- Dagger isn’t a chaining attack anymore (doesn’t move from one target to the next in line all the way down the line) Its more of an infectious aoe spread from the original target. If sylv throws the dagger at the melee minions, it won’t spread to the whole wave; if it marks the mage minion (orb dropper) then it will spread to more units.
This means sylv wants to dagger the unit in a the middle of a cluster instead of the front-most unit to get as much aoe effect out of using W.
- Dagger isn’t limited to spreading from auto attacks; ability damage will spread the effect as well.
Hitting the center dummy on Try Mode followed by Haunting Wave spreads dagger to the other dummies.
- Black arrow’s banshee curse bonus damage applies to structures.
This means that despite of the nerfs, sylv’s targeted damage at structures has improved to some degree.
- Q is reset on takedowns instead of minions. With how her other talents interact with ability modifiers and talented effects, W or E are going to be better for waveclear than Q now.
W quest + unstable poison being the ‘safest’ as the increased damage on dagger does apply to non-heroes, while windrunner resets on E can have similar clearing power.
- Festering Wounds applies 3 stacks of Banshee’s Curse to target’s hit by Haunting Wave. Since this applies her trait, and the talent boosts the damage of the ability, this effectively boosts the damage of Haunting Wave by 50% (*to target’s affected by Black arrow)
The curse/stack also works with Drain life so any unit* hit by Haunting Wave would then heal sylvanas as it applies the curse and damages at the same time.
- Mercenary Queen stuns mercs with 3 stacks of Benshee’s Curse and Festering Wounds applies banshee’s curse to any target able to be afflicted by Black arrows. However, while Haunting wave wont stun the mercenaries, it does seem the stacks are ‘there’, but aren’t active until Sylv hits the mercenaries with basic attacks.
I’m not sure if this is unintended behavior (oversight on how the game checks for banshee stacks on units) but if Sylv is using Festering Wound, switching which target she attacks will then ‘trigger’ the banshee stack and allow her to stunlock multiple mercs without having to activate her trait.
- Barbed Shot’s 350% bonus spike isn’t a base-damage modifier so effects like Might of the Banshee Queen (for spell power) or Merc Queen aren’t significant boosts to the 5-shot bonus damage from this talent in the same way damage boosts effect Festering Wounds on Haunting Wave.
I think its ~9% extra damage on that hit.
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Barbed Shot applies to any target hit by all 5 shots of Withering Fire: structures, mercs, monsters, etc
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While Cold Embrace shares wording with Barbed Shot (any enemy) the armor debuff doesn’t work on structures or bosses.
Cold Embrace does work on monsters.
I did a write-up on possession years ago when the ability was a heroic. Far as i can tell, the effects of the current possession are still the same now as they were then (exception being stealing mercs) despite the ability having now been moved a few tiers and having the charge quantity/refresh shifted. Hence, I will copy the pertinent effects of the current Possession compared to back then:
- -Units killed by Possession grant immediate xp to Sylvanas and if they drop something, it will drop
—eg using possession does not deny your team stuff they would get from otherwise killing enemy units.
-Possessed units do not give the enemy xp or drops.
-Possessed units can earn xp for the team in the same way other allied summon-units do: if they get the last hit, then it counts as xp for Sylv.
-Possessed units are healed to full, even when taking units Cursed by the Ravenlord.
-Converted units afflicted with black arrow or dagger may continue to have those debuffs and be frozen and/or taking damage
-unit ai can sometimes continue to attack and kill units converted by possession. Its rare, but is a form of friendly-fire in the game XD
-If boosts were applied on-target rather than as auras, then possession would steal those effects. That may be part of why more effects are aura-based than targeted on-use effects for non-hero units. (ie, old Promote could be stolen while Zag’s version is not)
-Converted minions do benefit from Zag’s or azmodan’s unit boosting effects.
While I understand some of the sentiment and concern that things have changed for Sylvanas, I think some of the incentives to pick and play her are for her ‘specialist’ quirks (boosts to push power esp with mercs or objectives) and she still has some power in trying to split a push herself, I will say that the current interaction with her talent trees are ‘better’ for the way these talents interact with one another, so her build options don’t seem to be one-trick mods to a single ability.
For instance, Windrunner’s reset (and history of interacting) on Q means its appealing for q talents, but having extra waves to cast means its also worth taking for E builds instead. The same applies to W and aa talents: just because sylv takes on talent doesn’t mean she’s then obligated to invest in all the mods for that talent; W-quest is improved by talents that apply banshee’s curse as a way to get more quest stacks rather than going all-in on W cdr or -armor where the quest may end up lagging behind Might of the Banshee Queen instead.
Now all this isn’t to say “ha, this is better and cope!” (esp despite my use of the word ‘better’ in design above) but rather this is being posted as a point of concern since these changes to sylv will be around for at least two weeks (track record on reverting reworks anyone? Bueller? Bueller?)
I’m not a sylv “main” but I am the sort of player that does grind through specific experiments and variations to see how stuff works (such as misleading tooltips, thanks game ![:wink:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/wink.png?v=6" ":wink:")
) and for me, not much has really ‘changed’ with sylv as I wasn’t invested in one sort of “build” to ‘carry’ games or the like, but rather, I tried variations to see how they work. For players that focused on one specific instance of play, that instance may seem significantly weaker on waveclear or mercs, while the potential for similar power is still in the kit, but its through different talents.
Q isn’t the all-bound savior for waveclear, mercs, and monsters as it had been before, so to get similar effects, players will need different talents than what they may expect, especially since many names have remained the same, but the usage of them is very different now.
Hence, a ‘guide’ or sorts to the possible quirks players may overlook when they find out that their ‘build’ doesn’t work the same as they would expect for a couple of quick games.
