Beastermaster Rework - For the Devs

[Lichkönig-2667]

He is the only one who didn’t really receive a quality of life treatment since reforged. Hawk and Ultimate literally unplayable bad please fix or rework

[Dani-2192]

Beastmaster was analyzed. It’s best to focus on fixing all issues with bear and beastmaster himself first which will be enough. If you want to buff Hawk well then you should remove Crystal ball from creep loot table and other. It was a mistake to reduce Crystal ball level from 5 to 2, the item should have simply been removed.

@Dani-2192

Interesting!

@MWP-21110

Beastmaster → Summon Hawk

Change

• + Add Resistant Skin

It’s not the hawk that is the issue. The problem is there are easier ways to detect invisible units and scout a map, because that’s what the hawk is supposed to do. If you want the hawk to be great then you need to do for instance these:

@Dani-2192

Crystal Ball = Remove it from creep loot table (to make far sight, flare, reveal, scout (owl) etc. more appealing).

@Dani-2192

Dust of appearance removed from Ancient of wonders and changed item classification from miscellaneous to purchasable.

@Dani-2192

• Scout Tower sight during night reduced from 1000 to 800.
• Scout Tower no longer has magic sentry ability, you need to upgrade to for instance arcane tower to detect invisible units.

@Dani-2192

Arcane Tower no longer has Reveal ability.

Problem is also beastmaster himself, for instance he casts his spells too slow and his turn rate is bad but can be easily fixed:

@Dani-2192

Beastmaster turn rate increased from 0.4 to 0.5.

@Dani-2192

Beast master “Art - Animation - Cast point” reduced from 0.5 to 0.3.

Here is the full list:

@Dani-2192

407. Beastmaster animation damage point reduced from 0.8 to 0.3 against air units (Attack 2) to match animation damage point against ground units (Attack 1).
408. Beastmaster turn rate increased from 0.4 to 0.5.
409. Beastmaster summon bear spell allow maximum 1 active bear similar to Misha in Founding of Durotar. This allows you to resummon your bear to deny exp. Removed blink ability from Spirit Bear (Level 3). Added resistant skin ability for Raging Bear (Level 2) and Spirit Bear (Level 3) in command card.
410. Beastmaster “Art - Animation - Cast point” reduced from 0.5 to 0.3.
411. Bears (level 1, 2 and 3) “Art - Selection Size” increased by 0.5 and Spirit Bear (Level 3) “Art - Scaling Value” reduced from 1.25 to 1.2.

Technically Spirit Bear level 3 already has resistant skin because of high level, but adding the resistant skin ability makes it easier to understand and consistent with other units who also have high level and resistant skin ability. Removing blink ability from bear reduces the amount of apm needed to play beastmaster since he has too many units and abilities to use (he is very hard to play compared to for instance blademaster and demon hunter), you then compensate by giving bear level 2 resistant skin for removing blink from bear level 3.
Reducing cast point makes beastmaster cast his ultimate faster and summon hawk faster (for instance archmage has 0.3 cast point), reducing to 0.4 would be acceptable if not 0.3. He is currently too sluggish.
When beastmaster comes at you with 2 bears it’s just hard for some players to deal with that. He is “intense” for short time and then bad rest of the time, by making him have maximum 1 bear he will be more balanced throughout the game, similar to far seer who can resummon his wolves to deny exp and is easy to play. Tooltip of summon bear ability doesn’t mention that hp regen increases by 0.5 each level and movespeed also increases, so that tooltip needs to be improved.

@Dani-2192

484. There is a bug with sight during day of Misha lvl 3 as it’s 1200 but Misha lvl 1, lvl 2 and lvl 4 have 1400.

@Dani-2192

515. “Art - Required Animation Names - Attachments” needs to be inspected for all units. For instance demolisher should have the string “large”, but the field is currently empty causing for instance Lightning Shield to become too small. Druid of the claw (bear form) has “large” but Beastmaster Bears (level 1, 2 and 3) only “medium”.

Blizzard fixed some issues with beastmaster in founding of durotar campaign (rexxar bonus campaign), but only for Rexxar and Misha, they forgot beastmaster and his bears for melee mode. For instance selection size is too small as you can’t see circle on ground when you select a bear and buffs/debuffs effects have wrong scale. Spirit bear level 3 also has too big scale compared to collision which Blizzard fixed for Misha level 3.

