As someone that has Zagara as one of my most played and favorite heroes for the past 6+ years, I must say that she’s ridiculously over-tuned right now. It’s pretty dumb.
This isn’t a complaint about Zagara specifically…
…because once again, she’s one of my mains and favorites, but I’m always annoyed when any new heroes and reworks come out because they’re ALWAYS over-tuned and usually waaaaaay over-tuned.
• Why over-tune heroes instead of trying to balance them immediately?
• Or when heroes are obviously way overtuned, why does it take 3-4 weeks to nerf them and still take 2-4 rounds of nerfs (3-6 months) to balance them better?
6 Likes
Better to Overtune than to under tune. You’ve already seen the “ZOMG you KILLED MY HERO !!! I HATE U BLIZZARD !!!” posts when they overtune the hero.
Imaging the baby rage when you under tune a rework.
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Unfortunately, this is what happens when you fire your support staff and play testers. Here’s hoping things will get better after the current mess is sorted out.
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The impression that Reworks are op is kinda a bias tbh. At least if we talk about their intended power. What I mean by that is, that for example, Falstad was op because of bugs, and he wouldn’t have been without those.
But when something is released (be it Hero or Rework), the goal is to gather data and finetweak it. This can only happen if the Hero is played, thus they can’t afford it to be up/weak.
But it’s really tiresome, agree on that.
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The only overtuned thing about her is Baneling Massacre
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Anduin would like a word.
Sometimes you get that anyway.
Like with Gazlowe.
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Raynor got weaker on rework. Anduin didn’t really change from a power perspective. Tyrande’s power level has only gone down (latest patch does seem interesting though…). LiLi arguably got slightly worse. Morales feels basically the same with a few cleaner talents. Johanna feels pretty much the same power level if not sometimes lower – albeit her level 20 power spike is very good now.
I could go on… you are focusing your argument on a handful of reworks and ignoring the others…
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A) Most people (“bandwagon players”) obviously loves overtuned heroes and that makes less popular heroes more shiny and let them picked more frequently
B) Since heroes are played more often devs gets more data and can do their job better and balance heroes
I don’t remember a game, where I faced Zagara that often before her change and I like that she got the attention she needed by the devs, even though she feels too powerful now.
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…. Everyone forgetting my boy raynor
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It is much easier to overtune something to see a difference. So when something feels overtuned or too strong, it is much easier to notice and take it back a few notches to where it feels better.
Ever raise the volume too loud, and take it down to just right? That is because you know what is too low and too high. You checked the range limits and took to where you like it.
Each change is calculated to create a controlled setting. They don’t just pick a random numbers and just wait and see what happens.
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it’s impossible to have a 100% success rate on new releases/reworks due to lack of data. Ultimately there is a limit to how many hours of game data the devs can pump out on their own vs tens of thousands of people playing the live version of the game over the course of a week or two.
Data collection takes time. To be quite frank, A couple of random players on the HOTS forums or reddit (most of whom are plat or lower) constantly whining about certain things being too strong doesn’t provide any sort of real, tangible data for the devs to act on. You also need to take into account that data from a lot of lower-ranked players is often only SOMEWHAT useful on account of many of them simply not knowing how to REALLY draft/build/play.
The fact that most “OP” heroes are actually just overtuned means that balancing them is just a matter of number tuning (reducing base damage, reducing scaling, weakening certain talents, increasing cooldowns, etc). It can be a delicate process as it becomes very easy to over-nerf a hero, making them straight up bad.
2 Likes
People want to blame waterlong, stop bringing your logic in here! 
You have a very good point of course, we also have a ghost town of a PTR, so it’s not like they can really test changes there either. People need to remember in regards to HOTS that it’s not 2016 anymore. We aren’t even as spoiled as were were in 2018!
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It’s easier to nerf a hero that is played than it is to buff a hero that isn’t played. By over-buffing a hero, the devs can more easily tackle the issues a particular hero becauase that hero will be picked more frequently.
