Community Patch Reception

[[f13]`11411181]

Reading is apparently hard.

I voted no but I'd like to explain. I do think that the patch was "good" for the game as the name of the poll implies because overall most of the changes are steering the game in the right direction but I was disappointed with the patch since it didn't have that many significant changes for how "hyped" it was and some of the changes I really didn't agree with (would like to hear an explanation but don't think I'll get one).

What changes would you like a pseudo-explanation for?

[[SmZ]SomaZ]

Kinesis nerf (just why? coupled with the mock DoT nerf) and Pebbles nerf to his carry potential (was his carry potential a problem?).

[GregerMoek]

****ing moron shitters who made this patch, srsly nerf Tempest? Most balanced hero in the game for a LONG TIME and even in DOTA.

Valkyrie also one of the best balanced heroes, only scrubs don't know how to dodge arrows. THE TRICK IS TO NOT GET DISABLED IN THE FIRST PLACE, IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW! OK!

Magmus... do I even need to share my thoughts on this? Okay so his farming got nerfed a bit, it's also makes more sense with the same gaps between each rank, but one could achieve that in other ways. Also his PK cancel is now nerfed...

So what else? Yeah some shitty stat changes, but we're told to ignore them so I guess I will too (already failed that).

Pickled Brain - Seriously? This is just a nerf to 2 items, and one of them is underpowered as ****. Nerf the item that is the problem instead of 2 items and two are problems in different ways.

Blitz... Not good enough, ult should be 30sec or something... Can't do anything with it, GG.

Chronos, phys do magic.. Okay so it doesn't go through Shrunken Head anymore, well that's a cool buff everyone! And people get vestments anyways these days, an item that already counters all magic damage regardless of your health. In some cases it will be better I guess though. Numbers buff I -DEFINATELY- agree with.

DS - Huge nerf again, why? He was only fitting into the current meta too well, we're seeing a shift so he'll be used less. HE works with tanks well, it's just a strategy pick not an OP abuse pick.

Hellbringer buff, good now we got our retarded harrasser back, we all wanted that I'm sure. Good that he counters the overly nerfed Tempest though I suppose. Another buff would be better, maybe longer range instead.

Kinesis, GOOD CHANGE! That one I love, must be an S2 change and not communisty change.
Pebbles also good nerf, that one I like, it could be done better maybe but it was solid still. No more Geometer's abuse.

Ophelia... This was just one of those changes that won't do anything, but it was a nice try of saying "we don't want this hero touched" in a subtle way! VERY SUBTLE!

Kraken... Oh boy, after all previous nerfs and now this. What can I say? More communisty patching I guess, take from the poor and give to the rich.

BS was already OP just not discovered, remember that game when TDM randomed BS and won hard? That's how good he is.

[[f13]`11411181]

Kinesis nerf (just why? coupled with the mock DoT nerf) and Pebbles nerf to his carry potential (was his carry potential a problem?).

If you mean the .3int gain nerf and slow nerf, you may or may not have missed the gigantic buff to his stun. .3int was to somewhat counter-address the gigantic stun buff he gained - and the slow scaling is also to counter-address his unquestioned mid lane dominance. He can win a 1v1 lane by just liftthrowing his archer every wave at the other hero, and this was suggested by the people that felt his dominant 1v1 laning should be addressed a little (without just removing the ability to lift creeps wholesale).

[skeloperch]

Can someone explain to me why they buffed WB this patch? I know it made **** all of a difference, but did he need anything more? Did -1 damage on RotT warrant him getting a buff?

[Gyros_Pita]

To be honest , that was the MOST dissapointing patch that they ever made.
Not because there were no REAL big changes , or because i dont like the nerfs / buffs but because they made a BIG BIG BIIIIIIIIG hype about it and then
they made nearly nothing.
Scout and Kinesis are the only heroes , where u really feel the changes.
Wouldnt be a problem ofc. if they just handled this patch like every normal balancing patch , but NOOO with this hype they did , the most people ( inclusiv me ) thought , OH YEAH some reaaaaaaaaal big changes are coming , maybe even some reworks of outdated heroes that became useless or not fun anymore.
Well I like the small change of kinesis ( and think scout should just get deleted out of this game just like nh , but w/e ) but still , it was just dissapointing with this big hype.
Next time they should just shush their mouth and handle the incoming patch like a normal patch , then there will be noone that is dissapointed because the result is so small.
But still , i like the most of the changes and balancing on this patch.

[EvilChuck]

the only thing I didn't like was that they added all those +0.05/-0.05 under "hero balance" and also used some of those changes as fake publicity.. so it created a hype and then was kinda dissapointing to see that many of the heroes "going under the knife" got literally nothing done to them.
at the same time it was a relief to see that they didn't try to balance 30 heroes at once.
Most of the changes pointed to the right direction I guess... they finally touched valk and buffed a bunch of heroes that have competitive potential I think (1450 scrub talking btw )

[PzKw]

Let's assume an average attack time one 1/1 second. Note that this increases as the game progresses.
Assume disarm is off cooldown when you initiate.