@Dani-2192

518. Attack animations are not consistent for units with the same model. Druid of the claw (bear form) attack animation is always playing the “bash animation” which beastmaster bears only play when bash procs.

@Dani-2192

a) Easiest way to solve the animation problem is to give Druid of the claw (bear form) the same attack animation as beastmaster bears for their normal attack, which makes their attacks more subtle.
However, druid of the claw (bear form) and beastmaster bears currently have different values set for attack animation damage point and attack animation backswing point, which is also weird since they have the same model and attack speed.

Bash ability (for instance used by beastmaster bear) has many bugs:

@Dani-2192

@Dani-2192

Bonus damage of Bash/Maul abilities doesn’t work against spell immune units, damage type needs to be changed from force to universal.

It would encourage mountain king to pick bash ability more often (even as the first ability) if bonus damage was fixed, as it helps against spell breakers, dryads etc. It encourages mountain king to buy an orb to deal with spell immune air units. Fixing the bug would also benefit Beastmaster bears and creeps such as Kobold Taskmaster which would be great.

@Dani-2192

More than 100 abilities of creeps are now in better sync with the latest patch, for instance War stomp damage from 25 to 30 and Shockwave mana cost from 100 to 90. Queen of Suffering “Charm (Neutral Hostile)” cooldown from 20 to 45 seconds, mana cost from 125 to 150 and can no longer target mechanical units. Maiden of Pain “Life Drain (Neutral Hostile)” AOE from 950 to 700 and cast range from 500 to 600. “Shadow Strike (Neutral Hostile)” mana cost from 65 to 75. Hurl Boulder cast range from 800 to 600 and cooldown from 8 to 9 seconds. Cripple (Neutral Hostile) and Cripple (Warlock) need to be fixed so they can be cast on mechanical units. Bash/Maul abilities such as Bash (Neutral Hostile 1) need to be fixed so they can stun spell immune air units. Delete Maul (Neutral Hostile 3/Maul), then give Bash (Neutral Hostile 2) to Misha (level 3 and 4) instead.

I also tested Bash (Neutral Hostile 1) used by Eredar warlock and Sea elemental, the ability doesn’t stun spell immune air units such as destroyer (Target “Air” is currently missing for these abilities). Misha (level 3 and level 4) is too strong so the Maul ability should be deleted from the game and be replaced with Bash (Neutral Hostile 2) to match latest patch of Spirit bear (level 3). We should not have this many different versions of Bash ability, keep it simple like the Evasion and Cleave abilities are for creeps. When abilities of the same type are more consistent it’s easier for everyone to learn how the game works and the game becomes more balanced.

Beastmaster needs stats and armor, not attack damage. Most of the heroes can be balanced in the game by fixing the creep loot table, for instance:

@Dani-2192

231. Gloves of haste = Reverted attack speed from 18% to 15%. Now also gives +1 armor and gold cost increased from 125 to 150.

@Dani-2192

@Dani-2192

Claws of attack +5 = Increase gold cost from 125 to 150. Then remove it from creep loot table.

Increase gold cost to make all level 2 items have the same price. However I think this item should also be removed from creep loot table, as only heroes such as blademaster benefit the most from this item, and this would make replenishment potion and ring of protection +3 drop more often which would for instance make heroes such as beastmaster and tinker possible to play with undead race, since some heroes lack healing depending on which race you play. This would make all heroes more equal no matter which race you play.
Claws of attack +5 is an item that developers struggled to solve for years, it was originally Claws of attack +6 and then nerfed to +4 which made it too weak compared to other items so it was reverted to +5. There are currently too many different Claws of attack available which makes the gameplay lack variety, for some heroes it’s unfair if only Claws of attacks are dropping. If you want +5 damage then you should buy an orb instead. This is also one of many reasons why Orb of fire should be added back for human since it was a cheap item which increased damage and was useful for paladin and mountain king to be able to attack air units.

[Gaze73-2228]

He doesn’t need a rework, just useful buffs. Bear cost -10, quil -5. Stampede -60s cd, -10s duration, +20 dmg.