Most every duelist hero in this game tends to be given some form of self-sustain…yet having self-sustain doesn’t define a duelist.
If you look at other MOBAs, many duelists don’t even have sustain.
This is because the dev team for HotS thinks that to be a duelist a hero has to be able to self-sustain in order to survive the duel.
This is in opposition of most other MOBAs where a duelist is a hero that, when good juking is used, the hero/champs abilities are used well, and smart game sense and positioning are used, said hero/champ will usually be the victor assuming equal skill between the players.
I’d say the closest to that description in this game would be Greymane, in many ways, despite my misgivings about how he beats melee assassins at their own game with Wizened Duelist.
I wish the dev team for HotS had designed more duelists like this, rather than just throw self-sustain on them, survivability, and call them duelists because they combo self-healing/shielding with damage to win.
Who exactly are you defining as duelists?
characters good at 1v1?
Characters who want to solo lane?
???
Seriously, maybe I’m just out of it (it is entirely possible) but when you say “duelist” I have absolutely no idea who you really mean, especially when you throw in this worthless definition
Is this the same character in a 1v1?
Against another “duelist”?
against a mage?
Against a tank?
I think youre conflating duelist and solo/offlaner. Heroes like Samuro, Valeera and Zeratul are fearsome opponents in a duel. Most heroes with sustain arent necessarily good duelists, theyre just strong in the solo/offlane. Plenty of heroes with sustain in the solo lane, e.g. Blaze, Yrel and Malthael can be completely bullied by half the roster of ranged heroes.
The main reason ranged heroes aren’t picked in the solo lane all the time is because this isnt a 1v1 game. Sustain provides staying power even when getting ganked or taking camps. Aggresively pushing as a ranged hero is dangerous due to potential ganks, so to “win” the solo lane you need to get an advantage in other areas. Duelists can have a harder time taking camps and might not bring what the team needs to teamfights. This game is more focussed on objectives than other MOBAs, so being strong 1v1 is less important.
Being strong 1v1 is more important in this game than you are aware and I’m conflating nothing. Pretty much every self-sustaining hero with a few exceptions is a good duelist…which is WHY they are used in the solo lane. Why do you think Yrel for instance was so heavily used for it before her nerfs? The solo lane is very much a 1v1 affair and very important, but of course you have to watch for ganks…this is true of any MOBA. Losing the solo lane, the 1v1, the duel can cost your team the game. You don’t even have to “win” the solo lane you just have to hold it.
Ganking difficulty is decided not by whether the hero is a ranged assassin but by the hero’s mobility and survivability.
True, Sammy is a good duelist…I kinda forgot about him lol.
Valeera was never meant to be a duelist…she was meant to be an elusive rogue that plays hit’n’run. She needs a rework to get rid of her burstyness and survivability and re-focus her around being that instead, which would make her much more useful in high ranked play. The Tracer of melee assassins, rather than a duelist that doesn’t even fit her design, lore, or role. She should be focused more around DoT and her debuffs.
She was used a lot because like i said before, the heroes that wreck her in a 1v1 lane, like Zagara, Falstad, Valla and Lunara aren’t worth putting in a solo lane. They can’t take camps as well, are vulnerable to ganks and it means you either have a weak front line, or have the bruiser/2nd tank in your 4 man, limiting its potential.
Edit: Youre right that ganking difficulty isnt decided by whether a hero is ranged or not, however ganking effectiveness is decided in part by how little sustain a hero has. Ana “ganking” by coming in to auto attack a few times and throw a grenade will put someone like Valla much more behind than it would Yrel, Blaze or Leoric.
If you need someone to roam and gank, draft an extra hero for that. However as you might notice, this means you might end up with both a Zeratul/Nova/Maiev to roam and a Valeera in the solo lanes, which really hurts your teamfighting. So this again comes back to this not being a 1v1 game where you draft in a vacuum.
I want to add btw that i realize that heroes like Valla and Falstad might not make great duelists. They beat some offlaners in a 1v1 lane, but would struggle in a 1v1 fight outside the lane against heroes like Zeratul and Valeera. So it might be good to define “duelist” or “duel” a bit better. If it includes the buildings and minions in a lane, i’d suggest calling it the solo lane or offlane.
I’ve seen Valeera played in the solo lane in niche cases in Grandmaster streams. She counters half the roster and can zone people from minion xp once she gets them low from opening on them once. From there, overextending for minion xp can mean giving her a kill and losing out on even more xp. Sure she excels at ganking, but she is very lethal in a 1v1 scenario and sometimes that’s enough to win a solo lane.
