State of the game: PUBs

[Hurricane]

Hey guys,

Just wanted to discuss, but I think that currently AA is too dominant in the pub scene. I know it's always been this way, and most of you will say

" but wait! strength heroes".

High leech, coupled with electric mantle, sliptide scythe, and aggresors guise is just too hard to beat. (thinking of shadow specifically)

To counter this, one must get barbed, executioners axe, electric mantle, debatably warp, and other tanky items.

 

 

Every game I start, I just want to play normally; with a balance of attack and defense but nooo, it's always 3-4 AA heroes on the other team and once again I have to get parallax, electric mantle, barbed, shrapnel cloak, FoE, warp, orgo, darksteel titan. Can never get a break, always the same tanky stuff all the time; and agility heros are so evasive its most likely if they fail to kill you they will be successful in running away.

 

Anyone else share this sentiment?

[Azrael]

AA + Leavers Bonus is the PUB scene. Anyone who tells you the opposite is dumb, retard or plays his own version os AoS.

[Nuparu]

I was playing DARPA 1v5 and rolled over a team that should have beat me painfully hard because I had so much movespeed their shade couldn't keep up and their shrapnel was useless. And they let Raynor get taser which meant it was never used.

 

READ: Leaver bonus + AA hero = win?

[Phyresis]

And your proposed fix for this is?

[Hogwarts]

shrapnel, electric and dont fight as a support 1v1 vs a dps carry and ez game

[Nuparu]

^ To be honest, fighting as a team is the only solution.

[akanna]

No derp pubs are dominated with AA and easy to use casters and tanks

 

Its all about personal K/D, and often when people play "support heros" they build them to kill instead of assist

 

If you want to have "proper team compositions" on both sides every time, go play IH/private game, where people actually worry about "roles" etc

 

When you roll in pubs you roll with random teammates and everyone picking someone they think they can score a bunch of kills with, or have fun playing. More experienced players will wait and choose the best hero to round out their team, but for the most part everyone is out for themselves, and teamwork is more a matter of convenience brought on by the desire to win.

 

most people flock to teamfights to try to get kills, and you very rarely will see someone sac themselves to save a teammate (far more common to see people pull back and leave 1 player to die). There are times people will sit and farm nuetrals while you die in a 1v2 less than 20-30 units away. Thats just how the environment is sometimes. Im not saying its like that all the time, I have played in many games with great teams and great teamwork, where people worked together and helped each other throughout the game and kept good communication about everything. But you take the good games with the bad, and thats what pubs is.

 

I know it seems Agi dominated at times, but you do run into lots of different team compositions. I have faced tank heavy / caster heavy teams plenty of times, I have also been on teams were we were tankless or carryless and had to make due as best we could. Sure Agi heros are far more common than others, and you find yourself building shrapnel etc instead of what youd like to build far too often, but its part of the game....and part of the environment

 

The only way to "force" a spread would be to set limits so each team could only pick up to 2 heros from each category (caster, melee, tank). And honestly there are plenty of agi heros that are casters, and strength heros that are DPS that I dont really know that you would see a change.

[lOvOl]

Aggressor's guise is a terrible item for its price. The speed boost procs like once every 8 seconds (it seems to have an unmentioned internal cooldown) and the cloaking is no better than what you get on parallax. By the time you have enough attack speed to cloak reliably with guise, the other team is at max items with elixir. As for sliptyde and electric mantle, those are good items on AA heroes sometimes because the spell resist counters electric mantle and barbed plating on enemy AA heroes. Nevertheless, if they buy HoM+Darwins, you just need to put one slot in axe to counter those two items and then you have an extra slot yourself to buy another utility item, DPS item, or tanky item. HoM+Darwins is like 8200 minerals and axe and barbed is around 4400. Just don't overinvest in stuff too early and you will have plenty of money to counter AA heroes later on.

 

I mean if you are doing a caster hero and can't instaburst down a hero with leech and spell resist, you are going to lose in a 1v1 situation so you either need to combine your burst as a team or else think about other ways with items to counter their AA hero. The good news is many items hard counter AA heroes so you can counter them with any hero more or less.

[Nuparu]

Owl, if they max AS (I've went double TS -> Pyre -> Aggressors) as an AD hero, they'll rape you while cloaked and your TS will be useless because they still raped you. And the HP and agility is always welcome. BTW, there is no internal cooldown afaik, you just lack attack speed because I get it to proc at least every 2 seconds.

 

And a lot of items which claim they hard counter actually don't unless they're melee heroes who are the victim- a good example is shrapnel. If you shrapnel me, I'll walk away for a good 4 seconds then use haste, come back, and rape you.

 

The only way to reliably counter AA heroes is teamwork. I s'pose that's working as intended, for carries should be able to 1v1 enemy heroes or stand up to them unless the enemy is a reliable anti-aa hero (name: disabler, burst caster) which starts a cycle of balance.

