Straight Dope Message Board

[Johnny Bravo]

I would be very surprised to see a four-lane map unless it was crazy tiny or else had some kind of quick movement mechanic, but it's not just because it would make Cho'Gall weaker (and you're correct that it would).

A four-lane map would drastically increase the effectiveness of characters with global presence. Vikings, Dehaka, Falstad, Abathur, Azmodan, etc.*

Characters like these can, if used properly, leverage massive experience point leads by farming experience/pushing in unattended lanes, by hanging out in a lane while the enemy team is rotating to objectives and then simply teleporting across the map as the teamfight is starting, or by otherwise being able to identify unattended lanes and push them out from any point on the map.

A map with an extra lane would make these guys even more difficult to answer and would drastically change the game's meta.

If you've played any ARAM, think about how useless the Vikings or Abathur feel there. That penalty is about how much more effective they'd be with an extra lane.

*the Latin phrase, not the cow.

[Chronos]

On the other hand, we already have a map that makes most specialists very nearly useless (Towers of Doom), so maybe they don't care much about that sort of thing.

[Johnny Bravo]

Towers of Doom doesn't make specialists useless but it does change the way they have to operate and how the friendly team reacts to those pushes.

There will always be maps that are inherently better for some heroes and worse for others, but I definitely would not say ToD invalidates an entire class category.

[magnusblitz]

Yeah, Towers of Doom doesn't make specialists useless at all. Pushing is just as important on that map... in fact, even more so, since once you start losing towers and you keep needing to run between them to re-capture them, the game's pretty much over. The towers are more spread out than the keeps in other maps so they're harder to defend.

Check out the win rates for the heroes in plat/diamond/master play by map here. While Towers isn't as good for most specialists as, say, Sky Temple, it's usually in the middle of their win rates rather than the lowest. And it's actually Zagara's best map (and Murky's second best).

[SenorBeef]

HOTS 2.0 revealed. Revamped progression/cosmetics big time.

[Johnny Bravo]

I haven't tried the 2.0 beta yet, but the subreddit is exploding about a few things.

Apparently Blizzard is capping the number of loot chests you can be retroactively rewarded with. Longtime players are saying they're being "punished" for having played so much since newer players will gain rewards much more quickly. Since these players tend to have complete or nearly complete hero rosters, it means they're just getting fewer cosmetic rewards than they might have. They've already gotten thousands of hours of gameplay, so I don't particularly feel for them here.

Blizzard is also doing away with the experience gate on master skins. This is causing a much bigger uproar, and I'm fully on board. Master skins don't necessarily mean you're good at a character, but they do mean that you invested not only time (to get to level 10), but a substantial amount of gold, which you cannot directly purchase with real money. When I play Cho'gall, I get compliments on the master skin because players know it means I've put in the time on a difficult character.

They represent something special and I hope Blizzard listens to the community on this one.

Overall, I'm a little sad that Blizzard is moving to loot boxes and multiple in-game currencies. Blizzard did a great job making HotS not feel like the chintzy "free to play but spend money anyway" games which have flooded the modern gaming space. That will be gone with this new system.

[RandMcnally]

God, these people on reddit are a bunch of whiney bitches. They keep going on that they're being "punished" because they aren't getting as much free stuff. Blizzard doesn't owe them a single free box. You (generic you) got to play with your skin for as long as you played with it and you get to keep it. I honestly don't get the whining.

I'm more sympathetic to the master skin, though. I'm not bothered by it because I only got masters that I think look cool and I don't use some of them because I don't want the other team to know that I know what I'm doing (Chromie, in particular).

[Tom Scud]

So I have a bunch of gold saved up - is there any consensus about whether it's better to spend it all or wait to open chests or whatever?

[Johnny Bravo]

My understanding is that gold will almost exclusively be used for new heroes now. I think. Chests will be purchased with gems.

I think I also saw that gold is used for rerolling chests, so maybe save your money for the occasional high-value chest (and double-check that I'm remembering right).

[RandMcnally]

Yeah, gold is used for rerolling. The first reroll is 250, then 500, then 750.

For heroes? I'm not so sure.

[SenorBeef]

Originally Posted by RandMcnally

I honestly don't get the whining.

It's easier to get the first few levels of a hero, and most of the experienced players already have most or all heroes up to level 5. So they no longer have the chance to grab those easy crates. Which means a new player (or a player who specialized in only a few heroes) will get many more loot boxes per time played as old players.

