Remove Blacksmith from RD and SD.

[luckbox]

There is a big thread about Luck on here already, but I think that since Blacksmith is completely based around Luck and there are a ton of other little things in the game based around it, this one deserves its own thread. I'm also not proposing any radical change, I just want him gone from pretty much everything but -AP.

Dumb, badly designed hero. Not really S2's fault because he's a port of Ogre Magi, but it's just not a good hero idea.

Anyone who plays any game competitively (and isn't terrible) knows that the more elements of a given game based around RNG, the less competitive and "good" the game will be. Blacksmith is a hero that relies on RNG. His core, as a hero, is getting procs, crits, whatever you want to call it. When I play HON/DotA, I want to play a strategy game, not poker. Getting 4x crits 12% of the time or whatever it is takes no skill and only makes the game extremely unpleasant for whoever is on the receiving end.

If I get outplayed, or if I just do something dumb and get killed I may get frustrated and blame myself or a teammate. But take this example

(PLEASE be aware that I'm making this up completely out of the blue, this didn't actually happen, and you could easily pick apart something in this example. That's not the point - I'm just trying to illustrate why the RNG involved with Blacksmith isn't a good competitive element): I'm in mid with full hp as Valkyre. Blacksmith is running around mid with full HP, and I'm harassing Moon Queen and she gets very low. I go to throw a javelin, but they get a fresh creep wave that blocks me. I have enough hp to leap in and try to snipe the running away moon queen, but the second I leap in I get 4x Multicasted down to 20% hp and the moon queen turns around and nukes me while I get auto attack killed by the Blacksmith.

I realize that these kinds of complaints only generally come up when people get abused by a certain hero, inciting the "wahhh this hero is overpowered wahhh" stuff, but not this time. My win rate is like, 65% or something on HON and I've played almost every game with my girlfriend who relentlessly feeds and has played like 40 games of DotA and HON combined ever. I've been playing DotA for years and I'm very aware of balance, how to play, all that stuff. And even though I win against most Blacksmiths I play against, I still feel very strongly that the hero does not belong in the game, or at least in competitive modes like RD and maybe SD.

I'd be for keeping Blacksmith in -AP and maybe -AR as those are generally pub modes, but for -RD and -SD I think he should be treated like Techies in DotA.

I'm also aware that the recent changes to Blacksmith were intended to make him more competitive and less "random", but it still accomplishes virtually nothing. There is almost nothing you could do to the idea of "cast and pray that you get your multicast proc" to make it a good competitive element. And that's the point I'm trying to make.

Finally, I want to once again reiterate that the example I gave isn't flawless or even the best example I could come up with. So please refrain from picking it apart and lol'ing at "how bad I am" because it was just a simple example.

edit: Haha, I almost forgot my username for HON is Luckbox. It's a poker term, and I play poker about 40 hours a week.. if that gives me any extra leverage on the subject of luck :P

[BureMakutte]

.No.

[luckbox]

The last update made him a bit more well rounded and less luck based.

What more do you want?

I was pretty explicit about what I wanted. He's a pub hero and should be treated like one. Competitive games are usually played RD or SD, and he's RNG based to the point where he can ruin competitive games.

[UltimaXtreme]

There is a big thread about Luck on here already, but I think that since Blacksmith is completely based around Luck and there are a ton of other little things in the game based around it, this one deserves its own thread. I'm also not proposing any radical change, I just want him gone from pretty much everything but -AP.

Dumb, badly designed hero. Not really S2's fault because he's a port of Ogre Magi, but it's just not a good hero idea.

Anyone who plays any game competitively (and isn't terrible) knows that the more elements of a given game based around RNG, the less competitive and "good" the game will be. Blacksmith is a hero that relies on RNG. His core, as a hero, is getting procs, crits, whatever you want to call it. When I play HON/DotA, I want to play a strategy game, not poker. Getting 4x crits 12% of the time or whatever it is takes no skill and only makes the game extremely unpleasant for whoever is on the receiving end.

