What I Would Change About BHB

General Discussion
1

Its inarguable to say that Blackheart’s Bay is a divisive map. It’s either one of your favourites, or you absolutely despise it, with very few people in the middle. This sort of vitriol produces endless “emagerd remoev dis map” thread spam, and equally reductive “lol its the best map” retorts.

I will freely admit that I am in the hate camp. I cannot stand playing on BHB. However, I also recognize that many people do genuinely enjoy it. So, I want to propose a rework that targets the things I dislike about the map while (hopefully) maintaining the things that people still like. Without further ado, lets begin:

  1. The top lane is removed, as well as the Grave Golem camp. The watch tower and skeleton camps are unchanged. Bruisers now travel to the middle (now top) lane.

One of the major issues with Blackheart’s Bay is that its needlessly huge. There is very little incentive to hanging out in the top lane, since the objective doesn’t spawn there and it’s too far from the turn-in point. The Grave Golem is one of the most rarely captured bosses in the game, since you have to go way out of position to take it and it pushes the least valuable lane. The purpose of this change is to streamline the map.

  1. Objective damage is significantly lowered, to about the value of Hanamura’s cannon barrage.

The objective’s damage is bloated, plain and simple. Knocking out an entire fort early in the game, especially the one adjacent to the chest spawn, creates snowbally gameplay. Late game, it feels unfun when the opponent can destroy your core with a single turn-in, making comebacks very hard to mount from that position. Turning in the objective will no longer heavily push the game in your favour. This will also compensate for the removal of top lane, as there are now 33% less defenses to soak cannon balls.

  1. Mercenaries no longer drop coins, with the exception of skeletons.

This is a big one. Mercs dropping coins bends the equilibrium that mercenary camps usually have. Normally, taking a merc camp is as difficult as it is to clear. On BHB, you are rewarded for farming mercs on spawn without any need to time. A team that’s behind is forced to clear enemy mercs and cannot easily gather coins for the objective. There is no reason for a team that’s ahead to even look at the team that’s behind. Some of the merc farming remains intact however, as you can still get them from skeletons. So, with that source of coins gone, where do you get them from now?

  1. Heroes drop 1 coin on death. This coin can only be picked up by the enemy team and despawns after 10 seconds. The Lost Vikings, Murky, and Misha will only drop a coin once every 4 deaths, and D.Va will only drop a coin when killed in Pilot Mode.

The new primary source of coins outside of objective spawns is player kills. Now, the team that’s ahead will have to directly engage the enemy to get the majority of coins. They can still snowball, but it now requires taking risks. This also gives the other team more room to catch up. Even if they can’t kill the Diablo hoarding 35 coins, they can still farm his teammates for a few extra ones.

  1. That weird maze of boxes beneath Blackheart is removed and replaced with a watch tower.

Just a minor one to end things off. That little tunnel network was just annoying to navigate and usually avoided. It now serves a purpose in providing a forward scout so you don’t have to dedicate as much manpower to guarding the turn-in.

Any feedback is appreciated. Try to keep it constructive while you tell me why I’m the Adolf [Censored apparently] of theory crafting.

3 Likes
2

What if the areas under bottom treasure chest and the top watch tower were Portals (or tunnels) like the ones added recently on Warhead Junction? Accessible near your core.

Moving on the map is a pain in the rear without a global hero like Falstad/Dehaka/bw. Especially as coin camps are scattered all over the map.

This would at least make mobility less of an issue so you don’t spend 30% of the game running around on a mount to get to coins or chests.

2 Likes
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I kind of like having a few large maps to break up the game play a bit, so my suggestion is instead of having two coin chests spawn, have just one where Blackheart sits right now, and two turn ins. This makes it easier for the team behind to sneak in a turn in, so the team that is ahead can’t just park at Blackheart and farm people trying to do the objective.

I like the idea of removing the coin camps, and just having them on the bruisers, and removing the boss, as well as making a few drop from kills.

