Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

Abberations.

Aside from a few small, and I mean really small, balance issues among other heros there have only been a few of note. The biggest of which (and the only im taking the time to complaing about till I've played a few more games) is Abberations.

It's a good concept, making things big and golemish and healing them and all that, but the stacking is really getting to me.

Please note: This ability is just fine early game. A few stacks isnt such a huge deal and the hp's are still low enough that creeps can take them down once in a while.

Late game however this abilitys slides into the range of OP'ness. As the Ascendant acquires more gear and str making hime a very tough and durable hero who can run away easily when need be, the abberations start to get too... big. Past level 40 or so the abberated units start acquiring hp's in the 3.5-5k range. They hit for 175 to 300. These guys just walk into bases and absorb huge quantities of damage while one-two punching creeps that go wander close enough to get hit.

So heres an example. I played a game last night where it was taking a while to get anywhere. Everyone was around level 45 and I was playing the Arcane Archer. I was sitting at a fully loaded/buffed/generatored mid base waiting for the push to come in. This push was just normal spawns except for the two Abberated knights. These knights had only been abberated twice each and were sitting pretty at 2800 hps and hitting for 200. They absorbed a huge amount of damage while the rest of the army killed the base and myself, and as soon as we got the first knight we attacked down to the 500hp range he got hit with abberate again, healing him to his full health and buffing him again, somewhere around 3600 hps. even if we had managed to kill them they still would explode for a 360 damage AoE and its not like everything wasnt already gathered around them trying to kill them anyways.

They are too powerful for creeps that cant be dispelled, or take damage as if summoned.

The only successful counter I have for it right now, which I think is unintentional, is the dread shamans skyfury totem. It removes the buffs when they get thrown in the air and turned invulnerable.


Oh well... something for your consideration.

the ESD is also a nice counter, 2k damage to a creep on a fairly low cooldown, you can use it to do some quick damage and zap abbed units early. I do agree that abberation is strng and its only hard counter is rend soul on the incarnation.

I've found the Experiment Safety Device to be a wonderful tool against aberrations.

Kalrithus wrote:the ESD is also a nice counter, 2k damage to a creep on a fairly low cooldown, you can use it to do some quick damage and zap abbed units early. I do agree that abberation is strng and its only hard counter is rend soul on the incarnation.

An ESD still simply isnt enough damage to counter a late game abberation. And it definitely cant counter two.

And though rend soul is a good counter to it... having one hero that is the only consistent counter to another hero, out of a batch of this many heros... thats not balance.

Yeah, Incarnation is the only real counter...

And especially given that Incarnation and Plight are on the same team (We don't all play AP games), wtf do I do then?

Abberations with 3.5k hp imba? Lets see...

Holy Strike, 800 damage. Kills a whole wave of 7 units, makes 5600 damage per cast. Does not require 3 minutes preparation time and 3 stacks on the same unit to be effective. Dead units also cant deal damage. The cooldown is propably lower than on abberation.

And now the addition of the ESD.

Holy strike has a radius so small you'd be lucky to hit 7 units. Abberations explode when they die dealing AOE. Also, Abberation is an unlimited HP heal if you want to get technical. If Abberation just increased HP % instead of healing completely, I doubt anyone would complain.

My only gripe with aberration is the healing part & collision size. Killing the same giant unit over & over gets pretty tedious. Having a lane blocked by giant slow moving creeps is also a nuisance.

Oh and when player controlled units get big, namely Shardlings & Rue's Guards.

I like aberrating my own workers to make them tougher and more difficult to snipe if they're in dangerous places.

Anyone try abberating slugdes?

Dark_Nemesis wrote:Anyone try abberating slugdes?

It's not efficient.

Still nothing scarrier than abberated archers/arachnathids/lava spawn models. 3 of those behind a push and towers are doooooooooomed.

So basically yak should remove every counter to Abberation and nerf their damage by 75%?

Silly idea: Make aberration not work on the elite units?


Maybe not so silly, just remove the ability to stack it? I know it used to be able to stack to at least five(or maybe it was endless?). I just don't remember if there was a good reason Yak didn't disable the stacking altogether.

Personally, I'm okay with just removing its ability to stack. One stack doesn't really hurt, 3 does. Maybe see how a 2 stack max works out?