When you initiate on an opponent, you open with a flurry that takes 4 seconds off of the disarm cooldown bring it to 4 seconds total cooldown. You may then attack twice more over the course of two seconds, bringing disarms cooldown down to ~0.

I'm no macrohard, so I won't be making a graph to show it, but you will find that, depending on attack speed, you will reasonable always have either 6 or 7 attacks before flurry goes off cooldown again.


Using simple binomial distribution:

Over the course of 6 attacks, there is a:
~83.3% chance to crit at least once with the old disarm.
~46.6% chance to crit at least twice with the old disarm.
~16.9% chance to crit at least three times with the old disarm.

Over the course of 7 attacks, there is a:
~86.6% chance to crit at least once with the old disarm.
~55.5% chance to crit at least twice with the old disarm.
~24.4% chance to crit at least three times with the old disarm.

In any given flurry, scout had a ~70% chance to crit at least once with a ~26% chance to crit at least twice.
use these numbers as you see fit.

http://stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx

My best friend for binomial stuff .

Note that when farming, Scout can get to creep camps/waves much much faster when using Flurry as a movement tool rather than as a burst tool. With the old Disarm you have a good chance of finishing the creep wave off fast, use Flurry to move to another camp.

Right now you either have to wait until you do more attacks and thus take longer to transition between farming locations or use Flurry to quicken the process of killing but slowing down the rate of actually moving to another camp.

My opinion, anyway (in regards to farming). Remember that I don't balance for S2!

I want to take the time to comment on the Scout change, and a little about the patch in general.

The general theme of both of them is that the patch got watered down a lot due to risk aversion. As a team, we had incredible trouble articulating our ideas to S2 in a way where they wouldn't disregard them out of hand. The Scout change, for example, was primarily read to begin with as a buff to his last hitting and laning with the overall intent of nerfing him. This wasn't the intent at all.

The original Disarm remake was intended to also Perplex on hit. There were several reasons for this, and several reasons why I think the ability should have retained it.

Firstly, when you disarm someone, it stands to reason that you knock it out of their hand or disable them from using it in some way. What this logically implies to me is that you shouldn't be able to use it for any active purpose. The idea of it perplexing was actually the first step in the remake and everything else followed from that, including the new cooldown scheme. I am also generally of the perspective that perplex is not used enough as an effect in the game; where it exists, it is normally tied to other things that completely overshadow it (with the exception of Hellflower, which was an excellent change from my perspective).

Secondly, if the ability is going to perplex, it is now strong enough as a concept to warrant it being a reliable effect that you can plan around. If this is the case, it requires rebalancing to reduce other aspects of it since it isn't an inherrently weak ability at the moment, it's just that other aspects (damage lol), dominate the ability. Since as a general rule, abilities which produce a reliable effect are better for the overall flow of the game and usability of a hero, this point complete seemed like a good idea.

Thirdly, the ability Disarm should inform Scout's gameplay for the unique effect it provides (Disarming someone, which ties in with his general theme of scouting, sabotage and hit and runs), as opposed to the generic effect that exists on many heroes (steroid crit, almost identical to several others). In addition to this, Scout already has a steroid (flurry) which effectively grants him a 4x crit when he attacks out of invis, so a second straight steroid (which is how %chance crits should be viewed) is redundant from a design perspective, and forces the hero into a hard carry role which detracts from his actual theme and flavour. While damage is not inherently at odds with Scout's theme, Scout's theme was neutered to accomodate the amount of damage that he could do with farm, and that was a bad thing from my point of view.

Fourthly, if you view disables as a spectrum which defines what a hero can and can't do under the effect, Disarm is one of the weakest in the game on its own. There are very, very few heroes that don't have an immediate action mechanism if they can't attack. The most common disable in the game is a stun, which is essentially all the other status effects rolled into one (disarm, perplex, stop, silence). Scout also brings Silence to the table, but at most points of the game Silence Disarm is also a weak offensive combination since the two instant reactions on the defensive early game are retrograde movement to reduce time on target and using bottle/consumables/battery to survive long enough to get out, while lategame, a myriad of options to reduce melee time on target exist through items (Storm Spirit, Hellflower, Hex, BKB, Tablet, Ghost Sceptre, Geobane). In this context, the only reliable way for Scout to create time on target is for another disable to be used (normally a stun) which renders his disables largely obsolete. Giving Scout a stun or a slow would make him too teamplay independant, however having his disable combination forced into being used redundantly is also unacceptable from my perspective additionally, since by reducing the damage to make the ability more unique overall reduces the offensive power, adding an additional disable to bridge the gap and produce a proper offensive disable combination seemed a fair and worthwhile compromise. Finally, the overall theme of Scout with these changes would favour him being a ganker/anticarry - in this context, the more farmed a hero is, the more they suffer from the Disarm/Perplex combination, which fits Scout's theme of asymetrical advantage/sabotage/super Special Forces/tever much better than instagibbing supports (which most heroes can do these days anyway) - Perplex is utterly necessary to countercarry, since it allows follow up by your team before a BKB can be turned on.


