Balrog design debate

[Adamantium]

While I wouldn't complain about a boros buff, I don't think he is particularly weak. I think the main problem is his jungle clear is now trash. Should that be addressed, I think he would be in a much better place. Plus you know what's going to happen. Whale increased balrog's heroic passive from 4% to 5% and balrog became instantly picked or banned every game and everyone cries OP. Balrog is actually weaker than he was before Whale came but is still considered so OP because people didn't recognize his power before. Boros has probably had the most "Boros OP" threads of any hero. Now imagine if that happens to him too...

Edited December 2, 2014 by AtomiK

[Jaysi]

While I wouldn't complain about a boros buff, I don't think he is particularly weak. I think the main problem is his jungle clear is now trash. Should that be addressed, I think he would be in a much better place. Plus you know what's going to happen. Whale increased balrog's heroic passive from 4% to 5% and balrog became instantly picked or banned every game and everyone cries OP. Balrog is actually weaker than he was before Whale came but is still considered so OP because people didn't recognize his power before. Boros has probably had the most "Boros OP" threads of any hero. Now imagine if that happens to him too...

 

But Balrog also gained a lot from the new items that Whale added and the change to crits doing physical damage which just gives his passive more to leech. That extra leech leads to a snowball effect because it increases his current hp which in turn outputs more through his heroic passive, and therefore leeches more etc etc.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Jaysi

[OPReN]

While I wouldn't complain about a boros buff, I don't think he is particularly weak. I think the main problem is his jungle clear is now trash. Should that be addressed, I think he would be in a much better place. Plus you know what's going to happen. Whale increased balrog's heroic passive from 4% to 5% and balrog became instantly picked or banned every game and everyone cries OP. Balrog is actually weaker than he was before Whale came but is still considered so OP because people didn't recognize his power before. Boros has probably had the most "Boros OP" threads of any hero. Now imagine if that happens to him too...

he wasn't op before item changes if i remember correct

ranged dps raped him

 

now rogs just broken

 

Heres broken heros list that i think

Balrog>>>>Jackson==Kerri

those 3 heros need to be nerfed asap

Edited December 2, 2014 by OPReN

[Jaysi]

 

he wasn't op before item changes if i remember correct

ranged dps raped him

 

now rogs just broken

 

Heres broken heros list that i think

Balrog>>>>Jackson==Kerri

those 3 heros need to be nerfed asap

 

I honestly don't know what changes Balrog needs if any, I haven't actually seen him played in like a month because he is essentially autoed via the first 6 bans.

 

Jackson needs a reduction on the range of his ultimate, it's like 5 units? Like holy crap.

 

Kerri, is supposedly nerfed in beta so I'm also not quite sure.

[OPReN]

I honestly don't know what changes Balrog needs if any, I haven't actually seen him played in like a month because he is essentially autoed via the first 6 bans.

 

Jackson needs a reduction on the range of his ultimate, it's like 5 units? Like holy crap.

 

Kerri, is supposedly nerfed in beta so I'm also not quite sure.

Rog gains damage if he buys health

i suggested jackson nerf here

http://www.aeonofstorms.com/index.php?/topic/6470-my-suggestion-in-current-beta-balance/

kerris still strong cuz of her bounce...

she can auto attack entire enemy team in teamfight with bounce

Maybe that's good example of poor design not old zera lol

 

Also shadowmourne should be removed or changed

dealing damage depends how much damage does enemy hero have is just silly

[Jaysi]

 

Rog gains damage if he buys health

i suggested jackson nerf here

http://www.aeonofstorms.com/index.php?/topic/6470-my-suggestion-in-current-beta-balance/

kerris still strong cuz of her bounce...

she can auto attack entire enemy team in teamfight with bounce

Maybe that's good example of poor design not old zera lol

 

Also shadowmourne should be removed or changed

dealing damage depends how much damage does enemy hero have is just silly

 

He buys an 1100 min hp item that gives 400-450 hp and he gains 16-20 damage at full hp, I guess just reduce the scaling slightly? The main thing is it is his only damage steroid, but I guess strength bruisers don't really need damage steroids when they have a 25% leech aura.

