Oldskool's hero ratings

Alpha is my favorite hero, and she’s not great at high tier.

My point is that I don’t think it’s possible for most heroes to be balanced at both top and bottom, so it’s not a reasonable goal. It would be nice if it were possible, but it’s not.

Mostly I don’t think it’s worth the risk of heroes like SAW, Taka, etc. losing their low tier effectiveness in pursuit of high tier effectiveness. There are plenty of heroes who are competitive at higher tiers already, and those heroes that dominate at low tiers force players to learn to get past them.

I mean, if they could be balanced at all tiers then sure, do it. But there are heroes who don’t work well at any tier who should probably be worked on first.

Basically this. None of those heroes hold top first turret for longer than 5 minutes max unless the enemy top duo is bad.

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Top lane is a meme at this point. It’s that bad.

Two people muscle their way past one person. Doesn’t matter how well that person farms, stuttersteps, positions, or how tanky they are: their first turret is folding within 5 minutes max, the enemy secures a sizable gold lead off of this, and they’re now partially starved for CS because they enemy was constantly pumping shots into them if they so much as dared cross their turret’s firing ring.

There is zero skill in this.

Some people argue that 5s is a more skilled and competitive mode over 3s but I’m just not seeing it. Same cheesy overpowered roams picked or banned every patch; most of the meta heroes (Kinetic, Flicker, Phinn, Churnwalker, Skaarf, Yates, ect) require little or no skill to play well; same overall team-fight strategy every engagement (which is to spam enough CC to where the afflicted individual basically cannot use their hero until they re-spawn next).

I know this has been said to death but 5s straight up sucks right now and is horrendously unbalanced. If 3s had two bans it would easily be the most balanced mode in the game right now because 1/3rd of the roster isn’t totally useless there like it is in 5s and the heroes who comprise that slice of the hero pool would see play because more OP picks like Kinetic, Idris, and Lorelai would be banned on a far greater basis (and in greater numbers).

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Heroes like Taka, Krul and SAW need reworks. They will not be balanced at any tier ever. Either broken or useless.

Krul has always been my favorite hero. But see how with time he’s playing literally nothing like he’s supposed to? Assassins like Reza, Anka even Koshka when good don’t have problems with prolonged fights where he’s supposed to dominate. And yet here we are Krul is played like an assassin and is the only viable way besides full tank but that’s again not intended warrior build path. Right now he’s that bad that not even that is very viable but I’m speaking in general. For the last few years he just isn’t who he’s supposed to be.

Taka is apparently hated by SEMC as WP and CP’s gameplay is way too dumb to be balanced. It either deals too much damage or not enough. Nobody likes playing against it when good, nobody likes playing it when bad.

SAW is… just SAW. I don’t think many would disagree he needs a rework. It just proven with years of proof that he just does not work.

Even when they’re that bad though, like currently low tiers still find it hard to beat them and ban those heroes. So what’s the point? Even without reworks they still need to be better. How would low tiers differentiate between strong high elo Krul and weak high elo Krul? They still lose to it. Literally changes nothing. Still though they need reworks which should aim to make them normal heroes and not noob-stompers. They don’t help the game. Low tiers hate them. They literally do the opposite.

Alpha isn’t that bad though. She can do with some buffs but I don’t think she needs a rework.

Heroes that don’t work well at any tier (probably don’t exist as in low tier everything works but) they aren’t that closely connected. I mean they can just buff them. Every patch has changes it’s nothing unexpected. Most heroes have proven to be viable at many points so no I don’t agree they should take the priority over heroes who have needed a rework for years. I guess there is 1 hero that is kinda useless in high elo and not that great in low either. Petal, she needs one as well. The difference is she’s not a noob-stomper so she doesn’t have negative impact on the game.

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Yes, they changed some heroes to the point they literally are not the same hero anymore/plays a lot different and their personality is erased. Krul, BF, etc…

Also there are heroes that are for rework as the game evolved - 5vs5 and lets not forget a lot of new heroes - so 3vs3 is also a lot different. Those heroes are just not cut it in the current game state and while in the past their kit was OK, nowdays it’s not.

As for the balance debate, games should be balanced toward the high tier - learners plays the game different (don’t know not only how to counter strong pick, but also don’t know how to use it). Good player in the wrong MM spot or smurfing will stomp over the learning players with anything. As I learned how to counter SAW/krul/whatever hero in the past @ 3vs3 and when he was strong - now they can learn too if the balance is right for the high tier. Ofc as I said, some heroes are for rework nowdays - saw, petal, etc.

You can’t add tons of heroes with supa dupa skills and expect someone like petal/saw to do good without being broken as pure stats… and obv some heroes are not fun to play and suitable for 5vs5 even if broken, their kits are just boring compared to the new ones (hi ringo). So many transition errors… what about lance? Hero clearly designed for tons of walls and bottlenecks in 3vs3 map + only 2 dmg sources that made him really tanky and easy to face the enemy for dmg reduction (esp as in 5vs5 all fights moves so fast). Also what about balancing over the new boots? Everyone moves faster - skill shots are harder, ESPECIALLY with the bad lag the game have nowdays! Some skills like lance A are roflmao easy to dodge without even trying with t2 boots… even t1 boots is = easy avoid for any t7 real skill tier.

