I made a post discussing the overall meta, but this is gonna be about specific heroes and some strong feelings about a specific one…
So I played a few games that inspired me to make this post as I have a few…string feeling about certain heroes in the current meta. This post is going to focus on 3 heroes in particular as they are the 3 heroes that come to mind that 100% require nerfs at the moment other than…other heroes that need some tweaks of course. The heroes in question will be San Feng (Surprise the new hero is good, but in a different way than usual), YEETS, and Reza.
I may sound like I am ranting about San Feng here…which I am, but I feel like he needs some major number tweaks
SAN FENG THE UNKILLABLE
Now where do I get started on this guy…he’s absurd. He feels extremely rushed in his current state, but not because of his kit. In fact, I actually think I will grow to like his kit and may end up playing him myself in the future. What feels rushed are his STATS. None of his numbers make any sense!!! It’s not like SEMC tried to balance him, but did not balance him enough. They just didn’t even BOTHER balancing San’s stats.
Here are many questions you may ask when fighting San Feng:
WHY is his A stun 1.2 seconds across all levels??? Let’s compare this to merciless pursuit which is Cath’s signature ability. Until overdrive her stun is only .7 seconds, almost HALF of San’s stun duration from level 1 of his A onward. In dact, even when you overdrive merciless pursuit, the stun is only .9 SECONDS!!! WHY IS SAN’S STUN SO LONG?!?!?!?!?!?!
WHY does San’s dash have so much range? I swear that dash has the range of an overdriven Magnus A. Now let’s KEEP comparing it to merciless pursuit. Cath gains movement speed on merciless pursuit, so she is still susceptible to CC which can counter her stun. Fair enough. What does San do? He just BLINKS to you from 9 meters away without you being able to react to it at ALL!!! Did I also mention it grants San CC immunity on overdrive? Yeah does this make any sense now? Not ONLY does it fortify San’s health, have a better stun duration, AND blinks, but also grants CC immunity, so you can’t even STOP it unlike Cath. It is an absurdly power crept version of merciless pursuit. And having to be hit is not gonna make it balanced.
We already see several problems with just one ability, but we have a lot more to go
WHY does his B have so much base damage and WHY does it scale so well??? Keep this in mind: San’s B has more base damage than a maxed Impale at LEVEL 3!!! AND LANCE ALREADY HAS HIGH BASE DAMAGE!!! And it is not like the scaling slows down from there either. It scales DRAMATICALLY at EVERY LEVEL! This kind of base damage is just not okay. When you can probably build 0 items and still out damage most of the cast there is a problem.
WHY is his ult so heccing good? SEMC: “Hey so we already gave him a better merciless pursuit. What should his ult be?” “Let’s give him a faster and herder to block judgement!” Now the stun is not too hard to block, but I am talking about the push. The fact that his ult STILL has an effect once you block it due to the long channel is absurd when you out it together with the rest of his overloaded kit.
WHY does he fortify ALL of his health? His high base damage just forces him to build all defense, which his passive bolsters to absolutely ridiculous levels! Good luck trying to kill a San Feng at all in the mid game!
WHY does he not have energy costs??? There are abilities that are far more fair such as Adagio’s abilities that cost a TON of energy (Albeit Adagio’s passive helps mitigate high energy costs), but with how powerful San’s kit is you’d EXPECT he would not be able to just spam his abilities all willy nilly, but NOPE! EVERYTHING IS FREE! Just…why? His stun is already worthy of a high energy cost, but his B definitely needs a high cost as well due to the absurd damage.
The dude has no weaknesses…whatsoever…
YEETS THE YOINKER
This is a potentially easy fix. Lower the range of his A. He should not be able to yoink you from the center of mid lane to his turret. The high range also makes it so that he can just walk around your minions and if you are pulled you’re so far away from safety that you’ll just die anyway. Also reduce his damage. It’s not fun in the slightest to play against a YEETS…
REZA THE QUESTIONABLE BUFF
Reza has always been meta in 5v5. However, before this patch I feel that he has grown to become one of the healthier meta heroes, but WHY did SEMC buff his passive so hard? I’d say revert the change. He was fine the way he was…
CHANGE WISHLIST
Reduce the stun of San’s A to something like .5 seconds (1.2 seconds is way too long)
HEAVILY (I cannot stress that enough) lower San’s B base damage level 2 and onward and convert some of the lost damage to ratios
Buff San’s channeling on his B
ADD ENERGY COSTS FOR SAN FENG
Lower the stun duration on San’s ult
Reduce Yate’s A range
Revert Reza changes
These are just some changes I thought of from the top of my head. What other heroes would you like to see changed and how?
