Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

Not sure I particularly like the current state of healing potions (granted they've been this way forever, just not used to the same extent). Especially early game, they're practically manditory.

Proposed change: Cap to 25% of max health.

DarnYak

Honestly if you want them to be balanced you should take a page out of DotA's book and make them consumable, non-combat, but they heal 400 over 10 seconds.

Beyond just overlapping with plain healing salves, I actually want them to be an in-combat heal option. The main problem is they heal around 80% of your health at early levels so its frankly stupid not to grab some at the start of game.

DarnYak

Then raise their cost or have less of them in stock in the store.

Reducing the store stock would make things worse. While I could see some cool team decisions on who gets early potions, the reality is more like one person would grab most/all of them, and then get bitched at. And/or, you'd end up with heroes with pots laning against someone without and the match would be completley unfair.

An interesting option (that wouldn't address the problem at hand) would be to have some overall limit that never gets resupplied (ie 20) so you start running out of supplies late game.

Cost...might be a factor but still doesn't address the primary problem. So you pay 200g instead of 50g to not die and/or get a hero kill, it's still worth it.

Unrelated but similar topic: Anyone ever use the mana potions?

DarnYak

I do, depends on the hero and whether I will be in a lane near the clarity potions or not.

jamn455 wrote:I do, depends on the hero and whether I will be in a lane near the clarity potions or not.

Same here. I often will with a strength hero where I need to use certain spells a lot in early game. BP, especially.

I duno, the idea of the health potions is great and all, but i think it comes down to the same point of required items because the other person has it too. much like boots of speed in other games. If your going up against someone with a hp pot and you don't have one, your probably not going to win. vice versa, if your going up against someone who doesn't have one and you do, that tips the scales in your favor a great deal.

I prefer the potions that are noncombat. though this gives ranged chars and advantage over the mele since ranged can sit back without being hit and get the potion regens, and mele cant.

There are various things you can try, like making it temporarily increasing max health. Although I don't think that would help any. I was thinking you could make it heal you the 400 over 10 secs but also debuff you to take 10-20% more dmg from all sources for 12-15 seconds. This would make it helpful in combat but doesnt completely turn the battle in your favor.

DarnYak wrote:Reducing the store stock would make things worse. While I could see some cool team decisions on who gets early potions, the reality is more like one person would grab most/all of them, and then get bitched at. And/or, you'd end up with heroes with pots laning against someone without and the match would be completley unfair.

then maybe you should just make artifacts unlimited so people dont get mad about that either.

If your going up against someone with a hp pot and you don't have one, your probably not going to win.

That's why I'm leaning towards a 25% health cap. It certainly helps, but it's not nearly as one sided. 25% more health won't even be enough in quite a few situations.

then maybe you should just make artifacts unlimited so people dont get mad about that either.

That's not even a close comparision. One's a practicly free item that's very useful to all heroes, the other is a very expensive item that not everyone wants even if they can afford it.

DarnYak

Something that is a necessity in the metagame shouldn't be "practically free", no?

Something that is a necessity in the metagame shouldn't be "practically free", no?

You can blow through potions pretty fast. I do anyway. And they are typically useless/less useful by mid game, so....

SuIIy wrote: You can blow through potions pretty fast

Yeah, and blowing through them fast doesn't matter much because they're practically free. This isn't DotA, you can't deny people creeps (unless you're Bane I guess) so gold is easy enough to get through auto attacking in the early game phase. If the potions were more expensive then people couldn't just be careless with their hero and would have to pick their spots to get the last hit on creeps instead of standing in, taking damage and just using the combat consumable potion, even if it just restores 25% of their health at the maximum, heroes that spawn with 600 are still getting 150 HP back, which is still a great deal of health for the stage of the game where single hero nukes do that much damage at the maximum.

Tehw00tz wrote:Something that is a necessity in the metagame shouldn't be "practically free", no?

If it's a necessity I would argue that's why it should be free or not exist at all (ie boots of speed). That's why I'm trying to figure out if a 25% cap (or some other option) would push potions from "so good they're always necessary to buy" to "a good option that won't always guarrantee an outcome so other options are viable" (and of course, not too low to render them useless).

DarnYak

Taking them out of the game definitely isn't the answer, maybe you could change them to heal for less health if the hero is affected by a deathblow?

Before I consider that option I'm trying to get my own proposal dealt with: Would a 25% cap be too high to solve the problem? too low to be useful?

DarnYak

125 (?) gold is not worth 25% health in early game imho.

75g

75g for 33% health restored sounds fair.

So why are we nerfing an item that everybody can get with no shop cooldown?

25-33% cap sounds good
early game it would likely allow a hero to escape but not to win if the opposition were strong enough to pursue

jamn455 wrote:So why are we nerfing an item that everybody can get with no shop cooldown?

To avoid making it into a "Boots of Speed" issue; everybody needs to get a Healing Potion since everybody is getting a Healing Potion.

I think the % cap is okay, though it probably favors the strength heroes much more late-game than the caster heroes.

watermelon wrote:I think the % cap is okay, though it probably favors the strength heroes much more late-game than the caster heroes.

I think that by % cap he means the potion will have a set healing amount (400) but if you only have 1000 hit points it will only heal for 250.
Mid - late game everyone will have at least nearly 1600 and strength heroes with 3000 hp will still only heal for 400 like the 1600 hp caster hero.

Honestly I've never had an issue with Health Pots. They don't make me lose vs people (maybe sometimes) they just stop me from getting a PK early on, or let people stay in lane longer. If people bother to use them, good for them. Most people are too busy item whoring.