 

Maybe reduce the search range of her bounces, so they are still effective against bunched up creep waves and like a Jackson ult/bio claymore but she can't just randomly AA half the enemy team. It's not much different from Explosive outside of the range/nerf it has for ranged users.

 

Yea Whale said last night he plans on it having nothing to do with shadows and possibly be a DST/barbed combo. I wouldn't mind if it made a shadow of yourself with like 25% of your attack speed and like 10% weapon damage. That way it can still do on hit effects such as frostbite stacks, pyre, sliptyde, Grunty passive etc and be useful on certain builds, but not always be a no brainer increase your total damage by 25% like the old one did essentially.

Edited December 2, 2014 by Jaysi

[OPReN]

He buys an 1100 min hp item that gives 400-450 hp and he gains 16-20 damage at full hp, I guess just reduce the scaling slightly? The main thing is it is his only damage steroid, but I guess strength bruisers don't really need damage steroids when they have a 25% leech aura.

 

Maybe reduce the search range of her bounces, so they are still effective against bunched up creep waves and like a Jackson ult/bio claymore but she can't just randomly AA half the enemy team. It's not much different from Explosive outside of the range/nerf it has for ranged users.

rog-

AoE debuff immunity is kinda problem too but need to nerf damage first

 

kerri-

it will make kerri pretty useless

[Hogwarts]

the change to boros ult made the champ bad imo. only have the 50% scaling or what ever.

 

No point in using ult past mid game other then an escape to avoid some dmg

[Jaysi]

the change to boros ult made the champ bad imo. only have the 50% scaling or what ever.

 

No point in using ult past mid game other then an escape to avoid some dmg

 

It still helps to keep him sticky to target, since he has no movement speed boost, no slow, really dumb to get FoE or Atom on him etc. He is still a valiant pick due to bola being such an easy pull.

[Adamantium]

His ult should be 100% scaling and proc on hit effects.

[Jaysi]

I'm sure Whale doesn't like all of his Int scaling either between heroic passive and Q W on a weapon damage and crit scaling melee hero. Though I would kind of miss it.

Edited December 3, 2014 by Jaysi

[Adamantium]

Idk about that. Sorob in RoA was pretty mixed between mastery[iNT] and weapon damage scaling.

[GreenSkittles]

I don't think zera was poorly designed. I think his ult was just extremely annoying.

LOL now his ult is not annoying at all or more op

[Revision]

I would like to to see Boros have 100% scaling on his ulti again just so he can carry games again. Obviously there should be some base damage/number of slashes nerfs. And maybe even a very small starting cast range so you can't just qr like you used to.

[Spooky]

While I wouldn't complain about a boros buff, I don't think he is particularly weak. I think the main problem is his jungle clear is now trash. Should that be addressed, I think he would be in a much better place. Plus you know what's going to happen.

Actually Boros can clear up neutrals camp pretty fast in compare to other carries like Nova, Darpa, Avanger, Leo, Crackling. There is nothing wrong with Boros capabilities to jungle. Its very easy for him.

 

Whale increased balrog's heroic passive from 4% to 5% and balrog became instantly picked or banned every game and everyone cries OP. Balrog is actually weaker than he was before Whale came but is still considered so OP because people didn't recognize his power before. Boros has probably had the most "Boros OP" threads of any hero. Now imagine if that happens to him too...

I don't agree completely with your statement. He wasn't considered weak before. And right now Balrog is in exactly same spot as he used to be then. He seems stronger only because of lethal barb change which decreased farming speed of many other carries and their early-mid game damage output, a lot.

 

Anyway, I would prefer to focus on topic. I've reported Boros ulti bug. It doesn't need any redesign, etc. It need fix.

