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(Lord almighty this is longer than I thought it would be, sorry for that but I do believe I've tried to bring something new to the discussion.)
This has been an interesting read, I've seen some of the Balance discussion threads about heroes that are considered UP now because of the game, but the discussion mostly seems to revert into a ongoing debate of "hero is UP, needs buff!" and "hero is balanced other things need to be nerfed".
Thus I came here.
HoN definitely feels like it could do with a realignment, I think finding a good pocket of heroes that are already balanced and then bringing everyone else to these lines, anyone much better at certain things need to have a good drawback.
A good example of a relatively balanced hero, I believe he could do with better scaling to make him more effective sooner (and have suggested so in his thread) but again, is that because other heroes are too useful to start with? should they in fact be brought down to Pestilence? It feels there are too many heroes with high early effectiveness that can easily gimp other heroes who have higher drawbacks early game.
I hate heroes that do very little and make you feel their wrath as opposed to others that need to use their abilities more cleverly.
come to mind as heroes who can do a fair bit a single spell that is rather easy to use
have to use their abilities correctly to gain effectiveness and can't just keep trying over and over.
I don't think any hero ought to have more than 1 passive ability unless its creative enough. The 2 heroes I mentioned above have 2 powerful abilities and then 2 passives to make the hero what they are automatically, something I consider a flawed design.
On that note:
I've noticed that the vast majority of heroes with 1 passive are balanced:
<Atesia> <Draconis> <Gravekeeper>
:chro:
:jera:
Not ALL of them are balanced but almost all of them are, this is the kind of Hero design that I find to be good.
<Flux> <Master of Arms>
Technically have 4 actives but 1 of them is mostly passive and are balanced
<Midas> <Gemini> <Nomad>
These are the main ones considered OP on the list. Midas was recently nerfed but its the combination of having a Psuedo-Blink escape and massive combo damage and cc, he shouldn't have both. Gemini is broken because his Ultimate just does too much. Nomad has too much "get out of jail for free" but I actually find many of his design features to be great, just does Hit and Run way too good.
When a hero has MORE than 1 passive I find it tends to be a bad design
Not necessarily because they're OP but because they're dull, unless their passive is actually interesting the hero does very little. They tend to be OP when they're 2 active abilities are powerful to make up for not doing anything else, which doesn't seem like a good idea.
Where I'm going with this is it feels like the heroes with 1 (or close to 1) passive ability are (mostly) a good way to judge balance and hero design.
I realise this isn't going to be what determines the OPness of a hero, what does is how much a hero can do or how much a hero lacks weakness. Nomad is too good at Hit and Run, Ra mostly lacks weakness outright, Midas shouldn't have as much versatility AND power as he does.
The Heroes with 4 active abilities also tend to be balanced, as if the designers remembered that when giving a hero 4 things to do, they can't be too good at everything or cover their own weaknesses too much. Valk and Aluna are perfect examples of "Jack of All Trades" that aren't too good, their ultimate's are nice and useful not OMFG YES! on top of it all.
So Basically what you are saying is N'aix is a broken hero?Originally Posted by OJPhoenix
(Lord almighty this is longer than I thought it would be, sorry for that but I do believe I've tried to bring something new to the discussion.)
This has been an interesting read, I've seen some of the Balance discussion threads about heroes that are considered UP now because of the game, but the discussion mostly seems to revert into a ongoing debate of "hero is UP, needs buff!" and "hero is balanced other things need to be nerfed".
Thus I came here.
HoN definitely feels like it could do with a realignment, I think finding a good pocket of heroes that are already balanced and then bringing everyone else to these lines, anyone much better at certain things need to have a good drawback.
A good example of a relatively balanced hero, I believe he could do with better scaling to make him more effective sooner (and have suggested so in his thread) but again, is that because other heroes are too useful to start with? should they in fact be brought down to Pestilence? It feels there are too many heroes with high early effectiveness that can easily gimp other heroes who have higher drawbacks early game.
I hate heroes that do very little and make you feel their wrath as opposed to others that need to use their abilities more cleverly.
I don't think any hero ought to have more than 1 passive ability unless its creative enough. The 2 heroes I mentioned above have 2 powerful abilities and then 2 passives to make the hero what they are automatically, something I consider a flawed design.
