can throw spiders and waste enemy time while ice blocked in a no healer game is incredibly powerful.

Life will be hard for the rag for sure, but it doesn’t mean the matchup is bad. In these no healer games, you sort of expect that people will die, but so will the other side. I mean considering it was 17-23 for a 23 minute game, seems like a perfectly fine game. He should honestly flock back to ranked and stay out of QM if he can’t handle that.

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8

If you play E build rag, then you’re going to have a harder time with tracer/butcher unless you’re partied and practiced with murky for allied E hits and in a healerless match, you’re giving up a lot of heal/mitigation to offset poke from the rest of the team.

Rag has armor options to help him deal with both. Lvl 4 has either active armor, or stored spell armor to at least offset damage spikes from azmo or tracer heroic (minus gul’dan dot,) he has re-active armor (proc on stun) at 13, and he can spec for Q cdr at 7, but that comes at the cost of meteor cdr if going to the spell armor build. If both butcher and tracer are charging in, Rag could juggle hp spikes when he’s engaged against two heroes as that is what triggers his Q cdr.

The particular reference I was making in the previous post was for Sulfuras Smash: due to the delay in landing, it can hit butcher as his unstoppable ends and curbs a hefty chunk of the threat of his charge. Granted, if you’re in a Lamb and everyone else runs away (despite it not being able to affect them early) then any portrayed 2+ v 1 while silenced is going to end poorly for most of the roster.

Zag’s maw goes through unstoppable so that’s an easy save against charge + lamb combo, and she can outrange and outtrade tracer (cuz summons.) However zag is one of those heroes that performs worse with bad/no stutter so a typical player is unlikely to be practiced and confident in bullying tracer, especially if they go Q build thinking they need to stand as far away as possible.

Probius rifts detonate on their own and don’t require Q to trigger them, so they can make an anti-engage zone by sitting in a portal to deter or punish a charge and just hope to trade rift burst for deaths. By 16, he does get spell power debuff and a knockback and provide potential peels if they’re anticipating an attack.

Nazeebo’s zombie wall isn’t hard cc, so it can be used to stall out butchers charge by either trapping him in it, or casting it around an ally to prevent him from completing the charge.

It’s the sort of match-up where teams should probably consider ally builds as select heroes can interfere with other ones. Probius usually has ‘free’ waveclear, so he can prevent nazeebo from getting stacks. Either zeebo or probius could build for ally support and zoning, but you wouldn’t want both/neither to do it.

It’s a similar concern for zag as well; depending on how she picks/plays, she could be getting in the way of zeebo and probius, and regardless of who gets targeted by a charge, they could run away instead of looking to turn the fight around.

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9

What you experienced was the hero interaction design of the game.

As others have pointed, you had some tools to play the match, I will argue that your fear (butcher and Tracer engage) was actually the most viable situation to win a teamfight, because your comp can’t reach Guldan or Azmodan anyway, but I’m not bashing you or something, if the scenario was the opposite, posters would had pointed that you had Butcher engage and Tracer pressure, but I think it was mostly because this statement:

Do you think if the game change comp rules or just never make you face counters in QM then gameplay experience would be better?

How I said in the group/stack posts, the “problem” from a individual gameplay perspective is hero interactions, in this specific case you felt the toolkit of Ragnaros vs unreachable ranges and point and click assassins. You don’t “outplay”, you counterplay.

Leaving aside your positioning relative to enemies and teammates, stuff foreign to your mechanical gameplay is what decides teamfights.

Did Murky start the fight with octograb on Azmodan one screen away?(If he took the talent in the first place) gl, Tracer has now zero chances to die, you can make her retreat with damage but not kill.

Did Zagara overlap her maw in an already punished target? (I expect in a ringed Butcher with full Zeebo combo mid air) gl, you lost your wombo combo potential for 80 secs.

You can’t mechanically evade Butcher and dodging pulse doesn’t change much the engage situation (she would pulse the charged target anyways), you have to hug teammates and force enemies to missposition because majority of heroes toolkit revolve around guaranteed stuff, so a lot of the mechanical gameplay in teamfights is spacing (no idea if MOBA have a equivalent term for footsies) and coordinate tools with the teammates.

That’s why your post blaming hero matching instead of hero design doesn’t address the “fun” of playing the game itself in QM.

