Whitemane Rework Goals?

What was the goal of Whitemane's rework?

In live the current version of Whitemane suffers from problems due to her Level 4 Talents, Clemency and High Inquisitor being almost mandatory.

After her release, the dominating build was Q build, during those times. Before Clemency and High Inquisitor was discovered to bypass Desperation mechanics.

and as well as those time, E build and Pity the Frail build wasn’t considered by the players as an optimal and viable build, perhaps a little less for Pity the Frail.

After a few patches, they nerfed and buffed Whitemane’s mana managing talents.

2018-08-22:
Level 4

  • Unwavering Faith (Q)
    • Desperate Plea Mana cost reduction decreased from 30 to 15
  • High Inquisitor (W)
    • Mana return per Desperation stack increased from 60 to 75
  • Indulgence (E)
    • Secondary lash Mana return reduced from 30 to 25

After days, weeks and months, people have begun to play the ‘Clemency’ Build with High Inquisitor, as it provided mana, Desperation mechanic abuse and safer out of team fight healing.

A few patches after they buffed Righteous Flame, an E build talent, people still considered E build as ‘sub-optimal’, and then Q build were being used less.


After a dev comment about how they’re looking at Whitemane’s mana management talents and how it interacts.
We’ve gotten a response from Blizzard, how they’re planning to rework and make Whitemane’s Searing Lash build even better, and the removal of Whitemane’s mana management talents.



In the blog post that they made, they talked about how the rework fixes Whitemane’s mana managing problems while also being able to apply ‘Zeal’

Whitemane’s Mana tension (the amount of Mana she has access to versus the amount she needs to spend to meaningfully impact a match) was the primary area we found needed some reevaluation. In our PTR patch available on 9/16, we’re reducing the baseline Mana costs of Whitemane’s abilities. Since she can now use more abilities before running out of Mana, we’ve lowered her damage output to keep her power from spiraling out of control.

We’ve pushed her playstyle toward more interactivity by giving her multiple new Zeal-stacking talents, which heal her allies when Whitemane damages enemy Heroes.

Not once have they mentioned Whitemane having problems keeping up with Zeal, was keeping up Zeal as long as possible Whitemane’s priorities and play-style, why does it last 8 seconds if it was suppose to be so?

While the playstyle you’re accustomed to with Whitemane’s hasn’t fundamentally changed, you should nonetheless keep an eye out for some new synergies she has with aggressive or dive Heroes at the later levels.

If it has not fundamentally changed, then why is Zeal the goal to this rework? As to keep it up as possible, wasn’t the goal about changing her mana and how it interacts or even removing the level 4 mana managing talents?


Please leave a feedback on what you think was their goal as well or comments.

17 Likes

Words are cheap. I think it’s safe to throw out what they said and focus more on what they actually did.

They nerfed/deleted her meta build. Now the only viable build is the new auto attack build that they added.

They either wanted to change her into an auto attack healer, or they didn’t like her current play-style and replaced it with whatever they felt with at the time.

8 Likes

We have enough AA healers tbh, and WM was the only healer, what could be counted as a mage.

Now we don’t have any.

12 Likes

Yeah, Idk why they felt the need to change her. For all we know, the developers could have been having drinks together one night and had a conversation like this:

“You know what this game needs? More auto attack healers.”
“We don’t have the resources to make a new healer though.”
“Lets just change one of the current healers into an auto attacker!”

Maybe one of the developers had a dream of the Billy mount telling them that Whitemane shouldn’t really be able to heal without doing damage.

13 Likes

Zeal was hard to apply on multiple Heroes thanks to mana issues which were negated by W build (only with Clemency and High Inquisition). Sure, you could apply Zeal on everyone even without W build, but usually either too slowly or with ending up oom.

So so far: mandatory talents due to core weakness. Leading to bad talentdiversity.

So they gave Clemency baseline but High Inquisition still remained a problem and removing it left a hole in her talenttree plus her root seemed to be too dominant as well but it was too hard to make talents able to compete with it at lvl 13 powerlvl, so ir got placed to lvl 16 and this whole stuff created a butterfly effect.

Other problems were her Heroics. SA dominated, so they had to buff DR and nerf SA.

And my personal take: that thanks to her design, she could build for (too high) dmg without giving up on healing powers, because her heals come from dmg. Lead to the problem, that she was a pseudo-assassin doing insane burst dmg for a Healer (at least for my taste, despite enjoying it like hell).

So since her PvE healing got buffed, and she got talents baseline, they decreased her dmg a bit (which imo ended up a bit too harsh but numbertweaks are not real issues regarding reworks).

