Beta Changelog - v1.151 (Balance Update)

[highdrater]

The beta map has been updated with the following changes and is available to the public by searching "Aeon of Storms (Test Map)". We encourage everyone to play organized games with the map and provide any and all feedback via this thread. However, please keep the posts relative to the changes. There are still some bugs of concern that have not been addressed.. namely chilling removing parallax, eternity procing on-item effects and crackling's zerglings taking priority from tower shots, but hopefully that will be fixed before the next patch is released publicly.

 

Beta Changelog 1.151

I.V. 263

===============

 

Sword Breaker

- Range increased to 7 units from 6.

 

Galactic Defender

- Shield reduced to 800 from 1050.

 

Stun Knife / Time Splitter

- Reduced the number of stuns to 2 from 3.

 

Blackhole Magnum

- Spell Damage Scale reduced to 110% from 125.

 

Heroes

 

Crackling

Zergling Rush

- Additional damage from zerglings now deal 50% damage from 100%

 

Dustin

Plasma Beam

- Scaling reduced from 50% to 40% int

 

Queen

Transfuse

- Scaling reduced from 50% to 25% int

 

Baneling Strike

- INT Scale reduced to 10% from 15.

 

Null

Arcane Sword

- Scaling reduced from 50% to 40%

 

Marine King*

Mob Mentality

- Weapon speed aura only effects non-heroic units by 50% of total amount

 

Shadow*

Occlusion

- Shadow can now be seen on minimap whenever he attacks any unit or structure

 

Vorpal

Dark Matter

- Reflection Damage as 100% True Damage now affects units within a 5 unit radius from 3.3.

 

Justicar

Consecrate

- INT Scale reduced to 10% from 15.

 

Armor of Kings

- Duration reduced to 6 seconds from 10.

 

Boros

Spell Storm

- Duration decreased from 5 to 4 seconds

- Damage adjusted from 30/50/70/90 to 40/65/90/115

 

* Means they haven't been done yet.

 

EDIT: the beta map is now on EU server

Edited December 1, 2013 by highdrater

[zeeeend]

Shadow*

Occlusion

- Shadow can now be seen on minimap whenever he attacks any unit or structure

This already happens when there is a ts ward or tower nearby.

 

The problem with galactic defender isn't the huge shields it the flobing cd being 30 seconds instead of 1 minutes (tooltip + buffer)

 

If you are going to fix bhm at least take a whack at energy saber aswell. Give that a weapon dmg cap to 30% of weapondmg(this way building pure int for the sake of int giving weapondmg on agl heroes wont work, it will still work on int as their weapondmg scales naturally with int) or if it is too hard to implement 100 dmg.

[Adversary]

All great changes except for Shadow. Shadow is supposed to be just that, a shadow.. He shouldn't be seen on the minimap unless like someone else said theres a TS ward or a tower can see him..

[CoolNoob]

All great changes except for Shadow. Shadow is supposed to be just that, a shadow.. He shouldn't be seen on the minimap unless like someone else said theres a TS ward or a tower can see him..

I like the shadow change...

 

Maybe for you doesn't mean anything at all but for pubs they do... Idgf if u don't care about pubs but we gotta be realistic and also help others.

My opinion

[highdrater]

This already happens when there is a ts ward or tower nearby.

 

The problem with galactic defender isn't the huge shields it the flobing cd being 30 seconds instead of 1 minutes (tooltip + buffer)

 

If you are going to fix bhm at least take a whack at energy saber aswell. Give that a weapon dmg cap to 30% of weapondmg(this way building pure int for the sake of int giving weapondmg on agl heroes wont work, it will still work on int as their weapondmg scales naturally with int) or if it is too hard to implement 100 dmg.

 

Alright let's get started here

 

Galatic was already fixed to 60 seconds before this beta.

 

I felt like energy saber was only broken on ling and zera because of its quick weapon damage for mid game.. however weapon weapon damage is already very easy to come by so it's really not that great of an item on any other heroes besides maybe kerrigan (since it helps skillset spammability - boomerang and ult have high base damage that doesn't require int and along with the weapon damage for leech) and certain aa int heroes like null or summers. I came to the conclusion that bhm was the main source of the issue for ling and zera and that i would change bhm before i even considered energy saber.

[Destroyer]

Kerrigans ult doesn't proc items. So energy saber on her is useless.

