General Balance Discussion

Raise concerns about balance.

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Jouven
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General Balance Discussion

#1 Post by Jouven »

watermelon wrote:Moving posts to this thread since they don't really fit in their respective threads.
Feel free to discuss general balance concerns/complaints/suggestions here.

Jou's original post follows:
I think it has been said many times before, but not here:
Make all the deathblows able to hit air.

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Re: Number Changes Suggestion

#2 Post by watermelon »

Are you thinking of a particular deathblow when you mention that? Most of the remaining spells that can't hit fliers are mostly like that because it doesn't make "sense" with the ability.

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Re: Number Changes Suggestion

#3 Post by Jouven »

watermelon wrote:Are you thinking of a particular deathblow when you mention that? Most of the remaining spells that can't hit fliers are mostly like that because it doesn't make "sense" with the ability.
Every deathblow skill that still doesn't hit air, like Sorrow Liege one, bp chasten... The only reasonable exception that I see is elder treant roots, but tbh I would let it hit air, because for me the problem, game play wise, is the situation where flying hero can negate a hero only nuke just because it flies, when flying heroes already have an inherent advantage, this is poor balance.
Your explanation about making "sense" makes no sense, because already some melee range skills do hit air when others do not like Lunge or dominant blow.

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Re: Number Changes Suggestion

#4 Post by watermelon »

The skills you mentioned aren't even deathblows.
Lunge and Dominant Blow already hit fliers. The explanation for those melee skills is that those heroes can jump to attack the fliers while the others wouldn't.

I actually would prefer all skills to hit fliers but that's one of the advantages Yak has given them so the only other choice is to balance the fliers.

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Re: Number Changes Suggestion

#5 Post by Jouven »

You are right they aren't deathblows, my mistake, I got them swapped with the ones that are. So not only they don't hit air, they also don't have "deathblow effect".
Well at least we agree in that the skills should hit air.
wm wrote:so the only other choice is to balance the fliers.
The problem I'm arguing is that some heroes can hero nuke fliers while others, having a hero nuke too, can't, I don't think you can balance the fliers around that.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#6 Post by watermelon »

So what do people do think about how option #2 (adding health to items) has played out?

I'm of the mind that casters have benefited the most as they now have more leeway in pressuring other heroes and are less prone to getting killed. They're also the most likely to get items first. Basically their already strong early- and mid-game has become stronger since their main weakness, low health, is covered by items that also further increase their DPS.
Late-game, the health isn't as important as other scaling factors like evocation or agility but still offers survivability.

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Re: Need feedback on balancing Str heroes vs the rest

#7 Post by Jouven »

I suppose it works.
But behind that problem there is the hero scaling through the game.
And then there is the hero talents scaling, which add another layer of scaling and isn't directly related to the hero scaling through the game, but I'll skip it's discussion in this post.

What do we have?
Heroes that scale really well end game, but might suck early on (this makes them harder to tag them as really good heroes), i.e: SM, fenris, fm, infil, blackguard and some more, this pattern mostly happens with agi and str heroes, the only cases with spell casters, the pure int ones, might be dw, and maybe incarnation, but they can be countered HARD with some shielding + magic resis, aka get RK or a "well played Sorrow Liege"?.
The underlying problem here is that some int heroes scale really well but their scaling can be countered with magic resist and shields, str and agi ones are harder to counter.
This "scale really well" its always related to the hero mobility, there is no good hero that lacks some mobility assets, even colossus which I think scales well, has smash that lets him catch up, on the other hand there isn't a single good hero that moves slow or lacks a mobility asset. This "mobility=good effect" happens too in more or less degree with cc skills in general.

Heroes that are ok-good early but don't scale at all, i.e: bp, sorrow liege, tc, oracle and scarab (after the nerf, none has played him but I think he is in this category now)

Heroes that suck early on and become ok-good? late game, i.e: mystic swash.

Air heroes (Aero might be in this category) which IMO should be removed, because they got a huge advantage in mobility, 0 LOS problems and can abuse the LOS problems of the ground heroes. They have "counters" yeah... like IS webs and AA owls, but those are pretty half-assed counters, and that's only two heroes able to "half-ass-counter" them.

Heroes that straight suck: SB

Heroes that are ok and scale ok: rest of the heroes.

Not taking into account: Nephilim (I suck with him) and Crimson squall (I don't know how to play him yet).

PD: yak nerf IS

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