[Doom]

In a balanced game, there would be no "roles" since everyone would be equally good at everything. Rory would be as good a carry as Nova, unix as good an initiator as Micro, Shadow as good a burst spell damage hero as Cyprus. The conception of balance is unapplicable to a MOBA, because of different roles such as Tanks, Support/CC, Carries, Pseudo-Carries, Assassins, Pushers, and more, not to mention various sub-types of the above roles, such as primary initiators and secondary initiators for Support/CC, as well as Mobility-Based Gank Assassins, or Burst Damage True Assassins. The only balance of roles would therefore balancing one hero to other heroes of that heroes role type, for example ensuring one Tank doesn't tank more damage better than all else, without having any downsides to make up for it).

 

Now, you are saying that the ENTIRE AA CATEGORY is too strong. There, we have a problem. If you said, for example, that Shadow is too strong, we could compare him to Nova, or Zeratul, or even Kerrigan, and then change him to be no better than the rest, if he was truly stronger. But when you say their whole category is OP, then how do we decide if they are OP or not? Based on how many pubbers play them? Hardly an indication, since most pubbers play AA heroes because they give better kdrs, and they want the prestige. Based on how well they perform vs other classes? Tricky, because unless AA carries do another classes' role better than that class (for example if all AA heroes were better tanks than all str heroes), in which case they can be changed to do that role worse, then we have nothing to go on. Who SHOULD win, a burst spell damage hero like Rancor, or an AA DPS damage hero like Shadow? If that Shadow beats that Rancor 10 times out of 10, does that makes Shadow OP? Do we make special considerations based on player skill, and match players of equal Rancor skill, and then have one play Shadow? In that case, what if that player plays Shadow worse/better than he does Rancor? Should we consider the test balanced and correct if shadow wins 5 times and losses the other 5? Or is he a bad/good shadow because he performed like that against a Rancor?

 

If we go about the theory of AA>Tank>Support/Burst > AA, then we have something to go on, but then you'll find that it doesn't work like that. For example, Cyprus can oneshot some of the tanks (I've seen him oneshot a 4K hp Micro just last week), and Zeratul can kill almost any caster, not to mention strange heroes that don't fall under any one category, such as STR spellcasters like Cow, int tanks like Erekul and Geneva, Agility spellcasters like vergil and rancor, strength DPS like LZ and Kerrigan..... in fact the only category we seem to be missing is AA int, which is still possible on Raynor, Jakk, and others. And what about heroes that can do whichever they choose, for example Boros, Balrog, Voltron and Toxi, who can deal powerful aa damage, burst ability damage, have tanking abilities, initiation abilities and more? It gets confusing quickly, especially if we look at the differences in Debuff-Carries, Buff-Carries, Farm-Carries, Spell Damage Carries, and so on. What even is the defenition of a "carry"? Is it a "hero that is strong in the late game, and benefits better from items than others", which is one popular definition, which however fails to explain heroes like Cyprus and Rancor, who are superbly strong late game, and get better with items than most others, including the "traditional" beliefs of carries, which would only include Shadow, Darpa, Nova, or any other heroes who's abilities improve their AA DPS. Is it a "hero that can solo the entire enemy team, carrying his own in the process"? That could make Drake, Tychus, Cow, Rory, and even Dustin carries, or basically anyone that can potentially get a ludicrous kill. Hell, even Egon, who is supposed to be "the only true support" a carry, due to his mad int scaling and damage through ult and q. Or is a carry a "hero that ensures/ contributes most to his team winning"? A pusher like MK can push down towers when no one is looking, and if paid no attention to, the crystal itself. Does that make pushers potential carries? It goes on and on and on, I for one can come up with hypothetical cases for several large textbooks on this game.

 

The bottom line is, "what makes the category of AA heroes, that you've called OP, OP, and what result/change to them would convince you that they are "balanced"?

[lOvOl]

Owl, if they max AS (I've went double TS -> Pyre -> Aggressors) as an AD hero, they'll rape you while cloaked and your TS will be useless because they still raped you. And the HP and agility is always welcome. BTW, there is no internal cooldown afaik, you just lack attack speed because I get it to proc at least every 2 seconds.

 

And a lot of items which claim they hard counter actually don't unless they're melee heroes who are the victim- a good example is shrapnel. If you shrapnel me, I'll walk away for a good 4 seconds then use haste, come back, and rape you.

 

The only way to reliably counter AA heroes is teamwork. I s'pose that's working as intended, for carries should be able to 1v1 enemy heroes or stand up to them unless the enemy is a reliable anti-aa hero (name: disabler, burst caster) which starts a cycle of balance.

 

Maybe it is bugged, but there seems to be an internal cooldown on the attack movement portion of guise as I have tested it in single player and concluded it is a bad item after testing a build I was experimenting with for Boros. Test it yourself. The cloak part works, but the speed part only works like once every 8-10 seconds.

[EterNity]

Kay here's my proposed solutions:

 

1. Play In House.

 

2. Make a pub game option that you can select before starting the game that globally nerf the attack speed and the weapon damage of all hero by 50%.

 

3. List a series of hero that's underplayed in pub games and give them a 50% increase in stats if the game is public.

 

4. Allow player to ban items at the start of the game so all AA item can be banned!

 

5. Make a hero suicide automatically when he gets too many kill and feels bad about it in a public game.

 

6. Enable a kick option that allows player to kick an enemy hero with the highest kill count.