[iatebambi]

Vorpal

Dark Matter

- Reflection Damage as 100% True Damage now affects units within a 5 unit radius from 3.3.

If you (devs) are going to keep Vorpal's W skill as is and not rework it (which is ok, I can understand not wanting to give him something too powerful, and also keep him as a kind of anit-spell tank), IMO you should be buffing it by making the reflected damage only affect enemy heroes and not creeps. Would then need to nerf the radius back maybe.

 

Marine King*

Mob Mentality

- Weapon speed aura only effects non-heroic units by 50% of total amount

IMO should be 0% but eh.

 

Stun Knife / Time Splitter

- Reduced the number of stuns to 2 from 3.

Great change :D

 

All other changes I can understand and/or agree with (although I have not actually tested this). Thumbs up.

Edited December 1, 2013 by iatebambi

[TaxHaven]

Stunknife and splitter duration stays same but just reduces one stun? Or sun duration increases?

[Ironsights]

Sword Breaker

- Range increased to 7 units from 6.

cool beans

 

Galactic Defender

- Shield reduced to 800 from 1050.

seems reasonable, possibly not enough.

 

Stun Knife / Time Splitter

- Reduced the number of stuns to 2 from 3.

this item definately needs a nerf. this nerf may or may not be the answer. Will have to wait and see.

 

Blackhole Magnum

- Spell Damage Scale reduced to 110% from 125.

I understand the reasoning you stated above, just not sure I agree with it. Doubt that this item actualyl needed a nerf...but then again it did hit pretty hard for its price...meh. I don't know.

 

Heroes

 

Crackling

Zergling Rush

- Additional damage from zerglings now deal 50% damage from 100%

reasonable

 

Dustin

Plasma Beam

- Scaling reduced from 50% to 40% int

reasonable

 

Queen

Transfuse

- Scaling reduced from 50% to 25% int

heavy nerf. too much?

 

Baneling Strike

- INT Scale reduced to 10% from 15.

I would have preferred leaving the damage scaling but removing the heavy spell resist (100% i think?) on the banes. They should be killable but deadly, imo.

 

Null

Arcane Sword

- Scaling reduced from 50% to 40%

reasonable

 

Marine King*

Mob Mentality

- Weapon speed aura only effects non-heroic units by 50% of total amount

too heaby a nerf. should have tried it at 75% first. While his pushing was arguably the best in the game, without the mob mentality he will be nearly useless in most pubs.

 

Shadow*

Occlusion

- Shadow can now be seen on minimap whenever he attacks any unit or structure

kind of destroys the flavor of shadow, honestly. It may well help with the "backdoor" problem, and he IS infuriating to deal with some times, but at the same time..its who and what he is. Balanced or not, I can't support this one.

 

Vorpal

Dark Matter

- Reflection Damage as 100% True Damage now affects units within a 5 unit radius from 3.3.

yeah, because vorp needed a buff >.>

 

Justicar

Consecrate

- INT Scale reduced to 10% from 15.

seems arbitrary. don't understand this one.

 

Armor of Kings

- Duration reduced to 6 seconds from 10.

I'll support this nerf if the level 3 is fixed to actually do damage consistently.

 

Boros

Spell Storm

- Duration decreased from 5 to 4 seconds

- Damage adjusted from 30/50/70/90 to 40/65/90/115

time nerf: yes :: damage buff: no. Boros has enough damage options, honestly spell storm should do little if any damage at all.

 

my thoughts.

[MrGrim]

I appreciate the work you devs do in regards to game balance, despite the misconceptions of others. The number of patches are far greater than many other games. If that's a good thing or bad, dunno tbh, but it shows that people care for the game and that's important.

 

That being said the nerf to occlusion on shadow is way to much. He's in a good place rn with the fix to stepping strikes and his role in being a carry/semi-carry that tends to fall a bit late and being one of the best split pushers in the game is in jeopardy. Shadow can't be part of team fights as effectively as other melee carries. His initiation is nowhere near as good as boros pull or zera planar and in terms of cc they both outclass shadow in regards to omnislash and the bubble. Without occlusion his effectiveness at split pushing and ganking is basically nonexistent thus he's remarkably weaker in most team comps.

[Hogwarts]

The only heroes u see buying Black Hole are Zera and Ling. And that's only because there abilities scale with wep dmg, while have relatively short cool downs. So getting wep speed on them can some times be counter intuitive.

