If you wanted to nerf Cruel Chain. Thats fine.
If you wanted to lower Maeivs skill ceiling a bit. Thats fine.
But WHY would you ever completely DELETE an entire playstyle from the game for no reason? This talent was in no need of an overhaul, it was fun to use, and it was effective, while maintaining counterplay and had a high skill ceiling to help balance it.
The solution was NOT to delete this talent. If they wanted to nerf Cruel Chain (which, by the way, they said they wanted to BUFF cruel chains a bit in the Dev notes…) then you should have made it harder to stack or something. Maeivs 2 builds (AA/Q, Cruel Chain build) play so radically different they are almost different characters. You basically deleted half of a character from the game for no reason.
Ironic that in the same patch you buffed abathur locusts to revive an old build that died out.
this indeed completely nullifies what she was really unique for… instead pf making her stack her quest unlimitidely (well my max stacks were 47 so idk how far it can go…) they could just cap it at 20-25, and that will nerf it without changing her playstyle, and still have that high skill cap ceiling-high reward feeling.
Ok so here’s how it works.
Old cruel chain, upon tethering targets, dealing damage to them increases the damage of the pull by 30%, up to 150%.
With the new chain, you get 30% pull damage for each hero bound after the first. Up to 120%
Not only is it a 30% damage nerf, but it also removes a huge part of her playstyle for no reason. Now the only way to get even close to the old damage is to hit 5 heroes with a tether, which is super unrealistic. Furthermore, this system removes more counterplay from the talent, before, even if maeiv got a 5 man tether you could stun or try to kill her before she stacked up. Now if you get 5 man tethered its over. It’s more toxic in low ranks and worse everywhere else.
And understand, Cruel Chains was not just a talent. It was an entire playstyle. I’m not mad because we lost damage, i would be completely ok with a 30% max damage nerf to old Cruel Chains, but new Cruel Chains is neither fun or engaging. Their are a lot of Maeiv players who play her for Cruel Chain, not just her base kit, myself included.
yes Indeed, and also even if, EVEN IF you tether 5 enemy heroes, the damage has STILL been nerfed, so no points
also, my reflexes and also my whole playstyle is based on that W talent, i can play E, i can play Q, but not near as good as W. I cant do my maiev combos anymore, it’s my whole playstyle that has to change, which i am not even sure if i want to play the game anymore
The level 16 talent is not infinitely stacking. But she does have one quest at lvl 1 that stacks forever. The way the lvl 1 talent works is that every hero hit after the primary target (the character you click on) gives you a stack. I would also be fine with giving this a hard cap. But instead they deleted half a character from the game
Edit: one of the cool things about Maeiv’s stacks is that typically its either you get enough to be good, or you don’t have enough to be good, while some other infinitely stacking quests are: you get to be good, but you can get enough to be broken. Maeiv getting a lot of stacks typically won’t make her broken except in the most extreme of situations (like power farming stacks tier)
yes, giving a cap to let’s say 20 stacks would work fine, it lowers the over powerness she has past 20 stacks (which is already alot tbh), but also without making her feel under whelming at the same time
Also, you will rarely get past 25 stacks, unless the enmies have a samuro, tlv or that they play really poorly, mosly in ranked which is even more unlikely.
The usual stacks (for me) is between 13-20 max so… yeah, it deals decent damage without being too overpowered, more importantly vs CC teams which you can’t just dive in and get out like that, you’ll get killed even with 1 stun if the enemies are smart
it should be noted, the way spell damage/etc in HotS tends to work, the additional damage from your bonus may not be multiplied.
But, given it gives damage instead of a % based buff, maybe it does?
Just want to bring the point up.
Actually, after some testing, i’m throwing my hands up in the air.
I’m finding that the level 16 upgrade hitting 3 targets total (1 of which is my AA target) is causing it’s damage from pull to increase from ~2.3 to ~2.45 dependingon talents chosen.
My conclusion is i’m going to need to find some people to test it with… lovely.
But, it looks to provide more damage than it states for now…
Agreed. What I dont understand is why some heroes have unlimited stacks and some heroes have a set cap. Set caps are only good in the mid game and tend to level out by end game, making the benefit seem marginal at best. Unlimited caps stay viable all game and tend to snowball out of control. I say make it so that a stack % (say 20-50%) should be lost on death for heroes that have unlimited stacking potential.
I doubt good players at the top will continue to dominate with these nerfs. If they wanted to push more diverse builds then buffing other parts of her kit would have been better.
This essentially nukes the Chain build and removes all of Maiev’s dueling capability. She now has weak wave clear, camp clear and solo fight ability. She can now only really deal decent damage against clumped up enemies.
I shouldn’t have to say this but it’s bad balance design for a hero’s strength to be based around how many mistakes the enemy makes instead of your own skill.
I think they might revert it. This change is just awful.
Maiev only has a few build options and chain was the best. Both Fan of Knives and Spirit of Vengeance are so easy to avoid that it can be difficult to get decent value with them consistently. The AA build is laughable because Maiev has no sustain, slow AA’s and can’t really stick to targets.
If they wanted more build diversity then they should have looked at changing up talents for Q and E. Completely nuking a working build to push others bad balance.
I cannot agree more with your saying! Btw they previoulsy buffed E build but i guess it wasnt relevant enough for pple to take it over W build, So what did they do? NERF LVL 16 TALENT TO THE GROUND … and “Buffing” Q a little to make it viable, it is sad, really sad
It looks they want to push Q synergy with E but that doesn’t feel right. You get that close just to spam Q? You miss one double hit and all the damage is just halted. This nerf makes Maiev an all in team fighter that’s weak at everything else. I just don’t understand it.
i feel like the q change is a nerf too tbh, if for some wild reason you go %dmg maiev (unfortunate qm drafts only really) the old one felt better
if you are in drafts you dont pick maiev for % dmg :’)
whoever decided on this nerf deserves ebola