Maybe if Yak fixes the AI to use all the abberation abilities.

CryptLord1234 wrote:Personally, I'm okay with just removing its ability to stack. One stack doesn't really hurt, 3 does. Maybe see how a 2 stack max works out?

Then instead of one abberation exploding for a lot of damage, you'd have a bunch of abberations exploding for less damage each, but for a larger total. The only reason to stack Abberation that I can see is to fully heal one of your abberations if it's low on health.

RSOG wrote: The only reason to stack Abberation that I can see is to fully heal one of your abberations if it's low on health.

Ummm, more damage on their attack Abberating archers/arachnathids/that lava spawn model are absolutely base-wreckingly awesome.

Stacking is a little bit more effective because the 50% attack speed penalty is only applied once I think.
Dunno about skills, but if they get all skills on the first cast, it may balance out would they work.

RSOG wrote:The only reason to stack Abberation that I can see is to fully heal one of your abberations if it's low on health.

. . .Have you seen what +150 siege damage on the Elite Archer mobs DOES to buildings?

EDIT: Also, again, perhaps limiting the maximum stack to two instead of three, should removing stacking altogether prove to be too much of a nerf to Abberation. Numbers wouldn't get as mind-blowingly large, but still respectable for the speed loss.

CryptLord1234 wrote:

RSOG wrote:The only reason to stack Abberation that I can see is to fully heal one of your abberations if it's low on health.

. . .Have you seen what +150 siege damage on the Elite Archer mobs DOES to buildings?

Okay. So if you only have one siege-damage unit, I could see it happening. +50 damage per cast is +50 damage per cast, regardless of whether the unit already has a +50 damage or a +100 damage on it. I hadn't heard that the attack speed modifier only applies once. If that's the case, then it's not detrimental to multiabberate, but it still doesn't give you any huge advantage.

If you have three archers, and one is hitting for +150 damage and has 2800 health, that's +150 damage per slow volley, while the other two get maimed by AoE attacks, or just bad luck. If you have three archers and they're each hitting for +50 damage and have 1400 health, you're getting the same amount of total damage with less risk of them dying - and hey, if they start to get close to death, you can just make one of them bigger!

Not imba. Learn to counter.

Infiltrator can put enough mines in less time than it takes Plight to fully abberate 3 elite ranged creeps.

I was a while worried about this skill but with the introduction of the ESD it got normalized again. However I think the healing part is a problem and that it is to strong if used in combination with the gloomire hydras.
As the hydra still has the ability to hit 3(?) or more enemies it can easily defeat an entire wave by itself.
The really strong part of this ability is that it heals the target completely up. I personally try to get 2 stacks on as many units as possible. Once they arrive the base buff the one close to dying and viola you have an efficient heal of around 4k health (assuming the use of a high level aberration). The healed unit mostly last long enough for the cooldown to finish and to heal up one of the other close to death units providing again a meatschild that will last long enough.
I think it would be enough to get rid of the healing to balance it out. Leave the rest alone maybe nerf the hydra that once she got this buff her ability to hit more then one target disappears.

RSOG wrote:Okay. So if you only have one siege-damage unit, I could see it happening. +50 damage per cast is +50 damage per cast, regardless of whether the unit already has a +50 damage or a +100 damage on it. I hadn't heard that the attack speed modifier only applies once. If that's the case, then it's not detrimental to multiabberate, but it still doesn't give you any huge advantage.

If you have three archers, and one is hitting for +150 damage and has 2800 health, that's +150 damage per slow volley, while the other two get maimed by AoE attacks, or just bad luck. If you have three archers and they're each hitting for +50 damage and have 1400 health, you're getting the same amount of total damage with less risk of them dying - and hey, if they start to get close to death, you can just make one of them bigger!

While this is true, this is still a large amount of damage, especially given that siege attacks do 125%(?) damage to fortified armor. You do need to keep in mind, though, that, particularly with the ESD, that one triple-buffed mob will not die to it, while any one of the single buffed ones will. Losing 1/3 of your strength in a shot versus none of it argues in favor of the triple-buffing one. I realize that the 2800 HP was an arbitrary number, but my point stands. (Which brings me to another thought: If you abberate a mob already abberated 3 times, does it heal? THAT would be ridiculous.)