Zeebo balance suggestions

General Discussion
1

I have a thread discussing why he needs some balance: Are you sure about zeebo? - #100 by WereElf-2100
But long story short: his spiders have the potential to deal severe amounts of damage on a short cooldown. Also, they are BY FAR his most popular build right now.
This thread will focus on suggestions about how can he be balanced in a way that keeps his relevant, but still tones down the parts of his kit, which can be overwhelming:

  • Voodoo Ritual damage reduced from 67 to 60 over 6 seconds, but now it can also poison enemy heroes.
    Its damage against non-heroic enemies is increased by 25%. (So it will be dealing 75 damage to non-heroes instead of 67).
  • Attack damage reduced from 88 to 80.
  • Corpse Spidersā€™ damage reduced from 38 to 34 damage per hit.

I think that this is necessary, if we want Vile Infection on level 20 to have real competition in terms of popularity. These changes will keep his basic attack dps roughly the same to what it is now. A single attack may deal 140 damage instead of 88, but if heā€™s constantly attacking over 8 seconds, he now deals 880 damage, and then he will be dealing 880 too.

  1. Widowmakers (changed functionality):
    Enemies hit by Corpse Spiderā€™ jar are slowed by 30% for 2 seconds (up from 1,5).
    Reward: After Corpse Spiders have attacked heroes 100 times, the jar break damage is increased by 120% and the duration of the spiders is increased by 1 second.

This change will bring down his Qā€™s damage potential from 1285 damage to 960 (1060 with the damage from trait damaging heroes baseline). Having more of the damage upfront, as well as the increased slow duration will make the damage more reliable, but it should no longer be able to 1-shot standing heroes, without other damage sources.

  1. Pandemic (additional functionality):
    When toads hit and enemy, they explode and deal damage in a cone behind the hit enemy (like a Greymane Q), instead of dealing damage in a small area around them. (The cone size is affected by Toads of Hugeness talent).

His toads are currently his lowest pick and win rate talent, so I think that this buff will be quite welcome. It will help Zeebo to gather trait stacks from minion waves a lot easier.

  1. Blood Ritual (adjusted functionality):
    Gaining Voodoo Ritual stacks restores 2% of Nazeeboā€™s maximum Health and Mana, each.
    Passive: Takedowns grant 5 stacks of Voodoo Ritual.

Making this correction to make sure, that hero takedowns heal him for 10% of max resources rather than 2% (or 0%, as it is now).

  1. Big Voodoo (additional functionality):
    Voodoo Ritual also provides Nazeeboo with Health and Mana regeneration, equal to 1% of the bonus HP and MP gained from it.

This talent is also fairly balanced, in its win rate, but other talents provide him with more sustain. So I think that this will be a good way to make this talent more appealing. At 175 stacks (which he should get at around level 20, perhaps a bit earlier, or a bit later), he will be getting 21 HP/sec and 3,5 MP/sec from this talent. I think itā€™s enough to make a difference, but insufficient to make him overwhelming.

  1. Vile Infection (changed functionality):
    Quest: each stack of Voodoo Ritual increases its damage by 0,5%

With Voodoo Ritual working against heroes baseline now, I think that this talent should become less popular. Not to mention the nerf it has gotten to its values. Right now, zeebo deals 167 damage to heroes, while at 175 stacks. With this change, he will be dealing 112,5 damage to them at 175 stacks. Which is just 52,5 more damage than he would without this talent. He would require 357 Voodoo Stacks in order to have the same efficiency as he does right now.
And the best thing about having this talent this way is: it can be easily balanced. It can easily go to 0,4% (or lower) per stack if itā€™s overperforming, or to 0,6% (or higher) per stack if itā€™s underperforming.

3 Likes
2

6 seconds DoT. You know, thatā€™s a BIG problem for Stealth mechanic.

Why would you buff him THAT much?

Kinda weird this talent is named Widowmakers yet increases the damage of the jar itself.

Thatā€™s just an absurd amount of AoE.

You totally forgot about Scaling.

3

Big problem against a tiny fraction of the hero pool. I have actually suggested a Nova rework too, where her Ghost Protocol cleanses DoTs from herself. But 60%+ of zeebos already take Vile Infection and HAVE this 6 seconds DoT, although after level 20.

Because I also nerfed his basic attack damage, as well as his Qā€™s damage.

Point taken. I couldā€™ve also tied the quest to him hitting enemy heroes with his jar too. However, it DOES increase the spider duration, so I canā€™t say that it CANā€™T be called that.

It could be, or it could be a regular size AoE. Depends on how itā€™s implemented. It would obviously need to have smaller area than GM cocktail, without the level 7 talent.

