[Sylvanas Update] Feedback

General Discussion
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So now that I’ve had a couple of days to test the new Sylvanas and watched other people try her out on streams I can safely conclude that this Hero Update won’t change much in regards to her popularity/usability.
It’s sad to say but not much has swung in favor of our Banshee Queen, she still suffers from the same problems as before, despite Blizzard claiming otherwise.

Before I get into the nitty gritty I’ll just say that I’m a Sylvanas main and I’ve played her ever since the initial release in 2015 (?), I have well over 2k games on her (probably double that in actuality since the stats from beta didn’t transfer) so without bragging too much I think I know what I’m talking about in regards to my favorite Hero.

So, with that out of the way let’s just get into it:

- The Good:

  • New Trait: More balanced, has both a PvP and a PvE component, the cooldown to active time ratio is 25% which seems fair. Personally I’d prefer a 20 sec cooldown with a 5 second duration (I get that the Stun duration would need to be adjusted as well) so that Sylvanas could use it in more situations instead of just saving it for pushes, but I’m fine with it either way. Sylvanas will definitely be a better duelist after the Update though sadly that’s not the area she was lacking in.
    One small caveat I have with it is how the PvP component functions, you need 3 stacks to deal 25% bonus damage to the target, right? Great, but that means targets with 1 or 2 stacks are basically unaffected by Sylvanas’s Trait. That doesn’t seem like a very good design choice especially when you compare it to other Heroes with similar mechanics. Ana or Lunara for example, still get value even against targets that don’t have the full amount of stacks applied to them.

Suggestion: Make the bonus to damage a curve rather than a spike, something along the lines of 1 stack: 5%, 2 stacks: 12.5%, 3 stacks: 25% would make the Trait feel much more fair.

  • Talent Tree: Overall more Talent diversity, less “single choice” Tiers aside from a few outliers. I guess I’ll just briefly go through the Talent Tiers:

Level 1: Not a very good Tier in terms of diversity, Unfurling Shadows sounds good but actually isn’t due to the massive W changes which I’ll talk about later and Overwhelming Affliction’s effect is too mild, plus the Slow only works on targets with full stacks so I have the same objection as I did with her Trait.
Banshee’s Curse is the obvious go-to Talent on this Tier, it’s powerful but most importantly reliable since it doesn’t depend on full stacks.

Level 4: No problems with this Tier. I think all Talents will find relative popularity depending on the Map and composition.

Level 7: Barbed Shot nerfed but also given PvP functionality, fair. Lost Soul, once again, not a fan of Talents the only work against targets with full stacks but I understand this one would be too strong if it worked otherwise, it’s alright, not great but not bad either. Now, Festering Wounds, a lot of people are giving this Talent a lot of flak but personally I think this will be my go-to since it instantly applies full Trait stacks to anything it touches, that’s HUGE and honestly I believe people undervalue this functionality.
Overall I think this Tier is fine, good choices all around depending on your preferred playstyle.

Level 10, Heroics: Wailing Arrow as good as ever, the new Mind Control better than the previous one since it doesn’t self-stun Sylvanas but at the same time is much harder to get value of since now it’s a skillshot and you can’t actually control the target’s movement. The only problem I have with this new Iteration of Mind Control is the cooldown, 50 seconds seems like way too much for what essentially is an Alarak combo or a ranged Varian taunt. I get the “ranged” part makes it much more useful but at the same time you can’t miss a Varian Taunt, you can miss Garrosh’s Challenge but it’s an AoE. The upgrade is amazing but the base Heroic, in my opinion, it too weak due to the relatively long cooldown. Though I still think Wailing will still be the go-to since it’s just easier to get value out of.

Suggestion: Lower the cooldown of Mind Control to 40 seconds, this would make the upgrade cut the base cooldown in half.

Level 13: Generally well balanced Tier although I feel like Remorseless is a bit on the weak side, perhaps increasing the bonus range to 1.5 would make it more appealing. I also noticed Windrunner no longer has that annoying 0.5 second cooldown between casts which makes it much better, though it’ll take a while to get out of the habit of spamming my E to cast Haunting Wave as soon as possible.

Level 16: Great survivability Tier, nothing to complain about, it’s very much about personal preference and team compositions.

