New and better aren’t synonyms.
Think about 1930s Germany. It was all new, wasn’t it.
Was it thus automatically better than 150 years old American constitution, democracy?
Or, is Mr. Trump automatically the best US president, ever - until now?
Admitting mistakes is a crucial trait, imagine you never do that in your relationship.
I trust that everyone is working with the best intent, but still, we’ve BFA, and despite 8 rounds of major improvements, people like it less than Classic.
I don’t mind hero specialisations where there is a level 1 (or 0, pick screen) decision on which theme you play. I would love old Malf back.
My only issue with Whitemane is balance. Supposedly the only build that works well is the one where you successfully root people by hitting them twice with E. I just want a good Q or W build as well. Li-Ming has it, Valla has it, Whitemane could, too. She is a cripple until level 4 and that’s an easy throw. (Although the 4x throughput difference between Li Li and Ana is also astounding.)
They dropped the ball on this rework, but it isn’t as bad as the OP says.
Whitemane never struck me as an auto-attack healer, but everyone seemed to go the same build with old WM so she didn’t seem in a great spot then either.
This was an intentional weakness that people don’t want to accept.
But with the way her Q works it needs to be a factor.
No.
She had 3 fairly well balanced builds (6 if you count variances in talents). W build was the safest but far from the only build. For example Karabars is talking about the E-build, the so-called OHK build which allowed you to burst down squishies (provided all the stars aligned for this to be plausible). So while you apparently only experienced WM players going for the W build, his experiences imply that the E build Whitemanes were even more successful pre-rework. And then there’s the fact we have a fair number of mad lads who went for post-nerf Q build and still did excellently. All 3 builds were near equally useful.
That’s NOT the case right now.
That’s what I did, so to me that is her identity.
I didn’t say the other builds weren’t viable, but that all of the talk and stat sites I saw seemed to imply that the great majority went W build. Which might imply a problem whether there was one or not.
Even now, I don’t go auto-attack build with her. Keep up with other healers. But her damage doesn’t keep up. It’s a design risk to tie healing too closely to damage.
It would be pretty cool if the playerbase could vote for the reworkable heroes.
I’m pretty sure i would vote for illidan. I would make votes enough for 10000 year.
While I’d have no problem with a revert, it’s possible to make this rework work. Admittedly a lot of making it work involves undoing a fair bit of the mistakes in her kit (like making Unwavering Faith not compete with Inquisition and enforce using clemency to set zeals instead).
She doesn’t have build diversity atm. W is and remains a dead ability until it gets notable buffs to make up for the gutting it got (lower damage, lower damage amps, less talent support). Q build’s talents are something of a joke atm as well, only working at very high desperation. Radiance is still great, but Martyrdom gives very little impact relative to its mana costs. It also, surprise surprise, lacks talent supports.
Blizzard, shoving in a ton of “utility” talents on a character who underperforms in just baseline stats and has ludicriously potent damage steroids is just going to result in not taking the talents that don’t fix the problem of the character not being able to do their base job.
I am really enjoying it. Its got a lot of power in the right circumstance and there is a huge amount of build variety now. I think a couple numbers still might need a buff, but overall I’m doing fine with it.
If you are building her only as an AA healer that’s why you are hating this rework.
There’s at least 3 other builds that are all more fun. I recommend building E and Q and playing her as a caster, or building W and Q if the enemy has a high damage dealer like butcher you need to shut down. I think only 1 in 10 games I go AA build. Playing her as a caster with cleanse is much more fun.
I was talking about her previous version which was the Owl spam version and no heal on her Shadowstalk. I said it was the previous version in my post, because it was, and it was niche in Ranked picked less than 5%.
The version of Tyrande you’re talking about is my favorite version of the hero.
I don’t think W is a dead talent. It’s my go to against butcher or valeera now. 50% damage reduction is a life saver, armour reduction gives them less EHP so they die before bursting anyone down. You have to use it totally differently than old whitemane, it’s not a meaningful heal now, it’s entirely designed to shut down a damage dealer. Pair this build with Q talents, not AA talents as AA and Inquisition don’t have synergy but Q and Inquisition do.
Make the most of free mana clemency with this build.
I’m really getting into this new whitemane. It does require a much different play style, but E build with some supporting Q talents and cleanse is great as an all round healer build. Goes great with Divine Reckoning.
The only buff I think she needs now is reduce the cooldown of Zeal to 45 seconds and give Zealous Spirit a self heal. Other than that I don’t need anything else.
Build guide…
E/Q build - all rounder, single target cleanse.
AA build, more healing, less damage, no cleanse, team armor.
W/Q build - used to shut down enemy damage dealer. Has cleanse. Team armor. Team unstoppable.
W/E build - build around root and lowering cooldowns. Use this if you want to roam and gank.
Revert whitemane in the next balance patch if you have any honor as developers. Take responsibility for your mistake and fix it. Nobody likes the rework. It ruined her. She used to be my favorite healer and now she feels horrible to play.
My problem with the rework even with improvements is that it only ends up being status quo at the end. Her utility talents remain at 13 and up, so it still comes on mid-late game. While her healing more or less if buffed with just end up similar to the old Whitemane but with mana cost as a constant concern.
While the build variety “increased” I’d argue that it doesn’t feel anymore useful than the old Whitemane in terms of utility (again the utility talents are still on 13 and up)… and the damage output is lower with the nerf to fanatical power. Given the buffs other healers have received with regard to their healing AND utility, Reghar says hi, making them more well rounded Whitemane just feels like she received the short end of the stick. More so when I compare this to the reworks of Ana and Tyrande, it just feels like they didn’t attempt to push Whitemane further the way they did with the other two healers. In my opinion it feels like they just wanted to emphasize the mana tension and add an AA build then call it a day. The rework just doesn’t have the same ambitiousness I saw with Tyrande and Ana it feels restrained to me that it gives the impression that they could have achieved similar results with the old Whitemane by tweaking her talents somewhat rather than going a full blown rework.
Speaking of mana talents while I can understand the issue with the W refund mechanic removing mana tension, which it did. I find it hard to fathom that the same could be said about the Q mana cost reduction and the E mana refund of level 4, both choices still had ample mana tension from what I’ve played and still made the desperation mechanic still relevant.