 

Like you wont see a shadow buying Black Hole even tho his Q scale with wep dmg because the Q is to long of a cd and his W is a semi long cd also. Going sustain dmg is more viable. I,E wep speed.

 

MY point is these two heroes are considered strong. More so Ling then Zera. And these two heroes are the only ones buying black hole. Black hole makes these heroes deal mega burst dmg. Nerfing this item will Nerf these two heroes while not really effecting other heroes in the game.

 

Quite honestly I would nerf the % dmg even further Id also nerf the % dmg on ocelots too. That item is ridiculously cheap for the dmg it provides.

 

 

Nerfing BH is Killing so many birds with one stone. If u nerf it hard enough you wont need to go in and tweak Lings or Zeras abilities.

 

I appreciate the work you devs do in regards to game balance, despite the misconceptions of others. The number of patches are far greater than many other games. If that's a good thing or bad, dunno tbh, but it shows that people care for the game and that's important.

 

That being said the nerf to occlusion on shadow is way to much. He's in a good place rn with the fix to stepping strikes and his role in being a carry/semi-carry that tends to fall a bit late and being one of the best split pushers in the game is in jeopardy. Shadow can't be part of team fights as effectively as other melee carries. His initiation is nowhere near as good as boros pull or zera planar and in terms of cc they both outclass shadow in regards to omnislash and the bubble. Without occlusion his effectiveness at split pushing and ganking is basically nonexistent thus he's remarkably weaker in most team comps.

 

This change doesn't effect his ganks. As he only shows on the min map once he AA's All this does is make split pushing shadow more noticeable.

 

 

Shadow is not really a initiator like boros and Zera. A person who plays shadow properly will show up for a team fight half way threw and clean up focusing squish heroes like other dps or burst caster. He is not really meant to charge in head first. He needs to flank, Coming in from odd angles or from behind.

But on the other hand Shadow has strong initiation powers with his vortex. Its a free aoe lock box for his team. Shadow has a strong team fight. He has two skills that disrupt the team fight. He just has a higher skill cap then most. His vortex can make or break a team fight. So can his ult. Its still a 2 sec blind. Thats pretty much a 2 second aoe silence.

 

You just need to play smart. Shadow is still a ridiculous strong hero when he is played properly.

[MOTHER]

The nerf to baneling strike is completely uncalled for. If the problem with Queen was her uber utility you already nerfed the heal severely (I would've reduced it to 30-35%, increased the CD, or just made it into a heal over time). If it was her pushing power, you could've reduced the damage from or removed the baneling strike's ability to affect structures or reduced the bonus damage the ultralisk has against structures.

 

Baneling strike was already nerfed several times before, costs an arm and a leg when it comes to energy and the skill tends to fall off late game unless you build full int but that has a trade off. Consider also the number of abilities that hard counter the skill. By reducing the scaling, you have crippled Queen's only true defensive and offensive attack since her melee AA is worthless.

 

The damage re-adjustment on Boros' SS is also unnecessary and should've been left as is.

 

The other changes you introduced are welcome, in particular the change to Shadow. However based on these changes, you did not really succeed at addressing your troublesome push comps. Unix, Garamond, Queen and MK will still eat towers alive (because the very things that made them good at pushing were not addressed fully). And I must ask, what happened about the fix to Shadowmourne Gara?

 

Also,

 

Edited December 1, 2013 by Jessika

[MrGrim]

This change doesn't effect his ganks. As he only shows on the min map once he AA's All this does is make split pushing shadow more noticeable.

 

 

Shadow is not really a initiator like boros and Zera. A person who plays shadow properly will show up for a team fight half way threw and clean up focusing squish heroes like other dps or burst caster. He is not really meant to charge in head first. He needs to flank, Coming in from odd angles or from behind.

But on the other hand Shadow has strong initiation powers with his vortex. Its a free aoe lock box for his team. Shadow has a strong team fight. He has two skills that disrupt the team fight. He just has a higher skill cap then most. His vortex can make or break a team fight. So can his ult. Its still a 2 sec blind. Thats pretty much a 2 second aoe silence.

 

You just need to play smart. Shadow is still a ridiculous strong hero when he is played properly.

 

I agree with you 100%. I completely understand about his positioning, that he's 1 of the few heroes where the angle of initiation and timing is everything.

