Xul’s current OP-ness is different from release Qhira’s OP-ness or Rexxar’s OP-ness. Qhira and Rexxar are legitimately difficult heroes to play, but result in great success when played well. Xul isn’t. Xul may be the most simple, most braindead melee hero to play in the game.
It takes little skill for Xul to clear waves or soak two waves. It takes little skill for Xul to CC someone because that E is point-and-click. It takes little skill for Xul to press R and either do a huge amount of AoE damage or zone control. It takes little skill for Xul to press 1 and get a shield that deals either percentage damage or AA evasion. Q is the only ability that requires skill, but is not necessary in his kit, because you don’t need to hit your Q’s in order to achieve success as Xul.
Xul is the epitome of low skill high reward. If you want waveclear you pick Xul. If you want reliable CC you pick Xul. If you want reliable front line who’s an off-tank you pick Xul.
Before the rework Xul was balanced because he was downright atrocious. He was bad, but he was easy to play, which balances things out. Like how Li Li is overall a below-average healer, but “good” because she’s easy to play. Now after the rework, when Xul has gotten new awesome tools and talents, his simplicity was still retained, but he was on par with the other bruisers, and now becomes a question of “why pick another bruiser if you can pick Xul and get the same result with half the effort”?
His ONLY weakness is his lack of mobility and ease of being kited, but he can hold his own against any ranged heroes by rooting them in place with his point and click E.
I think the only way to truly balance Xul is not to weaken him, but to make his E a skillshot.
lmao.
I personally this is why i stopped playing with illidan. I couldn’t fight against ranger heroes in teamfight, so i tried to avoid the teamfight and i did only laning.
I realised with xul i can act against ranger assasins and i can clear more quickly and easily the lanes.
After this i realised with mathael i even can do a big macro pressure thankfully to the mount talent. Here i had again the " i can’t do much against ranger heroes" issue.
I somehow i ended at ragnaros.
I had a pressure to hunt enemy heroes only too, so i had a artanis-alarak-zeratul lane.
All together i ended at Ragnaros-zeratul heroes as “main illidan character”
idk why everyone has ANY sort of problem with xul. since his rework i have NEVER even seen a strong xul. idk why it is even an issue in the first place cause i felt he was very average.
My problem has always been how much ground his W build covers.
I don’t know much post rework but I do remember beforehand that W build kind of provided him the most stable fighting chance.
It would be nice to see that build come down and others come up, but I don’t actually know if he does, or ever did need that.
Xul is still performing extremely well with huge pick rate. At least deathwing has been hit enough times with the nerf bat, now it’s time for xul to get repeated hits and the cycle of buffs and nerfs continues
I gave up bringing up that build, either Xul has cast some black necro magic on people to ignore it, or they just don’t realize how broken it is. Or they think “it’s just melee, it’s harmless.” Or, “Just stun him™”.
Every patch, that build goes completely under the radar.
Look it up on heroesprofile, all the W talents are disproportionately picked compared to every other build. Skeletons are not a problem, neither is Scythe (Q) build.
Touching those talents is pointless if you don’t do anything about W talents which hugely synergize from each other, allow him to clear everything super fast and sustain vs high melee teams indefinitely.
edit - Weaken (16) is just icing on the cake, the damage reduction it applies to anything touched by Cursed Strikes or a single Skeleton is enormous and unrivaled in HotS.
With the cooldown reductions to Cursed Strikes, he can have it up almost indefinitely.