Summary of the AMA on March 6, 2019

General Discussion
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Hello guys, I’m making this thread to help you guys read the answers Blizzard gave us in the AMA today. I hope this will be as good as the one Samisha would do if he had time :grimacing:

  • About the HL/TL merge and other ranked changes

How they will merge HL and TL mmr to give players the new rank

A little bit of ranked history and why they are merging HL + TL

About showing mmr

Maybe showing mmr in the replay if they show mmr in ranked

New ranked merge coming in a few weeks with the new season

Preferred roles for draft

Can choose between new roles + flex

New ranked mode will be first come first serve kinda draft

How they want to prevent smurfs in the new ranked mode and how parties will work

A little bit more about parties in the new ranked mode

A little bit about smurfs with the new ranked mode

Queueing as a role probably not happening

Minimum requirements to play the new ranked mode

Early conversations about MM using only mmr or only rank to create matches

A little bit about new ranked rewards in the future

Less placements games

Ranked decay for everyone

Automatically rejoin queue if someone disconnects somewhere in the future

About rank/mmr limits for placements

  • Talent Tree Design and Talents in General

Blizzard’s opinion on talent trees and how they approach them

No plans to create talents to ‘soften’ hard counters (like Butcher having a talent to do some damage through blinds)

About block talents and why they work in charges and not for a short period of time

  • Heroes and Hero Reworks

Kharazim pretty balanced and no plans to change his level 1 that much

Small change to Thrall’s Thunderstorm but nothing major

Valeera changes maaaaybe coming in the future (sorry Hailfall)

Maybe a small change to Malthael’s Tourmented Souls

They are pretty happy about the state of Li Ming

Deckard probably getting more small changes to make him better

Chen will get a rework but no details on it

Tassadar rework in the future (Someone is really happy right now :wink:). Where their inspiration to rework Tass comes from (Seriously, this is epic). Rework coming soonTM (:sob:)

About weird/unique heroes like Chogall, Abathur, Vikings…

  • Balance Changes in General

About balance changes with no HGC

Focus of the balance team

Large nerfs in a single patch versus small nerfs in several patches

Balance changes now that there’s no HGC

About having too many ranged mages

Buffing weak talents instead of nerfing strong ones and dev’s comment in every change

How the team chooses which talent(s) will get buffed

  • QM and UR

About forced comps and maybe an option to choose between any comp/forced comps

Maybe make Unranked First Come First Serve like TL

No plans to merge QM and UR

About new players taking too long to find a match in QM

About QM, forced comps and educating the player base

  • Multiple Subjects

Player impact in the match

Idea of a team gamemode with team mmr

Multiple questions: Show mmr, ARAM maps in custom, Clans, In-game tournament, spectate friends, public API

No avoid teammate option

New role rework coming with the next season

About sub-roles to avoid confusion

About loss forgiveness

And more about loss forgiveness

Party finder system in the future

Maybe an ARAM only mode in the future

What can we (the players) do to help you (Blizzard)?

About supporting the new pro scene from third parties

What are Blizzards priotities now

About the broken AI

About PBMMR

Trying to make the reconnect system better

Maybe a spectate option in the future but hard to implement

Exp changes and Ghostdunk article (Ghostdunk made a really good article with lots of information about how the exp changes from 2017 and 2018 affected the matches in hots, I highly recommend people read it, it’s pretty good. Anyway, what I got from the dev that answered this is that they probably have another blog post talking about their thoughts on the exp changes so far).

  • New Hero

Apparently the new hero is Broxigar (They even hinted it in a video and no one noticed it lol).

I think that’s it guys. Hope you like it, it took me almost 3 hours to make this thread, gather all the information and separate everything :sweat:

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Very nice work. Thank you for the effort.

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Thanks! :smile:
I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like reddit, so I thought I could help them read everything.

(also Samisha was busy :eyes:)

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I’m busy making a video remake lol xd (didn’t finish it it’s like 25% done I think)

Also I’m so excited and can’t wait for this new hero to get released.

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And you think its ok let others do your obligations???

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AMA should’ve been done on the forums.

NOT reddit.

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good thread! thank you for putting this together c:

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Damn, rick rolled in 2019

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About spectate. Obviously Riot planned right from the start of the development of LoL to have the feature so they had an engine where they can easily add it on.

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This was pretty well formatted and informative, all the information into bitesized tabs; well done.

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Thanks mate, doesn’t seem like icy veins or mmochampion wanted to post a summary of the ama and i have absolutely no intention of scrolling through the jumbled mess that is reddit UI.

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I would like to point out a rather juicy hint/pun.

Maybe they’re looking at making Chen more of a real tank. If so, that’s a huge change, not just as a buff, but to the entire core of the hero. Could be really interesting.

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That’s actually really interesting. I know they said they want to make him a real bruiser in the past, so maybe they will change things to help with his survivability? Maybe a new ultimate? :open_mouth:

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You’re a good guy Darak :sob:

Hopefully this shuts up the “remove quick match” people.

If you’re going to do this, fine(though I will miss the actual fun brawls like pull party) , but let me get my chest through AI or QM then.

I can’t believe no one noticed that, it’s really obvious if you’re looking for it in hindsight. Maybe Anduin was a red herring?

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Ok, I haven’t play WoW since Cataclysm days, played maybe a month of overwatch. If someone can please explain how a rick roll youtube link is a hint, I’d love to know.

EDIT: If its from diablo or starcraft, I must be really dense.

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He volunteered to do it, I didn’t stop him lol.

I mean, here, we had our share of conversation about it:

Started from this post:

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It means that the person asking for Broxigar got rick-rolled by a dev.

Apart from “on our list” they never say who is in development or going to be released in the near future.

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I want Broxigar.
Also I hope we’ll get a teaser this friday.

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If they can envision a kit for him, then there is a chance.

I do think the teaser is due now too, though Broxigar would not be my personal favourite to see revealed.

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Did they literally say they were adding visible MMR months and months ago? Now they are umming and aahhing about it?

God just scrap the damn game. Nothing that comes out of the devs mouths is worth the paper it’s printed on. Why even have the AMA, except to just pre announce something you are about to announce in one week. It’s just a damn promotional skit.