If I get outplayed, or if I just do something dumb and get killed I may get frustrated and blame myself or a teammate. But take this example

(PLEASE be aware that I'm making this up completely out of the blue, this didn't actually happen, and you could easily pick apart something in this example. That's not the point - I'm just trying to illustrate why the RNG involved with Blacksmith isn't a good competitive element): I'm in mid with full hp as Valkyre. Blacksmith is running around mid with full HP, and I'm harassing Moon Queen and she gets very low. I go to throw a javelin, but they get a fresh creep wave that blocks me. I have enough hp to leap in and try to snipe the running away moon queen, but the second I leap in I get 4x Multicasted down to 20% hp and the moon queen turns around and nukes me while I get auto attack killed by the Blacksmith.

I realize that these kinds of complaints only generally come up when people get abused by a certain hero, inciting the "wahhh this hero is overpowered wahhh" stuff, but not this time. My win rate is like, 65% or something on HON and I've played almost every game with my girlfriend who relentlessly feeds and has played like 40 games of DotA and HON combined ever. I've been playing DotA for years and I'm very aware of balance, how to play, all that stuff. And even though I win against most Blacksmiths I play against, I still feel very strongly that the hero does not belong in the game, or at least in competitive modes like RD and maybe SD.

I'd be for keeping Blacksmith in -AP and maybe -AR as those are generally pub modes, but for -RD and -SD I think he should be treated like Techies in DotA.

I'm also aware that the recent changes to Blacksmith were intended to make him more competitive and less "random", but it still accomplishes virtually nothing. There is almost nothing you could do to the idea of "cast and pray that you get your multicast proc" to make it a good competitive element. And that's the point I'm trying to make.

Finally, I want to once again reiterate that the example I gave isn't flawless or even the best example I could come up with. So please refrain from picking it apart and lol'ing at "how bad I am" because it was just a simple example.

edit: Haha, I almost forgot my username for HON is Luckbox. It's a poker term, and I play poker about 40 hours a week.. if that gives me any extra leverage on the subject of luck :P



I stopped reading because you did not define "RNG" before using it more than once in your article.

[Hibi1]

Is OP retarded? I think so.

[SolidStroke]

I stopped reading because you did not define "RNG" before using it more than once in your article.

Hunch: Random Number Generator

*edit*
I disagree with the OP's post. Matches can be lost just as much as they be won, by luck. That said, I doubt this character will see light in high level competitive play because of it, unless the character was above average if the player has ultra terrible luck.

[Darkstrand]

You seriously crying about % chance skills?

Lol

[Aegd]

Why is blacksmith so much worse than any other hero who relies on a % chance for added damage? Take heroes like Swiftblade, Scout or Chronos. Chronos can in theory dodge any amount of damage. This also goes for items like Riftshards that has a % chance to trigger. The only reason your QQ:ing over Blacksmith is because it's a single target nuke and it will always be more noticable when he gets a good streak of hits (or a bad streak of misses). You never see anyone complaining over Chronos dodging 4 ultimates in a row from Pyromancer, because it's not something that people ever notice.

Face it, this game is filled with abilites that rely on RNG, I would argue that Blacksmith are less random than most heroes after the patch, because much of the randomness from the old multicast is gone and it's now pretty easy to make an assumption of how much damage you're going to deal or recieve.

[Guile]

People like this are the exact OPPOSITE of what the game needs as beta testers...

But hey, $30 for S2 Gaming can never hurt i suppose.

[BluePojo]

The point is (and I think a good one):

When fighting Blacksmith you have 2 options: either go in full tilt every time and hope he doesn't proc a crit, or run away every time and hope he doesn't have a chance to proc a crit. His weakness is that sometimes he doesn't proc a crit... which is less a function of whether you're a good player and more a function of "did you get lucky?".

I agree that the more random something is the less fun the game is for competitive play.

Randomness works when it is in LARGE quantities because it can be relied upon more.... for instance the table top game Warhammer relies on dice throws heavily, but because you throw 10-20 dice at a time, you can still plan around probability in your strategy.

If you threw 1 dice that determined win or lose... that'd be a lot less fun, and that is the case with Blacksmith. 1/5 times you fight Blacksmith, you will explode. How do you strategize about that? Only fight him the other 4/5 times?

[Tidus1]

change the random engine to the WC3 weird random. real random is BAD

[SolidStroke]

People like this are the exact OPPOSITE of what the game needs as beta testers...

But hey, $30 for S2 Gaming can never hurt i suppose.