Not to be negative, but the balance was better with @nivmet… yeah, 5vs5 broke a lot of things, but he did a lot to try to workaround the heroes designed for 3vs3 and halcyon map. The meta direction is something I think he would balance better, but here we are… changes without really balancing some aspects around them. Something simple as speed boost is really affecting heroes. They buffed it how many times? The default speed, now boots… and how they compensated the time you need to land lance A? THEY DIDN’T. Just lower hit recovery if you miss - great, but the point of the skill is to land it. :smiley:

Combine that with the big empty spaces where you can’t stun anyone with B, then the buffed speed that makes easy to go around lance = one would see why he is even worse than 5vs5 release (even if they pumped his stats). Lance was stun and protector king… right now he is just tanky and thats all. I go with lance, but really - this is valid for a lot of heroes and balance changes.

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#BringBackNivmett #MakeVGGreatAgain

Lance: he used to have one of the highest health in the game, and now he has average (just another point to add) I agree the balance would be better with Nivmett, he knew what problems had most heroes, whereas Zekent and Sonata seems like they are just doing random changes without control.

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Obviously Nivmett had more experience with the game and how to balance it probably like three years, where as Sonata and Zekent have had only a short amount.

Just wanted to point that out, but I too agree with how Niv balanced stuff out compared to these two devs.

Nivmett wasn’t the original dev in charge of balancing. It was Zekent, so he has quite a bit of experience too.

That’s not an excuse of the poor balance they have been doing for the last updates

Thats what happens when you leave the balance in charge of a t7 (Zekent) instead of a 10S (Nivmett), they don’t have the knowledge. “We want jungler to stop being a second laner” Ambient gold in lane increased 60% -> 75% okkkk.

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Because they don’t know what the hell to do, they don’t know their own game, some just make random changes

Zekent was/still the balance dev , semc gave nivmett the balance stuff after he was responsible of testing updates with players , and that’s because zekent was main dev in the 5v5 project , so we could say zekent needs time to make balance good because he was doing other tasks .

Interesting, I was always under the impression that Niv was.

Again, time? He has done the balance for the last 3 or 4 patches, how much time he needs to stop making random changes?

Dunno why and how, but the balance is going south. The best balance was @ 2.8 before the HP changes (summer 2017) - after a lot of effort from niv, the game was in close to perfect balance and all the heroes/items viable. Sadly, he would had need a lot more time after 5vs5 release to balance the game again, especially with heroes designed for 3vs3 and halcyon map + for touch controls.

Lets see the changes made by them:

Tank meta; changes:

  • hard nerf to crucible, reflex block aegis. This was a right change in the wrong moment.
  • kensei, the tank assassin: nerfed because “he was too strong”

Anka is op: only tweaked, not nerfed. Honestly, how many updates has anka been op in? This shouldn’t happen.

Taka is shit: hard nerfed, I guess a Taka destroyed them and they raged.

Baron:

  • WP is shit
  • CP was good but not top tier
  • result: gets nerfed harder than Taka. Now sits in a 42% win rate.

Bot laners: kinetic and Silvernail (kinetic>Silvernail)

  • Silvernail nerfed (good)
  • kinetic untouched (WTF)

Bans: Anka + roams:

  • roams are buffed (LOL)
  • Reflex block, aegis… nerfed (again)

Junglers: “we want them to stop being a second laner”:

  • Ambient gold in lane increased???

This changes seem random at best (at least for me, if someone understands the reasoning please explain). At this point what we need isn’t time, it’s a miracle. People complain about the meta being worse and worse every update, nothing is done but buffin the strong heroes and nerfing the weak ones (rip Taka). As XenoTek said, “I can’t play more than 3 matches in a row due to how bad the meta is right now”. Awesome job from the balancing team.

Next patch (predictions): yates, lorelai, CW, Kinetic buffed. Hum…Taka nerfed, anka changed. Seems correct.

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This, also roflmao on taka, I recently played (this patch) a casual with him - he is totally useless in both WP and CP. No dmg at all, it’s laughable(and cooldown on C is also roflmao long, same with the other skills), especially next to the others assassin like anka/reza. Baron is also weak as WP… his dmg output is funny low. Heroes identity is destroyed. For example baron was slow shooting, slow moving, but hit hard as f… now all the negatives are not changed, but his strong side is nerfed. He hits hard as the others, but don’t have their OP kits (hi kinetic), mobility and so on.

For me the people balancing the game are really not great at that. Hope they learn, but… and all this with 2m between updates currently. Niv managed to do alone a better job vs 2 persons that got twice his time to make it right and test.

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Personally I don’t recall much of a difference when Niv was in charge of balancing(in regard to 5v5). There were still OP heores and he almost always took one extra patch to bring some necessary nerfs.

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True, but at least we had more than just 20 heroes viable, and didn’t make random changes.

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While I agree top lane is frustrating to play, I don’t get how this plays into poor balance of the game. How is there a gold disadvantage? Your bot duo sucked compared to their bot duo if you aren’t able to take that tower within the first 5 min as well. It’s balanced, technically, but it’s a flaw in the game design nonetheless.

If you are in top lane, and you are in a 1v2 or a 1v3 situation, that also means that “their top” lane is likely vulnerable as well and your team needs to be quick to push there as well to counter it. If your team doesn’t do that, it’s not that this feature of the game is imbalanced, it’s that your team is worse.

Again, top lane is not a “balance” issue in my opinion, because both teams deal with it, but it’s a flawed game design.