I would, however, also make it such that if you kill someone carrying a bunch of coins, you only get the one from the kill, the rest are lost in the depths of the sea. Even their team mate cannot recover them. This may give a troll a new way to annoy people, but it will help a bit with the snowball factor.

3 Likes
4

No. This is the worst change this map can get.

(it doesn’t even need changes)

What’s the point of it then?

Okay, you want to turn this map into a boring copy of old hanamura. No thx.

5

…You and I remember Hanamura very differently.

5 Likes
6

I like Hoku’s ideas, or failing that, if they want a cheaper to implement change make it so the damage Blackheart does is less punishing. Right now it removes towers, gate, fountain and fort, reduce the damage somewhat so the them that gets first turnover isn’t so easily able to snowball from there.

1 Like
7

The problem with BHB is that it’s arbitrarily big. The top lane hardly adds anything to the map aside from soaking up cannon balls to make every other turn in feel like a waste. Plus, even without that lane, BHB would still be a big map. The distance between mid and bot is greater than the entirety of most 2 lane maps, and in my suggestion there’s still more above it.

2 Likes
9

As someone who likes the map, (2) and perhaps (5) are the only ones I’d be ok with.

In addition (or as an alternative) for damage reduction, I have sometimes thought of a bribing mechanic: while being bombarded, a few places on your side would activate, and allow you and your mateys to pay a bribe (1-2 coins) with a quick channeling, so Blackheart would “miss” some shots.

About parking around Blackheart, maybe instead of (5) they could add an F item, that you would pick up and use nearby before delivering, and it would give visibility and small AoE damage or a negative effect to the enemies if they stay around. Like a flock of seagulls “dropping” in the area.

10

Why delete something the devs have put time and energy into making ?

1 Like
11

What I would change is that it’s in the game and Haunted mines isn’t :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
12

If the coin mechanism were changed, and the boss removed, having the third lane does two things for the map: it gives an alternative to the objective in terms of strategy, and it creates more gank opportunities for collecting kill coins.

For the first point, it opens up the macro game a bit more, since you have fewer things on the map itself to do. One of the big issues with the design of Volskaya is that when the objective isn’t up, there really isn’t all that much to do. The changes you have proposed gives teams even less to do, and with only two lanes, even less incentive to take the risks that leads to opportunities.

For the second point, 2 lane maps generally lead to a 1-4 or 2-3 split, neither of which are ideal for ganking or big team fights, which with some of your other proposed changes, is the main way to generate coins. By creating a large, relatively open map, you can create these opportunities, but only if there is some incentive for a person to be taking some risks. With a 3 lane map, that extra soak/structure damage can be enough of an incentive.

2 Likes
13

How about we add extra coin camps around the top lane. This would make the lane more valuable to push for access to the enemy jungle and their coin camps.

Also, let the Golem cast its root ability on Towers to disable them for a bit if there are no heroes around. Now it’s scarier when pushing an uncontested lane.
Additionally, nerfing the barrages would automatically shift some of the focus of the map back towards the boss.

Certainly not down to the level of Hanamura’s cannon. That thing is pitiful, there’s a reason the “rush the real objective while they’re pushing the payload” memes aren’t just jokes.

2,200-2,400 damage per cannonball would be more reasonable (current BHB is 2,815, Hanamura is 1,900, 12 shots for both).

This would kill the Towers (4 shots, 2 each), Gate (2 shots + splash from Tower shots), and Healing Fountain (2 shots), but leave the Fort (4 shots) with about 1/4 of its health left, which would require 2 additional shots to finish off.
This would also cause a full barrage at 20 minutes into the game to leave the Core at 13% (at 2,400 damage/shot) or 20% health (at 2,200 damage/shot).

:+1:

Nope. Don’t like this at all.

Teamfights at the objective are already a big deal on this map (if you’re playing it properly). Now, on top of taking all your opponent’s coins when you wipe them, you also get up to 5 extra coins? I’ve seen lots of games hanging on by a difference of 2-3 coins for 5+ minutes because the team that won a teamfight at objective lacked those last few crucial coins for the turn-in and the enemy team respawned in time to block them after they collected the missing coins.
If they could get those extra coins during those teamfights, those games would have been over.