Once her numbers will be on top once again, she’ll has 3-4 builds.
She can still spam E, now she can spam W, she can heal outside of fights with every build, she has two viable Heroics, now she can keep up Zeal for longer, now she has an extra AA build and can spam Qs with high Desperation for slightly longer before going oom.

Imo, tho WM lost from her powers, she’ll become a more well-rounded Healer once her numbers are balanced again, but the reworks is too fresh, so everyone try everything out and give legit feedbacks!

6 Likes

So… Um… I don’t know how to say this but… I wanna learn Whitemane.

Well, you should probably wait till a week after the rework.

Should I start getting familiar with her now or is the rework going to just mess up what I learn from her if I start now?

Speaking of which, I don’t see why people are playing Whitemane and Junkrat on Live right now, since they are going to be reworked shortly and have their abilities and talents adjusted (or hopefully in Whitemane’s case, untouched).

It’s like knowing there’s a hurricane coming and it’s predicted to be on a collision course yet we hope it doesn’t hit, sometimes though you get lucky.

The theory that the changes were made by someone less experienced than WM’s original creator and balancing “team” is probably true, hence why we’re in this predicament now.

1 Like

If the changes on the PTR go live, you will just be wasting your time getting familiar with her.

How exactly was Zeal hard to apply on multiple Heroes? Due to mana issues, whom they could’ve solved by fixing the level 4 talents?

Her heroics were never a problem, just that Divine Reckoning’s cooldown was needed to be reduced, as to which they switched the roles now, which was not needed.

What exactly classified as “insane burst damage” to a Healer? Healers like Rehgar can also build for damage and stronger sustain damage, without sacrificing any healing.

Kharazim has more burst damage than Whitemane’s supposedly ‘insane burst damage’ as he can also be built for that, his healing is still good even if he builds for damage.

Whitemane’s ‘burst damage’ was to be built to be very risky to use because Whitemane is squishy compared to the two, yet those two can escape and stick to targets. The so called ‘insane burst damage’ comes from two actives, both of which makes Whitemane a fragile target and can easily be negated if the Healer or the target reacts, seems that it’s a bit over-exaggerated to call that insane burst damage.

Building her for damage also negated her healing to only spell damage which was the weakness of that build, while other builds can be used to spam Q or just have increased healing when the targets with Zeal are low on health.

There were also other Healers that had ‘pseudo’ roles in them yet no one bats an eye, should Uther be also made to be a reliable Healer to put him in-line with other Healers?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that Whitemane’s E build or burst damage build are dependent on that burst to heal, while other builds are not, having to think when to use it and when to start was the key to it due to the long cooldown and it is a skillful usage.

13 Likes

Gotcha. Well, I guess we just wait.

They might be thinking it’s the last time to play that version of the hero and want to enjoy the final games they play on it. They could also just be more casual players that don’t know about all these upcoming changes.

5 Likes

Completely agree, current Whitemane is the Genji of Healers, the TLV/Samuro/Medivh of Specialists, the Jaina of Mages, and the well lets see… Tanks aren’t high skill cap.

Dons Spell Armor Cape

2 Likes

Careful, a certain beetle lady might prove you wrong :open_mouth:

1 Like

Zeal lasts 8 seconds, without W build her mana-tension is a bit high so you always had to wait those 4 secs for Desperation to wear off. That’s how.

SA cd tho is overnerfed at this point (imo on purpose to force ppl to test new DR for good data) was too low on 60 sec. Yourself casually used it for offheals not long before obj, because “hey, it’s low cd”.

What were your combo numbers? Almost 5k under 2-3 secs?..
Also bringing up Rehgar’s sustain dmg while talking about burst dmg?..

Kharazim? How? With SSS which targets the highest hp target for every hit so can be countered by not being alone?

Only one [Fanatical Power] made her more fragile.
And that boosted her dmg (so her heals as well) so high, that she received a godlike sustained-burst heal.

While I love murderball Uther and his stunlock of 5 sec, I think it’s not healthy for the game, so I won’t mind if at a point, they lower this potential a bit with a rework.
Despite how much I like it and how “balanced” his numbers are.

2 Likes

Explain how god-like her healing is while Fanatical Power and PtW is active, I’d love to see how well Whitemane survives during that time in a team fight.

You just managed to answer that ‘insane burst damage’ from Whitemane, how quaint that you shouldn’t be foolish on attacking a Healer built for damage, alone.