Level 20: Mind Control upgrade is amazing, maybe even a bit too strong, Wailing upgrade still not worth picking. Removal of Fury of the Storm, not sure why since it wasn’t very popular anyway and you didn’t buff Sylvanas’s AAs to justify this. I was honestly hoping you’d remove Bolt of the Storm or at least given Sylvanas her own unique version of it. Withering Barrage, great, definitely worth picking. Overall this Tier received some questionable changes, it could’ve been better.

- The Mixed:

  • [Q] Withering Fire: Okay, so here’s where I’m starting to have serious issues with this Update and where most of Sylvanas’s problems stem from in my opinion. I like the range increase and don’t mind the removal or charges that much but at the same time this Update’s objective was to make Sylvanas a respectable team fighter, right? But what was the issue that made her so mediocre in team fights? I mean, a good Sylvanas could easily top Hero Damage even before this Update so what was the problem?
    Here’s what: Lack of FOCUS in her damage output combined with the sustain-y nature of it. It doesn’t matter if you can output high damage numbers if you give your enemy time to recover or divert your damage.
    I’m sure you’ve seen people bragging that the new Sylvanas can deal 5-6k damage in Try mode, what they fail to mention however is that it takes her 5-6 seconds to do so and that you have very little control over where that damage goes in a team fight scenario.
    This is the underlying problem with Sylvanas, it’s not the damage numbers, it’s not even her squishy-ness, it’s the lack of CONTROL over her damage output.
    Which brings us back to the Q changes which on the surface might look good but in reality are a pretty substantial nerf, no more charges so now you have even less control over your Qs and a 50% nerf to animation speed which dilutes the DPS even further.

Suggestion: Make Sylvanas’s Q a point-n-click ability, this will finally fix the issue of focus and diluted DPS Sylvanas still faces in team fighting scenarios. Nerf the range if necessary but this is the kind of change Sylvanas desperately needs if she is ever to be considered a worthy pick alongside Heroes such as Fenix, Hanzo or Hammer.

- The Bad:

  • [W] Shadow Dagger: I’ll just get straight to the point, this Ability is practically useless now, ESPECIALLY in team fights. Not only does Sylvanas need to AA the initial target for Shadow Dagger to spread but also the spread itself is limited to a VERY, VERY small area around the target, so what we ended up with is practically a single target version of Shadow Dagger that deals less damage than before, doesn’t spread nearly as far AND doesn’t apply her Trait.
    Honestly this version of Shadow Dagger feels like a waste of Mana most of the time since it’s very difficult to get any significant value out it beside waveclear and even then it’s questionable.
    This combined with the nerf to Lost Soul makes this Ability pretty much useless in team fights, the damage is even lower than before, the spread is laughable, it’s just bad, really, really bad.

Suggestion: Significantly increase the spread radius OR give it additional functionality where the spread bounces off targets one additional time for every AA against the initial target, which would translate to 2-3 spreads depending on your timing.

  • PvE/Mercing: Another unfortunate side effect of all these changes is that her PvE damage output has been pretty much cut in half, if not more. No Q resets off minions, W range nerf, Barbed Shot reworked functionality and Trait changes, all of these translate to a much, much lower PvE damage output which sadly I don’t think has been compensated for in any other area of her kit. So now we have a Hero that’s somewhat better in duels, worse in team fights and quite awful at Mercing/Boss racing. Seeing the new Sylvanas trying to take a Hard Mercenary camp is a pitiful sight.

Suggestion: Remove the 3 stack requirement from Mercenary Queen and also make it apply to Bosses (the 30% extra damage part).

In Summary: As I’ve already said, I don’t think this Hero Update will shift Sylvanas’s place in the game a significant portion in any direction due to some highly questionable changes I mentioned above and the fact the the underlying problems which made Sylvanas an undesirable pick went mostly unaddressed. Between the Q animation nerf and her reliance on AAs the new Sylvanas to me feels slow and clunky, she definitely lost that nimble, elusive, satisfying flow which made me take interest in the Hero.
I hope Blizzard will reconsider some of their design choices otherwise I’m afraid we will have to wait another year or so before Sylvanas finally becomes a competitive-viable Hero.

Thanks for your time and have a good day!

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Here is my feedback: ITS CRAP.

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Honestly this Sylvanas change seems to just change her back to what she was before her first rework. A ranged dps that could contest Valla.

Atm she’s a joke so I honestly welcome it

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Just a before thought, the entire post looks reasonable and thought out. A lot of the information I agree with.

