Lets Talk About Talents!

[Hogwarts]

Talents

Where to begin with this mechanic. Talents are an extremely useful tool for the early game giving you more sustain in the lane and giving you a more pronounced presence in the lane. But there are several flaws with the current talent system. The biggest flaw being the imbalanced nature of the talents. Making some talents a must have and other talents borderline worthless, an after thought. I will break down these flaws below and add a solution.

 

Problem #1 Six Talent Points

Only allowing a player to use 6 talent points. I can not fathom why we are only given 6 points, each tree has 7 available points. You will never be allowed fully max a talent tree. Each tree has a unique skill to replace the default skill Recover to achieve this skill your required to use 3 points in said tree then a 4th point to invest into that skill. Thus its impossible to unlock 2 unique skills I.E Haste and Transport.

 

Solution

Give us the 7th talent point. This is a request a few others and I from the mumble scene have been pushing for from day one the new talents were implemented. It wont hurt the game in the least bit and it will add a new dynamic to the game play. And make the players happy.

 

Problem #2 Fitness

A few talents are a must have, they are absolutely required. One of these in particular stands out above the rest Fitness. Fitness is a talent in the Defense tree that has no prerequisite, but is the most important talent in the game. You are going to choose this talent 10/10 games. For any class of hero. Fitness offers a whopping 180 health. This is huge to put it in perspective, The tier 1 heath item is Emerald Mox this item cost 475 minerals and offers 200 health. The talent Wealth offers you 200 Minerals. Not only is Fitness worth 2x as much as wealth in mineral cost. Wealth also requires two points forcing you to invest 3 points into utility. If you choose to forgo this talent and you go to lane and your opponent has this talent you will lose in every trade against that opponent. You will be harassed out of lane and eventually you will lose your lane. This talent just offers way to much for its price.

 

Solution

Greatly reduce the amount of health this item offers. Or make it require at least 2 perquisite points to unlock, or both.

 

Problem #3 Swiftness

While not as mandatory as Fitness this is another talent that your still going to invest into 10/10 games. For any class of hero you play. Mobility is one of the most important aspects of this game, and with the removal of boots of mobility this talent is a must have. This talent offers 6% move speed, this talent also has zero perquisite. As with Fitness this talent offers to much in the lane phase and unlike Fitness this item scales into mid and late game being useful all game. Its actually one of the few talents that scales into late game that is a viable investment.

 

Solution

I think the solution to this is simple. Require two points to unlock this talent. Or make this talent only take effect when out of combat. I.E After 6 seconds of taking damage or dealing damage you gain 6% move speed. I think the latter is the better choice by far. I think the perfect balance is to make this item require 2 perquisite points but have the talent unique proc on heroes only, having lane and neutral creep have no effect on it.

 

Problem #4 Integrity

This talent offers 6 armor. While this may not seem like a lot. 1 point in armor = 3% physical resist. This talent offers 18% physical resist. While armor scales multiplicative meaning the more you have the worse it scales. This talent is still really strong compared to its counter part Discipline which offers a measly 7% spell resist. When faced with the decision of getting this talent or Discipline I will choose this talent 10/10 games. This biggest threat early game is physical damage, be it jungling or lane. You biggest source of incoming damage is going to be from creeps or enemy hero auto attacks. Some heroes can reach a whopping 38% physical resist at lvl 1 with this talent. Mostly agility heroes. This is pretty insane when you think about it. When drake takes this talent his physical resist jumps from 8% to 24 % to put it in perspective.

 

Solution

Reduce the armor amount to 4. Or rework the talent making it give a flat amount of physical resist like its counterpart. I suggest 10% This will still be effective early game but scale into late game.

 

Problem #4 Cunning

This is the only talent that offers offensive capabilities to spell casters and its pretty weak. It offers a measly 5% increased spell damage. This is a talent I never invest in. This talent does nothing for me early game. And its scaling late game is unnoticeable on most heroes. In fact the only hero I would invest this talent on is Queen seeing it procs on every baneling and Queen spawns 14 banes with lvl 4 Q. But with the nerfs to queens Q in mana cost I still rather invest into the utility tree for a stronger lane phase. Lets take Cyprus his ult does 800 base damage at lvl 3 excluding int scaling and pillars. This talent adds a whopping 64 spell damage. Its just not feasible to invest into this talent. If im playing a int hero with a decent auto attack. Like Null I will invest into the flat weapon damage over this 10/10 games.

 

Solution

Buff this talent to 10%. I think this is reasonable only two items offer increased spell damage by a % and that is Yamato at 25% and Gravity adding 20% true damage based on spell damage dealt.

