Well, I'm ruining Artanis Now

General Discussion
1

Basic jivey: assume I posted Arantis pick history, talent trends, player perceptions, casual/pro meta opinions, etc etc and use that to rationalize that the current trend of reworked Bruisers ‘breaks’ the heroes to save them from their previous mediocrities by making select aspects OP with a new/overhauled kit.

However, I won’t conceive gazlowe/d.va level overhauls on their talents, basic abilities, heroics, and traits, so I’m just going to work with what already exists.

Proposal:

Talents

  • Level 1

    • Zealot Charge (W)

      • Moved from Level 20.

    • Protector of Auir [Passive]

      • As is.

    • Amateur Opponent (W)

      • As is

  • Level 4

    • Reactive Parry (W)

      • Moved from Level 1.
        • Adjusted functionality:
          • Using Twin Blades grants 1.5 seconds of physical armor. If an enemy hero is within [ ] range of Artanis and attacks him in this duration, then their attack speed is slowed for [ ] duration.

    • Psionic Synergy (E)

      • Adjusted functionality:
        • Hitting an enemy hero with Phase Prism grants [ ] shields for 3 seconds.

    • Shield Surge (Trait)

      • As is.

  • Level 13

    • Templar’s Zeal (Q)
      • Removed
    • Graviton Vortex (E)
      • Removed
    • New Talent: Mantle of the Dark Templar (E)
      • Hitting an enemy hero with Blade Dash reduces the cooldown of Phase Prism. Hitting an enemy hero with Phase Prism reduces the cooldown on Blade Dash.
    • Triple Strike (W)
      • As is.
    • Phase Bulwark (Trait)
      • As is.

  • Level 16

    • Plasma Burn (Q)
      • Moved from Level 20.
        • Adjusted Functionality:
          • Increase the damage dealt by Phase Prism by [ ]. Enemies near targets hit by Phase Prism take 70 per second for [duration].
    • Titan Killer (W)
      • As is.
    • Force of Will (Q)
      • As is.

  • Level 20

    • Blades of a Templar [Passive]
      • Moved from Level 16.
    • Shield Battery [Trait]
      • Moved from Level 4.
        • Adjusted functionality:
          • Can be activated to gain [ ]% of maximum hp as a shield.

Xenterex Comment: The goal of moving Zealot’s Charge to Level 1 is to adjust how Artanis can control how he engages in team fights. On-next-attack mod abilities are usually used after a basic attack to increase the damage dealt, but with the charge function of Twin Blades, that distance means Artanis is not getting that attack in and trades dealing damage for closing the gap. While this was normally a higher level talent, given how defining his Level 1 choices can be, the opportunity cost should be fair and shift how Artanis picks builds to suit the earlier choice.

Shield surge has typically dominated Artanis’ level 4 choices and has been the most successful talent as well. Since it takes a key aspect of Artanis (his trait) and makes it better at key moments (when he needs shields the most) it’s not surprising that other options aren’t picked as much, nor are they as successful. The goal here is to try to adjust the appeal of other durability talents and shift how they work with his later picks. While armor on Artanis can be powerful, he already had options for both physical and spell armor, so having yet another armor option tied to a skill shot felt redundant and unreliable. While the skill shot aspect remains, having shields on proc means the effect is boosted by opportunities allies can provide armor (since armor sources no longer stack) and ease some of the anti-synergy healing artanis can have with his trait by giving him a source of shields regardless of his hp level.

Many hero reworks have tried to streamline the amount of talent choices down to 3. While players like having more choices, the reality is that many tiers with 4 (or more) options suffer on variety viability. So this change combines some of the effects of two options into 1 basic goal: to enable Artanis to cast his combo more often. This may provide him the opportunity to swap an enemy in, and then swap himself back out.

For Level 16: Adjusting the functionality of the Aoe damage from Artanis while he has shields to instead be on the enemy target can benefit Artanis players to consider where they swap an enemy and otherwise gives him a more spell-like damage source to flesh out the fantasy of the [b] Alone [b] scene in Legacy of the Void where Artanis showed qualities of being a High Templar, Zealot and Dark Templar. Depending on the duration of the effect (unlisted since I don’t offer raw numbers) Combining this debuff with the cdr combo from the new Mantle of the Dark Templar talent could mean that Artanis afflicts several targets that end up burning each other and taking considerable aoe damage.

Regarding the change on Shield Battery: Every bruiser has access to an on-demand active to increase their durability except for Artanis. Some have shields, some have armor, some have statis, but they all have some way to protect themselves at a specific moment and Artanis could really use a similar effect to help him stay in the fray.