Replace that TLV with Abathur and try to mechanical counter that Tracer or Butcher’s double charge as Ragnaros, sounds like fun to me!

Due to pick/ban system nature of ranked (and MOBA in general), for example you can improve Vaalera silence for X seconds, instead of rework the engage interaction, because isn’t about you “outplaying” the mechanic, but having the right tool in the comp to “counterplay” the engage itself, translating into very bad situations in QM.

You can still try to do your best performance in QM and create best the scenario for a comeback if things align in late game, for example 3 man Zagara’s maw > wombo combo then core and gg, but is so meh from the gameplay perspective.

I’m not arguing that game should be balanced around both teams war charging eachother, but some degree of individual hero outplay in these situations will lead to less “unfun” matches.

10

While W build is indeed safer, I feel that’s it’s just about the worse build in the game. I tested it a lot, but found it has very little impact.

Checked it on heroes profile for fun. And W talents have the lowest win rate across the board. None of them reach 50%.

I think Catching fire and Resilient flame both have merit. It just sucks that both come online late (Lvl 4 globe quest on a two lane map, and Lvl. 13 talent). We would have lost 2-3 imortals by the time I get the talent. (Though, as Butcher was fed pretty quickly, even with the armor, he hits so hard that I’d die anyway)

I did actually use it to peel myself. But I found out that I could not finish him off, and just had to run. Just 1-2 hits of Butcher’s brand was enough to take him out of kill range.

Do you mean catching Butcher with Maw during his run? Not that it’s impossible, but It probably isn’t easy .

Honestly, if I’m Butcher, I’ll just charge through the rift. Even if it detonates perfectly as I run through it, 2 auto attacks will give me back the health I’d have lost.

I know that Ipersonally would not be able to catch a Butcher mid charge with Zombie wall. I think even for Nazeebo mains that’s a pretty difficult feat. And I wouldn’t want to be trapped in it while Butcher is circling around either lol.

Meaning?

How would we ever catch Tracer though?

I’m not talking only about counters. In this case, it was a bad map for us because it’s both a two lane map that doesn’t allow our macro to shine, and an objective that we can’t race the enemy team for. And as you can see from the stats, we didn’t win the Team fights either. The majority of our kills were on TLV.

I don’t think the game considers the map into the matchup. I can’t know for sure of course, but I think the map is just random, and you can’t have the same map twice in a row so the game can’t force you into a specific map to “balance” you.

11

Well it does have 2 main issues:

  1. it is a skillshot and the typical player isn’t going to aim it well, so the performance is going to be dragged down by mindless spam trying to use it like it’s azmo’s aoe. The effective damage range (without quest) is practically melee.

  2. To deal optimal damage against a single target, they have to be moving in the specific path.

Without the quest re-direct, a hero can stand still to minimize damage, or – as is typically the case – if a dive hero just keeps chasing, then a meteor cast to roll past the target won’t do much damage.

If the blizz polls were updated to ask in-game trivia, I’d expect the ‘majority’ of play rag sees treat his W like it’s Gul’dan’s and only have it cast away from Rag, instead of toward himself.

@ zag/nazeebo; it’s less that someone will ‘intentionally’ snag a charging butcher, and more incidental if they do. Usually my own snags are self-casts when I’m being charged than if I happened to save someone else.

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12

Fight counterplay designed around tools rather than individual gameplay itself (you can argue spacing is still a mechanical gameplay, but is sad when is the only one for some match ups)

Not a LoL enjoyer but it works as analogy:

Imagine that Yasuo whirlwind was the targeted skill and the R was the skill shot, that’s more or less how things works in HOTS.

Not idea if the other poster is refering to a literal mid charge thing, but usually that type of stuff is aimed just in front of the charged target, so after the stun Zeebo or ally can make space and evade the brand heal, plus the punish of course.

Without octograb you can’t secure a kill on her, but without healer Probius and Zagara can trade damage when she engages (TF scenario, not 1v1) to at least force a recall and is still a better scenario than trying to reach enemy ranged heroes with Tracer around.

I’m not saying that now you have the advantage, but I just don’t see blue team ambush red team or having enough pressure to kill Azmodan or Guldan, is sad but the only time you can “outplay” here in a TF scenario is when they engage and relies in they making a bad usage of tools instead of you proactively forcing something.

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Don’t play LoL, so no Idea what Yasuo does. Still don’t understand what you mean.

What tools?

