Everyone prefers Claws to Rings. Then how about adjusting the level of Rings to reduce luck factors and balance items?
To compare the levels of Claws and Rings:
Level 2 Items: Claws +6, Ring +2
Level 3 Items: Claws +9, Ring +3
Level 5 Item: Claws +12
Level 6 Item: Ring +4
As we all know, despite being in the same group, Claws +6 is much better than Ring +2, and Claws +9 is much better than Ring +3. And why should the level of Ring +4 be unnecessarily high?
Here’s my suggestion.
Level 1 Item: Ring +2
Level 2 Items: Claws +6, Ring +3
Level 3 Items: Claws +9, Ring +4
Level 5 Items: Claws +12, Ring +5
So Ring +2 would be the same level with Shadowcloak, Gauntlets, Mantle, and Slippers. Isn’t this more reasonable? And some may be worried that Ring +5 will be OP. But I think for a hero with a fast attack speed and high base armor like BM, Claws +12 is better even than Ring +5. Thoughts?
Armor+5 is a really unimpressive bonus to a hero, especially when you consider Periapt of vitality protects from magic and can be obtained from a shop.
Even the ring+5 can not be compared to something like sobi mask or pipe of insight.
Best idea might be to just remove rings of protection from 1v1 maps.
I don’t think they need removing - they can always be balanced. But the balance definitely should be looked at. I don’t have the best ability to gauge how well balanced 바른나무’s suggestion is, but I feel it’s moving in the right direction - rings do seem UP.
If you insist on keeping the rings then perhaps:
lvl1 item +3 armor ring
lvl2 item +4 armor ring
lvl3 item +5 armor ring
Keep in mind that 5 armor is about 25% more effective health vs physical attacks (not spells).
So if your hero has 600 health 5 armor is just 150 and ONLY versus physical damage.
So a periapt of vitality gives more effective HP than ring+5 AND it protects from magic as well as physical damage.
Ring of prot +5 literally can not be higher than a lvl3 item.
Yes, Rings may be worse even than I thought at first. Anyway there is the consensus that they should lower the level of Rings. It is so ridiculous that Ring +4(not even Ring +5) is lv6 now.
This thread sounds like people do not understand how armor works…
The ring adds +4 armor which is an extra 24% life to take auto attacks with. So for example on a hero with 1k HP (eg Pitlord, Tauren Chieftain, etc), that would be an extra 240HP worth of auto attack damage they can take. So in comparison for the Claws +12 to negate that extra life an enemy hero would need to land 20 hits on the hero with ring +4, something that is not trivial and will take a good part of half a minute. Many heroes get well over 1k life late game which makes the ring even more valuable as that is effectively even more auto attack hits from claws +12 to cancel out…
This is why the ring is such a high level. It scales very well, and on high strength heroes grants a huge amount of extra auto attack damage they can take. On the other hand on weaker low health casters it gives much less value.
Compared to periapt of vitality or gem of health the ring+5 is just bad.
A ton of damage will be from spells which armor does not help you with.
Also if your hero is high level you want either mana to use powerful spells or claws/agi on blade or consumable items to heal/reveal or aura/summon items - armor is simply not on your wish list due to limited item slots.
And if you need to toughen your lower level heroes then periapt of vitality beats ring +5 easily.
Simply put ring+5 is bad in early because you can get periapt, and its bad in lategame because you dont have item slots to carry it on your high level heroes.
Even if I take your words into consideration, it is true that Rings are still inefficient. Many heroes get well over 1k life late game? That’s when the hero’s attack speed is also so fast enough that Claws are more favorable than Rings. Claws are almost always more useful than Rings, except for Alchemist, the only hero with an armor of 1 when he is lvl1. (And the only hero with a ‘slow’ attack speed when he is lvl1)
You have to distinguish between Magic Attack Type and Spell Damage. Heroic armor reduces Magic Attack Type by 50%. And it can be reduced by armor. But heroic armor reduces Spell Damage only by 30%. And it can’t be reduced by armor.
A lot about rings is psychological, it just doesn’t seem as obvious that your +2 ring makes your hero be able to take 8-12% more damage before dying, whereas it’s obviously that claws increases your damage by a light chunk every hit. It’s also true some heroes beneift a lot less from protective items than offensive ones, such as a lich.
Doesn’t mean there’s no issue. For instance a +3 ring is pretty much as good as a talisman of evasion in terms of damage reduction. You can do the math, talisman wins on a hero with 4 base armor, but by so little it’s significant… unless you care about gaining a ~4 effective hp advantage.
+4 and +5 rings however literally don’t compare to their other items. A khadgar gem of health (+300hp), which drops on the same item pool as the +4 ring, completely blows out the +5 protection ring, an item that drops a tier above, and by a significant amount (I believe my math gave me that if you have a 1000hp hero with 5 base armor, gem of health is about 100 more effective health than a +5 ring and 160~ more than a +4 ring).
