Farmville Splitpush beats Team Players with Assists

[Dafuq]

Some people have transitioned over to HOTS because they believe there is too much emphasis on farming in AOS and not enough team versus team action. Said players convinced me to try a few games in HOTS then I played the game below and although I'm a massive fan of AOS, I have to agree.

 

In the game below we won even tho I fed and we won zero team fights. I don't think there was a single 5v5 team fight for the entire 1hr duration. Now look at the farm on the tass, shadow and zera. These guys just farm and split push all game ftw. The losing team had much more assists, won almost every team fight and a conventional draft of tank, support, int carry, dps carry and jungler. Our team had 3 junglers that farmed and split push and we won comfortably.

 

If the community is fine with this then so be it but I personally would prefer more incentives for team fights from the get go and farming creep to be a less viable strategy. e.g. nerf reward for lane and neutral creeps, buff reward for bosses and hero kills and assists.

 

This will sound drastic and will be met with some crying/ridicule but indulge the idea of replacing the two mid T1 towers with another boss camp. That's right, team fights from the very beginning for mid. The reward for taking this mid boss can be money/buff but can also be taking control of a temporary tower that deals massive damage to enemy towers or a few waves of ultras/archons.

 

 

Thoughts?

 

[DreamCrusher]

sharin, while I don't think you're wrong about the decreased emphasis on teamfights ... I don't know that the lengths that you're looking to go are necessarily the answer. Recently experience yielded by jungle camps were decreased, which should encourage jungler to gank earlier/more frequent in the laning phase. In terms of the split push, often a team needs to designate 1-2 players to carry transport and to b responsible for it. If a team is committed to preventing the split push, and does a good job of it, it will allow the rest of the team (with better team play) to get an advantage. If someone's allowed to split push all game and farm.. they're not only building up their cs, but probably taking towers as well. Another thing about split pushing, is it's the teams dps doing it, which means you have a massive advantage in the damage department and should look to push the pace, and pressure the other team into taking a fight. if you wipe or kill 2-3 while other teams dps is split pushing, you can definitely make them pay, and maybe make them think twice about split pushing.

[MOTHER]

Terrible idea. This will destroy the laning phase and delete the economic layer of gameplay. If you want better team coordination and more teamfights in AoS, play inhouse.

[Jaysi]

From a HotS standpoint, there's quite a few other things playing into why team fights happen more often. The first thing that comes to mind is mounts, 30% extra movement speed when you haven't taken damage or used an ability/attack allows you to traverse the map much quicker to stop split pushing or get to the team fights. The maps may also be smaller. A decent amount of heroes have global teleports of some sort. There are no items to buy and there are fountains/regeneration globes/true supports that drastically reduce how often you need to teleport home.

 

Obviously other Mobas have different ways to address that issue but I'm not as familiar with LoL or DotA.

Edited February 23, 2017 by Jaysi

[Adamantium]

I'll tell you one thing, if you don't prepare to be able to counter split push from the hero selection phase you may be screwed. It's a good idea to have a hero that's strong in 1v1 in case of a split push so you don't have to send 2 to defend. A hero with wave clear and teleport is also a good idea.

During the game you need to pay attention to your creep waves. Notice if a wave is pushing and be ready to counter push. Ward strategically so you can prevent split push from succeeding before it does anything useful. Basically, have good map control and awareness. Split pushing is a viable strategy. It may be too rewarding right now but it shouldn't be removed all together.

 

I've played hots and enjoyed it but I can also understand why some people say it's not a moba. It takes a very different approach which removes items and includes shared XP and gold. You can't farm better than your opponent and then get fed and basically solo carry the game like you can in other mobas. For me I have sometimes felt like it involves too much team fighting since you're constantly worrying about the next objective. But it's all a matter of preference.

[Apache]

Remove shinobi's cloak / ms active and repurpose the item. Remove all these ms items built for DPS and repurpose them. Remove haste. The true problem is that since these DPS heroes already have an ability for escape they can obtain these items and not be punished for being out of position and (splitpushing). Keep the support items that add move speed, they are the ones that should utilize this tool.

[ZERATUL]

I agree with what both adam and partly apache said. The reason it can feel too strong atm is cuz its not too hard to escape. I would say you could definitely nerf mov speed shinoby gives, haste is fine mb consider increasing CD. Another HUGE problem is veteran not only on this topic but overall. That talent should either be removed and replaced with something else, or moved to utility tree(its better that its purpose is for roaming supports). Thers also insane amount of bushes that makes it way too hard to find someone.

But I don't think splitpushing is as close as OP as OP says. I can think of many games where even john got shutdown easy. Just read adams post.

Edit : That farm in that pub is nothing special tbh

Edited February 23, 2017 by ZERATUL

[Revision]

i empathize with you, split-push tassadar is the worst to play against.

[SayMyName]

I didnt read entire topic (only fast reading), but overall the debate is quite good and topic quite important, imo. There was/are (i dont know if there still are, but i quess yes) problems with splitpushing in the aos for quite large amount of time.