Imagine there were no free crates given back to them, and that everyone was just earning new crates starting now, but the guys who already played every hero some earned 1 crate per 3 hours but everyone else earned 1 crate per 1.5 hours. That would be unfair to the older players, right? That's the complaint.

The 70 crates thing is an arbitrary way to try to stem off that complaint but it's just that - arbitrary. They're gaining those 70 crates, but at a cost of getting their next several hundred crates much more slowly than other players.

I suspect it's not going to be as big a deal as it sounds, because they're not accounting for the flattening of the leveling XP curve (1-5 takes longer, but 6-11 is faster, and all levels above 11 are the same as 10-11), but there's still unequal treatment there.

[Johnny Bravo]

One thing I haven't seen (or retained) - will existing players get to keep the standard skin tints that they've already unlocked through leveling? Or am I going to go into 2.0 with one tint/character excepting the very few master/paid skins I have?

[SenorBeef]

I didn't see it in the patch notes, but I've seen people around reddit saying you'll keep tints you already leveled.

[Johnny Bravo]

That's rad, and it also means I think Blizzard is fine with the 70-chest limit.

One of these players complaining that about having leveled 50 characters to 10+ is also going to be getting a hundred skin tints that a new player will have to randomly unlock through chests. That's not nothing.

One thing that would be very nice is if Blizzard also gave out a pile of shards to all players based on their new hero level, with unlimited growth but diminishing returns rather than a hard level cap. That would let everybody buy a few things for their favorite characters and everyone could go into the beta feeling like they've gotten something cool out of the switch.

[Chronos]

I stopped playing before loot chests, so I'm not sure what the story is there, but the whole point of master skins is that you need to be level 10 to buy them. It gives you something to set as a goal. Why change that?

[SenorBeef]

Yeah, the master skin is an indicator to other people that you've played that hero a decent bit and you like it enough to have gotten a 10k gold skin in it. It's not completely reiable - there are lots of bad players with mater skins - but it's a bit reassuring when someone highlights a hero with a master skin in the draft. Now I guess they're going to award it like a random tint.

Incidentally, I hope this means they're coming out with a lot of new tints. I always figured 3 was far too few - once you've done the character model, changing the colors around is trivial - an artist could come up with 10 different color schemes in a day. I always figured each character should have at least like 8 tints to help better personalize them.

[Johnny Bravo]

They are - somebody on reddit made an imgur (or something) album showing off exactly what you're describing for almost all the characters, though not all of the tints are on the basic skins - they also added tints for premium skins as well.

Though I suppose there's no such thing anymore - just different rarities.

[Johnny Bravo]

Loaded up the beta and, I have to say, the new announcers are really cool. I hope they do a lot more.

In DotA, you could use any announcer being used by any player in the match. This was especially nice since some of them were hard to come by. It would be cool if they do something like that here.

[magnusblitz]

I'm really can't get too upset about the cap of 70 boxes... free stuff is free stuff, and I played before knowing full well what I was getting for leveling up heroes at the time (just gold). Yeah, newer players will get some loot boxes quicker, but whatever, it's just cosmetic stuff.

As long as all the skins (and unlocked tints) carry over, I'll be happy. It'd be nice too if the mount tints were independent of hero level (so say if you got any hero to 9, you'd have the black horse tint unlocked for everyone).

The master skins change is a bit weird, but, meh. As long as they carry over and keep the skin, no biggie. But I guess I say that only having one or two. I never really cared about them showing "dedication" (since anyone can grind a hero to level 10 and still suck), just whether they looked better or not. And most of them were underwhelming (ooh, bigger shoulder pads and a dumb hat!)

The only downside for me is that I know I won't drop any cash on loot boxes - I'll pay money for a skin if I like it, but that's because I 100% know I'm getting a skin. I'm not going to pay money for a lotto ticket. But Blizzard isn't going after me, they're going after their whales with shitloads of money and/or gambling addictions, so, their choice.

(Oh, and I guess I hope I can turn off emotes/sprays too since they'll horribly clutter up everything)

[RandMcnally]

If you haven't played in a while, or even just interested, be sure to sign on next week. They're giving every player a change to grab one of four themed bundles, each with about twenty heroes each, for free.