 

Problem #5 Haste

The biggest change I would like to make in regarding talents is this one. I feel this talent only offers benefits to AA heroes. I can not see any hero investing into this talent other then a hero that deals damage based off its auto attack. Be it Darpa dealing physical damage or a battle mage like Leo dealing spell damage. I think the implementation of this talent just pushes away all other types of heroes from the offensive tree as a whole. And lets be honest here. I hardly ever see this item used by AA heroes regardless. Seeing Fitness and Swiftness are mandatory that leaves them 4 talent points left, meaning they have to invest all 4 talent points to unlock haste leaving out other incredibly useful talents like Integrity or Youth. Most just opt out to use recover and get the stronger early game sustain talents. Over all this talent is lacking.

 

Solution

I would personally like to see this talent taken out as a whole, and replaced with another. Now before I get bashed by the community for what im about to suggest listen to my reasoning. I am not trying to turn this game into a more refined copy of LOL by any means. But I feel if we replace Haste with a skill similar to Ignite. A single target skill that deals damage over time and reduces all healing effects that scales with hero level. We will be adding a new dynamic to the game and open the offensive tree to more heroes then just AA. Lets use Cyprus for an example. It would be extremely viable to invest 4 points into the offensive tree as Cyprus where as before it was insane to think such a thing. I would take Might, Cunning (after its buff above) Veteran and this new DOT skill. I would take might for better last hit and more aggressive harass in lane. I would take Cunning for an early game spell dmg boost that scales well into late game. I would take veteran to reach lvl 6 faster then my opponent so I could potentially snow ball my lane. Then I would take the new DOT skill to give me a much stronger all in. With cyprus this all in would take place at lvl 6. This new DOT skill will work with any hero that wants to be aggressive early game. At the sacrifice of sustain and defense. This item will work great on AA heroes in the jungle or in lane. Also if the devs were to add in the reduced healing aspect. I feel this is a great counter to recover which i feel is a extremely strong default talent. Haste easily needs a change and doing this specific change will not only benefit aa heroes but the other classes as well. Where lets say buffing the time scale from 25% over 6 secs to 35% over 6 seconds will still only benefit aa heroes. Your not going to see lets say a Drake invest into haste so that way he can reduce the channel time of his ult. "Runs for the hills for suggesting a LOL mechanic to be implemented in this game" Any way that's my two cents on this talent.

 

Problem #6 Recover

As i said above I feel this talent is to strong. Its a great heal early game and scales really well into the late game. This talent has been to many times the difference between life and death. This item heals 60+15% of max health over 6 seconds. Now ever hero is going to take Fitness for an increased 180 health. This is giving each hero roughly about 600-800 life at level 1. So at level one this item heals for 150-180 health. I think this is just to much healing early game when u add in the mana sustain also. Especially seeing this is a default talent. Allowing to invest heavily into other early sustain talents. I feel this talent makes early game to noob friendly. I feel this item is way to strong late game. The average dps carry is going to be pushing 2.6-3k health and the average tank is going to be pushing 4k-5k health. So lets use 3500 as middle ground when you press recover you heal for 585 health over 6 seconds. I just think this is to high. Its easily to high when you consider it on lets say a Micro with 4.5k hp and 80% physical resist and 60+ spell resist. You heal for 735 hp at 4.5k

 

Solution

A flat nerf to the base heal and the scaling of this talent. I mean its free and its a dual sustain in mana / health. Or... if you decided to take my suggestion to the haste change I would be more comfortable in keeping this talent at its current strength.

 

 

 

Well this is all I have in mind at the moment. I feel like there are a lot of talents underused not mentioned but there still great in there own right there just out classed by other talents. If these other "mandatory" talents are changed i feel the more unused talents might be considered more often. If there is anything you think I missed or any of my suggestions are to just off base please feel free to let me know!! Lets make a better AOS together!!!

[MOTHER]

You're very good at articulating your thoughts. Good read and I agree completely. (Although I would never get cunning on any hero, not even Queen)

 

Although one of the ideas I had was the opposite of adding talent points but reducing them to 3 points. You need one point in a talent tree to obtain the unique skill (F) and you have another to do with as you please. The catch is though, all talents would be buffed, made more dynamic and useful, with their presence more pronounced through out the game. Basically, less points, less talents per hero per match but better stronger talents.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Jessika

[CrazySoldier]

I like this thread because it has color.

Also i always found myself wanting recover more than any of the other talents lol.

[EterNity]

I was there in the mumble when we brought this up. I agree with you and the link as promised!

