Community Collaboration Patch AMA w/ DOGKaiser

[[KKI]Chisel_Slim]

tips/tricks/general guide for shadow blade after this recent patch?

[[KRD]H4PPYP00P3R]

You, Mr DOGKaiser, do a very difficult job and I believe you do it very well. I like the directions you take the game and think that you deserve more credit than is afforded to you. Keep on being awesome.



Do you enjoy the tanky style of play that we witness in many games? The long, drawn-out fights always seem more epic to me. People get to see the full potential of their heroes during these times.

You have said before that you think Bubbles is perhaps the most balanced hero in the game. What brings him into this position?

Are there any updates on the intelligence style blade that we have been promised to compliment Firebrand and Icebrand?



I wish you a lot of luck with everything. I genuinely enjoy hearing what you have to say on these matters.

[Sherwood]

Are you going to allow a system that lets the Support Hero Accursed be reliably credited for assistance towards killing enemy heroes by being supportive at ranged?
Early on, he is rarely in melee scenarios/able to get into melee scenarios. His ranged abilities are an shield who detonation is not definitely going to occur or detonates too early/late or a single target nuke that often or not is better used for healing his team.

He is a support hero whose third ability is a supportive debuff that can only be applied via his melee auto attacks. As a result it helps him a lot to have farm that allows him to safely apply it or to be able to successfully melee attack. If he is less farmed due to less assists than another support hero, it means he is at an disadvantage. Nothing to do with the player, it's all to do with the hero. How it currently is, it encourages Accursed to use Cauterise offensively (which isn't helpful).

Accursed is the only melee hero who doesn't have some sort of reliable ranged 'assist tagging' capabilities. As more heroes are added, Accursed will be further at a disadvantage.

S2 are you aware of this problem?
Can you fix this problem without changing the Heroes' flavour of play? I don't know... perhaps allow assists from effective heals (cough my sig).

[Gringos]

What is your current take on Sacrificial Stone?
It's still the least used item together with Icon of the Goddess.
Have you ever considered using IotG in another (new) item recipe? What do you think about replacing IotG with a Blessed Orb and the Grave Locket to build SacStone?

[dcw]

1) Are you considering addting watchtower to match making? if so when? if not why?
2) Can we get some more MAPS please? for the love of pete!

[[RawR]iSlapMelons]

Three questions:

1) Blitz's E cast time. Why is it still there?

2) DS's unbreakable. 45sec cooldown on level 1? What was that for?

3) Gemini. When is his remake coming?

[[FT]Clarke99]

Community Collaboration Balance Patch AMA w/ DOGKaiser scheduled Friday, June 1st

DOGKaiser would like to invite everyone to an "Ask Me Anything" session about the Community Collaboration Patch hosted here on June 1st, from 13:00-15:00 EDT. You can post your questions until 12:00 EDT (noon) on June 1st.

Please post your questions below and follow along when DOGKaiser spills the beans on what it took to make this patch a reality.

Here's DOGKaiser's Patch Preview Interview for your reference:

DOGKaiser's first round of responses: http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/sh...1#post15131658

No girls here eh? Gotta love the fack "it's a group of guys"

[YAValanche]

Thanks for doing this DogKaiser. I hope you're still answering questions ^_^

• What do you think about the current emphasis on banning Junglers in tournament matches? Up to 4 bans are often spent removing Junglers, due to the big advantage jungling provides in terms of total XP/gold available to a team. Do you feel like this is something that affects the overall balance and if so, do you have any ideas you can discuss on how to address it?

• If Mana Ring's total cost was too seen as too cheap for its usefulness, especially in higher tier matches, why not add a recipe, rather then increasing the cost of Pickled Brain?

• Why does the Blood Chalice not provide 50% mana regeneration as a passive ability? Most built items retain the stats/abilities of the items that went into them. For sure it provides mana to the hero in a unique way, but I think it's strange that passive is removed entirely. I actually can't think of another item that doesn't retain the stats of the items it builds into from.

• The Magebane. Thoughts on his balance relative to the rest of the hard carries? Fact: Every hero is counterable. Heresay: but it seems like if a team is desperate to win, he is often that hero. He is a staple ban, and it seems people dislike Magebane pickers as much as Scout pickers; the difference is Magebane is actually picked competitively. I have been really happy seeing The Dark Lady, Silhouette, Puppet Master, and Valkyrie in the competitive scene lately. I know the passive spell-cast slow was removed recently - do you feel like that was sufficient?

• Last question - what was your favourite change from today's balance patch?

Overall I feel like HoN is sublimely balanced. Keep up the great work.

Thanks!!

[[HYSZ]HYESZ]

Do you feel that heroes/items that interact Do you think a melee hero with above average range (like 250 or something; enough to attack a creep from behind an allied unit or so) would introduce inherent problems with the design andr standards of abilities/item (like abysmal skull), or would it be a matter of the heros kit?

Similarly, do you think breaking max movement speed for certain characters (like blitz or warbest) would present significant problems?
Or what if it was raised alltogether? (for example to 750)

[PzKw]

When are we doing the next community patch to visit all the stuff we didn't get to in the last one, and meet the actual stated intent of the patch?

[[PSBs]fudgecookies]

Terrible patch, nerf Salforis and MK PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

MK is already nerfed enough. the only nerf they can do is probably change his skills which is stupid.

[Sphynx]

What does an increase/decrease of an attribute by 0.05 do in this patch? Over 24 level ups it is only a matter of 1.2 stat and doesn't affect the end game by a whole lot (0.168 armor, 22.8hp, 15.6mp, ~0.04hpregen, ~0.5mpregen). Early game its at most a +/-1 to mana/hp and +/-0.007 armor.