[Johnny Bravo]

You don't even need to log in right now - you get the bundle just for logging in any time between the 2.0 launch (April 25) and may 22.

It's an unbelievable offer with enormous value - we're talking an awful lot of hours worth of play to earn enough gold to unlock all these guys. Stupid, stupidly good deal.

If you've ever even entertained the notion of maybe possibly playing this game one day, you absolutely want to log in during that window so that you can claim your bundle.

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by RandMcnally

If you haven't played in a while, or even just interested, be sure to sign on next week. They're giving every player a change to grab one of four themed bundles, each with about twenty heroes each, for free.

List of bundles here: http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/megabundles/

I need to figure out which one has the most heroes that I don't have yet .

[Johnny Bravo]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1106331823

Make a copy of that and then enter the heroes you own. It'll tell you which bundle will get you the most value - more heroes doesn't necessarily mean more gold's worth of heroes.

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by Johnny Bravo

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1106331823

Make a copy of that and then enter the heroes you own. It'll tell you which bundle will get you the most value - more heroes doesn't necessarily mean more gold's worth of heroes.

Well, the only heroes I don't own at the moment are 10,000 gold ones, so in my case it does.

[Chronos]

I already own most of the heroes I'm actually interested in (or at least, most of the ones I'm interested in that existed while I was still playing), and my valuation of a hero is likely to be uncorrelated to how much they cost. Possibly even anticorrelated, since a hero that I'm only sort-of interested in, I might have bought at 2000 but passed for 10,000.

[Johnny Bravo]

See, I'm the opposite. I already own most of the heroes I'm interested in so if I'm getting a bunch of free heroes I'd rather get the higher gold value. That spreadsheet tells me that I can get 9 heroes or 7 heroes by choosing one of two bundles, but the 7-hero bundle is worth a lot more gold. Since neither set contains a "must have" hero for me, I'll probably go with the more valuable one since it will be cheaper to buy from the other if I change my mind in the future.

[RandMcnally]

Originally Posted by Johnny Bravo

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1106331823

Make a copy of that and then enter the heroes you own. It'll tell you which bundle will get you the most value - more heroes doesn't necessarily mean more gold's worth of heroes.

I'm a bit confused how to work this. Do I type "Abathur" in the "enter owned hero" thing? Just an X? I'm being really dense this morning.

[Johnny Bravo]

Just put an x into the pink column for each hero you own.

At the bottom, it will tell you the gold value of each bundle, along with how many heroes you'll get.

[RandMcnally]

I'm torn between the Assassin bundle and the Tanks and Bruisers. Tanks & Bruisers has more that I want (three) and I'm missing 5 total, and two of them are really cheap. But the Assassin has six I don't have, and they're all gold expensive. But, I probably won't ever play them. Decisions, decisions.

[Peanut Gallery]

They aren't doing a very good job promoting it. I play Overwatch a lot, and sometimes click through the launcher pages for the other games. The HOTS page just has some general "Check out 2.0" stuff. I only learned of the free packages by clicking on an old WoW bookmark.

I own zero heroes. I guess I'm getting the mixed package. Tempted by Support though. Does the Support list include any heroes of any other kind?

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by Peanut Gallery

I own zero heroes. I guess I'm getting the mixed package. Tempted by Support though. Does the Support list include any heroes of any other kind?

Yeah, if you look at the page I posted above they list 8 guys as either Bruisers or Tanks (Warrior subtypes I guess?) plus there's Abathur, who is a specialist though he's basically a support guy if one of a very different kind. No Assassin types though.

[Johnny Bravo]

Originally Posted by Peanut Gallery

I own zero heroes. I guess I'm getting the mixed package. Tempted by Support though. Does the Support list include any heroes of any other kind?

To answer your question, all of the packages have really nice mixes of characters. Blizz went all out in making these really, really nice gets.

Anyway, HotS and Overwatch are very different games even though they share some characters. If you're unfamiliar with MOBAs, you may want to go with something other than Flex.

If you've never played a MOBA before, I'd recommend the Tank/Bruiser package. It has some really good beginner characters who are both easy and effective.

After that, the Support/Specialist package has a bunch of supports who are easy to pick up, and also gets you really solid tanks. It might actually be the superior choice.

They Flex package actually contains the most difficult characters in the entire game - characters who can be quite powerful but who also require deep knowledge of the game to use effectively.