I like this post. You ranted about San Feng, sure, but I love how you provided some examples to back up your opinion. Something we can continue to work on with these forums - providing opinions with substance.
Not entirely true. As has been pointed out in other threads, he struggles vs mobile heroes. Why? His channel/charge times to cast his abilities is a bit lengthy. It is quite easy to dodge his B with someone like Idris, Kinetic, Vox, Gwen, etc. That offsets it’s ridiculous damage… a bit.
I’d like to see Flicker get more involved again. His ult is quite useless at level 1 with it’s very short duration. Perhaps find a middle ground from 3.9 to 3.10? I think he was nerfed at 3.10. He’s so fun to play!
Adagio Buff. His A is just ehhh and his CP is more viable. His B is absolutely useless by end game and its sad. And his ultimate is just a targeted label sayin “Target me -Adagio” or just block it.
I think he could use some tuning. His B could be reworked so its not as useless as a roamer.
Okey… this is probably going to be long.
I do think he is quite balanced and I will go point by point explaining why.
The stun duration: 1.2s seems a lot, but you have to take into account the requirement for it to stun: he needs to be hit during the counter stance. This means it rewards quick reflexes to block an attack, and given that it’s damage isn’t specially high, it stuns. The stun duration is also justified by the channeling of his attacks, without it he can’t reliably hit the B ability, which is his main source of damage. Also, if you get stun by it, it’s your fault as you hit him while he was preparing to counter. Think of it as Catherine’s B.
The range (A): he is, after all, a bruiser, and as the rest of the bruisers he needs some kind of mobility. It’s range is similar to Rona’s Into the Fray or Glaive’s Afterburn, so I don’t see much of a problem here.
-Merciless Persuit: you can’t really compare both abilities as the kits are completely different. She can stun whenever she wants, he can’t. The CC inmunity makes sense for his play style as a counter attack. Having a counter attack easy to block doesn’t reward a good counter, and without the stun it isn’t even dangerous.
Divine Fist (B): It doesn’t scale well, 60% CR and 40% WR isn’t what I call “good scaling”. The damage is pretty high, I agree, but isn’t that op considering the bad ratios and the channeling (~1.5s). If you can’t dodge a 1.5s channeling ability it’s not the heroe’s fault. People can dodge Joule’s ult, Celeste’s ult, Skaarf’s A, Idris’ B etc but not this one? Late game you can’t trade with (almost) anyone though, you are left as a frontliner, and his B damage is mediocre at that stage.
Master’s Lesson: if you block the first part of the ult, it won’t push you back or anything.
Iron soul: it fortifies his entire health because it supposed to block 50% of all the damage, and the only way to do it was with full FH so different to reim you can’t bypass it. It also last for 2s, while for example GJ has 35% damage reduction forever. It makes him incredibly tanky when countering an attack with any of his abilities, so it again rewards skill. If you just spam your abilities you will get bursted easily.
No energy: he doesn’t need it. You can’t just spam abilities because as I said it will make you die. His base health is extremely low, the same as Silvernail, so you depend on the correct use of his abilities to survive. You can’t conoare his energy costs with Adagio, as Catherine, they have extremely different kits.
weaknesses: literally, any mobile hero.
Yates: I agree.
They buffed it because he was underperforming. In fact the changes made to him in 3.10 were a nerf. He is now far easier to counter and fight. RB hard counters him, and CB nullifies his ult, which in a teamfight puts you in a terrible position. Imagine an anka diving it and once she dives she can’t attack for 2s. It also made him far weaker in team fights due to bodyblocking. His laning phase became horrible and his clearing speed is abysmal.
This is how you kill a hero. Try doing that to Glaive and rona. Vox’s A is the smallest dash in the game, you can’t give that range to a bruiser.
