4.0 Meta Discussion (Ft. Bruisers & CC)

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I just read @ThePinkOtter’s (Yeah that nerd) recent post and some very good points were made (As well as changes I could 100% get behind) and I am making this post since it was closed, so Imma try to keep it a bit more organized. (Keep in mind this is mostly gonna be me paraphrasing @ThePinkOtter’s post, but in a more organized matter to continue the discussion cause I really liked what @ThePinkOtter had to say there …so credit for most of the content here goes to @ThePinkOtter )

THE PROBLEM WITH BRUISERS


It is well known that bruisers are not played very often, and the only ones played are generally ones with very high base damage such as Grumpjaw (As a Baron counter) who’s sole purpose is to slow down the bot laner’s progress as much as possible. The post explains in high detail how Kensei’s new passive punishes his role as a bruiser/tank buster by forcing him to build less defense to ensure his damage boost will remain active and how it adds a weird interaction where being under leveled can be a good thing with his new passive. However, it forces Kensei into a more assassin-like role where he aims to burst enemies down and can be killed with ease unlike the unkillable powerhouse he could become back then if he were given the ability to stay in a fight for a prolonged period of time. In fact, captains are just bruisers anyway due to their high base stats like @ThePinkOtter mentioned. However, since captains have far more utility than a traditional bruiser has, there’s no real reason to use the other.


TOO MUCH CC


Too many heroes have several CC options. Every hero released barring assassins have been loaded withCC such as Magnus’ double stun, Kinetic’s B, Yates in general (Yeah he’s a captain, but his CC is off the charts), Ylva, Silvernail (But he has some of the healthiest forms of CC tbh), and most recently Sang Feng with his insane ult (Which is literally a faster, better version of Adagio’s ult in terms of utility). Most comps have at least 3 heroes that can CC chain you, so generally fights are decided based on who can coordinate their CC better. It is difficult to make traditional bruisers good when everyone gets good CC such as ranged carries which already have an inherent advantage with their range (Especially meta mages with their extremely high range such as Magnus and Skaarf).


SUGGESTED CHANGES:


This is where @ThePinkOtter makes some suggestions that I really agree with and believe could definitely improve the viability of heroes like Glaive, Rona, Kensei, etc.

  • Nerf captain base damage: This does need to happen. Captains deal very high damage at the moment and just makes bruisers irrelevant. Some captains could have decent stats like Phinn due to his slow movement speed or MAYBE Lance, but captain damage across the board needs to go down overall.

  • Nerf CC across the board: This could be a great change! All CC needs to either be nerfed or changed (With maybe a few exceptions imo like Cath’s A and Captain CC should only be affected slightly, but still nerfed). @ThePinkOtter mentions Magnus’ B could be a 99% slow and Kinetic’s stun should be locked under a 300 CP requirement.

  • Add utility to purely damaging abilities on captains: An example for this that @ThePinkOtter mentioned would be adding armor/shield shredding on BfB for Ardan.

One change I would add is lower Yate’s A range cause if overall CC is nerfed his A will 100% need a big boi nerf cause that ability is just plain dumb.

O and did I mention that @ThePinkOtter is a nerd?

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A good, across the board nerf to CC would be to reduce the cooldown on reflex block (and perhaps buff it’s barrier, or the base stats on Aegis to encourage players to prioritize Aegis and Crucible). Crucible was a clutch item in 3v3, but it’s slower and blocking one team wide CC leaves you open to the next 3, so crucible is usually gettingnbuilt later, and many players don’t build a reflex block at all.

Letting reflex block be a bit more effective has the upside of forcignplayers to choose between 1 defense and 2 defense builds.


You’d need to be careful about nerfing captain damage, because some of them already do virtually no damage to players. Catherine comes to mind, but Lorelai is also pretty ignorable if she doesn’t build CP. Yates, Lance, and Ardan are really the exception more than the rule when it comes to captain damage. They need to be looked at, but generally it’s not a problem if a captain needs to build CP or WP to do damage as long as they suffer some opportunity cost from not building utility items.