I think instead of killing heroes we should have more coin camps.

I’m not a fan of the maze and wouldn’t mind seeing it gone, but

!!!

You have just created a second Objective for this map, and it’s not even a minor one.

This Watchtower would provide total vision of the entirety of the most active part of the map – the turn-in, 1 of the chests, the most direct route between the mid and bot lanes, and the 4 most important vents/bushes on the map.

This would now be the most central and important point on the map (yes, even considering the turn-in itself) – people would camp this Watchtower the entire game because it’s so important. I would literally never approach the turn-in or those vents as a squishy hero unless my team owned that Watchtower, because if we don’t then the enemy team sure as hell does.
This would be more influential on the flow of the game than the Sentinels are on Hanamura. I’d expect it to change hands easily dozens of times in any game where the one team isn’t roflstomping the other from the first minute in.

^ I think this would be a much better alternative.

Portals like the ones on either WHJ or ToD (or some combination of both) would effectively shrink the map, helping take care of your complaint that it feels “arbitrarily big.”

Keep a wall directly between it and the turn-in, of course, to make sure people can’t pop out and immediately beeline for it.

Here are some further suggestions I’d make.

Treasure Chests:

  • Spawn individually, one at a time, instead of simultaneously. The first chest will spawn in the middle lane.
  • Give significantly more warning before they spawn.
  • Drop 12 coins each - 2 coins after losing 33% health, 4 after losing 66% health, and 6 upon being destroyed.
  • Take significantly longer to kill, especially for high damage-instance-rate heroes. No more Tracer drive-bys killing chests in 3 seconds or Deathwing morning-breath killing them in 2. Couple general ideas for how to achieve this (not mutually inclusive):
    – Normal health system or some variation thereof.
    – Guarded by skeletons and is invulnerable until all are killed.
    – Gains a “Lock” ( a large shield with normal health mechanics) that must be broken before it can take damage to its health directly.
    – Gains a “Lock” for 2-3 seconds after dropping coins.

Coin Camps:

  • Spawn in only once the first Treasure Chest has been destroyed, and take a bit longer to respawn after being captured.
  • Have significantly more health and a bit more damage (but not to the degree of actual mercs) so taking one is a bit more more of a commitment.
  • Despawn during barrages and while Treasure Chests are up (unless leashed beforehand).

Blackheart (Turn-In and Barrages):

  • Turn-in takes ~30 seconds to respawn after a barrage.
  • Barrages last a bit longer – the reload period between each burst of shots is extended.
2 Likes
14

Here is what I would change: its existence.

15

Wow am I psychic or am I just caught in a gawddamn time loop?

Seriously though, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has better ideas than mine. Really, the purpose of this thread was to brainstorm solutions for something so divisive rather than continue the pointless back-and-forth nothing we see surrounding BHB so often. My ideas are complete crap, but I’m happy to see a lot more engagement with the topic than usual.

3 Likes
16

And

In the same rework concept

NO thanks I don’t want endless games thank you very much.

make the map perfect is simple, we replace the treasure chest spawn in mid lane with a second way to turn in Coins. Those two locations are far enough apart to cut down on camping of the objective once a team has a macro lead.

After that you add a second chest in the top lane section

Step 4 is to add flight paths, similar to the recent Sewers on Warhead junction a lanes vertical distance away from the spawn points of the chests.

I am in that wierd middle ground on this map FYI that rare thing you mentioned

17

I like the bhb-based brawls more than the map itself (shortcuts, fighting over multiple turn-in spots) My take would be to adapt more of those qualities to make the map something more unique, but in writing out my thoughts on that, I realized I was describing warhead junction, which doesn’t really help the ‘unique’ part I’d want.

1 Like
18

Bc it’s a horrible map.

19

I don’t like the change particularly, but I play viking so I hate all 2 lane maps with a passion.