[Jeroz]

those 0.05 ones are more likely just to standardise the stats. Now there shouldn't be any that has stat gain with double decimal points. It's not really a balance change but to streamline the process, nor don't think it should have an impact anyway.

however even without those ones there are still 22 heroes out of 30 that had significant changes. I don't really think it's smart to keep on dwelling on it and ignores the actual balance changes.

[Cyferion]

How do you see Blitz as a hero? His highly "Blitzkrieg" ability is highly situation, yet is very unrewarding.

It surprises me that you didn't allow him to go beyond 522ms (with ability), he is after all, the only hero designed around pure movespeed manipulating mechanics.

[Mediocre]

"balance changes too 30 heroes incoming!"

I dont consider stat round-ups in the 0.05 range "balance changes".

[MAKEEMSAYUGH]

Will s2 rework recent heroes that I think most find to be fairly useless or at least always overshadowed by other heroes of a similar nature. Namely blitz , shadowblade, Gemini , kinesis. While these heroes are unique, they have little impact on a game, minus a farmed shadow blade, however this hero can only carry, farms very slowly and has a horrid early game . Kinesis is debatable , some like her burst potential . I however feel that there is no point picking him over standard int solo / supports such as tort, witch , pyro.



also, will s2 acknowledge the power of built in escape mechs in future hero design? Such factors dominate competitive play and have been the death of former powerful heroes like soulstealer , which is now dumpster tier.

[[S2]ElementUser]

When will you redeem yourself for the loss against DivA during the S2 Midwars Tournament?

[MushidoZ]

Here are my questions and worries :

1)
DogKaizer: When you just buff or just nerf heroes you end up forgetting about other areas of balance in the game such as items.

I believe shrunken and portal key are in much bigger need of attention than, say, hellflower, as it makes some heroes skyrocket in terms of strength (deadwood and pebbles come to mind), as you more or less hint there:

DogKaizer: These are two items that are very popular but they also affect so many different areas of the game that touching them is difficult at best. Most of the time it's better to address the heroes that may use these items rather than the items themselves.

So then, why aren’t characters like deadwood nerfed?

2)
Why is it that pestilence’s movespeed skill prevails over blitz’s ult? Why is a regular skill stronger/more effective than another character’s ultimate?… when all of his skills are already pretty much weak?

3)
Blitz is mad fun to play, and I recently discovered him. He is however pretty weak. I read you are talking about buffing him, but my question is, would it be possible to keep his spirit alive and have SIGNIFICANT changes that would make him stronger without ruining its gameplay?

4)
Shouldn’t Blitz’s blitzkrieg have no movespeed damage limitation? Would it be viable or the max would make this gamebreaking like deadwood’s ult that has absolutely everything in one single attack?

5)
I never understood why deadwood have a copy paste of with slayer / pyromancer’s ults, with added benefits (and mighty strong ones at that!). I also never understood why witch slayer has the same ult as pyromancer (with minor change to the damage), why flint has pretty much the same ult as scout, and probably some other examples the like I can’t seem to pinpoint right now. SOOOO the question is : Are there any plans to make those characters' ultimates DIFFERENT (as in, new ones, that other heroes do not have), in more ways than adding a slow / armor removal, etc.? Wouldn’t that make the game/those characters more unique and more fun to play than if they all have the same ultimates? Isn’t that the point of having different heroes, after all? (I think ultimates, above all, should be UNIQUE, a character’s signature move)

6)
DogKaizer: Emerald is a powerhouse in lower level games but barely ever used in high level matches. On the other end, Parasite is a hero with an extremely low win % but in high level he's considered extremely powerful. This indicates that win% is not always an accurate value to use when considering how powerful a hero is for every level of play.

I “could” somehow agree with you on that, but you don’t take everything into consideration. Parasite is picked pretty often by noobs and somehow happens to be often in the free picks of the week. Noobs make ratio go down, as parasite need a “minimal” level of skill to be played. Similarly, warden is picked even more often… and she still manages to get a high win ratio. Warden IS definitely in need of nerf, and I believe starting with lowering the range on those wolves and not make them attack heroes she cannot see would be a step in the right direction. I think those wolves should work like Dota’s tinker’s missiles, that deal only dmg (not slow) and cannot hit what he cannot see. Do you think my thinking wrong or unfair in any fashion?

7) Why is Night Hound’s cloud so freaking crazy? Are there plans to make the aoe/silence/slow/miss percent/relatively low cooldown cloud deal less benefits? Maybe even be switched and decided on by the players as to what effect the cloud does? (like steam boots activated to change the stat). Just a pointer, but NightHound's cloud skill is muuuuuuuch stronger than about 90% of all other heroes' ultimates.

8) It doesn't take very long to notice that devourer and flint are banned or picked in 100% of midwars (very often banned by both team leaders). While I believe devo is fair in a regular match, he is complete bull in midwars. Flint, however, is bull in both (in my opinion). Are there plans / ideas to make it so that those two be altered for midwars OR that banned them count as half a ban, or have them auto banned OR adding more bans to the midwar system so that it is not wasted every single time on devo and flint, with both team leaders banning them? Wordy... but meh

9) What is your take on "jungle pulling", that is, people agroing creeps so that they attack their lane creeps and lure them in forest, basically cutting the lane, giving free exp / gold to the one doing it, and so on? I consider this as cheating / abusing game mechanics. Are there plans to make that opening in the forest removed / those creep spawns be pushed further away from creeps?

[fn0rd]

One last Question: Will you answer the questions u didnt answer?