On that note:
I've noticed that the vast majority of heroes with 1 passive are balanced:
<Atesia> <Draconis> <Gravekeeper>
Not ALL of them are balanced but almost all of them are, this is the kind of Hero design that I find to be good.
<Flux> <Master of Arms>
Technically have 4 actives but 1 of them is mostly passive and are balanced
<Midas> <Gemini> <Nomad>
These are the main ones considered OP on the list. Midas was recently nerfed but its the combination of having a Psuedo-Blink escape and massive combo damage and cc, he shouldn't have both. Gemini is broken because his Ultimate just does too much. Nomad has too much "get out of jail for free" but I actually find many of his design features to be great, just does Hit and Run way too good.
When a hero has MORE than 1 passive I find it tends to be a bad design
Not necessarily because they're OP but because they're dull, unless their passive is actually interesting the hero does very little. They tend to be OP when they're 2 active abilities are powerful to make up for not doing anything else, which doesn't seem like a good idea.
Where I'm going with this is it feels like the heroes with 1 (or close to 1) passive ability are (mostly) a good way to judge balance and hero design.
I realise this isn't going to be what determines the OPness of a hero, what does is how much a hero can do or how much a hero lacks weakness. Nomad is too good at Hit and Run, Ra mostly lacks weakness outright, Midas shouldn't have as much versatility AND power as he does.
The Heroes with 4 active abilities also tend to be balanced, as if the designers remembered that when giving a hero 4 things to do, they can't be too good at everything or cover their own weaknesses too much. Valk and Aluna are perfect examples of "Jack of All Trades" that aren't too good, their ultimate's are nice and useful not OMFG YES! on top of it all.
Okay, here I think the term "team dependency" really describes this factor good.
Say,
Monkey King, Team Dependency: 3/10
Amun-ra, Team Dependency 4/10
Flux, Team Dependency: 9/10
Also, Flux is a good team-asset, as for Monkey King, he offers Damage, Slows an Stuns..
"Heroes who contribute: Team Shields, Team Mobility and other such usefull stuff has become less and less, instead, we get heoes who can kill other heroes in different fancy ways. And we dont need that anymore, what we need are heroes that can contribute other interesting things that would open doors to more synergy and awesome team-combos.
Combo-ing your own skills to get a kill is lame and not as satisfying (and balanced) as having to do it with a team.
Flux pushing allied Pebbles forward to an enemy then Pebbles chucking the Enemy back to Flux, and Flux using his Magneting Stomp to slow the enemy and finishing him off is better than and more rewarding than:
Amunra, stuns target, explodes for slow, burns enemy with aura, auto-hit, dead."
I think that pretty much sums it up. while noone wants games where you farm for 50 minutes to see 1 carry on each side just destroy 5 people on the other team, the current gameplay allows certain heroes to just take off and dominate in a way that is far too strong. previous one shotters like pebbles and deadwood had long cooldowns and low usefulness outside of their combos. new one shotters such as MK and midas have incredibly short cooldowns and are continually useful. We need games where teamplay and proper strategies are victorious over some guy taking an s2 hero mid and getting fed by orange.
IF want some hero like Flux, geo. revenant, Voodoo,soul stealer, soul reaper, defier ..... appear and make a game more fun
S2 need nerf some hero fk retard like Magebane, parasite, Chuluphant, keeper of the forest,
Specialy plz nerf keeper and magebane, they suck a strongest hero and hard to gank them in early
And why only magebane can burn mana with his ilusion??????????
Because magebane's mana burn is hero based, not item based (nullfire).
with the ra and nomad nerfs it makes me think have pub balance in mind
though it's strange they reworked vindicator before deadwood, i'd argue deadwood has contributed to more unfun games than vindicator
it seems like they have no direction on balance/design other than to make the games end faster
Wiping my butt is like trying to get peanut butter out of shag carpet.
Vindicator was really an issue with it just being never picked or whenever it would've been needed it was usually banned. Deadwood could use some buffs though...
Imo, tone down the viability of most blinks/escape mechs. that way more skill will be required than 'I gank you, I have 300 base ms speed, same as you, but a pseudo-blink/blink that gets me 1100 yards away from your angry ally who lacks the one shot ability. So even if I use it poorly I'm getting away. TA!'
