Valeera rework ideas discussion

General Discussion
1

Hey guys. I’m working on a rework concept for Valeera, basically what I think a rework for her should look like. I’ve hit a bit of a mental roadblock/crossroads with some of the ideas I was working with, and I figured I’d try running them past you for some help deciding. This is also to gauge the interest in a rework for Valeera.

Feel free to present any other ideas you come up with too.

My goal with the rework is to allow Valeera players to specialize more, choosing more of either utility, burst damage, sustained damage, or CC over the others while still being able to hybridize.

The first options I’d like to bring up involve Eviscerate.
I have two ideas here.

  1. Combo Points grant a fixed amount of damage, stacking additively. This is currently 85 per Point, adding up to 255.
  2. Eviscerate always deals a fixed, albeit very low, amount of damage, say 30. Each Combo Point doubles this amount, stacking multiplicatively. 1 Point doubles once for 60 damage, 2 Points doubles twice for 120 damage, and 3 Points doubles thrice for 240 damage.

I’m also considering adding in a talent at level 20 that increases maximum Combo Points to 5, but also reduces the base values slightly.

The next issue is with a talent for Cheap Shot. I plan on reverting Cheap Shot’s stun to 1.25-1.5 seconds.
I’m considering adding another talent for Cheap Shot at the same level as Blind called “Knockout” that adds a 2.5 second sleep effect but reduces the duration of the stun to 1 second.
Is this something you’d be interested in seeing?

Next is Mutilate. I’m trying to break Valeera out of the Q-spam rut she’s stuck in without making it completely useless.
One of the things I’m considering is changing the bonus damage to 5% of the target’s maximum health. This would make it less effective against low-health targets but more effective against higher-health targets, giving this talent a specific role to fill.
Any thoughts?

4

Mind if I ask the reason why you are thinking of many kinds of heroes and reworks for them?
It must be taking too much time.

5

I got some free time occasionally. Might as well use it for something I enjoy.

3 Likes
6

I’ve had Valeera on a “to do” list of my own for a while. My preliminary notes are:

  • Re-focus talents on three cleanly defined build paths: Burst/Ambush, DPS/Sustain, and Crowd Control
  • Rework Garrote into a DOT effect that punishes the target for moving instead of a silence
  • Revert Cheap Shot into just a stun, add Blind afterwards as a talent option
  • Rework the teleport effect for Vanish abilities to proc when using them from a Bush or Stealth Bomb instead of after being Vanished for 3 seconds

Feel free to use any of these concepts for any of your work if you’re interested.

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Hero rework request check list.

Do I think the hero needs a rework?
Have I played 100 games as said hero?
Have I played 100 games against said hero?
So I still think the hero needs a rework?
Have I asked for help playing with, as, or against said hero?
Have I played 100 more games with, as, or against said hero?
Do you still think the hero needs a rework?
We’re those 100 games since the last time said hero was affected by a balance patch?
Did you answer yes to all of those questions?
Did you really answer yes to all those questions?
Go ahead and post a rework request.

3 Likes
8

Lost Vikings Rework

1 Like
9

As someone with her over 100, I do think she needs a rework, but it either needs to be a simple talent rework for build diversity with buffs to certain tiers, or an overhaul that adds full invisibility but lowers damage (unless full invisibility is added, I do not think you can reduce her burst/damage without her going from niche to worthless, because currently she can not position to disable a specific target, rather she has to take what she can get and she has to have the damage for it to be effective).

Your first idea: it just sounds like a nerf to Eviscerate? It’s already a weak part of her kit. If this change were to happen, a 3 point Eviscerate should do more damage than it does currently, while the 1 and 2 point Eviscerates do less, otherwise it’s a pointless nerf. Kind of like Nova’s current Snipe quest except not as gimmicky and random.

Your second idea: I agree Cheap Shot needs to be a longer stun. It might be annoying, but her openers are only as strong as they set up kills. The blind is too niche right now and only punishes bad play where people try to 1v3 with AA on Zul Jin/Artanis/whatever. I think they could also reduce the energy cost to 20 instead of increasing the stun, but something needs to make this opener more compelling of an option.

