alexstrasza is broken and needs to be fixed. her entire design is inefficient and needs to be modified. she needs a rework from the ground up and i absolutely think she is the most bizarre hero in the roster. her talents are imbalanced and her kit is not logically designed. i will explain this to the best of my ability to combat the inevitable tidal wave of disagreement resulting from favoritism or other biased opinions.
her q is busted. she takes any form of burst damage and her healing is instantly and drastically cut. this basically limits her viability to double support compositions. this is a severely limiting factor and needs to be buffed immediately. not to mention she has no way to instantly prevent damage to herself, therefore she is the one of if not the most vulnerable healer in the game, and this mechanic has a huge negative impact by default.
her w is so obviously telegraphable to the point where it actually causes your team to take more damage than it can heal, making it viable most exclusively in out-of-combat scenarios. 3 seconds is WAY too long of a duration for it to scream âcast your aoe nukes hereâ. this is so counter-productive i cannot believe it actually was made live, this spell almost directly assists the enemy team to land their aoe and crowd control when used in combat.
her e is worthless for anything besides countering a stealth hero, because it does not heal and the damage is pitiful. it can be used to clear a line of minions reliably and that is about it. its dps is too low to risk putting yourself in danger by getting close enough to use it in an actual fight. anyone with common sense is going to target alexstraza the second she comes anywhere close to your team, and her using this spell on the enemy puts her in range of their spells which makes it useless as a poke tool and should only be used to clear a line of minions, reduce her dragonqueen cooldown while laning, or prevent the enemy from capturing a channeled objective assuming she is not put in danger by another ranged hero or something like the butcher, tyrael, or other single-target diver.
dragon queen is too easily interrupted. you must use it outside the area of battle unless you want to be obliterated by mashing the âstun meâ key. also, given her lack of survivability this must be saved when playing against things like ice blast or pyroblast to avoid inevitable death. the channel time for this should be removed altogether.
cleansing fire is also too easily interrupted, and cannot viably be used as an escape or survivability spell while in the thick. you have to use these two abilities at least half a screen away from any crowd control threat unless you want to be ended right then and there.
her talents are incredibly imbalanced. there is only one real viable talent path.
flames of fury, which doesnt even seem to work properly. it is obvious why you should only ever choose this talent.
heat exhaustion, clearly the only viable talent in this tier.
fire within, if you choose anything else you are trolling.
cleansing flame and life binder are the best parts of her kit, both both still highly flawed in ability to be easily countered. cleansing flame can be very good but is easily countered by any form of mobility, sustained healing, shields, and other forms of damage mitigation (armor)
life binder is incredibly situational and also easily countered because of its visual que.
her 13 talents are all viable, but pacify is clearly the best choice against anything from artanis to illidan and i dont know why anyone wouldnt pick it.
draconic discipline, clearly the only sensible talent in its tier as well
i think that red is the best 20 talent, its too good to substitute for something else unless you have a massive %hp damage comp threat exclusively in which case you should go life binder talents otherwise pick red because nothing else makes sense, especially the buffet talent which reduces your attack speed by 25%.
alex is weak, immobile, telegraphable, and virtually defenseless/incredibly vulnerable. she is countered so easily that it is astounding to me that she made it live in this state.
the fact of the matter for me personally is that i have never feared an alex. she seems to have little impact on the game in a combat scenario. her âbuffedâ dragon form is still weak. she gains no armor or shield without talents, and thus becomes more more vulnerable to %hp damage, its just bad design and you have no choice. the best thing for a team with alex to do is avoid fighting until 10 and go get camps, then try and bait the enemy team into engaging against dragonqueen/cleansing fire combination. these abilities have high cooldowns and if you mess up or they disengage youâve thrown the game. the enemy should instantly contest the objective after she has expended these abilities. she is so weak in human form it is just a joke. not to mention she is hard countered by healing reduction, making things like ana and xul render her completely useless. she can still be polymorphed which seems silly, garrosh can still throw her (no cc reduction can save you there), and overall this form has way too high of a cooldown even with her talent which seems to only work if you hit them at certain times. also, once you are off cooldown hitting people with her e to reduce the cooldown is clearly not going to do anything, its just bad. not to mention she starts off the game on cooldown, meaning she cannot use dragonqueen in the mid skirmish, although that is the least of my concerns. the only thing her dragon form should be used for is to grant yourself health and push the enemy away. if you go charging in as a dragon, you will die as it does nothing but give you maybe 1 burst spell worth of health.
she really needs a once over to fix her epicly glaring weaknesses and her lack of real strengths. i can think of so many more reliable healers i would rather have on my team, she has no niche and her power curve is wildly skewed.
her difficulty rating should be âvery hardâ, in my concrete opinion she is harder to play than medivh but i think she needs to be reworked to fix her absolutely broken design.
luckily i have enough experience with this forum to understand that there is a totally unfair censorship system and i save all threads. it is sad that this happens because my post was clearly falling short of legitimate violation for which it was flagged. it is also stated that it is removed manually. you should be ashamed of yourselves by consistently supporting and empowering the obvious troll abuse that goes on here. you canât just remove someones thread because people donât like what someone has to say.
i repeat, alexstraszaâs design is senseless. weak, inefficient, telegraphable beyond reason, and i believe that she is a total liability to her team a large potion of the match. she is more effective out of combat than in. this is not befitting of the dragon queen who fights deathwing. it would take a god to play alex to perfection, she is so unforgiving that i canât even see a reason to risk drafting her. she is an incredibly high-risk, low-reward hero that needs an overall mechanical rework to make her versatile and viable in general. she is so easily countered it is mind-boggling to me that she hasnât been adjusted since her release.
i will continue to play alexstrasza and update my analysis if my observations are found to be false. i am no game designer but i have played enough time and enough heroes to determine that something is blatantly wrong with her. i was excited to play her, but now i see why she is of no threat to me whatsoever as an enemy and a hero who i wish could be replaced as a teammate.
i firmly believe at this time that she is badly designed and needs a rework as soon as freaking possible. maybe i just donât click with her and her difficulty level is too high for me. seems unlikely, but ok, maybe im just bad with her, but after some practice i absolutely feel like my position is valid. you are not required to agree with me. this post is here to just state what i feel is obvious.
you wanted the wall of text, you got it.