Balance Dump

[PzKw]

I think he's right though. S2 appears to have really deep corporate problems, but I've had that suspicion since a few months after beta when the development of the game got really schizophrenic.

[PzKw]

Edit: F2P isn't one of those problems.

[[DRD]china]

Speculation:

Decision making is probably far too centralized, and the team sports little in ways of agility. It's pretty obvious they're mired in what's possibly an unhealthy atmosphere filled with cliques and clashing visions/ideas. That's how it always is when a company experiences huge success: some attribute it to growing pains, but I attribute it to growing greed.

[PzKw]

Speculation:

I don't think it's growing pains or greed, I think it's misallocated resources ie. bad management. I don't think there's enough programmers to compete with the rate of change in other games in the genre. When the shop was first released, I thought it was to soak the art team's time while they wrote another engine for a new project, now I realise it's because their art team is so big compared to the rest of the company. You could put that decision down to greed, but at the end of the day, no one likes to fire people who've been with you from early on, and you could pretty strongly argue it's unethical practice.

I'm near to certain Nome and Diva had very different ideas about the direction of the game, and my assessment is that both had/have some pretty serious flaws. Nome was never cut out to be a designer in a competetive MOBA, and Diva is a little too rigid in his view of viability. This basically combined to lead to a year of designs that were centered on gimicks that either incidently became capability which was broken, or were downplayed in order to cram big numbers onto the hero. The net effect of this was a generation of heroes that felt really samey and templated, or which were just stupidly unfair in certain ways that themselves weren't very well thought out or original.

Mind you, this is based on a single conversation with Diva and reading Nome's blog. My opinion is that Diva is very intelligent, but limited by some flawed implicit assumptions he's not fully aware of, and Nome is genuinely just a self impressed idiot who insists on trying to apply largely self invented principles to a genre their importance is grossly secondary to design principles and conventions established by people who floor him for understanding of the game.

(I can't even emphasise the point on Nome enough - every time I read his blog my opinion on him drops a little more - I actually quit the game for a month when he released Tremble because it was such a terrible idea, and he came out in a blog recently and says that he thinks its because mounds are destroyable but take too long etc which frustrates people, rather than the free RoHx1.5+Yasha+NH ulti+Furion TP+Skadi+Duplicate hero from 6+EZmode last hitting. Tremble is honestly the most ****ed up backwards design I've ever seen post 5.x series DotA, rivaled only by Death Ward SA, Invoker V1 and Gambler. And you know what? They were all removed for a reason.)

[PzKw]

Also, the biggest travesty of the shop, worse than the 10USD skins, is the fact that the worst skin in the game, Warbeast, not only hasn't been remade so it doesn't look ****ing retarded, it hasn't even had an alt avatar released yet.

Seriously, what the ****?

[dandylion]

You conveniently fail to mention stuns and knock backs, which could also be used to distance oneself from ursa. I don't know why people don't count them as escapes. If hammerstorm stuns you and galvanizes you aren't going to catch him as a melee hero without a blink or gap closer up. Compare ganking a hero like MK to ganking a hero like Lina, its a joke.

blink/charge/leap/monkey king away from him

Your words, not mine.

You didn't specifically mention stuns and knockbacks either, but if that's something that you would like to cry about, there are plenty of heroes in DotA that disable as well. Let's count movement speed boosts too. And evasion. And invisibility. And items. And oh dear, now every hero in the game has a way to stop Ursa! It's too bad he can't do things to avoid those too...

[[LsE]Hsssh]

That's how it always is when a company experiences huge success: some attribute it to growing pains, but I attribute it to growing greed.

I don't know, could you like write what exactly you think is greedy about S2 or Maliken? HoN must make money, if not there is no reason to develop it further, this is not charity. One time pay wasn't giving enough money so they added item shop and EA heroes to increase profit. With more money game can be supported better and stuff like hon tour can be organized.

I too would have preferred if f2p/EA wasn't introduced and HoN was left on life support. /sarcasm

Nome is genuinely just a self impressed idiot

Amen. But i heard China likes him

and he came out in a blog recently and says that he thinks its because mounds are destroyable but take too long etc which frustrates people

What do you think about his explanation that he hates one-shotting and how he is sad that Nomad is built like this?

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

bring back his stun

Heroes like get their retarded stuns and are still able to carry. I truly loved the playstyle of the hero with his stun. Was the definition of manning up and was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

[skeloperch]

bring back his stun

Heroes like get their retarded stuns and are still able to carry. I truly loved the playstyle of the hero with his stun. Was the definition of manning up and was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

You have to be a certain distance away from to be stunned, and same with Ra. On top of that, they get completely shut down by Shrunken Head, while Madman doesn't. MM can go mid and gank easily with just a bottle, and has the luxury of building every carry item in game and still be useful. MM is also running at max movespeed with close to 60% up time. Madman was even better when he got his stun removed, and had to be nerfed to what he is now.

[Launders]

^ that was because the barrel roll removed attackspeed iirc

[[f13]`11411181]

It removed % of aspd, rather than flat -aspd. (back then)

[PzKw]

What do you think about his explanation that he hates one-shotting and how he is sad that Nomad is built like this?

It's fair analysis, but it's a common fault shared by several physical damage melee semicarries at the moment, and it's one of his less significant design problems (Miragespamlol).

I've posted a lot about what I think needed to be done to shore up Nomad design wise. Remove charges on Wanderer from hitting, remove Wanderer from Mirage and reduce the cooldown on it (leave Truestrike as it is), increase MS gain from Sandstorm.