[BestZeratul]

I think talents should just be removed to be honest, this would be much easier to balance too.

[BestPlayer]

I think talents should just be removed to be honest, this would be much easier to balance too.

 

This strikes me as the best solution.

 

Talents

Problem #1 Talents

They are there.

 

Solution

Remove them.

Edited November 24, 2013 by Soedenone

[Indo]

why not re implement the old talent tree? :3

[Hogwarts]

why not re implement the old talent tree? :3

 

Devs felt the old tree was to daunting for new players they wanted to make it more simple while still being useful

[Indo]

it gave way more alternatives though, i really miss it

[Destroyer]

I don't get fitness on my veteran bio build :D. But yeah I agree with everything in the OP.

[Figgonson]

Or we could replace haste with shrivel. I always loved that talent. everything else is pretty spot on

Edited November 24, 2013 by Figgonson

[Doom]

Cunning OK on vergil, as he is almost never going to AA anything, especially in an IH, where he's likely to be put 1v2 in hard lane, where he'll take lots of damage if he dares to go right beside creep wave.

[solrflare]

Devs felt the old tree was to daunting for new players they wanted to make it more simple while still being useful

 

Wait, what? I've seen the old tree. When I first started playing in ~Dec '12, I was utterly confused by which talents are good with which heroes. I went Default Talents for the first 3 months I played, because I had no clue wtf to use.

[Jaysi]

Wait, what? I've seen the old tree. When I first started playing in ~Dec '12, I was utterly confused by which talents are good with which heroes. I went Default Talents for the first 3 months I played, because I had no clue wtf to use.

 

And that's why they simplified it. Would be nice if they extended the time you could edit your talent builds before they were implemented onto your hero(ie, allow you up until creep spawn to select your talents for the current game).

 

As for your suggestion for Haste, I just don't like Ignite in general in LoL, and I would hate to be Ignited by every pub shadow and zera... It sounds so annoying.

 

What if instead you changed Haste to 50% Time for 4 seconds(200% total, compared to current 150% total)? It would be useful on AA and channel heroes(Id much rather pick Fortify on Drake of course...), it could also be a potential escape talent for heroes like Raynor. Why use it as an escape over Fortify? There's a lot of times where distance between enemies is better and safer than high resist to enemies. Maybe even add in a little extra CD reduction with it to encourage mobile casters to get it.

[Moo]

The haste could be changed to give a flat reduction on all cooldowns in addition to the timescale. The flat reduction would work like egon's passive, so casters could potentially get a second round of spells of in very quick succession with the flat amount of seconds taken off of the current cooldown and the timescale. This would also benefit dps heroes with the timescale bonus (which I think should also be increased by a bit), and heroes with very good low cd abilities (darpa's jump) to make them be able to spam their skills harder. It would open up a viable offensive option to so many heroes.

[Hogwarts]

And that's why they simplified it. Would be nice if they extended the time you could edit your talent builds before they were implemented onto your hero(ie, allow you up until creep spawn to select your talents for the current game).

 

As for your suggestion for Haste, I just don't like Ignite in general in LoL, and I would hate to be Ignited by every pub shadow and zera... It sounds so annoying.

 

What if instead you changed Haste to 50% Time for 4 seconds(200% total, compared to current 150% total)? It would be useful on AA and channel heroes(Id much rather pick Fortify on Drake of course...), it could also be a potential escape talent for heroes like Raynor. Why use it as an escape over Fortify? There's a lot of times where distance between enemies is better and safer than high resist to enemies. Maybe even add in a little extra CD reduction with it to encourage mobile casters to get it.

 

I highly doubt a Rory would invest 4 points into the offensive tree for 50% time. I easily would not. Keeping it at time scale only helps AA heroes period. I think putting Ignite in is a great idea because its new dynamic to the game. If said shadow blows 4 points into offensive tree and you require the health talent to have 2x prerequisites points. That is going to be an extremely squish shadow. Its a trade off plain and simple. Using this skill just make sense to me. Talents are a mechanic to baby sit early game. And going heavily into the offensive tree right now is just not worth it. And as i said before it only favors AA heroes if you decided to choose this tree. With this ignite mechanic it favors all class of heroes who wish to gamble and play a more aggressive early game. And if you shut down one of these people looking to snow ball they will end up pretty far behind.

 

And obviously we would have a long cool down on this skill.

[FinalEnd]

Talents are to Op for new players to understand... they don't even know that talents exists

[John]

Talents are to Op for new players to understand... they don't even know that talents exists

 

To balance for new pub players, just make the talents another no brainer just as the following:

rune creeps, vorpal orb mechanic change, unable to deny towers, nerf to lasthitting and dening, the jungle is a big joke, the one thing that requires the least skill in the game gives the highest reward at no risk lol, list goes on.