Same is before, that would make his ability basically useless and his B impossible to hit against even the inmobile heroes.
Already explained.
Already explained.
You are right, you ranted about San Feng, and when proposing the changes or ranting you didn’t take into consideration the global kit, only the abilities separated comparing them to abilities that may be similar but with heroes completely different.
Alright you do make a point, but San’s kit pretty much rewards building pure defense far too much which makes him practically impossible to kill. He can have a long dash, but his stun is too long. I am now thinking they should still nerf his stun, but maybe BUFF his channeling while also heavily lowering the B damage. That way he does not rely soley on the stun to hit, but his damage should not be so ridiculous while retaining his mobility. I just feel he should not be dealing the kind of damage he deals now by just building tanky and becoming unkillable.
San Feng SHOULD retain his tankiness, but his damage needs to be built towards. Not just given to him. Also by his B scaling well I mean each level its base damage goes up DRAMATICALLY. I know how CP and WP scaling succs lul
Also wdym RB hard counters Reza? You talking about how it blocks his passive? Also I forgot what does CB stand for again? :^)
EDIT: I changed my San wishlist, but I still think he needs some energy management added onto his kit, especially with a channeling buff
For the 3 you listed:
San Fang: nerf stun from 1.2 to 1/1/1/1/1.2
Yates: Wolf’s Maw energy cost increased by 25 all levels, projectile speed reduced. Overwhelm’s bonus move speed nerf to .8 and scales with WP to 1.6. Stun duration nerf to .5 and scales with health to 1.2.
Reza: Nerf 240% perk damage to 220%. Buff Troublemaker scaling from 40% to 60%.
Others:
Ozo: CC immune during Acrobounce.
Rona: Stun immune during Red Mist, duration between Foesplitter activations increase by 1s to allow more run time and build-up.
Petal: Planted seeds passively heal 1/2/3/4/5 health/sec which scales with 1% bonus health, 5 planted seeds max. Seeds provide 3m of true sight. Ult heal scales with 10% health.
Krul: Ult stun duration buff from 2 to 2.2 on overdrive. A barrier buff from 2 to 2.5 on overdrive.
Skye: Suri Strike buff to do 20% WP ratio and 120% CP ratio
Joule: TS cooldown nerf from 3/…/2 to 4/…/2 and damage nerf by 30 at all levels.
GJ: perk nerf from 7% to 6%.
Lance: base damage nerf from 85-178 to 75-160
Magnus: Chrono Driver stun removed at lvl 1-4 and at lvl 5 stun duration is 0.7s
Malene: Ult CP ratio nerf from 80% to 60%, A energy cost at lvl 5 nerf from 35 to 55.
Gwen: B energy cost increased by 15 at lvl 1-4.
Yates: cooldown increased 16/15/14/13/11 to 24/22/20/18/14 (Same as Afterburn, Yates’ A does tha same as Glaive’s A, but with the change that he doesnt need to get into the enemy, so he does an Afterburn from a safety place), range decrease, dagame decrease first levels 165/225 to 140/200.
San Feng: agree
Magnus: if you do so, he will be shit, you can’t remove his only way of surviving a gank.
Lance: base damage in impale and GW decreased (revert the buff)
GJ: agree, but i would also reduce the base damage on his A
Petal: this would make her a roam rather than a mage, so I won’t touch her, a rework is needed
Tension Bow: 100% WP to 50%, Amorbreaker: 45% to 30%
CC inmunity for you! CC inmunity for him! CC inmunity for her! CC inmunity to everyone!!! Why you do this to me? You knew I have to comment in this, now I have to start that conversation again… CC inmunity to everyone isn’t the way to make heroes that suffer from cc viable. Deleting counters isn’t good as it removes counterplay. I can’t agree with this.
She needs a rework. With this change she is basically a support?
I don’t think that’s the buff she needs.
So basically untouched. 30 less damage in an ability with 260+180% will surely make a difference.
The AA damage isn’t a problem, just revert the last buff.
With this you can already delete the ability. Then please remove Celeste’s stun until maxed, and reim’s root too, no? Also the ordained.