The new contracts are actually a step toward nerfing captain damage, since there are a lot of captains who might have started with a Crystal bit or weapon blade, but do more for their team now if they start with protector contract. A biiiiiig part of the problem is that since tier one and two items didn’t offer any team benefit, there were lots of captains who actually got more benefit from building damage first. Throwing in a utility item for 600 gold gives captains a reason to not build damage.

The other problem with captain damage is that so many retain too much survivability and utility when they don’t build captain items. It’s okay if a hero can be built either as a bruiser or a captain, but it’s not okay if they keep he majority of heir captain abilities when they build for damage. Why don’t any of Yates’ abilities scale with bonus health? The stun on his B and barrier on his Ult would be good candidates to scale with health. It should not be possible to build a hero for damage while retaining full CC and defense. A captain-built Yates is annoying in his own way, but it’s not the same as the one who is just a better bruiser because he built mostly damage and 1 or 2 defenses.

Some captains are probably fine where damage is concerned. Lorelai and Lyra can both do a lot, but they both need a certain amount of bonus health to be functional as captains, so they basically turn into carries when they spec for damage (or else they need to decide on a balance). Lorelai does very ignorable damage if she doesn’t build CP, and every health item she replaces with CP lessens her slow, her barrier, and her stun. I usually build one CP item on her just so enemies don’t laugh off my damage, but it comes with an opportunity cost. That’s the way captain damage should work (though in the past Lorelai’s damage has been out of line).

Basically, captains should require bonus health to be fully effective, and require WP or cp to do damage. That way players can chose hybrid builds or different roles, but they won’t go making bruisers obsolete while at the same time covering a large portion of their captain role.

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Lorelei has high damage if she uses pools correctly. Her captain path can 1v1 (early - midgame) most carries or mages, even some bruisers. Lance and Yates, both has very good damage, and can, again, 1v1 most non captain heroes.

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This is super true, back in the days @ 3vs3 - crucible played a big big role to a fight won. The CC heroes in general was lower in numbers + only 3 enemy players not 5. Right now the number of new CC heroes + the sheer number of heroes makes the crucible not that important, nor the reflex block/aegis over something like SH. At 5vs5 start players buy aegis mainly because it was the most shield giving item in the game by far + RB as a bonus. Right now it’s super rare to be build.

As you said - after the first blocked ability with crucible and mind you - no matter how good you are, there is alsoways a slim chance to miss it in the mayhem of the team fight with 20 players and small mobile phone screen (esp if there is other sound source around you). So, you use it once and then you have 3 more BIG CC abilities coming your way… also I noticed that recently after the nerfs, the aegis/RB barrier is super tiny. Before you can atleast block a lot of dmg on top of the negative effect. Right now the barrier is so low that this isn’t really helping… it can’t save you from a lot of things like ringo ult for example as before it was literally more like invulnerability if you are not taking the dmg from 3-4 players.

Fixed.

He is no longer a tank killer. His damage to tanks wasn’t touched, but against squishy targets yes. Right now he is much better as an assassin than as an anti-tank.

This needs to be fixed. Horrible rework IMO.

I can’t express how true is this. That’s something I’ve been saying a lot: the main problem is that there is no reason to use a bruiser when captains deal the same damage, have more cc, tank more and require less gold. This is due to the community petition of “more impact for captains”, which lead to a massive damage boost, even if they were already the strongest class.

I’m form the opinion that ranged heroes doesn’t need as much “free” cc. As you already said, Silvernail is (IMO) the only ranged carry with a lot of cc being fair. Kinetic doesn’t need mobility+slow+stun+bonus damage+ ranged poke (12 range in a slow+stun+high damage+ low cooldown is just busted.

Much needed. Specially Yates.

I would like to see a cc nerf, but not in general. I would like a reduction in effectiveness to already hard cced heroes so you aren’t completely dead once you get hit. One of the problems is that bruisers are easily cced to death.
Agree with kinetic though (in fact I would make it so if it stuns, then it doesn’t slows, there is no reason for her to have a stun and a slow on top of it). Magnus… I would make it so it can only stun once per B, also, they need to fix the hit box of his abilities.

And make it slower, it’s too fast to reliably dodge it for how much it pulls you (the entire range).

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