Funny, I was gonna say the same about you.

[RedLions0]

Why is blacksmith so much worse than any other hero who relies on a % chance for added damage? Take heroes like Swiftblade, Scout or Chronos. Chronos can in theory dodge any amount of damage. This also goes for items like Riftshards that has a % chance to trigger. The only reason your QQ:ing over Blacksmith is because it's a single target nuke and it will always be more noticable when he gets a good streak of hits (or a bad streak of misses). You never see anyone complaining over Chronos dodging 4 ultimates in a row from Pyromancer, because it's not something that people ever notice.

Face it, this game is filled with abilites that rely on RNG, I would argue that Blacksmith are less random than most heroes after the patch, because much of the randomness from the old multicast is gone and it's now pretty easy to make an assumption of how much damage you're going to deal or recieve.

This. A lot. The entire game is based on random number variables. Yes, there's some solids numbers that don't change. Yes, there's a lot of strategy involved. But everything is still mostly random. You could have bad luck and always run into an enemy hero in the jungle (lolmaphacks). You could be extremley lucky as chronos and dodge all the enemy's attacks for a whole minute. If you want a game without variables, play Chess. Me, I'll enjoy my game where sometimes a little luck goes a long way.

[Darkstrand]

The point is (and I think a good one):

When fighting Blacksmith you have 2 options: either go in full tilt every time and hope he doesn't proc a crit, or run away every time and hope he doesn't have a chance to proc a crit. His weakness is that sometimes he doesn't proc a crit... which is less a function of whether you're a good player and more a function of "did you get lucky?".

I agree that the more random something is the less fun the game is for competitive play.

Randomness works when it is in LARGE quantities because it can be relied upon more.... for instance the table top game Warhammer relies on dice throws heavily, but because you throw 10-20 dice at a time, you can still plan around probability in your strategy.

If you threw 1 dice that determined win or lose... that'd be a lot less fun, and that is the case with Blacksmith. 1/5 times you fight Blacksmith, you will explode. How do you strategize about that? Only fight him the other 4/5 times?

He's not that good of a hero.. The DotA counterpart was one of the least used heroes in competitive play, and he's a direct copy..

[Evilite]

That is funny. I thought 1/2 of the heroes in this game have some form of Evasion or Critical Strike with a CHANCE TO PROC. Also, you miss 25% of the time when you shoot up hills. Are you high?

[Darkstrand]

This thread needs to be buried to save people from further embarrassment imo

[BureMakutte]

This. A lot. The entire game is based on random number variables. Yes, there's some solids numbers that don't change. Yes, there's a lot of strategy involved. But everything is still mostly random. You could have bad luck and always run into an enemy hero in the jungle (lolmaphacks). You could be extremley lucky as chronos and dodge all the enemy's attacks for a whole minute. If you want a game without variables, play Chess. Me, I'll enjoy my game where sometimes a little luck goes a long way.

Screw you, im gonna play some Checkers. **** Yah, Checkers!

[Blam]

I'd be for keeping Blacksmith in -AP and maybe -AR as those are generally pub modes, but for -RD and -SD I think he should be treated like Techies in DotA.

RD and SD aren't "generally pub modes"?

Anyway pretty much everything worth posting has been posted, Blacksmith might actually be quite nice in competitive games as even without multicasting, he is quite a nice support hero if you found the right combination (Soulstealer for example, who needs disables and would benefit greatly from Frenzy). Frenzy is an insane support ability, as well as the stun and the large AoE slow+DoT.

[BluePojo]

This. A lot. The entire game is based on random number variables. Yes, there's some solids numbers that don't change. Yes, there's a lot of strategy involved. But everything is still mostly random. You could have bad luck and always run into an enemy hero in the jungle (lolmaphacks). You could be extremley lucky as chronos and dodge all the enemy's attacks for a whole minute. If you want a game without variables, play Chess. Me, I'll enjoy my game where sometimes a little luck goes a long way.


That's not the problem, though... it's one off randomness. Dodges are like the high quantity random that I mentioned. Blacksmith is the one off: win or lose randomness. If he procs, you will die 90% of the time.

I suppose one solution is stacking magic resistance, which should apply to his nukes, correct?

[tropicaza]

Long story short...No. Pointless thread, and flaming is about to get hot.