(Counterarguments to the fourth point were raised. It was felt that giving Scout every disable short of the stop on stun would be undesirable. I wasn't present for this conversation, and never really agreed with it, but got taken out of the picture by some pressing work commitments).

Fifthly and finally, closely related to the third point, I have always detested the fact that the ability Disarm is split into two completely seperate abilities. A crit, and a pseudo-disable. It is clumsy and awkward design that is a dead givaway that the ability wasn't designed with a clear intent. Scout as a hero suffers from this all over the place - Marksman shot not giving sight is another example at odds with his theme, Invis/Flurry where two completely independant and unrelated effects exist and preclude any kind of real intuitive scaling and ultimately discourages any kind of play IAW a healthy theme, and finally Eye, which again suffers from the same problem where it has two completely independant effects - free wards, and also an AOE silence - the use of it in one capacity completely precludes its use in another. Scout as a hero has always sat in a state of limbo from some really questionable design decisions - ultimately, his incredible scaling burst out of flurry made him semi viable, and so despite it being the most unhealthy part of the mish-mash of competing priorities on the hero, it was allowed to dominate the others. This should never have been the case, and adding reliable Disarm/Perplex while removing the stupid damage potential from multiple crits in flurry was the best way of sealing him into a better defined role.

The gigantic issue that I have with the way the Scout remake, and the patch in general rolled out, is that aversion to risk has produced a product that doesn't really meet its original intent. The patch itself is probably half the size it was intended to be, and misses several things that at the start we decided were high priorities - a BH remake, a SW remake, a Gemini remake. The visibility buffs and nerfs that people have harped on about were intended to be stocking fillers that slightly adjusted the majority of the hero pool around some key remakes, and some substantive design/balance changes. I don't want to sound too negative about it, mostly because I think there's a lot of value in keeping the lines of communication open so we can revisit the project and finish what we started, but if we were to do it again agreeing on a defined left and right of arc before we invested a huge amount of time and effort into areas S2 weren't game to look at would be the first priority.

I think the community feedback generally indicates that most people would have liked the realignment patch we originally envisaged, and there are even tonnes of specific posts asking for changes that we actually sued for. Revisiting this project clearly has a lot of potential benefit for all parties involved.

[PzKw]

Tl'dr:
It was meant to lose damage potential, and should have picked up more utility than it did in my opinion.

Scout has been a laughing stock forever, and there were always going to be people who cried when the silly parts of his awkward design were tamed to make him a reasonable hero. I don't see any of this as a bad thing.

There is also no reason the extra utility can't be added to it in a subsequent patch.

[[STLI]Tupimus]

So now that Scout's crit isn't random any more, does it stack with item crit? If not, why not?

[Skyve]

So now that Scout's crit isn't random any more, does it stack with item crit? If not, why not?

Because all crits don't stack with other crits in terms of being able for both to procc on a single attack (look at Puppet).

[PzKw]

I can't believe that question was actually asked. Wouldn't it just be great if scout procced a crit on his crit and suddenly did like, 12870621032x damage >.>

I'm actually enjoying the new scout a lot. Still think it needs perplex, but it's great at the moment. Experimenting with phase-->RA-->shroud-->sh which makes a nice change from my old treads --> ra--> ra--> ra--> ra--> ra--> ra--> ra

[Skyve]

Do you also think the damage multiplier on lower levels of the skills is a good idea? Still seems to me like the hero would benefit a lot of he could contribute more damage early on.

[PzKw]

It could stand to go to a flat 2x perhaps as well, but I'm not fussed.

[PzKw]

Also throwing in phase ra ch SH bash shroud

[[msry]Rkey]

Icon got a nerf, one of the most useless items gets nerfed. At least no one uses it.

I'm pretty sure a bloodstone rework is just around the corner.

[Demonwing]

Before I say anything else, I would like to remind everyone that balance is balance. Whether or not one believe a skill "does not fit the flavor correctly" or "is ridiculous" or "isn't cool enough" is irrelevant. Changing skills and numbers arbitrarily based on what one believes is "fun" or "logical" is ludicrous. One cannot simply go about remaking and crossing out heroes based on his or her subjective opinion.

