Plight

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Plight

#1 Post by Casval »

I am aware that there are a million threads about Plight and fliers in general, including ones made recently, but I feel like there should particularly be a Conclave thread about Plight.

Plight, as he is, is anywhere from very strong to completely imbalanced depending on who's asking and who's playing. There's a lot of "issues" with his design in general which make him particularly strong.

1. He flies. Flying provides a lot of innate benefits:
a. no collision: he can't be trapped by creeps.
b. free pathing: there is no untreadable terrain.
c. displaced position: AoE targetted spells are more difficult to hit due to you needing to target the shadow as opposed to the model.
d. cannot be hit by certain skills: can't be targetted by ground-only skills unless netted.
e. undisrupted line of sight: it's impossible to use ramps and trees to your advantage when running.

2. He's STR. This, coupled with the following, make him benefit greatly from stat gains.
a. he flies: the fact he's a STR flyer automatically makes him extremely difficult to kill.
b. his best basic skills are all STR dependent: pumping STR into him not only increases survivability on a hero that is ridiculously difficult to kill, but also makes him much more powerful.
c. he doesn't actually need items: even if you don't get items, your STR gain by itself is enough keep you alive in the front lines.

3. His skill set is very strong. It'd be great on a non-flying hero, but on a flier it's just ridiculous.
a. Aberration: as of right now, the only natural counter to Aberration is Rend Soul, which happens to belong to a hero who's on the same team as him. Apparently the Bloat talent also makes it damage towers.
b. Terra Smash: it deals a large amount of damage, slows, and hits everything but fliers.
c. Ravenous Dive: absolutely ridiculous if you buy Zephyr Totem.
d. Stone Gaze: not so great, but if you go Smash+Dive, a point in Stone Gaze makes it that much harder to run away.
e. Ult (forgot name): absolutely ridiculous damage on heroes and buildings alike. It doesn't have that low of a cooldown (less than Icespinner's it seems) yet it takes towers down to 50% in a cast.

All in all, Plight's utility is a bit too much. He can push, he can PK, and he can siege. You can really build him however you want and still own, because it's nearly impossible to kill a decent Plight. On Stormwail, where there's plenty of cliffs, his ultimate is next to impossible to interrupt, and because channeling AoE spells don't give sight, towers won't even target him. In general, heroes with strong damaging abilities have limited vitality, making them a risk to play, but Plight is the perfect exception.

IMO, a good fix would be to either make him an INT hero and keep everything else the same, or keep him a STR and make his primary damage spells get boosted by AGI or INT. Thoughts?

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Re: Plight

#2 Post by BustroQuick »

I'd like to add that his innate can dispel most debuffs on him and (usually) allows free escape.

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Re: Plight

#3 Post by Dekar »

Massive STR stacking should be discouraged by having no skill or just Abberation depend on it. That way you have to sacrifice survivability for damage.
If that still leaves her with large amounts of health from base STR, the natural STR gain should be reduced.
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Re: Plight

#4 Post by Casval »

If you get Zephyr Totem on Plight, there are several places on Stormwail that you can trap a hero, especially in the middle lane. If they don't have the blink consumable, they're pretty fucked, because you can keep them there indefinitely by attacking them whenever they try to TP.

Either that terrain needs to be altered, or there needs to be something else to avoid this abuse, I think.

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Re: Plight

#5 Post by Dekar »

Picked up heroes should be dropped when Plight blinks away.

Wait, can you time a teleport with dive to move an enemy hero over half of the map into your base?
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Re: Plight

#6 Post by BustroQuick »

I think he'd work well as a medium strength intelligence hero. His flying ability and innate already give him a survivability advantage, the high hit points are borderline ridiculous. Just as Harpy is supposed to be a hybrid caster/hero killer, I think Plight should be a hybrid caster/tank. As he stands, he's excellent in both roles.

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Re: Plight

#7 Post by Elreth »

The problem I have with plight is that I am never playing him as well as I could because I don't want to get bitched at. Zephyr totem/grab is cool and acceptable but the dropping them onto unescapable ledges isnt balanced at all. You could make an argument oh you need see invis for infi its fine that you need blink wards for garg. But whereas see invis is p cheap and will last you a while, blink wards are relatively expensive, have relatively few charges and each charge will free you but once. This could be resolved by taking every unescapable area on the map and making a trigger that slides heroes out of it after a while, removing all such areas, or at least reducing them.

Im relatively okay with being stuck in trees since at least some heroes can damage trees and possibly escape. And if you are able to defeat plight then he should leave you alone long enough to base-tp out, but its still an unfair expense/risk (he could come back and hit you once easy).

Other than that, he isnt that powerful besides his ult. Sure if he item whores up a lot he has the potential to be really good but a lot of heroes do. Often times he just ends up slowing or hurting a push but ultimately being useless and god help him if someone gets a bunch of nets. Overall he is good, and certainly one of my favorite heroes (which is indicative of his power, but more of his mobility since I find I am favoring mobile heroes more and more), but I don't feel he needs attention to be brought into line with other heroes like swashy/rk/gt/ds.

Itll be easier to tell once he is fixed but as he is, when I see him I am usually just grateful it's not someone I have to deal with immediately (strong pushers, potential super heroes (swashy,roth,fenris,oracle), powerful defenders). He is in the middle enough I don't have to worry about using a specific counter because as long as I throw enough at him, he'll lose, whereas if I throw hoards of units at an icespinner/firelord then it will be useless but if I throw the right units at them they will fall. Sure its nice when you use the right units/strategy but then I have to make sure that none of my team mates screw it up, decide whether to counter them or put resources elsewhere, and all the while there could be several other instances of this, random creep pushing, merc heroes, and whatever my hero is doing. But as I said maybe once rav dive is fixed hell become worrysome again since he'll pick off more weak heroes.

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