Look at Zagara. Even you at this point would have some idea of what to tackle on her kit because you’ve played against her enough (and maybe as and with her). The more information the devs have, the easier it is to adjust.
Now look at Illidan, what do you buff and what do you nerf? The answer is no longer as simple. You would need to personally play more game as Illidan to identify the issues with him just so you unlock more information which would take a lot of games.
I do not believe the devs purposely go out of their way to make reworks/new heroes busted. You can see this when they release tanks and healers since they’re not typically over bearing. But it simply makes more sense to do so for the time being as they gather information.
I think it’s far better to undertune than overtune. OP heroes, especially ones with a low skill floor, dominate the meta, screws with skill fidelity, and impacts sense of balance on the rest of the roster far more. Even OP heroes will look weak comparatively to a super OP hero. A weak hero just doesn’t get played.
This is kind of a BS argument. The very fact that there are changes stimulates people to play. We get more than enough data to get a good idea of how to balance the hero. When heroes are weak, we know they’re weak. Gazlowe was reworked and everyone hailed him as now usable and awesome, didn’t change the fact that he was initially weaker postrework, and his popularity shot up. Blizzard then got more than enough data to show he was slightly undertuned, and they didn’t need to then undo all the guardrails which then shot him up to a 60% hero. I’m trying to be diplomatic, but that made no sense.
Regardless, there are varying degrees of acceptability. Once you’re encroaching past 60% win rates irrespective of specific bug/talents (ie. mixing fire, lightning rod and even then those heroes were only borderline), you’re just not doing your job. It’s like being on a conveyor belt checking for correct sizes for quality control for chicken nuggets. Sure, some might be bigger than others, but if you let a live chicken through, something is seriously wrong with your testing.
But since this is the first time they’ve really screwed up that badly since AzJackson left (which basically happened in EVERY patch, and his logic/reasoning to make changes was questionable, while he rarely considered counterbalancing), I’m willing to believe they’ve earned enough good will to not think they’re being reckless. You can see that whoever is doing changes now, they’re being much more careful in general, and actually using nerfs as a tool.
But Zagara…I don’t really know what they were thinking… When reading through the patch notes, I knew she was the clear WTF hero of the patch.
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Look, I actively watched every balancepatch through the years.
Read almost everything the devs ever said.
They said that it’s easier to tune down than to up.
And it’s logical to me, because “weak” is not really telling. They mostly use winrates.
40% Hero with low winrate talents can mean that the talents are weak or that the base Hero.
But seeing 1-3 overperforming talents is a lot easier to tweak.
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So have I. And I think you’re greatly exaggerating that philosophy. They’ve waffled on their approach based on public sentiments and who is in charge. And I doubt you’ll even find a quote that explicitly says what you just wrote. And even if one person did, doesn’t mean it’s correct.
Gazlowe being weak was determined from his win rates, and he got more than enough play to get those win rates. All heroes that get changes see an uptick in their popularity. So your argument still doesn’t make any sense.
A 40% hero just means the hero itself is weak. That’s exactly what they did with Morales when she was released. They just massively buffed her HP, and suddenly she was viable. Speaking of Morales, I’d argue she was undertuned, but her popularity still shot up, so again, your argument just falls flat.
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No need to talk about popularity.
If a Hero is weak, it’s hard to pinpoint precisely what needs buffs. Nerfs are always a clearer picture.
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You’re the one who stated heroes need to be played. If their popularity shoots up, it means they’re being played more.
Your second sentence doesn’t make sense either. It really depends on how weak they are. If you’re nearing 40% it just means the base hero is weak. They also have a ton of other metrics to see how they compare with other heroes. When Lunara was released weak, after a couple of playthroughs, it was pretty apparent that even though she had movement speed, her HP was just too low, her damage also wasn’t quite up to snuff. Once she got closer, they were then able to see the talents that were outliers once she was in a better place.
You’re just arbitrarily assigning more value to the nebulousness of balancing weak heroes when there’s really no evidence for it.