[Revision]

 

I don't agree completely with your statement. He wasn't considered weak before. And right now Balrog is in exactly same spot as he used to be then. He seems stronger only because of lethal barb change which decreased farming speed of many other carries and their early-mid game damage output.

i think I see what you are trying to say but he is definitely not in the same spot he was before. Lethal barb was not the only item changed, both contam and, imho pyre were nerfed into the ground making it almost impossible for a dps hero and a support together to kill Balrog seeing as Balrog has a target gap closer plus debuff immunity and 5-6k health at full stacks. Balrog can just jump on any damage dealer and kill them easily without supports being able to peel at all because he's immune to debuffs. Once a carry for a team is dead literally no one else can touch Balrog. Just a dumb hero.

[Spooky]

i think I see what you are trying to say but he is definitely not in the same spot he was before. Lethal barb was not the only item changed, both contam and, imho pyre were nerfed into the ground making it almost impossible for a dps hero and a support together to kill Balrog seeing as Balrog has a target gap closer plus debuff immunity and 5-6k health at full stacks. Balrog can just jump on any damage dealer and kill them easily without supports being able to peel at all because he's immune to debuffs. Once a carry for a team is dead literally no one else can touch Balrog. Just a dumb hero.

Well, besides that his passive is still doing 4.5% damage, while it used to be 4% (in beta is 4% again), Balrog is in the same spot. U are referring to late game, when Balrog actually becomes weaker. His is very strong mid game, when enemy carries can't do enough damage fast enough and he is doing a lot of damage because of his passive and ulti stacks. But late game Balrog is falling down, because he is melee hero. Enemy carries like Nova, Avenger or Darpa have better mobility and if they are competent enough they should join teamfight just after Balrog jumped on someone and focus him. Getting his health lower u also decreasing his damage output. So late game is all about positioning because every carry at this point has potential to go through Balrog HP in few seconds. The main problem I can see is that if Balrog get ahead enough early game then he can snowball hard and never reach late game stages. And speaking about items - try play Balrog against competent Jakk who rushed Pyre and u will see how fast your health will drop early-mid game. Pyre is rly good against Rog, but u can't let him to jump on u. He is STR hero, so he doesn't have strong physical resistance. Contam isn't very good anymore, but u have armor penetration items.

[BestPlayer]

How surprising that a player who plays Balrog a lot doesn't think it is OP.

 

Reminds me of how Highdrater was complaining every time Summers got nerfed.

[Revision]

I don't agree. Balrog is strong early mid game and downright broken late game. you really think a hero with pyre will have enough health to not be one shot by Balrog? Edit: q and atom smasher takes away any mobility they have and it is on a shorter cd.

Edited December 6, 2014 by Revision

[Adamantium]

Parallax or Gauss Cannon = no slow.

Edited December 6, 2014 by AtomiK

[ANARCHY]

Parallax or Gauss Cannon = no slow.

wait so you agree that its completely fair that;

 

balrog spends 4k? on atom smasher & is then able to carry, tank & gank

nova spends 3.6k? on parallax and can..... run and hide?

even if she buys gauss cannon she wont even make a scratch on balrog

[Spooky]

How surprising that a player who plays Balrog a lot doesn't think it is OP.

 

Reminds me of how Highdrater was complaining every time Summers got nerfed.

At least I know what I'm talking about. I've introduced Balrog as carry in inhouse at the time when there were those snowball items like Olympic Morph. It was a time when Balrog passive was giving 5% additional damage and his ulti stacks were giving 100/200/300 health each. He could easily reach around 4k health at lvl 11 and over 5k health at lvl 16 with only 2 core T3 items. So very fast people find him extremely OP and in fact he rly was. As far as I remember I made a post about it by myself. So passive was changed to 4% and ulti stacks to 100/150/200. But also it was at the time when those snowball items were removed. And Balrog became useless for a long time. We had to wait for another item changes patch (CoA gives much more health, FoE gives much more health) to make him viable again. Still wasn't enough because Lethal Barb was making other carries too strong too fast and usually Balrog couldn't get ahead enough to carry a games. So he got buffed again. And again together with items changes (Lethal Barb and so on) which made him even stronger. And with ulti doing more damage he could easily one-shot squishies with Atom Smasher. So I can agree that there is need for some changes, but not drastic ones like it used to be. It appears that usually problem was more about current items set, not hero itself. So keep his 4% passive like it is in beta, maybe reduce his ulti stacks by 50 on each lvl and take a closer look at Atom Smasher. Because there is main problem. Because of that item Khyrak was nerfed to ground and he is completely useless now. Atom does fixed amout of damage, so its very strong early game. I would suggest to change its damage to scale with STR only and remove fixed amount of damage part. So item will be weaker early game, but stronger late game. That should fix early snowball effect of some heroes because of that item and remove possibility to one-shot squishies by Balrog. I just don't want devs to make drastic changes again and make hero overnerfed, forced by community members when most of them don't understand where problem rly is.