Toning down some of this mobility would cause people to have to seriously consider the possible consequences of their gank on those heroes rather than always being able to get away with no consequences against lesser heroes or players and snowballing all game.
Theres never going to be a point we see every hero in competitive play regularly, but I think bringing some of these heroes risk-to-reward factors back down to earth would encourage people to play a wider assortment of heroes.
I think it's suboptimal to determine hero balance by how many actives a hero has. Furthermore I think a hero can have a cool design despite many passives (armadon, nh, pebbles, bh, sr). Also how can you list ramp, vindi, ws and zeph as dual passives when they only have 1 passive?(Lord almighty this is longer than I thought it would be, sorry for that but I do believe I've tried to bring something new to the discussion.)
This has been an interesting read, I've seen some of the Balance discussion threads about heroes that are considered UP now because of the game, but the discussion mostly seems to revert into a ongoing debate of "hero is UP, needs buff!" and "hero is balanced other things need to be nerfed".
Thus I came here.
HoN definitely feels like it could do with a realignment, I think finding a good pocket of heroes that are already balanced and then bringing everyone else to these lines, anyone much better at certain things need to have a good drawback.
A good example of a relatively balanced hero, I believe he could do with better scaling to make him more effective sooner (and have suggested so in his thread) but again, is that because other heroes are too useful to start with? should they in fact be brought down to Pestilence? It feels there are too many heroes with high early effectiveness that can easily gimp other heroes who have higher drawbacks early game.
I hate heroes that do very little and make you feel their wrath as opposed to others that need to use their abilities more cleverly.
I don't think any hero ought to have more than 1 passive ability unless its creative enough. The 2 heroes I mentioned above have 2 powerful abilities and then 2 passives to make the hero what they are automatically, something I consider a flawed design.
On that note:
I've noticed that the vast majority of heroes with 1 passive are balanced:
<Atesia> <Draconis> <Gravekeeper>
Not ALL of them are balanced but almost all of them are, this is the kind of Hero design that I find to be good.
<Flux> <Master of Arms>
Technically have 4 actives but 1 of them is mostly passive and are balanced
<Midas> <Gemini> <Nomad>
These are the main ones considered OP on the list. Midas was recently nerfed but its the combination of having a Psuedo-Blink escape and massive combo damage and cc, he shouldn't have both. Gemini is broken because his Ultimate just does too much. Nomad has too much "get out of jail for free" but I actually find many of his design features to be great, just does Hit and Run way too good.
When a hero has MORE than 1 passive I find it tends to be a bad design
Not necessarily because they're OP but because they're dull, unless their passive is actually interesting the hero does very little. They tend to be OP when they're 2 active abilities are powerful to make up for not doing anything else, which doesn't seem like a good idea.
Where I'm going with this is it feels like the heroes with 1 (or close to 1) passive ability are (mostly) a good way to judge balance and hero design.
I realise this isn't going to be what determines the OPness of a hero, what does is how much a hero can do or how much a hero lacks weakness. Nomad is too good at Hit and Run, Ra mostly lacks weakness outright, Midas shouldn't have as much versatility AND power as he does.
The Heroes with 4 active abilities also tend to be balanced, as if the designers remembered that when giving a hero 4 things to do, they can't be too good at everything or cover their own weaknesses too much. Valk and Aluna are perfect examples of "Jack of All Trades" that aren't too good, their ultimate's are nice and useful not OMFG YES! on top of it all.
Sometimes passives add flavor and are also beneficial to balance. Do you propose pebbles gains more nukes, cc, or maybe an escape mechanism instead of one passive? Would that make him more balanced?
What determines how balanced a hero is is function (dubbed as versatility here) and numbers. If a hero has good stats, attack range, animation, escape mech, cc, and a farm skill then one can assume that the hero is more powerful than most (this is being versatile). If a hero has simply too much damage (numbers) then the damage needs to be toned down. It's that simple.
Monkey king is imo insane, he brings some cc, excellent mobility, good escape mechs and huge damage to the table. Along with excellent stat gains.
Ra gets good cc, great farm, lanestay skill, escape mech. Starts to look good?