Your third idea: The talent would probably still get picked because the other builds aren’t enough damage, but it would overall nerf her and she probably wouldn’t get used as much since she would still be mediocre at killing tanks but then would lose her effectiveness at killing squishies. It would have to lose the range penalty to make up for the loss of burst on squishy targets, and she would likely have to gain burst elsewhere anyway since her win rate would likely go down. I think a Giant Killer Q talent like this could be good in a full talent rework, but here it would fit in awkwardly since the talent currently sort of makes up for her kit’s overall lack of damage.

My personal ideas is that I think the 13 talent tier could just be better overall. Right now it feels like a very weak power spike. Her whole theme is disabling her targets, and for the most part she is good at that, but it can start to fall off late game when enemy heroes hit harder power spikes and do more damage and have more utility. So, I think Strangle could have the spell power reduction duration nerfed for slightly increased silence time, Blind could be renamed and simply increase the stun duration to something useful OR apply a sleep after the stun ends, and Death from Above would either be changed to a flat trait CD reduction or it would no longer require the teleport with Ambush to trigger.

I think those changes would turn 13 into a more noticeable and impactful utility power spike. It would also give Valeera her scary CC back but much later in the game than before so that she doesn’t feel too oppressive in the early game.

Another change, since I don’t think they would ever add full invisibility any time soon, is edge of vision invisibility. One of the most annoying things on her that I don’t think many people realize happens is that the vision in this game is very forgiving. People often see the new stealth shader at the very edge of the screen. I think stealth should be invisible in a very small area outside of the fog of war just so that she is a little bit safer rotating around but not less obvious when moving in for the kill. There should also be an indicator as to how visible you are to the enemy because that can be hard to judge often.

2 Likes
10

I don’t mind a rework since I like new stuff but I love Valeera as she currently is. Why would you rework her? She has insane cc, insane burst and 2 awesome ults. Although I almost always build the same, she has a nice talents tree diversity compared to other heroes.

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I wish her level 20 talents were a bit stronger if anything. I always felt like she could have had a rogue’s “Blind” as an on use ability at 20 which sleeps a target for like 3-4 seconds. Blind in WoW is a very clutch CC that is used to disable a target in order to set up kills. Since Valeera falls off toward the late game, a utility ability like this would give her back some of that much needed late game pressure. As its a sleep it could be broken by poor coordination/timing while still being very strong when used successfully.

The only issue is she has a talent called Blind already at 13, so I guess they could just name the 20 talent “Sleep Powder” or “Chloroform Vial” or something like that. Certainly they could replace that trap Rupture talent with this one.

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That’s what I’m going for. It’s kinda tricky cause I have to move a lot of talents around, but so far things are looking pretty good.

Already doing that.

This is what I’m going for. It won’t be full invisibility, just the shimmer from old stealth.

I used to love the subterfuge aspect of stealth, but I know just how frustrating the combination of surprise and high burst damage can be to play against. I’m trying to give her more even talent scaling curve for her damage and CC to balance that out.

Those numbers are not final, but nerfing that early burst damage is part of what I’m going for. The end result would be equal to or slightly lower than her current values in exchange for more talent scaling for it.

What do you think about the Knockout talent idea?

I did the math, and this change would total about a ~40% decrease in damage to Valla and a ~40% increase to Stitches. It would be niche, but it probably wouldn’t add up to much of a nerf.

I’m planning on changing Garrote’s duration to 2.25 seconds (pre-rework state), then have Strangle increase the duration of the silence by 0.5 seconds instead of reducing spell power. To balance that, Hemorrhage would be changed to increase all damage Valeera deals to enemies affected by the DoT by 10%.
I’ve removed Rupture to make room for other talents.

13

Doesn’t her Stealth work like any other, rendering her invisible after not moving for a few seconds?

14

Needs sustain and more damage like all other melee assassins have. Also to be able to 1v1 Raynor at all levels.