If at all possible, only change numbers. The next step would be a slight tweak to a skill while retaining as much of its original function as possible. There is no hero in the game off the top of my head that I believe cannot be balanced by these first two steps. Reworks are desperate, last ditch efforts that should only be used in dire situations and should only be made AFTER many efforts to balance the hero have failed. Reworking a hero is not balancing the hero. It is essentially deleting and starting over again.

I have noticed that many of the community members particularly interested in HoNs balance have a tendency to want very, very, very, very radical changes with the impression that it will somehow balance a hero more quickly. This is not how any game should be balanced. One must be content with what, to him or her, may seem like a very small numbers change every patch. Maybe just one change that makes the hero a bit more survivable in lane is enough. If not, it isn't an issue. Just buff the hero a little more in a similar fashion next patch.

Balancing a hero is done over the course of several patches. Large all-encompassing one-shot hero balancing just simply does not work no matter how knowledgeable of a team is working on it.

I will reiterate that this is not a design discussion. It is a balance discussion. While design is an important part of the game as a whole (with the most prominent examples of gameplay-effecting design being RNG and hard counters), it should only be considered after a hero is already in a balanced state. Arbitrary design changes to an already weak or strong hero is very destructive to balancing efforts and only makes it take even longer to balance the hero.




Now as for Scout's change, his sustained (carry) DPS was nerfed. In exchange, he recieved a nominal but functionally inconsequential buff to Marksman's shot. He also exchanged a more frequent crit with a more reliable crit that disarms for slightly longer. This is an example of an already weak hero that may have been fixed by numbers changes who was instead subjectively changed (and probably for the weaker).

Instead of being able to objectively look at changed numbers and going from there, we now need to subjectively measure the value of reliability versus frequency . That is, the reliability of knowing exactly when you will crit versus the frequency of the crit.

Fortunately in this case it is rather obvious that the change was a nerf despite all of the unknowns that have been introduced. Scout's carry role was nerfed (less total sustained dps) while his "ganking" role was buffed kind of (more reliable break damage and vision on his ult).

The actual issue that made Scout weak was not addressed. That is, he has literally no lane presence primarily due to how harshly his abilities scale up. All of his skills are useless in a lane at level one and even level two. This means that Scout isn't even remotely useful until level 5 (and even then he's not that great). Now, I'm not saying that he needs monster early game potential, but every other hero with a similar role (Madman, Chronos, even Sandwraith and TDL) has at least one skill that gives it some type of laning ability. There are some other smaller issues that could be addressed as well, but that is the big #1.

So now, with this nerf, Scout has either

A. become a weaker carry
or
B. become a slightly stronger ganker who needs a dedicated babysitter (or two), cannot gank at all until midgame, and even when he does try to gank does not have any hard disable or immobilizing skill.

Either way, the change clearly did not even take a step in the right direction (that is making Scout more viable).


Despite what someone might like or hope for, Scout is a carry. The more "utility" is forced upon him in haphazard on-the-fly design changes, the weaker he will get. He only has a few very well-known and time-tested problems making him weak.
I am addressing Scout because it is a good example of an otherwise very simple balance problem that has not been addressed because people always want to mess with it instead of fix it.


One more time, because I can't stress this point enough: in this forum we are balancers. we are not designers nor is balancing a field in which one should go waving his or her artistic flair around. If you (the reader) don't personally like the "theme" or "style" of a hero or think "It just doesn't make sense to me", well. . .there are a hundred other heroes that you can worry about. You probably just aren't qualified to discuss the balance of that particular one. Let those who do understand the hero give balance comments instead of giving remake suggestions in an attempt to warp the hero into a role that you, personally, can relate to more easily.

[[ZLG]Kainiet]

Demented nerf was way to high. Just looking at the numbers it wasn't even necessary.

Ability Level Cooldown Mana Heal (1 target) Heal (5 targets) HPS HPM

Unbreakable 1 45 85 125 2,78 1,47

Unbreakable (old) 1 15 85 125 8,33 1,47

Healing Wave 1 12 80 80 400 6,67 1,00

Compared to Accursed. The by far best healer ingame.

Ability Level Cooldown Mana Heal (1 target) Heal (5 targets) HPS HPM

Cauterize 1 6 75 100 16,67 1,33

Fire Shield 1 18 100 110 6,11 1,10

Here is a list I've made of all heroes that have healing abilites. Except for Marty and Ophelia.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38368099/HoN%20Heal.xlsx

I cannot realy figure out how to upload something and attach it here thats why I use dropbox. Feel free to correct me.

[Skyve]

^ How does that have any bearing on anything? Unbreakable is not exactly your "standard" heal.

[[ZLG]Kainiet]

The point of unbreakable is to keep your teammate or yourself alive. The question is, how much are heals and unbreakable compareable.

E.g.
Accursed can use his cauterize two times and heal 200 health. In that time unbreakable is still on cd and heals 125 health and no, that tiny little bit extra damage isn't an excuse.