Rogues have always been good duelists, I don’t know where you got the idea that they weren’t. Its extremely true to lore and design that she would excel in that area. Getting rid of her burst potential counters your suggestion for her having strength in hit and run tactics, and her burst is pretty average compared to other assassins in the game already. Her survivability is there because she lost a decent amount of damage from her kit and had her cc nerfed, so they had to give her something to compensate.
You want to take away her durability and damage, so what exactly is she supposed to have then? Elusiveness? Everyone can see her coming after the stealth changes, and half of her power comes from her openers as is. Outside of giving her full invisibility all the time, I am unable to see how you plan to make her more elusive. Making her invisible would also remove a lot of her counterplay options so I can hear the QQ threads already. I have to be honest I don’t agree with your suggestions at all, and feel like you may not have the greatest understanding of the hero.
Good thing solo laning is not merely point and click and damage someone.
Good thing this is a 5v5 game and not 5 1v1 duels.
As far as i am concerned medivh is the best kind of duelist: you miss nothing and anticipate damage or you lose.
…you don’t draft an “extra” hero for it…during the draft you decide whether you need a ganker or not and build your comp accordingly. I literally don’t know what you are arguing here. Your teamfighting won’t be hurt because drafting doesn’t work like whatever you are trying to describe.
Generally speaking, you WANT A duelist in the solo lane and again most of the solo laners are also good duelists. You are basically arguing semantics for the most part as most players that are not just starting out in the game tend to understand this.
Again, poor design that makes her not as viable in higher ranked play for what she was truly designed for, very rare cases notwithstanding. She should not be able to counter half the roster, even in 1v1 scenarios.
I’m not talking about stealth, I doubt that will ever be changed back.
Removing her point and click teleport, burst, and durability but buffing her mobility a good bit, though not to Overwatch cancer levels, and making her DoT much better in conjunction with her already good debuffs will give her a true role. They can also make her AAs triple shot like Genji’s works and increase their damage so that she doesn’t have to stick around. She should be about death by a thousand cuts…not burst that this game is overbloated with.
You apparently haven’t played many games with rogues if you think they are good duelists…they are good at killing an enemy by using their agility, sneakiness, and swift strikes. Not because they can stand there and murder you without effort.
Trust me when I say that, if they rework her in this style but DON’T mess it up, it would be better than you think. It would also, if done right, make her less vulnerable to getting knocked out of stealth by abilities which would simultaneously remove that weakness of Valeera while making her delivering her damage and debuffs actually take skill, unlike the point and click teleport she has now. She is one of the easiest “hard difficulty” heroes to play. She isn’t really that hard, more about spamming keys and timing than anything right now, which isn’t hard if you can play virtually any other hero. Her skill floor needs to be upped and her overall design improved.
Yes good thing. It is a good thing also that I often am teamed with people that understand the place dueling has in this game and not with…others.
I’ll admit, my experience with rogues is in relation to their existence in WoW. There rogues have consistently over the years been very good at dueling, and good at ganking. They were also able to easily CC their opponents to death, which she sort of does vs mages, but against others she tends to need help securing the kill, or at the very least it takes more time with her opponent fighting back as well. I think Valeera has embodied the rogue concept quite well, even if she’s bulkier in HotS than a rogue of old may have been. I can’t say how rogues play these days, as I haven’t played WoW since Mists of Pandaria ended, but I think they did quite well transferring a rogue kit into moba form.
Her point and click teleport is basically a rogue’s Shadow Step from WoW. It makes sense that she would have an ability like that imo. She needs a way to reliably close the gap without losing the opener, which is what gives her the edge in any fight.
I like the concept of performing swift strikes elusively, and your suggestions give me the impression that you may want her to play somewhat like Akali from League of Legends. I think people would hate something like Akali in this game even more than the current iteration of Valeera. I wouldn’t mind playing as something like that, but I feel it would make her increasingly frustrating to play against because she takes elusive to the next level, while also having high burst damage with her hit and run tactics. Its true that Valeera’s current skill floor isn’t particularly high, but there is certainly a noticeable difference in effectiveness between good and bad Valeeras.
