(Hate as in from own team during the draft section)
Often times, these are the excuses I hear when they say not to pick Aba:
“One less body in team fights” (He's still there, contributing to the fight via Symbiote and Mines. If anything, not worrying about the risk of giving the enemy team XP is more beneficial)
“It’s a 2-lane map” (again, I don't see the issue here. Sure it might mean slightly less XP soaking, but he's still able to excel in XP soaking against all players in both teams)
“Playstyle is too unique and others would be forced to adapt” (This I can somewhat understand, but from my plays, there didn't seem to be much forced adaptation)
“This map wouldn’t work with Aba” (Got this in Sky Temple, literally one of Aba's best maps cause MULE has potential to counter the objective)
“Aba = lose” (To which I was like "???". How does a hero able to assist his team from anywhere on the map WHILE being one of the best split-pushers in the game automatically equal losing? This was before the enemy team's draft was filled btw)
I genuinely don’t understand the Aba hate when it’s from the own team. So much potential to bring into the match and gets faced with those reasons even when it’s not always true (again, those reasons above are given regardless of whether or not the enemy team counters Aba).
It means he has a harder time to bodysoak, utilise his Trait plus being everywhere, dividing the enemy. And the enemy has an easier time to just push the lanes on him.
Most Abas are bad (as he can easily not die, drawing in bad players) and since he’s actually the hardest Hero in the game. Plus he has a negative winrate, meaning statistically you’re more likely to lose with him than win.
He does have the shield. And the way some players are so averse to getting grazed or people obsessed with soaking, you might as well delete some bodies and it wouldn’t make much difference. I find that so long as I’m actually hatting, my presence actually is making a difference. It’s usually when I stop and try to soak that things get dicey, but that’s an interesting choice you have to make.
The problem falls more so how the Abathur specs. If they go hat spec, it amplifies the body you are hatting. If you go something else, not only is your hat bad, but you’re incentivized to be out of hat to lay mines or locusts which have terrible or nonexistent team fight applications. It’s not a surprise that those two specs are by far his worst win rates.
He really needs a redesign so the other specs have more in combat applications instead of to just ignore hatting your team.
In non-recreational modes (Storm League, money tournaments) he is a liability and nuisance at least 98% of the time. There are a lot of bad players picking him just to avoid dying.
Extremely few people know how to make him work with various team comps or utilizing him to his full potential (which also means occassionally risking his body).
Even his full hat buff build is bad if your hat target is not a good player. And you have no way of knowing that unless you play in a premade.
He is just one of those heroes that does not excel in solo queue with random people.
If you look at the global win rates for each week, only Medivh is lower than him (who should also be classified even harder than Very Hard, because most people simply do not have the skill to play Medivh properly and he does not excel with complete randoms, but is very destructive with a skilled 5 player premade)
He’s a lot better in solo QM, but that’s mainly because of the way he’s matched up against other heroes like Zarya and Medivh that are terrible against Abathur. And in no healer games, mines is not a completely useless ability, and shield sustain is pretty powerful without needing to spec into it.
Yeah, he creates a healer vs non healer scenario in QM unfortunately. Which can hugely tip the scales in favor of his team. What I meant was mostly people blindly first picking him in SL which often leads to disaster.
So does Zarya. On top of being there wit ha HP pool.
Overall it does matter. Sure, sometimes people do as much or less in a teamfight than Aba, but it does matter if there are 1 more body to kill while your own team can get a kill or two, or not.
This is usually a low rank problem and early game problem. Until you get your hat talents your team is down one player. Aba is just slotted into any comp, people have to build an aba draft (usually consisting of a hyper carry who will be the main hat target) and such the team needs to draft a very strong 3 man to not lose because aba is one less body until you get stuff like atk speed hat 4 and clone.
If you play aba a lot this should be a no brainer he is much weaker on 2 lane maps, there are less lanes to soak and abuse global, for example a map like braxis drafting aba will leave your team in a 1-3 split. Losing braxis objs is the most devastating in the game and you have to decide between giving your offlaner the advantage to win or helping your 3v4 bot lane win but you never have both at the same time.
This is a problem to low ranks with any hero that scales later and has a weaker early game. Aba is played in large maps ideally with objs that can be stalled out and all you need is to draft one hero who can make exceptional use of hat.
Yeah whoever said that is braindead sky temple is one or aba’s best maps.
To be fair, that works against skillshots and nothing else.
AAs and targeted abilities go just on the target and for all AoEs it´s additional damage taken per body (plus potential bonus damage/CDR for multi-target hits).
It works against everything. Even against dodged skillshots (including aoes), one more body equals one more target to split attention with. Even AAs. As someone who mostly played Tanks, I always felt if we had a low HP pool as a team i na fight. As Healer, Tank and Assassins are fix, so Aba is picked in slots which could be Bruisers or other melees, or more Burst, so the enemy don’t have time to burn you down. And it’s important (as a Tank and as everyone else as well), that you only die if it’s truly a good call, the better worse, so sometimes you fall back before getting to zero to be healed and going back, and meanwhile your other allies soak the AAs and other dmges that just exist no matter what. Spread out the enemy dps so nobody dies. Aba’s Shields help, but way too low to be comparable with Zarya or a complete Bruiser.
It matters, but not really as much as people exaggerate if Abathur goes hat build. If you are playing with people who are so afraid of getting hit, the fact there is another body is almost irrelevant, because the body only helps if you use it to prevent a death. The “body” of the people I’m talking about usually only comes into play after you’ve already lost the fight.
That’s the thing, people who are so afraid of getting hit, the attention doesn’t get split. They specifically position themselves so far back (often nerfing their damage too) so it would be super annoying for the enemy team to target them, so the body doesn’t even matter. It goes directly to the front line.
Once the deaths start coming in, it just often becomes a chain reaction to a wipe. So the fact there’s another body is like, who cares. It could have been useful at the start of the fight, but now that someone is dead because you weren’t able to relieve tension off the person that was getting hit with your HP, that person dies, and then increases the chance for the next person and the next person, until the body of the scaredy cats are forced into play. And now you either retreat or get chased down and killed and it’s going to be a dead body which only helps the other team.
If you go hat builds, you can make up for a lost body with a slew of other advantages. Zarya is a bit different because she should be played as a semi front line where you actually want to get hit, otherwise your damage suffers. It’d be very strange for a Zarya to play the way that I was describing. But it’s funny you mention Zarya, because there are times where I end up dying because the backline refuse to use their body to relieve tension off me or make it so my shield ally can be used, which wastes the shielding and keeps my energy lower than it should be.
The big problem is simply that Abathurs don’t hat during fights, so it literally is a 4v5.
I’m in silver at the moment. Rarely play rank cause queue times become excessively long, especially from afternoon onwards (from what I’ve seen at least)
Yeah I can see how that’s an issue. Some people I’ve played with in solo queue had little understanding of how Aba’s kit works (I had a case where I got mass pinged for looking afk when I had Q on another ally)
He just has a huge fanbase so ofc you see him alot. I still remember the good old slap fights I had in mirror games where we both died to mines. Those were the golden days.