15

Samuro doesn’t have any sustain because he’s so hard to catch, and I’m honestly not comfortable working any into Valeera’s kit for the same reason.

16

I think you confused Valeera with Genji

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Yes I read it the first time. That’s not what I was suggesting in the talent I suggested though. How the ability works in WoW is as a targeted CC with a slight bit of range to it. You use it to CC one target while focusing down a different one. If you have to open on the target you intend to sleep, that most likely puts you far out of position for the target you intend to actually be focusing down, thus likely resulting in you being kited to death, particularly if they are out of your Sinister Strike Range.

However, I can see how a targeted ranged CC (basically what Blind is in WoW) could be seen as far too strong for a moba. Perhaps giving her a 16/20 talent called Sap, where she can sleep a target (most likely melee-ish range) for 3-4 seconds without having to leave stealth, but can only be used while stealthed, and then give it a reasonable cooldown. It would have a bit more counterplay that way.

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I miss her old Ambush build, doing good burst dmg to lone targets and teleporting behind targets as soon as you entered stealth. It was mobile and fun.

I also miss her early days after the rework when the Garrote build actually did dmg. It was very good for team fights.

If they made those two things viable, and then made a strong Cheap Shot CC based build with lower dmg, but higher set up potential… then she’d be viable.

But Valeera and Nova are cursed with the ‘noob stomper’ tag that will never let them be competitively viable.

3 Likes
19

It does, and it’s fun to use by positioning in specific areas to kill people, but my point is that she would need full safety in rotations and engagements while in stealth to justify lowering her damage. Kind of like Genji - it is nearly impossible to stop him from doing damage with his E because it is nearly instant and long enough range to where you can’t expect to outrun him. If Valeera could not be stopped because you can not see her at all, then you could justify nerfing her damage.

Also, the better the enemy team drafts against Valeera, the less useful the full invisibility while standing still is because it’s more likely they’ll survive or immediately be aided and rescued.

20

I think it was an important issue with old stealth that a portion of the population could not see the old shimmer but advanced players were able to spot it with ease and land difficult skill shots on it. Even if making the stealth more visible was not as fun for the player, it at least created more consistency so that the only players who didn’t see her coming wouldn’t have seen a non-stealth hero coming. If they ever decide they want stealth to be hard to see again, I think they should take a page from Sombra’s book and make it fully invisible, balancing around that. Full invisibility while standing still is fun, but it’s not really useful enough to make up for her overall lack of safety and reliable engage.

Assuming that’s a sleep, I think it would be really good because it would enable setting up kills by walking around the target and allowing skill shots to land while they sleep without her just railing into the target while they can’t move due to it being a full stun.

This is something that would really come down to numbers of the final build, but it could be good or it could be bad. I don’t really like current Hemorrhage build anyway. Looking at all your changes, I could see it being an overall nerf to her damage due to changing talents but then buffing her base abilities instead of talents, which would be better overall in my opinion, so I could see myself supporting it.
I always thought the new Rupture talent was disappointing. It only seemed good in full silence build or on BoE, but not very fun.

23

Actually, those low-skill players still had trouble spotting stealth heroes even after the rework made so much more visible. It was never a matter of an “eye-test,” it was a matter of paying attention. Since low-skill players still neglected to pay attention to their surroundings after the rework, not much changed. Nova and Valeera’s usefulness are still heavily limited to low-level play and hyper-niche last-picks.

Add to that the fact that they just aren’t fun to play anymore, and I see absolutely no reason to keep the stealth rework.

This is reminding me of Malthael now…

@topic
I’ve almost finished it, just applying the final touches now. I’ll probably post the concept later today.

I’ve moved a ton of talents around and made small tweaks to the vast majority of them, but I think I’ve avoided making anything too terribly broken.

2 Likes
24

She doesn’t need a rework though. At most an extra talent centered around her W, an upgrade for Evisc at level 20 and a better smoke bomb talent at 20 as well (slow for enemies, longer duration, idk).

I would love a 4th combo point.