Why current hitboxes are a terrible design: Let's play a game

General Discussion
1

Have you ever played Alarak? Or Rehgar?

Have you tried to use Lightning Surge on a minion behind an enemy Hero, to hit the enemy Hero for bonus damage? But they were too close to each other, so targeting the minion only led to targeting the enemy Hero instead.

Ever been in a hectic team fight and tried to cast Ancestral on your ally Cassia who’s very low on health, But Diablo gets infront of Cassia, and you literally couldn’t click on her and you target Diablo instead?

This is poor design.

Here’s a small game. Imagine you’re in a game of HotS and this arrangement occurs:
https://i.imgur.com/j2Kcd0i.png
All you’d have to do to win this game, is to target Chromie, and land a Basic Attack on her. This without context sounds incredibly easy, but in this case, it’s impossible. If a sufficiently large hitbox is placed in front of a tiny or small Hero, they’re in pseudo-stealth.

Now. I don’t want you to tell me “oh just use AoE dmg”. This isn’t about how you kill the Chromie, it’s about how you target her. If one of the core elements of the game, targeting entities to interact with them, can be neglected due to arrangements like this.

If you stood in the situation of being a Basic Attack focused Hero, or simply out of cooldowns and a very low health Chromie is on the run whilst being inside of your Basic Attack-range, and you couldn’t attack her. Wouldn’t you just feel a bit cheated?

Edit: Even if you’d say it fits a tank such as Diablo to peel for his team, even in the fringe scenario that his hitbox is covering Chromie from Basic Attacks and targeted abilities. This however still does not cover the problem of as eg. Rehgar you suffer the same inability to target Chromie with an Ancestral Heal, as an enemy would with a Basic Attack. It goes both ways and cannot be excused.

Thank you for reading.

11 Likes
2

They apparently adjusted it in the last patch but I feel it gotten worse than what it was before with the change.

2 Likes
3

Point-N-Click abilities should allow you to click on the portraits at the top of the screen. I do not play point-n-click supports anymore, simply because I just CANNOT stand mis-clicking my abilities!

14 Likes
4

Happened too many times with Alexstrasza, how many times did I cast my Q on someone who wasn’t the intended target…

3 Likes
5

The concerns with that would be at what point do you limit it? Do you allow hostile point and click abilities to be used the same way? Would this circumvent things like Dehaka’s Isolation, where you can still see and click on portraits? When someone is out of range, what happens?

As far as I am concerned, this sort of issue is just a part of playing the game. If you are the one in danger of dying, make it easier on your healer to target you, similar to how you spread out to avoid sharing a Living Bomb.

2 Likes
6

God forbid people to have precise mouse movements as a skill.

1 Like
7

don’t you dare implying I should remove those 3 sqft carpet and cathair from my ps/2 ball-mouse chassis blizz plz fix hitboxes

3 Likes
8

thats funny. i made a suggestion about this a while back.

in general i dont think many abilities actually need a portrait click capability. i would say you cut it off like: global abilities only (allied).

skillshots are part of the game. thats just something that everyone has to deal with. however, for some things it would make life better if you could target all the way across the map in that cluster of your team and their team fighting the person you actually want easier.

1 Like
9

Each hero has an invisible aura around them. the hero that si standing at the front is the preferred target even though you clearly click the hero behind (you click the aura) . It is an issue since Alpha I belive.

10

You should be able to click the hero portrait at the top of the screen to land a beneficial ability on a teammate. That needs to be a thing.

Rehgars ancestral, lt morales stim…etc should be able to cast their ulti on a portait.

1 Like
11

Probably just make it not work outside of vision, same as normal point and clicks.

6 Likes
12

I’ve gotten use to the point and click healers. In fact I micro pretty well in picking my targets with my mouse. I still have the issue but only unless my allies are full mobile heroes there are some slip ups.

13

regrowth on malf always hits the wrong person -.-

2 Likes
14

That seems sensible enough.

1 Like
15

This called skill, stop cast skill without thinking hold a moment and forcus your target :wink:

16

Some heroes would not be fair with ‘portrait click’ abilities. For example Ana is all about aiming your shot very precisely on a teammates hitbox, if you miss they get no healing at all. So learning their hitbox size is a part of her high skill cap.

17

Ana doesnt have point and click abilities that would take advantage of portrait casting, so your point is irrelevant.

18

Cleanse is point and click. Divine Palm is point and click. Should those be castable on a portrait? That would significantly lower the skill cap of heroes with said abilities and dumb them down.

19

Not really. You’d probably cast it too late if you went to click on a portrait for it. I’m not advocating for this to be implemented. I think it’s a dumb idea. If you can’t manage clicking on the right hero, that’s your problem. I’m just saying your use of ana as an example was meaningless as her heals are skill shots.

It’s a point and click ability. That’s about as low of a skill cap as you can get. The usefulness of a cleanse comes from knowing who to use it on and when, not the ease of access to it.

20

Nanoboost.

1 Like