[Johnny Bravo]

Only partially related, but if anybody reading this is under level 10 and is planning on getting more into the game with the overhaul, please consider sending me a message.

I'll give you a referral code that will net you some free stuff (a stimpack and some heroes, I think) and get ME a space motorcycle mount if you (and several other hypothetical people) ever level up a bit.

Most people who have completed this promotion have done so by making several fake accounts and leveling them up to 10. I can't be bothered to do that, but if any of y'all are planning on getting into the game anyway, help a Doper out.

[Lemur866]

So I have a lot of gold saved...in 2.0 the only thing gold will be used for is to buy heroes? And cosmetic stuff will be bought with the new currencies?

So there's no real reason to save or spend gold now, except you only want to spend gold after you get the free mega-bundle, because you'll be getting a lot of free heroes.

Or are prices going to be revamped after 2.0?

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by Lemur866

So I have a lot of gold saved...in 2.0 the only thing gold will be used for is to buy heroes? And cosmetic stuff will be bought with the new currencies?

So there's no real reason to save or spend gold now, except you only want to spend gold after you get the free mega-bundle, because you'll be getting a lot of free heroes.

Or are prices going to be revamped after 2.0?

Apparently you can also spend gold to reroll chest openings - I'm not really clear on how that works or what the expectations there are. But my sense is it's better to just save the gold for now and see how things shake out.

[SenorBeef]

Gold can be used to re-roll crates that don't have anything you want in them.

[Johnny Bravo]

How'd we all do on loot boxes? I got some nice skins, a few cool mounts, and three new characters (Lucio, Probius, and TLV). Lucio was the one character that I really wanted but didn't get from my megabundle. I may have gotten murky, too. Or maybe I just got murky skins. I can't remember. Either way, my collection is a lot closer to complete than it was on Monday.

I spent almost 30k gold rerolling, with a huge chunk of that just on my four veteran boxes - if you're going to get a legendary every single time you may as well reroll until you get a legendary you really want. The strategy I saw on Reddit was, assuming you have enough gold, to always reroll a box if you only get the minimum payout unless you get something you really really want. It worked out okay for me.

If you don't have the Gazlowe announcer, you should craft the Gazlowe announcer. Some of the funniest content I've ever seen from Blizzard.

[Tom Scud]

A buncha skins, some mounts, a few announcers, and zero heroes, but then I think the only heroes I have left are legendaries. I probably should have rerolled my veteran boxes more aggressively.

[Johnny Bravo]

Just learned something:

If you haven't done it yet, click the settings button and complete the veteran challenge thing. You'll get a lootbox with a 7-day stimpack and a hero at minimum.

[Chronos]

OK, so I opened up a bunch of lootboxes that I had apparently accumulated and got a lot of stuff. The heroes, skins, and mounts, I understand. And I'm guessing that announcers replace the arena voicetrack (Blackheart or the Queen of Spores or whoever) with someone else. But what the heck are voicelines, sprays, emojis, and banners for?

As an aside, my strategy for re-rolling was to keep it if it contained a hero, a mount, or a skin for a hero I actually use, and to re-roll it if it didn't. Was this about the right way to go?

[Johnny Bravo]

The most "efficient" way to go was to always reroll if you only got the minimum payout for the box. So an epic chest guarantees a single epic-rarity item. If you only get the one, you can reroll and hope for two. That maximizes the shard value of the items you gain.

But if you just rerolled until you got stuff that you actually wanted, I think you did it right.

[Chronos]

Well, I think I rerolled until I got stuff I wanted. But since I don't know what most of the rewards even are, I'm not sure.

[SenorBeef]

I have mastered the dunk.

I'm 20-3 over my last 23 games as Azmodan. 34-10 over my last 44.

Not only that, but two of my friends started playing the game a couple of months ago and they only want to play when I play, so I can guide. But because they never played solo or just wit them, they never really got accurate placement - I carried them to a lot of wins early on which inflated their MMR, so now they're about 500 MMR ahead of where they'd be if they were solo, so the games we get are tougher than they should be, but I'm still racking up that winrate anyway.

Hotslogs says that going army of hell has the better winrate, but I do it all with pure dunk build. I can only guess that people aren't very thoughtful with their dunks or the win rate would be higher.