+health items have the advantage of letting you soak magic damage while rings are only physical damage… but armor makes all healing effects way more powerful (Which includes hero regeneration). Having 16.6 armor means you take 50% damage, thus it’s similar to doubling the worth of your regeneration and heal effects.
The main culprit, I guess, would be ring of protection +2. A circlet of nobility literally gives the same survival as a ring +2 if you have 700hp and 3 armor… Except it also gives +2 damage, attack and intellect. I’d argue that’s just the circlet being Op though…
To me, it feels like +4 and +5 rings should at least become +5/+6 to be able to compete with other items.
Base armor does not matter. An additional +4 armor is worth the same if the unit has 0 armor or 40 armor. All that matters with armor is how much health the unit has since armor multiplies health when it comes to the total amount of attack damage a unit can survive. +4 armor is +24% health worth of attack damage the unit can take.
However I do understand that the problem is not with +4 armor being bad, but rather that other items are more useful to most heroes late game. The use case of +4 armor is very specific, pretty much melee strength heroes against attack damage heavy comps where one wants the hero to be taking quite a bit of the damage. In such a case it can easily replace a healing item (since it will reduce damage taken worth more than a single charged healing item), but still might not replace summons and other utility items.
Hero spells are spell damage. Spell damage is not magic damage. Magic damage is a type of attack damage like hero, normal, pierce, siege, chaos etc. Spell damage is pretty much all abilities that deal damage. Hero armor type reduces spell damage by 30%. It also reduces magic damage by 50%. This means that using spells on heroes is ineffective as you will get more total damage from them by casting on non-heroes. It also means non-hero magic attack units (usually casters) are utterly useless at dealing damage to heroes
Many heroes such as warriors have well over 1k health. Paladin for example gets 1.25k at level 10 and is not the toughest hero. As such it offers more value on those than on lower health heroes (which is most of them…). It likely offers the least value on agility heroes as they already have higher armor amounts due to their high agility so fixed amount health items are worth considerably more to them.
I tried going for a realistic value of when you’ll get the item, so I came up with 1000hp 4 armor. Lvl10 heroes are not realistic in the vast majority of competitive games, but just for kicks, a lvl10 paladin effective health is:
With +5 ring : 2600 effective hp
With +300hp: 2759 effective hp
Khadgar gem of health is still better… But the paladin has a ton of base armor since he has devotion aura. Let’s take the Alchemist lvl10, the absolute best case for ring of protection +5 since he has tons of health and no armor
+5 ring: 2223 effective hp
+300 hp: 2170.
The gem is worse by 53 ehp… That’s if you didn’t find anything that increases armor, and the ring SHOULD win anyway because it’s a higher tier item than the gem. A +4 ring loses to the gem by 34 ehp. This hero is the absolute best case for the ring because the alchemist has craptastic armor (4 at lvl10). If a ring +4 can’t win or be equal with the khadgar gem, it just needs help.
The ring adds +4 armor which is an extra 24% life to take auto attacks with. So for example on a hero with 1k HP (eg Pitlord, Tauren Chieftain, etc), that would be an extra 240HP worth of auto attack damage they can take. So in comparison for the Claws +12 to negate that extra life an enemy hero would need to land 20 hits on the hero with ring +4, something that is not trivial and will take a good part of half a minute.
Can’t compare it like that. Heroes with claws get +Attack Damage no matter what unit they attack while +Armor rings are 100% worthless unless the hero is attacked.
This is why the ring is such a high level. It scales very well, and on high strength heroes grants a huge amount of extra auto attack damage they can take. On the other hand on weaker low health casters it gives much less value.
This is bs. Rings are UP, nobody is ever like “oh wow, nice, a ring +2”.
Many heroes such as warriors have well over 1k health. Paladin for example gets 1.25k at level 10 and is not the toughest hero.
Items like Blades of Attack or Gloves of Haste give full value immediately. Nobody cares about your Paladin level 10 when you already gged and left the game when he was lvl 4. Earlier advantages are worth much more than later ones.
Many players just stell the rings because they prefer getting some gold now over getting value for the ring later.
As others have said the rings of prot just dont do enough.
Even in their niche physical protection they get heavily outperformed by health items, which also protect from spells.
Perhaps they should be turned into Tomes of Armor that a hero consumes…
They are fixable quantitatively - as the suggestions show above. If you can make them work purely by tweaking numbers then that’s usually the best way, IMHO.
Aside: IMHO blizzard all-too-often balances things with qualitative changes when all they needed was different values (eg: original entangle mechanic, which was more unique).