But if you do it before the stun, Butcher will run around it. After the stun I’m sure he has time to walk out.

14

What I have seen is they LAND the ring at the same moment Butcher impact target, leaving butcher inside the ring and target outside, I have seen this to be more consistent if Zeebo is the target, because he can control where to be impacted by the Butcher’s E, instead of an ally trying to make some dash or pop any CD.

Maybe is bad wording from my part, I mean the toolkit of the heroes.

The Yasuo stuff…

I gonna put you this example with Butcher, any LoL player would be picky but anyways:

Imagine that Butcher’s E was a conditional spell.

Now let’s remove Butcher’s Q slow.

You need to land 2 consecutives Q on heroes with max 6 seconds between them.

If successful, the third Q becomes Kaelthas E for 6 seconds. (this is the “whirlwind”)

If you land your “Kaelthas E”, now you can cast the Butcher engage, but this engage is almost instant, stun the target one extra second (remember is only castable after landing the “third Q” that is already a stun) and is uninterruptible after landing and deal heavy damage.

Don’t get to picky about the nuances of the ramp up system, the main thing here is that the gameplay for the Butcher in this scenario would be landing Q (a skill shot with short range), to proc a skillshot with long range and be rewarded with a engage. For the other player, the gameplay would be evading the Q to negate the third Q or negate the stacking by evade the Butcher for 6 secs, if third Q is inminent your gameplay is dodge the “whirlwind”. All this can be done by any hero, because isn’t designed around a healer being in your butt CCing Butcher after the engage, because the engage is “earned” by gameplay mechanics.

By doing the engage not conditional and targeted (making the whirlwind targeted) now dodging Q does nothing, the main gameplay is “spacing” (Maybe I can use the term footsies, because from what I searched zoning is refered to area denyal, more similar to how you treat circles in braxis) and having the right partner to counter the engage.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think LoL is better or even think that you can make Butcher like this without tuning the other heroes first, but is just a example of gameplay mechanics over toolkit countering and how it affect enviroments without draft, in this case QM.

15

I like how people are talking to you as if you had control over your teammates and how skillful they are on their heroes if they didn’t already check out at game’s start.
It doesn’t matter what the other heroes on your team could have done if you aren’t the one playing them. Did the Murky and Zag even pick octo and maw? They might not know how to used those ults. I’m sure all of this is still your fault some how. So you know…get good I guess.

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Ye you can only control the outcome of what you do with your own hero. What others do is up to them to figure out. You can talk tactics all you want but if the others dont do any of it then its waste of time.

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the conclusion of the op is, “There’s nothing we could do here.”

If people convince themselves that their actions cannot change the outcome, are they going to attempt to do better the next time around?

Sure, one of the biggests shortcoming of HotS is one person getting focused while everyone else just watches or runs away. Then they either peter around for respawn or they run in after the ally died and end up getting killed themselves due to 4v5. Even ‘pro’ games suffer from staggering deaths like this.

Since the OP is inclusive of the ‘team’, then it stands that other people will try to encourage more action than surrendering to some projected inevitable. That sort of reasoning slipper-slopes into rationalizing surrender options where people convince themselves that they know the game is won/lost “at draft” and then proceed to act to realize the loss.

It is a ‘team’ game of sorts, so sometimes a few words in chat or ping actually help “allied” players to hold up their end up the team. But if people don’t know what options may be available, they’re unlikely to consider using them.

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The problem is Phase is talking about the matchup and then individually talking about the OTHER heroes as if they didn’t have tools that have nothing to do with him.

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If they are not going to use them (which in solo que happens more often then not to me so I understand why he positions it that way) You might as well treat it as if they don’t have the tools and work from there. What do you have left if you are on the hero with no easy tools to work with in this, and many other cases where it is up to your teammate to step up and not make it feel like you have to 1 vs your own group xD

20

That’s frustrating yes, but then the thread should have then been allies don’t use their tools to counter (which we don’t even know is even true, Phaseshifter tends to have a pretty bad track record when doing game analysis, and as I said the game wasn’t even a blowout), NOT the matchup is bad, and there’s nothing WE can do.

And as he tries to defend himself, he just digs further in that silly position by then listing all the different ways the enemy team counters, but then ignores how the allies somehow mysteriously can’t. His position was never that they didn’t, it’s that they don’t even exist. Those are two very different things.