 

This comes from mechanics (1st place, this includes map design) and engine of the game (which some could not think of, cause the reasons are more "blur and fuzzy")

And from what i heard- with the future plans with increasing the map lenght, size will only increase the problem

(If this happens there should be some more counter mechanics added- that is correct answer and most easy to fix the problem. Targeted directly and only to splitpush, not "also affecting something else" example: increasing tower strenght also increases difficulty of overall pushing - 5 man together with pushing highground, base which can result even in increased and more rewarding splitpushing - longer games-> more focus on lategame - easier to take undefended tower. So the solution is to increase difficulty of taking towers solo/solo undefended - which is one of main aspects of splitpush - aside from farming- increasing efficiency of farm in a team )

 

 

 

COUNTERING SPLITPUSH - POSSIBLE CHANGES IN GAME

 

So to counter splitpush you can take direct (1) and indirect (2) approach (changes overall playstyle and game itself in way higher degree)

1a) decrease damage taken from lower number of enemy heroes around towers (this can affect only hero dmg to towers or hero and creeps dmg to towers, depends on the approach). Obviously 1 hero does less dmg then his entire team, but this is about further additional penalty depending on number of heroes. This suggestion was already made quite some time ago i remember, to give something like an aura around the heroes.

1b) decrease time to react to splitpush - better transportation in game to/through buildings, better teleports, possible teleport system from tower/building to tower/building, example tunnels mechanics

1c) increase time needed to achieve tower damage - increased resistance of creeps, time of creeps needed to be around enemy tower to be able to damage them- via natural timer example 15 seconds near tower to be able to take dmg from heroes or by glypth/fortification mechanics (dota solution)- this also includes area of how close creeps need to be near tower, no creeps near tower no dmg or very low damage.

1d) increase respawn times - (i remember in aos when i played respawn times were super short, which was one of main aspects that lead to so many problems like this, this should be always strictly correleted to map size in terms of balance), even in further approach, more harsh nerf to splitpush and emphasize in teamfight its possible to decrease respawn time of deaths near allies (teamfights- again emphasizes teamfights, punishes solo splitpushing solo farming- direct nerf to splitpush)

 

2a) decrease map size, jungle size, creeps gold income, increase jungle creeps strenght (watch out mk like heroes, balance needed to those kind of hereos at same time with changes like that), kills/assist gold income - less efficient/rewarding farming, increased focus on fighting

2b) map design (this is hard to explain and describe for me it would require longer post)- amount of paths (less paths weaker splitpush), amount of juke spots on map (this highly depends how they are made, but mostly more juke spots - stronger splitpush), amount of possible trap spots (how easy is to gank hero in certain crucial areas of map, that splitpushers walk the most. There can be even trap mechanics buildings added in certain map locations for defending team to activate once per set of timer) - but honestly i think it would be just too frustrating.

2c) amount of disables in game, catch in game (example via specific heroes) to escape possibility, survivability of some heroes- just how easy it is to gank (solo)/cordinate a gank (like with 2-3 heroes), strenght of defensive/get out of jail free card items

2d) game lenght - how much you need/how long you need to wait to push highground, take towers- longer game- more rewarding farming- better splitpushing, its correleted again to respawn times (after pickoffs/won teamfights)

2e) skillset of heroes (pushers mostly, anti-pushers). Have in mind that too strong anti-push controversially leads to not being able to push tower ever unless not defended tower - which leads to splitpush.

 

 

REASONS OF STRONG SPLITPUSH IN AOS

a) short respawn times

b) big map size

c) high game lenght

d) high farming income, lot of jungle camps (also counts as map design)

d) very short amount of disables in game

e) high damage of solo heroes (again its the result - need because lack of stuns/disables- to be able to achieve kills in game)

f) weak transportation system through map for defending team (in dota sudden tps of 5 like it was used to in sotis to a tower becoming an instant teamfight - resulting in complete negatation any splitpush is solved with increased tp time of following tping heroes)

g) high amount of aoe and aoe spell dmg in game (strong clearing waves possiblities- easier,faster to push, harder to push against defended towers- again no stuns, high dmg needed, high scalling of every hero in game and spells)

h) again high scalling of every hero in game - focuses on farming, getting advantage by gold- splitpushing

 

I could find propably more, but its already complicated enough

 

as for the

 

ENGINE OF THE GAME LIMITS

 

what i meant is that its more enjoyable and easier to play solo and splitpush not even by mentality aspects of some of the people and ego but simply because teamfights in aos are laggy and clusterfak as mentioned mulitple times.

If teamfights were more clearer (both by timings, amount of effects and animations)

 

 

SPLITPUSH YES OR NOT?

 

Answer is yes, but to some degree. Its like everything with balancing it should be experimented, tweaked, working on values.

Simply put by one of categorization of playstyles in moba you can describe it as:

a) 5 man

b) splitpush

c) gank oriented

 

where a>c>b>a and this is one of the basics what gives advantage (is solution) to what you and enemy have. Still strong 5 man should win over weak splitpush. (obviously most of time lineups are not one dimentional but a mix in some degrees of one and another)

 

Problem is where for example SPLITPUSH > ALL no matter what and games becoming boring and one dimentional.

 

From my experience the heavy splitpush oriented meta in mobas is boring or even hated the most not only by observators but also players.

People like more gank oriented or teamfight oriented game to watch and play.

 

Second worse is heavy deathball 5 man snowball win in 15 minutes you can do nothing about meta.

 

If splitpush is non-existent, game becomes too much 5 man oriented.

Edited February 24, 2017 by SayMyName

[Nostalgia]

I was in the Protoss team. I remember you mentioning something about this at the end of the game Sharington.

 

Anyways I feel we could have easily won if we pushed properly when we killed 2,3 of your team. I personally remember feeling like I played like crap as I was distracted by something else during the game.