[FinalEnd]

To balance for new pub players, just make the talents another no brainer just as the following:

rune creeps, vorpal orb mechanic change, unable to deny towers, nerf to lasthitting and dening, the jungle is a big joke, the one thing that requires the least skill in the game gives the highest reward at no risk lol, list goes on.

 

I agree with everything you said. However they dubbed down the talents to make it easier for new users lol. Which in turn makes this game less appealing to the hardcore AOS players like ourselves. Screw the new players, if they do not want to learn how to play this game they should not play the game!

[John]

why not re implement the old talent tree? :3

The old? Good old jax, drake lane with flash & reboot / raynor rancor with flash & reboot, fb at lvl 2 then snowball.

Or were you just referring to the previous talent tree where you'd go same talents on all heroes, regardless of what hero you played. Defense ftw.

 

 

Todays talents, just like Quidditch pointed out isn't balanced either. However I'm surprised that Fortify didn't got any attention, (maybe he's saving that for next tourney!?) People haven't understood the full potential of it yet, regardless of what role you have in ur team, the benifits from it in a teamfight is massive.

[Peas]

It depends on your telints. Im good at swimming and colelcting sea shells. Some people like team sprots and art. Who is the right? WHo is the better? All subjective..!! Is the need for metaphysical anylsis or can agree all that is metter for perspection?

[Hanedog]

I am currently investing time between the Android MOBA called Heroes of Order and Chaos. Its actually a very fun, fast-paced game with matches typically taking no more than 30 minutes to finish. It has a very well executed Talent system as well. On top of talents, players are able to 'purchase' runes using ingame money OR coins earned from gameplay. The runes grant your hero additional passives similar to those offered in the talent tree. The talents and rune passives offered in Heroes are much more varied and intriguing than many of AOS's. For example, one of the ruins I like using grants your hero health and mana regen every time you are within 5 meters of a friendly tower... this would be great for heroes like boros or mogloo who are spell heavy and short ranged... There is another one that grants heroes increased attack damage each time a spell is cast, stacking up to 5 times and still another that provides increased spell damage for a hero that is hiding in the shadows (ie tall grass etc.)

 

I understand the dev's want this game to be 'user/noob friendly' but at a certain point the SC2 community as a whole will stop growing and AOS will need to capture the interest of players who want a challenge but are tired of regular SC2 match play. Keeping this game noob friendly and macro intensive won't attract a lot of those players. A fix for this issue could be releasing another copy that is named something else and branches from this version but then there is the issue of competing popularity within the same community, which could be a huge drawback... I'm just getting a bit cabin-feverish from choosing from the same heroes and looking at the same items that do the same things every single game.... Like any sport, the evolution of the game usually means that you have to become better and better both on a personal and team level. AOS though, seems to have taken the 'school of fish' route, where once a tactic or strategy works, it doesn't get altered or built upon.

 

Enough ranting for now as I really do like AOS but I just don't want to see it get left behind by other, less polished MOBA's simply because it is trying to focus on making itself playable by any ole' bloke....

Edited November 26, 2013 by Hanedog

[solrflare]

And that's why they simplified it. Would be nice if they extended the time you could edit your talent builds before they were implemented onto your hero(ie, allow you up until creep spawn to select your talents for the current game).

 

As for your suggestion for Haste, I just don't like Ignite in general in LoL, and I would hate to be Ignited by every pub shadow and zera... It sounds so annoying.

 

What if instead you changed Haste to 50% Time for 4 seconds(200% total, compared to current 150% total)? It would be useful on AA and channel heroes(Id much rather pick Fortify on Drake of course...), it could also be a potential escape talent for heroes like Raynor. Why use it as an escape over Fortify? There's a lot of times where distance between enemies is better and safer than high resist to enemies. Maybe even add in a little extra CD reduction with it to encourage mobile casters to get it.

 

The talent tree that I started using is the current one.

Edited December 3, 2013 by solrflare

[Yaldi]

It depends on your telints. Im good at swimming and colelcting sea shells. Some people like team sprots and art. Who is the right? WHo is the better? All subjective..!! Is the need for metaphysical anylsis or can agree all that is metter for perspection?

 

Im glad you didn't include spelling and typing in your list of talents :p

[Hogwarts]

I think there really needs to be a change to the talents. As they stand they dont offer much innovative game play. They should not be just another thing the community simply "accepts" like the countless bugs.