Sounds like a good suggestion, as sylvanas’s damage from point one has been reduced slightly, the major difference between old and new sylvanas is that she can augment her damage greatly with talents when old sylvanas had no way of doing so until 13 and 16 and even then the talents were meh for better damage output. A more reliable output of damage by scaling autos would probably be better in her sustained damage playstyle.

Putting an enemy unit out of the fight for an entire second and give them bad positioning is not something to be taken lightly, I suggest we wait til this hits live first and experiment further.

Definitely. I feel like she has no single target options when it comes to this tier, making her a bit weak in lategame considering it’s a 13 talent. I think it should be changed to only hit the hero you’re auto attacking with withering fire.

Putting it on quick cast to break that habit helps. I often press once and it’s done, it’s how I’m using all my heroes lately, helps tons.

Well again, mindcontrol puts a single unit out of the fight, wailing arrow can stop an entire team and is particularly devastating with the 5 second silence. I’ve had genjis thinking it would be over but no, it’s almost like isolation to a degree.

Agreed, previous blizzard mantra was to remove old bland talents or at least give them heroic versions of it like hellgate and psionic shift, wonder why they dropped the ball here.

Sounds fair.

I feel like they compensated this talent for it’s quest variant and it’s level 13 talent synergy with it’s level 7 synergy.

The dagger build is a interesting thing to take against multiple melee comps if you have a steady frontline to keep them off you, it can be particularly devastating.

However I do agree the spread radius is too short or it should bounce an additional target and the talent at 13 should be changed to only apply armor reduction to the initial bounce.

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I just saw that video. So MC is now harder to use and has less utility? I would sometimes grab people and move them away because they were on a low health ally.

Also I would primarily drop it on people like Luna, Tracer, Genji and Lucio. Now it seems like I would have an easier time dropping wailing arrow on them.

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Well said. New Sylvanas changes may look promissing, but you are no longer dancing around dodging damage. You are sitting duck, trying to aply 3 curses to become … usefull. Show me team who will let you do so. If they wanted to remove Sylvana from splitpush … it is complete success. Dueling … fair. Team fights … oh dat will be disaster and late game will melt her. Shame.

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ptr’s down now, so I can’t check, but from what I recall of when I was testing the changes last weak, the dagger spread is based on any other damage form form sylv. While aa is the fastest and most available source, i was pretty sure it’d bounce from hitting the target with ability damage as well.

that said, it is a wierd that’s is more of an aoe spread than a linear bounce, but I would guess that change was meant to curb some of the dominance dagger + -armor has had on sylv’s previous builds to try to create ‘skill’ on when/how sylv uses dagger, rather than just on the lead target with it to bounce to others.

while I do agree with much of what you conveyed, I generally figured sylv had ‘high numbers’ less for the focus, but more for the aimless spam she had for her skills, such as dagger + cdr. Because her damage us sustained and spread, it means it can be healed up and allow numbers to cycle over again; heroes can generate more numbers if the targets are dead.

So the odd part of the rework here is that sylv’s abilities seem to ‘encourage’ focusing targets (to get trait procs, dagger bounces, etc) as the distinction of setting apart her skill level from the mindless spam she had previously. I have some reservations on the execution so far, but it does seem like the concern for damage control looks to be the make and break point of this rework.

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She will be out performed by the majority of the other assassin picks. They pretty much put her in a cross roads between specialist and assassin and gave her a utility ULT which doesn’t fit in the assassins roll.

She is still a win more hero if your team can carry her and she can reliably land good wailing arrows or MCs. But for everything else in the comp.

She doesn’t wave clear like she used to. Her disable will more then likely get people killed for extending too far/too long. She doesn’t square up in damage versus what the other actual single target assassins can put out. And on top of that, her entire kit balances on the fact you got to be attacking a pretty mindless target in order for them to let you stack stuff on them or hit them 5 times with withering. Her ability to grab mercs is mute since she has no real self sustain anymore and even with the disable it’s comparable to what other people could camp on. Albeit camps health and experience has all been reworked.

She probably still sieges decently for damage on structures but you won’t be getting much reward outside of towers since Keeps/forts don’t help your team outside of lane pressure. That and you’ll be pushing with someone else guaranteed.

Her quest is negligible because it doesn’t really stack damage fast enough compared to what she was putting out before hand. Even if you talent everything. Dagger doesn’t work like it use to and keeping it up is both problematic and unrewarding.