I have not forgotten anything. It just doesnā€™t matter if I use the level 0 values or the level 20 values. Iā€™m using the level 0 values, because itā€™s easier to compare them. You know that the average squishy hero has 1300-1400 HP. You know that the average tank has around 2700 HP. And itā€™s easy to see what portion of these numbers you get as a value, without having to multiply or divide stuff by 2,19.
Dealing 1000 damage to a hero with 1300 HP on level 0 will take 77% of their HP. Dealing 2191 damage to a hero with 2848 HP on level 20 will still take 77% of their HP. Makes no difference.

EDIT:

Right now he deals 969 damage over 8 seconds, when attacking minions.
With the suggested changes, heā€™ll be dealing 900 damage over 8 seconds, when attacking minions. So the ā€œbuffā€ is actually a nerf.
Although I am indeed not taking into account target switching and stuff like that. Itā€™s not so much of a buff or nerf, as much as it is a ā€œredistribution of powerā€.

2 Likes
4

Just reduce his damage by 99.999% and throw him in the trash and heā€™s where he should be :wink:

5

Could you be a bit more constructive? I donā€™t quite understand if you think that the changes Iā€™m suggesting are too big nerfs, or if they should be.
If itā€™s the former, than which part would make you think that?
I would agree, that the nerf on Vile Infection would be way too severe, if implemented with 0,5%. It needs to be 1%, if we want it to keep its current power, but it may scale out of control in some of the games. So perhaps it should be 0,7 or 0,8%.
As for his spiders (which is the only other thing that got ā€˜nerfedā€™, having the potential to deal 960 + 4% damage, is still QUITE A LOT. In comparison, Vallaā€™s Q deals 380 + 4% + 7 dmg per stack. Chromieā€™s W deals up to 967,5 + 4% damage, if all 3 hit with their center damage. Orb build Li Ming deals 530 + 3% damage with Orb, at max range.

3 Likes
6

Some very cool ideas :o I really like your thoughts with vile infectionā€¦ Having baseline poison from lvl 1 and then taking that talent down a scooch could give him some extra early game power while taking away a bit of lategame power. All in all not bad :+1:

7

Copypasted from my note document.

Trait

  • Voodoo Ritual receives the following changesā€¦
    • Vile Infection is now incorporated into Voodoo Ritualsā€™s description, now sayingā€¦

      Nazeeboā€™s Basic Attacks and Abilities poison non-Heroic enemies, causing them to take 67 additional damage over 6 seconds. If a Minion dies while poisoned by Voodoo Ritual, Nazeebo permanently gains 6 Health and 1 Mana.

      ā¢ Quest: Reach 150 (reduced from 175) stacks of Voodoo Ritual.
      ā¢ Reward: Voodoo Ritual can now be applied to Heroes and its damage is increased from 67 to 151 (nerfed from 150% to 125%) *over 6 seconds.

Talents

Lvl 1

  • Pandemic receives the following changesā€¦
    • First quest reward requirement reduced from 40 to 30
    • Second quest reward requirement reduced from 80 to 60
  • Thing of the Deep second quest reward Spell Power increased from 5% to 7%

Lvl 4

  • Blood Ritual receives the following changesā€¦
    • Health and Mana restoration increased from 2% to 2.5%
    • Passive Voodoo Ritual stacks from Takedowns increased from 5 to 8

Lvl 13

  • Guardian Toads receives the following changesā€¦
    • Armor duration increased from 2 seconds to 2.5 seconds
    • Armor max duration increased from 6 seconds to 7.5 seconds

Lvl 20

  • Vile Infection moved to Trait
  • Bad Medicine cooldown reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds
3 Likes
8

These suggestions seem fine, apart from the fact that nothing is done about the Spiderā€™s overwhelming damage.

9

7% seems like a really awkward number. Just my personal opinion :joy:

3 Likes
10

Hereā€™s my thought process:

  1. Thing of the Deep was buffed to provide a maximum of 20% spell power at 100 stacks of trait on November 22, 2019.

This was later nerfed less than a month later from 10% spell power per quest reward to 5%, reducing maximum spell power gain to 10%.

This nerf is unofficially (my thoughts as to whyā€¦) justified because TotDā€™s other functionality - bonus range on your Basic Abilities - allows Nazeebo to play from safety as well as mimic the damage bonus that he would have gained from Widowmaker and Pandemic combined. High level players would rather pick a more consistent option (in this case TotDā€™s range bonus).

Think of it this way: the bonus range is the primary reason you pick TotD, the bonus spell power is just the icing on the cake.

  1. Since 100 stacks is very easy to achieve well before lvl 11 at the very least, a small to medium-sized reward would suffice.