I’m glad you guys aren’t balancing the game, because so far you would kill a bunch of heroes.
What buff do you think Skye needs? I really feel strongly that if people are going to disagree, that should give a why. Just saying.
Overall, I agree with your post. I love reading the ideas and that we have a forum and community where people feel they can share such suggestions. Unfortunately, what I’ve read so far is unnecessary and off the mark.
@Bayou - with regards to Rona’s red mist, I’d counter your suggestion with giving her increased move speed during the ability, or simply remove that she is slowed by it. Making her immune to stun in it is just too op.
You can’t create balance by over correcting things or making extreme changes. It’s little tweaks at a time. It’s a process. It’s unfortunate there is some imbalance, but we’ll have to be patient. The reason there is imbalance is because they’ve done things similar to what has been suggested in this thread… Dramatic changes.
WP Skye is good, she just suffers from countering heroes that aren’t being played right now.
CP Skye is a little bit tricky, her main problem is that her A is easily body blocked, which can’t be solved other than deleting whoever she attacks. If you want to make her viable, you have to fix that, but not her damage on her B, that one doesn’t help fix the problem and would only make her meta if it’s broken. I didn’t comment why because I just don’t know how to fix that problem, specially when body blocking is supposed to be a counterplay to her, but it’s just way too easy to do it with 5 members, she suffers from a 3v3 oriented kit, when blocking it wasn’t as easy. It’s the same case as pateto, she fights always against at least one AoE hero, which hard counter her, so in order to make her work you have to stop that, but then you are removing a hard counter, so she needs a rework.
I guess they could do what they did to reim. They could remove the bonus damage form the passive and give it to the ability so she doesn’t need to hit whoever is targeted, but as reim, that would mean removing an interesting mechanic and probably break her identity as she would become a poke hero. That’s a solution I would hate.
It’s easy to say “I don’t like that”. It’s harder to offer actual suggestions for changes.
I believe it’s reasonable for some channeled, melee range abilities with DoT to have some type of CC resistance. Stun immunity means Rona can be slowed, rooted, silenced, etc.
Yes, I think Petal should just transition into a support.
What buff does Skye need?
What nerf does Joule need?
I agree, reverting the last buff is reasonable. I also think he needs a base damage nerf to bring him in line with some other heroes. It will slow his lane clear.
I would say the range in which his A scatters when hitting a marked target could be reduced. It’s a tad annoying.
In general, a slight nerf to either his base damage on abilities or the scaling could be useful. If not, then a smaller hit box. I like Magnus, to be honest. I just think he’s simply too strong. Nerf slightly and tinker with ratios and hit boxes, and see how it impacts him. My hunch is he’d still be useful and fun to play, but no so oppressive/ban worthy.
My biggest complaint of San Feng is he doesn’t really fit the character concept he’s supposed to embody. He feels more like a mid range mage that uses the divine magic of the Buddha rather than a Shaolin warrior who’s all about stances.
Like I’m not going to get into the whole “realism versus gameplay” argument as that conversation has already been processed into very fine pate as this point. But if they wanted to create a martial artist style of character I personally feel that they failed to convey that in the hero itself.
And his character description is very misleading as only really 1 ability counters his enemies. I would have been much more interested and invested into San Feng as a character in Vainglory if they tried hard enough to embody that aspect of him being a martial arts master with full emphasis on his abilities countering enemies.
Instead the current San Feng is a lazy half-assed attempt at the hero design that utterly falls flat.
Again just my opinion as someone whose spent 2 years creating my own hero ideas if that’s worth anything as credentials.
Lance attack speed is lower than most heroes, and what made him so strong where the last buffs, so no need to touch his AA damage.
Magnus: reduce his A crystal ratio and base damage a bit, reduce his ult base damage.
Joule: TS reduce his co ratio to 150%
Skye: she is supposed to counter bruisers, and bruisers are not viable, so she has no work to do, that’s why she is bad.
Rona: delete speed penalization in her ult. She is meant to be a 1v1 warrior, not a tea fight one, and in a 1v1 situation in lane, the CC is not so high.
Edit: Petal could work as a Roam, but she should get reworked, not just adding healing and % health to all