 

EDIT:

@Mods - pls move part of this topic to balance section :)

Edited December 7, 2014 by Spooky

[BestPlayer]

What? Haha!

 

No, the main problem is Balrogs design. He is an odd mixture of damage, utility and tankiness.

 

Regardless of what items are or are not in the game, whether you "introduced" him as a carry or not. It doesn't matter.

 

Balrog has the highest health of any hero in the game (cause of his ult), has one of the most insane utility skills in the game(his AoE debuff removal) has a leap which doubles as a slow and finally a lifeleech aura.

Along with that, his heroic passive nets him extra damage based on his health, which scales with his ult (obviously) as well as with items - and also included lifestealing from that bonus damage too.

That is not to mention that both his leap/slow, the AoE debuff removal aswell as his ultimate all double as significant spell nukes and makes him an extraordinarily good burst hero.

 

In a sense you have Balrog. He is a Tank. An Initiator(by virtue of simply forcing fights and being a big fat target). A burster. A carry (though he is melee). A jungler. And he is able to casually remove debuffs.

 

Balrog has skills from all over the place and is a wickedly oddly designed hero.

 

Either you make him much less tanky in a change, or make his damage output significantly lower - or you redesign the hero. Should probably redesign the hero.

 

I think you're the one who doesn't understand that the problem is the current skillset, or at least their values. Sure, some items (like Atomsmasher) may make the problem more apparent, but they are not the cause themselves.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Soedenone

[Jaysi]

I'm not a big fan of the way his ultimate stacks work. It provides too much potential to snowball or if you're stuck turtling you will struggle to get stacks.

 

A barrier to changing his design is the fact that he's not really a boring hero/none of his skills feel underpowered, which is typically why we redesign a hero, and to actually redesign a strong hero is an odd feeling.

[Hogwarts]

HP Passive Damage

 

1000 4% = 40dmg

 

2000 4% = 80dmg

 

4000 4% = 160 dmg

 

5000 4% = 200 dmg

 

 

4% does not seem like a lot. But thats per auto attack. At lvl 1-3 He gets a free 40 dmg on his auto attack.......... So you figure he roughly gets a free Hyperion incinerator at lvl 2

 

Lets look at a lvl 6 balrog. 0 ult stacks stacks

 

Health - 1345

Wep Dmg - 130

Items - buckler ocelots hatchet

Int - 41

 

A gank would be

 

Q -LVL 3 - 140 dmg+40% wep dmg = 192

W-lvl 2 - 100+100int = 141

Ocelots - 75% = 97.5

Passive 4% = 53.8 "100% health"

Ult - 300+150 = 361.5

Auto Attack = 130

 

 

Seeing that the Q slows for 3 seconds Its easy to assume your going to get at least 3 auto attacks off. Also you could combo correctly to get two procs with ocelots by delaying when you use w after you q in. But lets say thats not the case and you only get 1 ocelots proc.

 

Your total all in dmg at lvl 6 would be 1343.40 damage. This is a lot of damage. Seeing most champs have 800-1300 hp at lvl 6. This dmg is the instant aa when you q and two more AA after wards. For a total of 3 AA. If you managed to get 5 AA, The instant on the q + 4 more "Which is reasonable" your dmg would be 1603.40

 

 

The Damage / Health / Utility of this champ is to strong. Something needs to be done. No matter what happens If balrog face plants 1v5 or 5v5 he is getting at least 1 kill. And forcing the enemy team to blow all there skills on him. You cant peel him off. At rank 4 his W gives him 5 seconds of debuff immunity........