So that pretty much concludes my iteration suggestion: I’ve looked to ‘ruin’ the hero by shifting some talents that could make him “broken”, I’ve looked to move a few talents to change builds (and ruin how players ‘main’ him) and even added a potentially unwanted new playstyle to really edge out all the passionate players that push their play to the upmost to make the most of their Hierarch.

Questions, comments, confusion, screep caps, accusations and the like will all be welcome now :smiley:
Edit note: Some topics have had posters claim that I would ‘ruin’ heroes if devs listened to me, so the topic of the title is based on those assertions and conflating that with responses to any hero rework that those reworks ruined the hero for said players. :wink:

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Finally I see you post an idea instead of sitting back on the sides making “polite” long posted comments that can’t be inflammatory because it’s all factual and no opinion

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Nothing new for you to be salty though.

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That says more about how much you don’t pay attention than of what I posted.

Internet is an easy resource to have an informed opinion and you’d do well better to make use of such. Similarly, your backhanded comments do more to bespeak the malady of your ignorance than the indicate the quality of your concerns.

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And nothing new with you on the attacking the person instead of saying something useful too

6

I can say to things: Shut up and

I think blades of a Templar should stay

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I read your posts. I prefer to condense what I write into one small paragraph or readable paragraphs at the “risk” of not including all the information. Your post style is more of a detail oriented post where you include every last detail but it ends up being a whole essay.

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You ‘see’ my posts, but rarely read them. Of the concerns you have, you tend to have ‘term’ fixation that’s backed by feel and want more so than ‘information.’ A basic indication of that is how much assumption goes into what you write, while I try to reduce assumption by posting ‘bloat’ to help establish context that is generally overlooked.

But of those distinctions, little of what you have posted has anything to do with the topic at hand, which is about par the course for certain forms of discourse regarding hero ‘balance’ by people that aren’t relying entirely on impulsive reactions or trying to anticipate trend-cries by bemoaning things since complaining is easier than diagnostics.

So, do you have something pertaining to Artanis to actually put forth, or should look forward to the typical “hivemind” jingles?

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And here I thought this would be a thread about Artanis…

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While I agree “Zealot charge” is not Lvl 20 material. I wouldn’t put it Lvl 1 either. His early game as a duelist is already decent.

Probably 7 or 13.

“Protector of Aiur” I would completely remove. It’s not a great talent, and it makes players take bad decisions.

I think lvl 4 is too early for an imposing presence effect. As it has a very heavy impact on auto attackers. And melee assassins have a hard time as it is.

I have no idea why he wasn’t given this already. But I doubt we would get both the armor and the shield. They would probably drop the armor if they made this change.

I’m not sure how useful this is. When you just hit someone with prism, you’re unlikely to be needing Blade dash quickly afterwards. And when you use blade dash for a flip, you won’t actually hit a target with the dash. It has less Synergy than the current version that keeps you shielded.

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For the slot, I could see Charge take the spot as they both influence his ability to skirmish against one target; AO is a pve utility for artanis to take camps or race objectives so they suit different functions in how he plays.

Ideally, he’d want something akin to thrall in having options for solo lane (solo skirmish vs solo push) and then have option/incentive to be in the roaming group. Something like offense/defense/utility is also a good split and is something closer to how Sonya’s talents work.

Since 7 is his ‘attack’ tier right now, if Charge were at that tier, it’d probably need some additional function for that slot; otherwise it might be a lvl 13 as that’s where he finally breaks from ‘themed’ tiers to split utility into options that pretty much get dominated by Triple strike for offense, or Phase Bulwark for defense.

I think having it earlier is more appealing because it does influence how he can engage, rather than just being an option to help him be more sticky at the late game.

As far as the lvl 4 goes, some bruisers do break some usual talent/tier conventions on when they pick things. The most recent comparison is that gazlowe does have armor + shrink ray at lvl 4 (earlier than other heroes) so I do think some effects are based on the opportunity cost, and not necessarily the stage of the game.

Afterall, what sort of builds can artanis really have that deviant some of his ability? I figure if he has a sort of ‘defensive’ reactive set, then that compliments a damage-sponge function – which while frowned upon openly, exists and can be effective (hi yrel :smiley: )

@ Mantle. Yea, obviously how cdr triggers, how often, how much, and mana constraints on it are a big factor on how helpful it could be. As you said, if someone is going for a swap, they don’t typically hit anyone with dash, so the interaction with the two is intended to encourage something different, and in my book, try to do it without auto attacks.
(better option may be if either ability doesn’t hit anything, refund mana/cdr?)