Then sit and see how he plays, buff/nerf as required, but at least you have the concept shored up then, and the design is consistant and workable.

bring back his stun

Heroes like get their retarded stuns and are still able to carry. I truly loved the playstyle of the hero with his stun. Was the definition of manning up and was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Are you ****ing retarded? Firstly, Axe and Lego are the definition of manning up, secondly, a line stun on an agi carry with incredible positioning and mobility is the definition of derpery.

[[RCT]Reldnahc]

It's fair analysis, but it's a common fault shared by several physical damage melee semicarries at the moment, and it's one of his less significant design problems (Miragespamlol).

I've posted a lot about what I think needed to be done to shore up Nomad design wise. Remove charges on Wanderer from hitting, remove Wanderer from Mirage and reduce the cooldown on it (leave Truestrike as it is), increase MS gain from Sandstorm.

Then sit and see how he plays, buff/nerf as required, but at least you have the concept shored up then, and the design is consistant and workable.


Are you ****ing retarded? Firstly, Axe and Lego are the definition of manning up, secondly, a line stun on an agi carry with incredible positioning and mobility is the definition of derpery.

1 second is more than enough.

[[IaF]Skyve]

Why can't they just make the attribute bonus into a passive ability so it simply deactivates when gemini enters his split form?

[skeloperch]

Why can't they just make the attribute bonus into a passive ability so it simply deactivates when gemini enters his split form?

That's not even the most significant of his design flaws. He needs a total rework on his ulti for him to be balancable.

I've posted a lot about what I think needed to be done to shore up Nomad design wise. Remove charges on Wanderer from hitting, remove Wanderer from Mirage and reduce the cooldown on it (leave Truestrike as it is), increase MS gain from Sandstorm.

Then sit and see how he plays, buff/nerf as required, but at least you have the concept shored up then, and the design is consistant and workable.

No. No no no no no no no no. That isn't shoring up the design, that's dumbing the game down. Nomad, like other physical dps monsters like DW, DM, and Tremble, are supposed to be nigh-unfightable in a 1 on 1 close range fight. What you're doing is completely changing his role. He sits in a really good spot right now, from what I can tell, if not being a little under powered. He is easily counter-able (ring mail, RotT, Greaves, Bracers, Grave Locket), but he packs quite a punch. He is a one trick pony, true, but that doesn't mean we go and change him. I mean, for how long have Pebbles, Pyro, and etc. stayed one-trick-ponies? If they don't get worked-around, than neither should Nomad.

Furthermore, his main design flaw is that he is too easily countered, but is a monster if left uncountered. I don't have problems fighting Nomads, since I know all of his tricks, but that's because I'm more experienced than most pub-trash. Plus, when you look at it objectively, he has a lot more flaws than strengths. Despite all of his flaws, though, your suggestions would turn him into a snore-fest and nerf him at the same time, which is horrible.

[Qpo]

http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/sh...d.php?t=381132

^ this is nice and all, BUT:
1) Slowpoke. All changes done could probably have been made in a week or so (by someone capable).
2) Nerfing Zephyr's heal at the same time as HotBL is INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT TO GET JUST RIGHT. Why not start with nerfing only HotBL, since that item is a problem on more heroes than just Zephyr, and then see how Zeph turns out, and then take it from there?

Large patches with low frequency goes against everything that has to do with troubleshooting. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. If the changes are introduced one by one — as in first introduced, tested, analysed, then the next one goes through the same steps, and so on and so forth — then I can understand releasing them all at once to the public in one big pack, in a sort of "first let them suffer, then treat their pain — *****es love to be treated like that" kind of way, but it'd still be more effective to launch any change that is for the better.

The reasoning probably goes something like this: "Since people need lots of time to get used to, and understand a new patch, it's better if we introduce lots of changes at once, to speed up the process", but that's completely lol since the more changes included in each patch, the longer it takes to find out if it was good or not. And since every change affects everything else, the time it takes to test a new patch increases exponentially as the number of changes increases.

If it has to do with downtime and they not wanting to interrupt games, well, they could just have a certain hour each day (like 5 am or some ****) that would be the patch slot, giving people a chance to work around it.

[[f13]`11411181]

People whine if balance patches are slow, people whine if balance patches are scattered and fast. Can't please everyone.

[skeloperch]

People whine if balance patches are slow, people whine if balance patches are scattered and fast. Can't please everyone.

This.

I would much rather have deliberated balance patches every month and a half than knee-jerk nerfs/buffs every week or two.

[Qpo]

Pleasing everyone is the most stupid goal imaginable, and is certainly not what I'm after — I only care about them making a good game (note that what I call good, scrubs call bad).

[PzKw]

That's not even the most significant of his design flaws. He needs a total rework on his ulti for him to be balancable.



No. No no no no no no no no. That isn't shoring up the design, that's dumbing the game down. Nomad, like other physical dps monsters like DW, DM, and Tremble, are supposed to be nigh-unfightable in a 1 on 1 close range fight. What you're doing is completely changing his role. He sits in a really good spot right now, from what I can tell, if not being a little under powered. He is easily counter-able (ring mail, RotT, Greaves, Bracers, Grave Locket), but he packs quite a punch. He is a one trick pony, true, but that doesn't mean we go and change him. I mean, for how long have Pebbles, Pyro, and etc. stayed one-trick-ponies? If they don't get worked-around, than neither should Nomad.

Furthermore, his main design flaw is that he is too easily countered, but is a monster if left uncountered. I don't have problems fighting Nomads, since I know all of his tricks, but that's because I'm more experienced than most pub-trash. Plus, when you look at it objectively, he has a lot more flaws than strengths. Despite all of his flaws, though, your suggestions would turn him into a snore-fest and nerf him at the same time, which is horrible.

I give up, I'm putting you on my ignore list because you don't understand the design intent of Nomad. Which is what we were talking about. I've tried for as long as I could to avoid doing this, but I really just can't be ****ed reading your drivel anymore.