Oh man, I need some Azmodan, Lord of the Dunk
I really wish Azmo was better. Lobbing his Q across the map to kill an enemy that thought they got away is one of the most fun things to do in the game, but he’s just not good enough to play regularly.
Huh, he’s my second-best hero. I think the key with him is to watch your own minions to tell where the enemy minions are before you can see them, so you can aim/time your fireball to land right on top of them. If nobody responds to you, then you can push a lane very quickly this way, and if someone does respond, then you’re doing damage to them via long-range skills when they can’t reach you to damage you. You can also quickly respond to a weakness in another lane by putting your Demon Lieutenants there, before any actual hero can make it there.
I play rocket league, which uses the same sort of matchmaking/ranking system that counterstrike uses, which is in theory the same as what HOTS uses. If you go on the steam forums for rocket league, you’ll hear stupid stuff like:
“I worked my way up to challenger 2 and now I can’t get further, I only win 50% of my matches and my teammates are always worse than me, I’m being held back, it’s not fair, I can’t progress”
Now this comes from ignorance and delusion. The ignorance part is that they don’t understand that ultimately, the goal of a ladder/ranking system is to put you up against the level of your competition. So 50% win rate is the desired outcome. If you play better, you play against better players, until you’ve found your place on the ladder and you win 50% against equals. You’re not supposed to just keep climbing like an RPG character goes up in levels. You’re placed relative to other people.
The “omg I’m so good but my teammates hold me back” is just delusion. Rocket League has excellent matchmaking. The vast majority of the time you get a fair match with people who are similarly skilled to you. If you think you’re always way better than your teammates, you’re wrong - you’re just ignoring your own flaws and exaggerating theirs. The system works - you find your place, you stay there unless your skills improve.
The reason I say all this is that I understand how a ladder system should work, and how people fall trap to blaming everyone else when they find that they stop progressing.
Now, that said, HOTS hero league matchmaking does not ring true to me the way the Rocket League system does, even though they’re supposed to use similar systems. I’m a pretty average HOTS player. I dive too much, I don’t know all the different hero builds and how to fight them. But other than that, I avoid making horribly stupid mistakes. I’m not off in a corner of the map laning with malfurion while my teammates die on the objective. When my teammates make a heroic effort to save me while I escape with 5% hp, I don’t immediately turn around and go back in the fight and die. I don’t shoot at their tank while their exposed healer goes unscathed. I’m not great, but I’m not a bad player in terms of fundamental mistakes.
But when I got done with my placement matches for hero league, it put me at rank 35, which is pretty scrubby. Here’s the thing: I don’t belong in that league. When I say that, I know I sound like all the rocket league players I was talking about who bitch about a broken matchmaking system they don’t understand. But when I play a game full of level 35s like myself, they make “play with their own poop” mistakes. Horrible, stupid, mistakes from utterly awful players. All the time. These are not people on my level. Again, I’m not great. But I belong above the HEY LET’S DIE TO THEIR TOWERS IN AN UNCONTESTED LANE players.
So, easy enough, if I’m playing well, I should win more games, and my MMR will go up. But it hasn’t. I’m actually down to 37. Rocket League delivers a balanced, close game about 90% of the time. HOTS delivers a balanced, close game about 30% of the time. But I seem to have the playing with their own poop players on my team disproportionately. In theory, both teams should have an equal number of awful players, but my winrate in these awful games is around 46%, and a lot of the games I win require me to play extremely well and carry my team. I’m starting at the scrub tier and actually losing ground because, even though the game says we’re all level 32-38, my team seems to have more than their fair share of utterly incompetent players.
As an example, tonight I played a match with balanced hero league ranks. And we actually had a better draft.
My team was utterly incompetent. We racked up 12 deaths in the first 5 minutes, with no kills. I, as muradin, lead both siege and hero damage for most of the game - even though there was a Sgt Hammer and a Li-Ming on my team. I also was the only person on my team not to die by the 10 minute mark - everyone else had at least 4 deaths, some up to 8 or 9. It was just an utter stomp the whole time. My teammates did not do anything useful for the entire game, even by accident. I lead them in every statistical category as the tank. We lost the crypt of the spider queen map in 12 minutes, 13 seconds. It’s damn near impossible to lose a game that quickly. Do you know how bad you have to be to do that? It’s astounding.
When it came time to assess the rank points after the game, I expected to lose very few. A typical game for me results in +/- 70-110 points. Clearly this group of players was better than us, the matchmaking rating of my teammates would’ve been awful. And in this sort of system, if a much better team beats a much worse one, they lose few points. What was the rank point loss? 300 points. I went down 2 ranks. For losing with the worst team I’ve ever seen.
Rocket League provides a balanced, even match almost every time. Rocket League quickly finds the level you belong in, and puts you in the right games. Rocket League accurately reflects your true skill level when it gives you your division, equivalent to ranks. This game does none of those things. There’s something extremely funky about the matchmaking that makes ranks very inaccurate, does not correctly get you moving in the right direction, and does not create balanced matches. Even if you end up with a 50% win rate, Rocket League gets you there by giving you really close, down to the buzzer games between equally matched opponents that could go either way. HOTS gets you there by giving you 4 games where you utterly stomp the enemy and then 4 gmes where they utterly stomp you, and 2 good games if you’re lucky.