There are a variety of ways players can use swap (esp good ones) but a lot of typical play only sees one kind, and then it fails, a lot. The way I see it with Artanis is that he tries to have an attacker based build, and then a casting based build, and his talent trends pretty much only make use of the one with a semi-variation available.

I think part of the issue of Aratanis’ lower opinion and talent stagnation is some effects don’t really shift what he does, only how well he does it. With artanis swaps, there’s the usual “dash in from a way, but swap the target up close” and then there’s the opposite swap “close, but dash away” that’s much harder to pull. If he had two charges of both abilities, then Artanis could swap in, and then swap out and displace two enemy heroes into an unfavorable position for them.

1 talent probably wouldn’t give 2 abilities a charge each, but they could have a cdr reset akin to diablo. So I figure if the two talents do have some sort of interaction together, then it might make that in/out swap combo possible.

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And its going to compete against protector, instead of assisting it what it could have done now. I think this should be moved to a diffirent tier, that currently is not assisting enough towards an AA style build. I think level 4 would work better, since the extra range is going to be able to also assist you in getting away, and allows you to hit more AA’s for the shield cooldown to get reduced.

I would keep this at level 1, but give it the johanna approach. Make it more useful, and adjusted towards the style of artanis. A few examples:

  • Your buffed idea (its good)
  • Using twin blades grants you a stack of parry (limit 2). Upon activating Shield overload, consume a stack of parry and gain 40 physical armor for the next 3 seconds. Armor stops when the shield breaks.
  • Each hit with twin blades grants a stack of parry (limit 5). When Shield overload activates, consume all stacks of parry and gain 15 armor for each stack of parry, armor lasts 3 seconds. (the limit of 5 is because of the limit of 75)

Outside of that i cant judge the changes enough. But i think its bad if certain playstyles get reduced synergy in talents. Even for the AA build, there can be more options of talents as you often still would want to have some form of CC to actualy get those AA’s to hit.

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Zealot Charge on 1 is a big buff, but it’s two edged: Then I can’t take Amateur Opponent when I need it or Protector of Aiur when the enemy has a Chen I can punch for free stacks.

Which makes me wonder if it’s worth the pick.

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You mean:
Finally, you post an idea that you put lots of through into and looked at how things interact in the game, and don’t try to add a bunch of random stuff into the game at the same time?

Yeah, I wish we had more posts like that.

It would let you pick Artanis outside of “I’ma pick AO and PvE the whole game”.

I’m not sure what I think about the changes overall, I’m having trouble visualizing them as a kit.

But having something actual compete with AO would be nice.

In that case, it should become buffed.
Personally, I think the biggest issue is either that it start out weak, or doesn’t get strong enough to warrant the weak start.

There are a few ways to look at it:
-baseline damage to start your stacks?
-give another bonus for every X attacks/kills?
-give a bonus upon reaching a bonus threshold?

“gain 10% base attack damage and [current ability text]”
“upon damaging enemy heroes 100 times, gain an additional 10% base damage when your trait is on cooldown”
“Upon reaching 20% additional baseline damage, gain 10% addition baseline damage”

Personally, I think the 2nd or 3rd would be a logical way to do it, as Artanis is “designed” around a later game powering up.

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I like putting Zealot Charge at 1, gives him a way to handle kiters like tracer and fenix, which would normally be impossible to land a single hit on.

Reactive parry is definitely cool from a thematic standpoint, and quite unique as a talent, I approve.

Not much of an opinion on the later talents, but overall I honestly like the changes.

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A number of talents tend to have a goal, and then a jump in power after that point. Without a goal to stop fishing for more dings, I think it contributes to more players making bad trades for muh stacks. Good quests tend to reward something hard, but PoA is fairly mindless and just encourages brawling constantly since there isn’t any of shortcut conditions like maiev or alarak have.

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The problem is that the buffed damage applies to everything. So if you buff it enough, it turns into an “Amateur Opponent” that also hurts heroes, and you have a new default talent pick.

All you have to do against Tracer is take a step back like you were running away, then immediately step forward and W. She no longer has the range to kite you as you move. The only way this doesn’t work is if she stops attacking you.

Tracer’s range was reduced, Tychus’ range was reduced, Genji’s range was reduced. Squishy ranged heroes usually don’t have CC or sustain, and their advantage over melee gets lower as you move towards the late game. So I would not agree with negating it that early. I want Zealot charge sooner, but not Lvl 1.

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Artanis W range is 2.5 while Tracer’s range is 5 or 5.5 with Tracer Rounds at lvl 1. She can kite him for days.

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See above. :cat2:…

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I don’t think you’ve played against competent Tracer players, then.

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