At 300+ stacks she is a probably a force to be reckoned with. But good luck trying to get there

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It does the same damage. It lasts 25% longer, and deals 22% less damage. That doesn’t take into account that it does 25% more damage against targets that have been cursed. The talents are also more laid out for this. The quest stacks SUPER fast too and doesn’t require you to hit multiple targets with it really.

In addition to that… you’re really overestimating how long it takes to stack the curse. Sylvanas attacks so fast she can stack it up in 1.8 seconds on a single target.

Lunara and Ana have attack speeds that are more than twice as slow as Sylvanas’s.

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Yeah but Lunara only has to hit you and move out of range to be effective. She hits Sylvanas twice before Sylvanas get’s up 3 stacks on her and then moves out of the way and waits for it to fall off and will still out damage her.

Ana is mute point as she isn’t in a damage dealing role. Heroes like Ana and Nova have more specialized talent selection to aid their AA damage and are situation specific.

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Yes, but my point is that they didn’t give her the tools to do so in team fights. You still have no control over your Qs, the range buff hardly matters when the Ability still auto-selects targets so most of the time the tank will intercept a good portion its damage output. W is pretty much a single target Ability with the potential to deal slightly more damage IF you stack up your Trait, the Q Talent or the W Quest. They also took away a lot of her PvE power (Mercing, laning, Objective/Boss racing) by ‘reworking’ Barbed Shot, so I see that they’re trying to push Sylvanas towards PvP though I don’t think her kit was changed well enough to make her a competitive pick alongside other Ranged Assassins. Why would you pick Sylvanas over Hanzo, Hammer or Fenix? And please don’t tell me because of her Trait because first you need to win a team fight to get value out of it.

As I said in my original post, Sylvanas will no doubt be a better duelist but that’s not what she was weak at, what she lacked was control over her damage in team fights and this rework did not address that issue at all aside from slightly buffing her single-target damage output.

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Just curious: Her basic abilities (not heroics, mind me) are still all point-and -click, right - not skillshots? So maybe she also has her viability and a indirect buff in comparison to other assassins through the hitbox changes. She doesn’t really has to care about them, she will hit her targets as easy as before, while skillshot heroes will become a little harder … so, for (mindless) poke / sustained damage she will be quite nice - just needs an other finisher in the team?

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You already didn’t have control over her Qs, making it point and click like the OP suggested would be good, but don’t you dare make it sound like you actually had control before.

Not true, there are a ton of talents that makes that poke ridiculous (which btw does work with abilties so you can hit a hero and then immediately press Q) and it can be talented to apply an AoE armor debuff, thats nuts.

If you thought 100% of her PVE power was in barbed shot then something was already wrong there.
If you want to merc then there is a lvl 4 talent for that, if you want to push there is a lvl 4 talent for that, if you want to clear there is a lvl 4 talent for that. The point is to make her choose because she has good damage output now.

You act as if hammer fenix and hanzo win those teamfights by themselves. I think you are drastically underestimating PTR syls teamfight damage.

If she was simply given 8 range on a point and click poke skill on top of dagger applying AoE poison while at the same time being mobile she’d be too much of a ranged raidboss. At least with hanzo it’s all skillshots and there lies some counterplay, but syl’s always going to hit.

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I can see that being a valid reason only at low MMR where there’s little coordination and strategy, at higher tiers the new Sylvanas will still face the same problems she did before and I can’t see her being picked over other Ranged Assassins aside from the “I want to play this Hero” factor.

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good job Blizzard you nurfed my favorite character.

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I was looking forward to the changes reinforcing her assassin feel, but her damage output is worse post patch.

This rework is a design failure. The all or nothing mechanic on Withering Fire feels awful, I would rather have my single use fire back.

She feels neutered, a shadow of what she was.

So far her winrate has dropped, I don’t see it recovering very much.

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I told you that’s exactly what happened to her and no one seemed to listen.

Just because they look like buffs to her damage on paper doesn’t mean it’s buffs to her damage.

She isn’t some new Assassin from what she was. She is stuck between an Assassin and a Specialist now and way more unfun to play as.

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My thought after a couple games is - she’s crap now. Just awful for all the reasons you stated.

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Anyone try her mindcontrol now? It doesn’t do ANYTHING lol

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This is not a rework this is a massive, pointless, typical nerf.

When will Blizzard hire competent developers?

I’m seriously one Jaina nerf away from having all my favourite characters ruined and uninstalling the game.

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