I propose increasing the second rewardā€™s bonus spell power to 7% (maximum of 12% spell power). I donā€™t want to go overboard with buffing because giving a hero like a mage basic ability range is extremely powerful.

Iā€™m only buffing up TotD and Pandemic to better compete with Widowmakersā€™ power it brings to its own build.

3 Likes
11

The issue with Corpse Spiders is their ludicrous damage potential. Anything else is secondary.

1 Like
12

Some good suggestions.

It would be nice if there was something like this

  • If at least 2 toads hit a hero within the first hop, that hero will be pushed back.
  • Ice-block replaced with Spirit Walk
    • Spirit walk makes Naz stealth for 3 seconds and movement increased by 20%. While in Spirit mode, Naz can walk through heroes, minions and fort walls.

Would be nice if Naz had some sort of escape

1 Like
13

I like it as it fits Nazā€™s lore in D3. The thing is Naz is supposed to have the weakness of being immobile. They removed Sprint (which isnā€™t as strong as your suggestion) for this very reason.

Iā€™m not saying your idea would make Naz too strong, but those complaining about IceBlock would have far more problem with an escape ability that not only gives Naz stealth, speed and anti collision.

2 Likes
14

Ya, I understand what you mean.

When I play Naz, I pick iceblock 90% of the time and itā€™s great to avoid damage such as ults like fireball, butchers charge/ult, Mephisto global ult, fire bombs, tracers ult, novaā€™s ult and the list goes on and on and onā€¦ iceblock is a really nice talent with a lot of positives IMO. As you know the negatives with iceblocks.

Spirit Walk I guess just does make sense to him as a character and lore and the overall theme of his kit.

I think my projection on Spirit Walk is that, I am quite an all-in player with Naz, I go in headstrong then I get out if I can, I am quite aggressive with assassins thus having spirit walk would definitely make my playstyle a lot easier.

3 Likes
15

Orā€¦ just move Bad Medicine to Lvl 13 and nerf it to compensate. :man_shrugging:

16

Or just let it as 20 as it is and donā€™t make Vile Infection baseline, so players have to choose, which talents they pick at 20, because Naz has some good choices.

Instead they could work on some other less played heroes like The Butcher, Valeea, Probius or Nova.

17

I like it, but Iā€™d still rather see Blood Ritualā€™s new passive be baseline and not tied to a talent. Iā€™d change it to this:

Base

  • Voodoo Ritual [Trait]
    • Takedowns now cause Nazeebo to gain 5 stacks of Voodoo Ritual

Level 4

  • Blood Ritual [W]
    • (New) Enemy heroes that die while poisoned now cause Nazeebo to gain 15% Health and Mana. Non-heroic enemies that die while poisoned continue to restore 2% Health and Mana.
    • Passive Voodoo Ritual stacks from Takedowns has been moved to Trait

This way he isnā€™t pigeonholed into one talent in order to team fight properly, and Blood Ritual stays competitive with the other two talents.

3 Likes
18

I doubt it, because why would you pick a bet more regen against increased more value or spider talent?

But now you can either pick Blood Ritual on a two lane for example or go for value on a big map.

19

Doesnā€™t this overlap with Bad Medicine tho? Seems a bit redundant. Donā€™t get me wrong, this I think fits Nazeeboā€™s lore more than Ice Block but just seems a bit too similar to BM.

Maybe instead of gaining extra MS, Spirit Walk allow him to move through objects and/or player base terrain while gaining stealth for a bit. But still though, this seems too similar to Bad Medicine.

Agreed. Tbh I donā€™t know why they havenā€™t incorporated this baseline on top of making VI baseline as well.

1 Like
20

Just because people are obsessed with stacks and damage, doesnā€™t mean itā€™s mandatory and there are maps, where you canā€™t complete this quest anyway. Itā€™s a nice quest, but it isnā€™t and shouldnā€™t be mandatory.

I donā€™t like the idea being it nerfed and included to the base kit, because as it is now we have three different types of playstyles for Zeebo:

A) Mage (Q-Build)
B) Carrybuild / Traitquest (1)
C) Bruiser-ish mage with Frogs.

And only for two builds (A, B) itā€™s a nice addition, but for E build I still prefer heroic upgrade for more zoning or Bad Medicine for more survial. Btw good players donā€™t need Blood Ritual, who knows how to dual soak. Itā€™s only a talent for bad players or on maps, where you struggle to complete the quest.

Edit:

I donā€™t want another Nazeebo changes, except maybe a small nerf to Q, when itā€™s too strong on Blizzā€™s data. But I want a new hero or other changes for least popular heroes. Naz is in a good spot.