 

I feel that his major problem pre patch was targetability/ms during stepping strikes which disregarded strategy and/or how well the opponent could react. Occlusion and split pushing in general is much more easier to solve from players perspective. To prevent occlusion/split pushing, a counter pusher and awareness is all you really need which is part of the skill cap for aos. Nerfing that rewards players too lazy to notice large creeps at a tower, for ex, or creep waves disappearing mid lane or a tower getting dpsed town solo and thats all part of being a conscious aware player. Occlusion raises the skill cap of all involved. It gives the shadow player the option to backdoor if the teams down or the other guys occupied plus it gives the opposing team an option to set up ganks to an overzealous shadow who relies too heavily on splitpushing. Removing that takes away alot of fun in playing shadow plus I think it might be a purely pub fix since call outs are so much more present in ihs.

 

I hope you guys do implement it in the beta since it exists to try changes and I hope my reasoning gets backed by actual gameplay.

[highdrater]

The occlusion nerf which hasn't been implemented yet will be done to help prevent backdooring/split pushing or in my own terms cheesing. The problem being faced is that someone fully map aware via the minimap has to continuously search around for a shadow about to sneak a tower and when you're in a team fight you don't have that luxury. So what's happened in the past is shadow can win games if you have heroes who can turtle towers. It's been complained for over a year that split pushing is way too strong and does not promote any kind of team play. The teleport talent was changed to only porting to allied structures or siege creep such that if a Garamond was to try to teleport in, clear the wave and take the tower within 6 seconds the enemy player would have an easier chance of recognizing when this could happen. And now shadow can be noticed when he is attacking creep in a lane. He can still run through the river past regular wards and not be seen which is still a great passive for his jungle/hanker role, but at the same time he will have a harder time trying to cheese towers.

 

 

[zeeeend]

Galatic was already fixed to 60 seconds before this beta.

 

I felt like energy saber was only broken on ling and zera because of its quick weapon damage for mid game.. however weapon weapon damage is already very easy to come by so it's really not that great of an item on any other heroes besides maybe kerrigan (since it helps skillset spammability - boomerang and ult have high base damage that doesn't require int and along with the weapon damage for leech) and certain aa int heroes like null or summers. I came to the conclusion that bhm was the main source of the issue for ling and zera and that i would change bhm before i even considered energy saber.

Never saw the patchnotes on defender.

 

Well it is only unbalanced on those hero, if you think adressing bhm first will solve it we´ll see.

I also get saber on rancor for a whopping 180 weapondmg increase. But i guess thats fine for 3k

[Yaldi]

The occlusion nerf which hasn't been implemented yet will be done to help prevent backdooring/split pushing or in my own terms cheesing. The problem being faced is that someone fully map aware via the minimap has to continuously search around for a shadow about to sneak a tower and when you're in a team fight you don't have that luxury. So what's happened in the past is shadow can win games if you have heroes who can turtle towers. It's been complained for over a year that split pushing is way too strong and does not promote any kind of team play. The teleport talent was changed to only porting to allied structures or siege creep such that if a Garamond was to try to teleport in, clear the wave and take the tower within 6 seconds the enemy player would have an easier chance of recognizing when this could happen. And now shadow can be noticed when he is attacking creep in a lane. He can still run through the river past regular wards and not be seen which is still a great passive for his jungle/hanker role, but at the same time he will have a harder time trying to cheese towers.

 

How about stopping maar teleporting creep waves.. it shoukd only affectvheroes

[Saah]

1) why dont you make the backdoor protection for all structures, in pubs ppl backdoor a lot.

Same protection, like in Dota 2, where towers regenerate hp at 20% hp per second, if it is attacked before creep arrives and ofcourse if creeps are fighting behind (this is easily to develop using regions (in warcraft 3 world editor, similar thing should be in SC2 editor)

2) Immortal solidus and map bounds fix (reported long time a go in bug reporting forums)

3) Darpa still has not updated tooltips of his ultimate (5/10/15 intstead of 7/14/21 sec CD)

4) tooltip fix for hero card mouse-over damage (where attack range and base attack speed are displayed and always wrong/unlinked)

5) finally what news are about the Blue Gene

 

thats all i remember for now.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Saah

[highdrater]

Never saw the patchnotes on defender.