I don’t have enough data to guess at it, but something seems deeply flawed about their matchmaking and ranking system.
I created a new account, so friend me on there: ASDbelowMean #1846
I’ve come to realized that I hate playing assassins. I’m really not good at them and I just don’t find them fun. I really like the supports (except for Uther. I’ve never played Lili) and I’m a lot better as Morales than I used to be. I also like some of the warriors. I have a master skin Artanis and a level nine Stitches. I’m waiting for some buffs for the former, however. He needs help.
I’m ok with the releases so far. Buying a brand new hero is a complete gamble. Morales, Lunara, Rexxar, Artanis, Cho’gall, and Greymane were completely undertuned on release (and some still are). Yeah, Xul and Li-Ming were overpowered and everyone who played should have seen the nerf hammer coming. But in Blizzard’s defense, it’s really hard to see if a hero is overpowered or people just don’t know how to play against them. I remember when the Butcher was released and people were whining left and right that he was OP. Well…he definitely isn’t.
I’m sitting at ~2500 MMR and I think that’s where I should be. Some games we do well, some we don’t. Although I’ve had a losing streak as medic that wasn’t my fault (seriously Illidan, don’t dive in 2v5. I can’t do anything).
You seem like you’re where you should be, SenorBeef Even before your hiatus your MMR (in HL) was ~1500. It has dipped down quite a bit since you’ve been back, though. But, to give validity to your statement, if you have a bad run during your placement matches you’ll have to climb out of a very deep hole.
If you’re better than the other nine people playing then you should should be winning more often, because you should be carrying them. You need to become the shot-caller (the biggest issue is knowing when to end the game). Looking at your Muradin build, it doesn’t match the top ten builds.
But yeah, your example is rather egregious and I’d have probably thrown my computer out of the window. The reason you lost so bad is because your Li-Ming through the match. Plus, they had a much better comp than you. There’s no way Tyrande would have been able to out heal Morales. It was possible, but the moment Li-Ming threw y’all were doomed. For your last game with Valla she picked some not-good talents that didn’t mesh with your team well. Even then, your Diablo out-damaged you. For your last Falstad loss you took some weird talents. The first few levels you took ability talents then after ten you took one ability talent but then two AA (Giant Killer and your level 20). If you wanted Giant Killer and Nexus Frenzy you should have taken Season Marksman at level 1, Power Throw at 4, and Secret Weapon at 7. Same goes with Muradin. Eg, Stoneform pairs perfectly with Avatar.
So, in summation, your teams have sucked but you could do better.
I know the stats I claimed don’t match up with the end stats of that one. That’s why I was saying “at the 10 minute mark” rather than at the end, because during the last 3 minutes or so I made some desperate efforts after the game was over to save some teammates and died a few times, during which they mostly sat behind the walls and finally racked up some damage and came out ahead. But the game was thoroughly over by then.
There was something weird with the placement matches. When I came back, I had to play 12 of them, not 20. If I hadn’t played in so long that I needed to be re-placed, I should’ve had to have played all 20. If not, I should’ve had 0. Having 12 is very strange.
I played those placement matches with a friend, who himself got placed after we played another 8 games (he needed 20, I only needed the first 12) and he ended up getting placed at level 20 to my 35. Even though all the placement matches I needed I had played with him.
You’re right, if I’m better than all the other players, I should be advancing… if the bad players were evenly distributed. It’s anecdotal at this point, but it doesn’t seem that way. It seems like the worst player - the one who’s bad enough to throw the whole game - ends up on my team more than half the time.
It’s incredibly frustrating that you can’t queue into HL anymore with more than one friend. My rating tanked pretty hard after that.
Wait, how are you able to see each others’ games like that?
And before anyone bothers to look up my games, I’ll just say outright: Almost all of my games are against bots, and most of them are at the lowest difficulty just to quest and level up heroes as quickly as possible.
If you’re only playing against bots, then your games aren’t in there.
Ah, gotcha. Do they somehow monitor all games, or is it just games where at least one of the players is a member of that site?
And speaking of bots, has anyone seen a bot playing Li Ming or Xul? I’m starting to wonder if they didn’t bother to write an AI for either of them.
Oh, and one other random observation: I just noticed the other day that at least some of the female heroes ride sidesaddle. I’m not sure if it’s all of them.
As long as one person uploads to the site the match will be there.
They definitely wrote an AI for them, or else there’d be nothing for them to do when players drop link during regular matches. No idea whether or not they’re appearing during AI matches or not.
Absolutely enormous patch dropping - big changes to draft mode, kill data graphs, and major reworks of a bunch of heroes.
Hopefully the draft changes indicate that this interminable “preseason” is soon to end.
Oh hey, they made Sylvanas’ second ult not useless. And by that I mean gave her an entirely new ult.
Man, that ult has me worried.
She does need to channel while using it, so I’m not TOO worried. It’s going to set up some hilarious moments, though.
Wait, what? They’re taking away Possession? No!
It’s becoming a talent at level 7.
Oh, well that’s OK then. Though, as I recall, level 7 already has several good talents to choose from, so there will be some opportunity cost there. Unless of course they’re moving those around too.
Probably not something you’re aware of since you mostly play AI, but Possession was widely considered one of the most worthless heroics in the game, if not the top contender.
It’s great on AI matches, but trash otherwise.
Yeah, it’s assumed that if Possession has been picked it must have been on accident.