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Stun Knife and the Meta-game


ginosaji
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Combo driven team compositions have faded from popularity and viability since the new items patch and some changes to certain heroes. Many of these comps (Jackson/vorpal, Rory/Jackson, Jackson/vorpal/Rory, etc) were some of the most fun to play while simultaneously bringing variety to the game. Stuns have become more prevalent in both item and in the hero pool.

 

Stun knife is the first or second item on many AA heroes, which is a significant indirect nerf to combo team comps, especially heroes with channels like Rory and initiators like Jackson and Vorpal.

 

A few heroes with stuns have become more viable with new items and changes to the heroes themselves. Queen got buffs and has become a stronger pusher/healer, Null is more popular because he can go INT/AA and INT earlier in the game with cerebro, Justicar has become stronger with new items.

 

All of these stuns can be countered, especially on initiators, with Parallax. The problem is that it's expensive and many heroes need other items as well to be especially useful (Jackson dial/shard, etc). It's too expensive to rush to counter stuns, many of these heroes would be too weak in the initiation area (Jackson) or too squishy (Vorpal/Rory) if they did so.

 

My proposition is to make a "mini-parallax" that would be a replacement for the stabilizer component of the current parallax. It could do the same thing as Parallax, but only counter stun knife stuns and minor debuffs like slows (wouldn't apply to ability stuns, or debuffs like Vespus Ult, Egon, Timesplitter stun, Null/justicar stuns, etc.). This would at least give combo team comps a little more viability early game.

 

Thoughts?

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I don't think anyone would have that good of reaction to turn on stun knife as soon as jackson warp shard in and ult. That combo would take like only 0.5 - 1s.... Followed up by vorpal q would make sure that jackson q will reach it full duration...

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That's probably not going to happen because it would require all buffs to be recategorzied which is quite a bit of work with very little reward. Currently, buffs are basically categorized into negative(Debuffs that appear red in the UI) and positive(that appear green in the UI). We would have to go through each buff in the game that is negative and change it to either major or minor. There are MANY of these. Again, its possible of course but unlikely.

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I don't think anyone would have that good of reaction to turn on stun knife as soon as jackson warp shard in and ult. That combo would take like only 0.5 - 1s.... Followed up by vorpal q would make sure that jackson q will reach it full duration...

If they are expecting an initiation then they could have already activated their stunknife, so yes there is enough time to counter a Jackson initiation IMO.

 

@OP I strongly dislike how cheap the stunknife is currently. If it was me, I would increase the agility bonus from the stunknife (while decreasing the agility bonus from the other component) and make it more expensive. The overall cost would be roughly the same this way. Also I do like the notion of having a mini-parallax, however only if it counters item effects maybe..

 

Edit:

@Adamantium

What if the devs were to create a new debuff type which includes debuffs from items/item actives. That way you can leave majority of the debuffs, and would only have to change the ones from item effects to be 'minor'. Or is that not possible? Forgive my noobish editor ways :3

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I don't think anyone would have that good of reaction to turn on stun knife as soon as jackson warp shard in and ult. That combo would take like only 0.5 - 1s.... Followed up by vorpal q would make sure that jackson q will reach it full duration...

 

It's actually pretty easy, any AA I play I always have my finger on the stun knife hotkey when not using other abilities. It's an even easier task when using it against a channel ability. These timings are all based on split second combos, even a 2/3 second can make a huge difference. Example: you're Rory after your allied jackson combos, if you're 2/3 second late that's the difference between hit 3-4 people with your molo and hitting maybe one. In competitive play there is always someone tasked to disrupt the rory, so it's not like the won't expect it. Even in pubs people's first reaction is stun knife, it's highly disruptive to casters for an item that every AA gets.

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The CC should have diminishing returns like in LoL. (Hey it's from LoL. It should totally be used in AoS!)

 

The duration of stun/slow, in general, should be lower if one target is being stunned repeatably or more than 3 times.

 

There are also no "Tenacity" items in AoS to counter CC-heavy team. Currently, the counter to CC is "movement speed."

 

It sounds ridiculous but it works that way so it must be intended.

 

The example of SK and TS are extreme because the item itself is overpowered resulted by bad decision making from developers; however, the lack of counter to CC is still a problem in AoS.

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Yeah, make something like this to make supports even more viable. Cause I'm so sick of watching raynor SOMETIMES lose 1v1 to nova... Yes, item would help rory, but make other nukers TOO STRONG.

 

Early game, yes Raynor wins. Mid game, depends if he gets his silence shot off, which shouldn't happen 1v1 anyway unless you get ambushed from fog of war, in which case, Raynor should win. It also depends on how much health the nova had going into the fight. By late mid game onward, a Nova should never lose to a Raynor unless she has low health to begin with, gets ambushed from fog with low health, or doesn't kite or dodge the silence... In all of those cases past, it's your own fault and not because Raynor is Stronger than Nova. I agree though Raynor is too strong.

 

This did have me thinking though. It might make zera and LIng even more op.

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