I suggested some time ago that it should be on par with Divine Reckoning’s cooldown, 60 seconds is too short for an ult that’s suppose to negate burst damage, yet 90 seconds is too long for an ult that’s suppose to negate burst damage.

There were talents that helped Whitemane spread out her Zeal, you could get 4 Zeals including Whitemane, and a fifth Zeal after Desperation ends.

You didn’t even need three Zeals on your teammates to be effective, nor would you have spent a lot of mana.

Even if you do not go W build, other talents for level 4 provided ways to preserve or get back mana.

What exactly is healthy in this game? If Uther’s stun was not healthy for the game, why buff it to 1 second?

3 Likes

LoL, discuss with Hellobg about Whitemane is like discuss with Satoshi Tajiri about entomology. He simply played Whitemane at high levels for a looooong time. If I trust in someone about a hero in this game that’s Hellobg.

4 Likes

WM has 3023 hp at lvl 20, Fanatical Power gives her -25 armor which isn’t that big of a thing because there are other similar armor debuff sources from the enemy while armor buffs and debuffs no longer stack.
And with these in mind, you dealt and healed


almost 1300/sec (with dmg and heal ticks every 0.5 sec, so 650/0.5sec). Burst that down…

Khara and Rehgar are both melee Heroes, so they take more risk with attacking/dealing dmg and I never experienced problematic burst dmg from them, but if you show me some proof for it, you can win me for your argument.

Agree that 90 sec cd for SA is too much, but what I saw from Blizz is that they sometimes overnerf some stuff so even those who are stubborn and biased will take the other option so they can get some numbers on the new stuff.
Numbertweaks are not real issues regarding reworks.

All of which were just worse version of High Inquisition. That talent tier was failure.

That question is hard for me to answer. But ppl can get an idea. Dying fro ma healer 100-0 you is not healthy, imo no one should be able to 100-0 (unless you’re extre squish and that’s part of your balance).
And being unable to do stuff for 5 sec solely thanks to A Single Hero is also beyond “okay” imo. But stuff like this can be missed by the playerbase, because “not meta”.

I don’t think we should blindly agree with Burger on everything WM-related just because he played a lot of WM. Imo he became somewhat biased, which is not a bad thing, and totally natural with ppl who main Heroes.
Part of the reason why he’s a WM-god was WM herself.
Ofc, I’m not saying he’s wrong and I’m right, tho I think I’m right ofc, but ppl and Blizz can prove me wrong, I’m just here to share my thoughts, especially since this topic is so one-sided on the forums.

I have 60%+ wr with WM, that was suspicious for me alone. Then came @hellobg with her WM-god powers. 60%+ wr, almost 10 kda. Sure, give credit to him, he’s an excellent player, but come on…

2 Likes

WM rework is by far the worst rework of 2019 and one of the worst reworks ever!

She used to be WOW disco priest, a mage-healer hybrid, now she is some kind of AA priest. What is AA priest? Such thing never ever existed in wow. Additionally, we already have more than enough AA focused and sustained dmg healers Tyrande, Khara, Rehgar. Even for Anduin AAs are important part of his kit, even though as a Holy Priest he shouldn’t bother with AAs at all… Did we really need another AA focused healer? NO! It really feels like some kind of AA fetish…

Someone on reddit already counted, that if you go AA build, late game AAs only will give you more healing per second that casing Inquisition!!! So, her W in now completely useless and it is better not to use this ability at all. Was it really necessary to nerf self root channeled ability which can be easily interrupted???

Clemency is now baseline. I should be happy, however it was made by the worst possible way. Why does it cost more mana than Life Binder, the same amount of mana as Shadowstalk and only slightly less mana than Ancestral Healing??!!?? Seriously, it is probably the most cost inefficient ability in the game!

It could be easily fixed. Just make High Inquisition to recover 10 mana/0,5 s instead of instant 50 mana…

I don’t think she lost her powers. I think this rework will make her broken in lower ranks, but completely useless in higher ranks. As I already mentioned her W is useless now (and because they removed its talents it isn’t so easy to fix). Her E was also nerfed, so you can’t rely on it. Basically they created a healer with just one basic ability!

  • In lower ranks (where people don’t know how to focus) she will just spam Q (or use Scarlet Aegis) and AA enemy tank all the time (and sometimes cast E, but nothing will happen if you forget). You will heal huge numbers and you don’t have to think about it…

  • In higher ranks she will be useless, because unlike other AA focused healers I mentioned she has no utility in her kit. She is squishy and good enemies won’t let her AA.

It doesn’t explain why they shifted all her power from abilities to AAs…

2 Likes