Not only am I hitting the enemies with my dunk after they dash away or whatever, but I've learned to look at where the minions are in my own lane from the minimap to estimate where the center of the enemy minion lane is, so often I can kill an enemy and perfectly aim a dunk to clear a wave at the same time.

I also don't think people use him to his best as an xp gatherer. You can easily push your lane using only auto-attacks and demon warriors while also doing blackpool dunks on another lane, which completely wipes out a lane, which gives you the XP from two lanes at once.

Azmodan is amazing. I'm getting the trifecta - top hero damage, siege damage, and XP most games. And killing people who thought they'd gotten away is just about the best thing in the game. And Azmodunk is the best skin.

[SenorBeef]

Woops, I said "army of hell" build had the higher winrate, but I meant demonic invasion, the non-black pool ultimate. Army of hell is the level 4 talent for cheaper warriors, which I do take.

Demonic invasion actually has a 4% higher winrate than black pool, which baffles me because black pool seems essential to me to how Azmodan should work.

In other news three of my friends (possibly including an upstanding member of this thread) asked me if I wanted in on a game with them and then started like 23 seconds later before I'd had a chance to respond. They got matched up against a 5 stack of supports. All healers.

What a silly stunt, right? Going all healers as a 5 man.

Anyway, my friends got destroyed. By 5 healers. In 12 minutes. Much amusement was had as I listened on voice comms during the game.

[Tom Scud]

Originally Posted by SenorBeef

Anyway, my friends got destroyed. By 5 healers. In 12 minutes. Much amusement was had as I listened on voice comms during the game.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0077.html

[Johnny Bravo]

Gimmick comps can absolutely wreck QM. All tanks, all healers, a team built around Chogall. Whatever. Stuff that would otherwise get countered in a draft goes completely unanswered.

If you happen to QM into a team that CAN counter your gimmick, though, ya burnt.

[SenorBeef]

A team built around chogall isn't a gimmick team, I don't think, just a team with a purpose.

I have a hard time believing that all tanks or all healers would regularly win games.

It was Li-Ming, Rehgar, Nazeebo, Varian, and Genji vs Malf, Auriel, Li Li, Khara, Tyrande. I guess they did pick the best damage-oriented healers, but it still seems kinda silly to me. I would think the balanced team would win most of the games.

This ended up being 17 kills to 1.... a 12 minute stomp.

[Johnny Bravo]

The non-healer team just wasn't well-suited for the matchup. No stuns except Varian's taunt. Rehgar's got a root and Nazeebo has the zombie walls, but neither of those stop the sustain train. They've got really great poke damage, but the heal comp is virtually immune to that.

On the other hand, the healer team had very respectable damage output potential, blinds to neutralize the AAs, and CC for days and days and days. Auriel doesn't use mana, Malf can give mana away. Khara can have unlimited mana with insight. Khara, Auriel, and Tyrande all have multi-target healing. I was initially going to say that Uther would have been better in there for the stuns, but I think these five have a really excellent overlap of abilities.

They were also a five-stack against what was at best a 3-and-2, so the usual advantages apply. My uninformed guess would be that they started rotating as five immediately, and were letting Tyrande call targets with hunter's mark.

I think that healer team would lose against any comp that has both big single-target burst and the ability to isolate/pick off enemies. There's a lot of "greater than the sum of its parts" stuff going on there, but their ability to dish out meaningful damage drops off way too quickly as they lose characters. The comp relies on everyone keeping everyone else alive. As soon as that fails, everything crumbles.

[Chronos]

What constitutes "a team built around Cho-Gall"? I mean, just having Cho-Gall at all ties up 40% of your hero choices. And I can think of things that counter him (anything that does a percentage of a hero's life in damage), but I can't think of any healers that heal a teammate for a percentage of their life, or the like.

SenorBeef, Azmodan is one of my favorites, too. And I, too, aim my three-pointer shots by watching my own creep waves on the minimap. It definitely takes some practice to get the timing right, but you're right about how satisfying it can be when you get it.

And still no answer on what voicelines, sprays, banners, and emojis are for?

[RandMcnally]

Originally Posted by Tom Scud

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0077.html

That's pretty much happened.


There are two pretty well known streamers who had a friendly tournament of their subscribers played each other at their respective ranks. So bronze would play bronze, etc. At the GM level one team drafted pure supports while the other did a meta team, and the support team won pretty handedly.

So I'm not ashamed.