Valk has good range and attack animation, decent stats, escape mechs, decent farm, good cc.
Pollywog has good range and animation, great farm and cc but no escape mech which kinda balances him.
Magmus 2 escape mechs, 3 skills that can be used for farming, good cc and huge damage.
I think the problem with alot of the heroes that are believed to strong is that the get all the perks most heroes have in addition to having solid escape mechanisms.
This is why Kraken is still imbalanced and picked very often... he's a tanky dpser that can do everything except hard carry: he has aoe on a short cooldown that slows, damages and stuns, he can chase well, he's got above the average of 300 MS, he farms well and has good last hitting in lane, he's beefy all game, he can kill you and the rest of your team if you just ignore him but he takes a lot of effort to kill too and he works with pretty much any lane partner.
This is a good long list of advantages. But apparently, it's not enough that he's that good - in addition he has an escape mech which is not only that but also damages, stuns and dispositions if he uses it offensively. I believe that this escape mech is the cherry that completes the Kraken cake. When you have as many pluses as Kraken you should not also come with something usually reserved for frailer heroes (which is why for example Valkyrie is too good but not broken) unless the hero is supposed to be imbalanced.
The only ''weaknesses'' that Kraken has is that he's melee (which is arguably just a trade-off when you consider especially hatchet but also buckler and to a lesser degree more base regen) and that a farmed Kraken won't beat a farmed Predator/Ra/Madman in a slugfest.
And people tell me Kraken is fine.
And this is just one hero. We have the likes of Magmus, Keeper, Plague Rider and so on so forth too. But they will never get fixed, they are fine....
Last edited by Salem1; 03-12-2012 at 05:56 PM.
The game should be balanced around the assumption that every hero/item is being utilized in the most efficient way possible. Pub play and competitive strategies shouldn't matter.
Realistically, however, this game has so many variables that a pretty specific set will always average out on top. Then the question becomes "Are we bored with playing/watching this strategy or seeing this item/hero and is it time to change it?" since it's all about fun...true actual factual rock/paper/scissors balance will never occur so it's pointless to discuss.
Shouldn't be allowed to post in balance forum. Nomad was buffed and Ra took a much needed hit to his (still) easy flash farming. Vindicator was reworked because he was (worse now) either a complete and total counter to your lineup or a walking feed machine. Deadwood is perfectly fine, that's just pub talk.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: Ra will always be unbalanced simply by design. You could change the numbers around, completely rework his spell effects and the end result is the same: he doesn't use mana and doesn't fit in HoN.
Last edited by Good_Apollo; 03-13-2012 at 06:30 PM.
I think they could make Ra fit with HP loss/skills.
The problem is that he loses nothing with how hes built. the HP loss used to be a bad joke to nonexistent, now its a slight inconvenience, but its still not a drawback.
Change ashes to ashes to an entirely player damage based skill, scaling to the old higher hp regen (maybe even a little higher) values, but only if attacked by another player. Suddenly hes not a clutch jungler, has to lane, can't tower dive as well, and needs more hp regen to be an effective AE farmer, preventing him from snowballing so hard.
Remove whats left of the mana and make his ult a toggle ability. It'll allow for more skill in using it, and maybe a few clutch mistakes that players capitalize on, like the current Accursed ult.
Last edited by aeowulf; 03-13-2012 at 08:58 PM.
Agreed on the toggling of Ra's ult, it just makes it harder to use, but at the same time it kind of requires the other team to think whether or not he has his ult on, as opposed to now where he basically constantly has his ult and you would have to basically instant burst down his 1.5 lifes.
At the same time maybe make his AOE unstackable with the mock? You can say that it's easy to counter that with a shrunken, but most in most pub games it is very rare either the team knows the shrunken is a counter, or they can farm 3 bkbs to effectively make Ra useless.
The point with his AOE and mock combination it just dishes out too much damage (similar to zeph), but can also stay alive for a longer period than zeph at the same time, which makes him deal even more damage.
Is it not time for this thread to be summarized then closed
Its points should be made sticky so the future can know for all eternity.
(You might also want to close some of the others, ty to the moderator.)
You are so right. This thread has run its course. Thanks for a good discussion.
Thread closed.
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