 

Well it is only unbalanced on those hero, if you think adressing bhm first will solve it we´ll see.

I also get saber on rancor for a whopping 180 weapondmg increase. But i guess thats fine for 3k

 

Yeah but thats with 3500-4000 energy on rancor.. which is only because youre level 18 and have int items like grav edge, nitrogen, and sunflare to tack on extra int/energy. An agi carry won't be able to get that much damage since the energy pool would be less than half of that.

[Figgonson]

Update 1.151 - The Nerf Update

[Hogwarts]

The nerf to baneling strike is completely uncalled for. If the problem with Queen was her uber utility you already nerfed the heal severely (I would've reduced it to 30-35%, increased the CD, or just made it into a heal over time). If it was her pushing power, you could've reduced the damage from or removed the baneling strike's ability to affect structures or reduced the bonus damage the ultralisk has against structures.

 

Baneling strike was already nerfed several times before, costs an arm and a leg when it comes to energy and the skill tends to fall off late game unless you build full int but that has a trade off. Consider also the number of abilities that hard counter the skill. By reducing the scaling, you have crippled Queen's only true defensive and offensive attack since her melee AA is worthless.

 

The damage re-adjustment on Boros' SS is also unnecessary and should've been left as is.

 

The other changes you introduced are welcome, in particular the change to Shadow. However based on these changes, you did not really succeed at addressing your troublesome push comps. Unix, Garamond, Queen and MK will still eat towers alive (because the very things that made them good at pushing were not addressed fully). And I must ask, what happened about the fix to Shadowmourne Gara?

 

Also,

 

 

Unfortunately High doesn't have the power to fix bugs or change game mechanics. All he has power to do is changes numbers around. Because this is all Red can do,

[MOTHER]

Having played the patch, I still think the scaling nerf on Queen is unnecessary and harsh. It doesn't affect Queen's wave-clearing potential much but it does hurt her badly 1v1 against AAs mid-late game, hell even early game. AA heroes can still inflict absurd amounts of damage in all stages of the game - casters should keep them in check. The truth is Queen should not have an AoE insta-heal, she is an aggressive hero with a lot of utility already from her 3 other skills. The skill ought to be redesigned to give HER lane sustain and further cement her role as a aggressive lane controller WITHOUT directly giving the team even more utility.

 

Either way, it's pointless - you kill push comps with nerfs, and another comp will emerge and be in the limelight. This has to do faulty game design and not numbers. Nothing Highdrator can do about that though.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Jessika

[highdrater]

Well her base healing is high enough that 25% int won't really effect 1v1 situations since 25% of say 300 int is 75 less. It's scaling was nerfed because it's a little much when the heal can propagate out through multiple heroes.. I.e instantaneous aoe heal. Regardless queen is still strong as hell but if the heal is to remain aoe it has to be balanced around say queen being able to heal say 3 people including herself on average. If her heal is doing 333 health with some additional health regen then she has effectively done 1k instant heals and then some after. Compare to Geneva's q heal and you will find out that queen completely out classes Geneva. Great long lane solo. Great support win heals and a massive aoe stun. All on top of being able to have serious map control since nobody can push against queen unless she's killed or severely outnumbered. Right now queens skill cap is so low and her support is first class. Still overpowered and needs a rework completely in my opinion, but for now she will just be watered down to where she is manageable for an opponent.

[MOTHER]

Transfusion should be reworked so that it heals an amount that is divided equally between all allies in the AoE. For example, it could either heal 1 ally for 500 HP or 5 allies for 100 HP each. This I always felt is a more reasonable way of having an AoE heal.

 

Also highdrator, most every hero in AoS has a low skill cap, especially the carries, lower than even Queen yet they get away with their BS unchanged.

Edited December 1, 2013 by Jessika

[highdrater]

There are other low skill cap heroes, just not as op as queen.

[ginosaji]

Never saw the patchnotes on defender.

 

Well it is only unbalanced on those hero, if you think adressing bhm first will solve it we´ll see.

I also get saber on rancor for a whopping 180 weapondmg increase. But i guess thats fine for 3k

 

INT/AA Rancor isn't really all that viable though, so saber isn't a major concern on him. Even on INT/AAs people rarely go saber. I'd take a pyre, shadowmourne, Grav build on jakk, and usually a Cerebro/Star's on Null over energy saber. Most other heroes rarely build hybrid INT/AA.