You seem to be a bit focused on making her damage into more DoT than direct burst. It can be a good idea, in that it gives the other team the chance to potentially react or save a teammate, but it also takes away her lethality since she wouldn’t as easily be able to secure kills, and would open her up more to punishment. Combined with your suggestion to make her less bulky, I feel this could remove her from viability, without compensation elsewhere.
Rogues on WoW generally weren’t overly DoT heavy unless they went a particular build to bleed people out, with additional damage coming from their poisons. Its possible to do something like that with her kit, but it might encroach on other DoT based heroes currently in the game. Your suggestions to make her more like Genji would further remove her uniqueness as she’d then be stepping on Genji’s toes with the “death by a thousand cuts” vibe.
In terms of design yes, there are a ton of cool ways to create a rogue, but they really did do a good job already of capturing the essence of WoW rogues with her, imo. She would be a hard hero to change the design of, if they want to maintain their vision of “WoW rogue”.
Although I don’t agree with everything here, you have many good points, but to be honest, I wish Dustin Browder was still in charge of this game. I think he would have looked at what the forums were saying and looked more at what could be transferred over and changed from the original games to HotS to improve or change heroes that need it. I just don’t think this game has much of a future anymore and the downhill spiral started when Activision removed DBro. This was his baby.
I am indeed arguing semantics, because your definition of a duelist seems to be very much the same as a solo/offlaner, and yet you argue theyre not the same. Can you give me examples of what counts as sustain? Do the shields from Anub’arak, Artanis and Fenix count as sustain? What about Lunara, Valla, Zeratul and Alarak, is their (potential) healing sustain?
And who do you consider duelists? Heroes that can kill most other assassins completely on their own, or ones that can kill tanks? Ones that can bully enemies in a solo lane? If you include a lane with towers, minions and a healing well, heroes with sustain eventually win out. However they tend to lose the initial fight and are forced to back off while they regain their health and cooldowns.
referning to “most mobas” in a generalized arguement demands that people either have tk already agree with you, or have played “most mobas” to share that perspective. However, if that is an asserrtion and not “fact” then its misrepresentative
“most moba” to borrow the term you use, have items for purchase and distinctions of movespeed, so the sort of items a “duelest” gets varies with their kit.
Its not uncommon for players in dota2 to use bottle/crow/consumables to supplement their healing and juke throufh the woods to turn around a skirmish by getting a few seconds without taking damage. Granted, a big noob trap item for sota 2 were early regen items, but others used raw stats for having more effective ho to endure in the fight, so the effect is simialr to ahaving healing.
Generalized arguments dont really convey mich and thus make poor points of “proof” and while a list of all cariables would be unnessary clutter, at least offering examples allows others to see more into your perspective and get more than bais and presumtion.
But ya know, the want to have better particulars of an arguement is generally offset by people thay go out of their way to whole-quote walls for their replies
You want duelist, check out Legion Commander in DOTA2.
As for in hots, I’d call a duelist anyone who can slam into a majority of heroes 1v1 reliably.
They need to stick and gapclose, for ranged heroes, and be strong enough to kill something before they get killed. This is done through a combination of range, damage, and defensive abilities.
Example, Varian. Sticking power, good DPS, and enough defenses to maul most people 1v1.
Legion Commander in DOTA2 has a ranged nuke that deals more damage to clumped heroes (to discourage grouping), A steroid that heals, dispels some negative effects, and I believe makes the target faster, a counter hit that heals her, and her ult forces her and the target to AA each other. If one of them dies during the duel then the winner gains damage forever.
So she has the tools to get onto people and kill them alone, as well as team utility. Making her a strong duelist but not bad at teamfighting.
I’m a solid 99% sure that Archonite was stating that putting Zagara in a solo lane reduces her camp taking potential because she has to leave her lane to take the camp effectively weakening her ability to take camps.
edit: and you’ve also not explained how you define a duelist in HotS, still.
For Dota 2, Icefrog’s hero design policy is to have every hero have the potential to kill another hero; depending on items, skill order and opposition, just about any hero could be a “duelist” though obs some favor more than others.
However, a number of heroes that do excel at ‘dueling’ either do have sustain, or they have mobility & burst to offset the sustain. Without specific examples, better definitions or anything else outside of overgeneralization, its an arbitrary complaint that doesn’t even suit it’s down title
![:cowboy_hat_face:](https://d3rakab8gpdsa3.cloudfront.net/en/heroes/images/emoji/twitter/cowboy_hat_face.png?v=6" ":cowboy_hat_face:")
