Eve of the Apocalypse: Twilight

New Candleburg! Terrible item changes! And surprises!

DarnYak

WHAT ITEM CHANGES?

Some changes for b2 (might release b2 tomorrow, undecided):

- The zepp will move all the way to the center fountain before floating back and forth, this way it should both avoid pathing over the houses and the tower targeting when it gets to bases should be more balanced. Might need further refinement.
- Zepp speed is getting tweaked. A fast moving zepp should take a while to get, and reversing one should take several seconds instead of nearly instant.
- Ping spam is a bug, just so we're all clear
- I'm holding off a bit before doing anything but bugfixes for Flo since she's really not designed for candleburg.

I'd really like to hear everyone's feedback. I felt the new Candleburg was a blast and would love to do some more real games. It's actually probably the first time I've had real fun with Candleburg and one of the rare times even losing didn't seem that bad. Some of you didn't sound so thrilled about it (or maybe it was just losing), but I'd like to hear what you think to be sure.

DarnYak

@Dekar: It's a surprise! Or just check the wiki.

Last Edit: 11/14/13
- Soulmate enemy stat decreases
- Maiden Strike damage
- Added some replays about issues.


Issues

• Fatal Attraction causes Succubus to have a permanent Rejuvenation graphic.
• Fatal Attraction can be cast on ground.
• It looks like Fatal Attraction doesn't get removed properly.
• Soulmate doesn't give mana regeneration.
• Soulmate doesn't give the correct stat bonus to allies. It looks like it splits the attributes.
• Soulmate doesn't correctly remove stat decrease from enemies.
• Fluster doesn't affect the Fel Horde Diabolist unit, probably because that unit has no ability.
• Tree's pixies don't go away after he dies.
• Maiden Strike is dealing 75% of what -s states it would.
• Damage from Fatality and Penance seemed to be odd at times; dealing a lot of damage at one period. Don't have exact time for replay, but I got killed by Penance.

  strange things.w3g

  (192.11 KiB) Downloaded 383 times

• Replay just shows enemy AI buying workers from top left Kedge base near late-game:

  strange things as sb.w3g

  (345.88 KiB) Downloaded 390 times

Tooltips

• Maiden Strike isn't categorized as a deathblow.
• Fix the "|n" from describing the map objective.

Thoughts on Flo

• Her model size seems pretty small.
• Innate tooltip is a bit vague with just saying target since it has to be on an enemy hero.
• She sucks in the beginning but she scales incredibly well to the point of being broken with the long stun from Maiden strike and Mesmerize.
• She really likes investing in attack damage. With enough attack damage, she can start one-shotting creeps with Mesmerize and her passive innate. Combined with the Sadist talent, she's pretty much a vampire.
  The duration and AoE of Mesmerize makes Penance/Purge Malice look too low.
  She doesn't synergize well with AoE heroes who can break Mesmerize. Bad allies also include Rue's fatality aura and Tyrant's ice shield.
• Maiden strike seems kind of pitiful due to the damage, but it's the stun that allows her to kill. It doesn't seem easy to escape from either with the long stun.
• Fluster is boring but the silence is pretty effective against heroes.
• I feel that Soulmate could be pretty interesting. It would be sad if it revealed invisible allies though.
• Her ult makes her have a lot survivability, though I mostly ended up favoring Mesmerize with Sadist for clearing out creeps. Doesn't seem too unreasonable given that it can be interrupted.
• The wink talent feels like a one point, though I could see the longer duration being used as an ambush.
• She looks like she could be BFF with Inf as she provides a lot of opportunities for AoO.

Reminders/Suggestions

• Replace Remoreseless talent
• Maiden strike target air.

Other Stuff

• I think the crystal cost for Soul Harvest becomes too expensive if it's only giving a 1% bonus.
• Should dig masters give experience upon death?

EDIT: Man I take forever to write a post.

Candleburg
I'm kind of concerned about the zepp damage against heroes since that could be too strong of a snowball effect. I definitely prefer the new dynamic from the zepp over nothing.
It feels that there was a disadvantage for red since the tower near the mine gets picked first to get bombed which means the main base receives the explosion. In comparison, the tower for blue on the right gets bombed, which doesn't harm the main base. Well let's hope the new path fixes that.

1. Make zeppelin explosion be a % of heroes hp, just lower the damage, or any other thing that makes low hp heroes survive the explosion, I mean this new mechanic encourages tanks, which in candle is encouraged anyway IMO.

Nothing more to say about candle if the fixes you mentioned go live.

Flo:
1 Synergizes on negative way with heroes which have any kind of AoE, she might do well with stunning heroes though, lol, e.g tony cloud might combo well.
3 Alone against units does pretty well with mesmerize + the vampire talent and her ullti.
4 Attack damage scales VERY well because the stun gimmick
5 her hero nuke its kinda "meh", the stun is good, the damage is a tad low and the stun takes time to happen... against i ais won't do a shit, against humans maybe... the problem here is that the enemy might nuke you out of existence before you do it.
6 (bug?) soulmate can be used on self =), which at level 6 fucks up your mana regen and it gets stuck and you don't regen mana =/
7 soulmate against enemy heroes kinda sucks, you have to go away yourself to force the stat debuff on the enemy hero
8 soulmate circle tells you where is flo from afar
9 gold digger works on self and allies
10 mesmerize is ud army banshee skill

She might be broken with a hero composition with lots of stuns.

bugs:
1 coif + knowledge doesn't earn more exp
2 stun lag still present

Reminder:
nerf blade rain

PD: fix capture, buff SB, buff Oracle

•Fluster doesn't affect the Fel Horde Diabolist unit, probably because that unit has no ability.

So I wasn't aware that happened but I went through all the basic units and added a filler ability that will hopefully prevent further issues. Let me know if you catch any others.

•[Scarlet Maiden's] model size seems pretty small.

She has smaller than normal pathing, but her graphical size is set to roughly match Inf's. Checked by putting them next to each other and eyeballing it.

•Should dig masters give experience upon death?

Probably not but I don't think its significant enough to matter.

coif + knowledge doesn't earn more exp

Verified and fixed just fyi.

coif + knowledge doesn't earn more exp

I honestly have no idea how this is still possible, so sorry but you're going to have to deal with it. Right now I have it cast it once during the spawning heroes lag, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be loading it like it ought to be.

DarnYak

Last Edit: 11/14/13

I have no idea what changed.

DarnYak

•Damage from Fatality and Penance seemed to be odd at times; dealing a lot of damage at one period. Don't have exact time for replay, but I got killed by Penance.

Confirming weird damage! It's not exclusive to those two spells though. Basically, since WC3 sucks, I have to pass a lot of crap in global variables, which isn't usualy a problem. Here, clearly another trigger is getting fired in the middle of another trigger and overwriting the global variables. It can be fixed, but the odds of figuring out what it is unfortunately pretty damn low.

Btw, I forgot to mention that the zeppelin movement isn't based on the # of heroes you have in the circle, only that your team has the most. 5 unopposed heroes will move as fast as 1.

Also I'm going to schedule EotA games for Friday the 15th for the hell of it.

Edit: On second thought, after checking the replay again I'm pretty sure its Devil's Smirk being cast in response to taking damage.

DarnYak

Btw whats blackguard invisibility CD?, seemed pretty imba last weekend.

Last weekend videos are up.