Flask has been in the game for a while now, ever since the removal of Halcyon potions because of… reasons. It appeared as a free starting item in 3v3 that took up an item slot and now it appears as it’s own special button in 5v5. It provides a sizeable barrier and heal at any point in the game, which is enough to save a life or swing a teamfight.
I hate it, specially in 5v5. Here’s why.
Points
It’s too powerful. In the early to mid game, whenever I pop my flask from a gank I basically have to say to myself ‘no going aggressive for another 2 minutes. If one person has flask and one doesn’t, there is no question about who will win the fight. Flask is too important for 1v1s and it leads to people playing passively just because they don’t have it.
It’s too powerful (2). Once you reach late game, if you don’t have flask, you don’t have your incredibly powerful crutch to save you. So do you know what happens? You stall. It’s boring. You just stall till your whole team has flask, then you fight. It slows down the game and it’s boring.
It’s too powerful (3). Early game heroes can hit flask once and recover half their health, erasing your early game trading in seconds. Then they stall by farming under tower.
It doesn’t take an item slot. In most MOBAs, you have to actually use item slots for sustain. In VG 5v5, since it has its own button, there are these cheesy builds that pop up (AKA 5 Bit Idris) which have no downsides such as having no space for potions or wards.
It’s too easy to accidentally activate. I don’t think I should have to explain this one.
It’s better on some characters than others. This means that part of the balance in the game is tied to flask, which is only meant to be a sustain tool.
It’s frustrating. The stalling and inability to fight is boring and it slow paced. It sucks.
It replaced halcyon potions. Halcyon potions are not only a normal solution to the sustain problem, but solve literally every problem I personally have with Flask. Plus, it actually costs money. If it was 50 gold per potion, people would think twice about casually stacking 5 in their inventory, considering that with the same money you could get t1 defence.
Conclusion
Point is, I despise Flask. It think it sucks and I want it removed. Discuss, and give us your points, either for or against.
I do agree it would speed up fights. But would you really want that? currently games are sitting on 15 - 20 minutes on average, Pro’s making it 10 - 15 minutes and the average player can stretch it out to 30 minutes.
making matches any shorter would be taking it into brawl territory.
The flask mechanism is also a means of a come back, as another post has highlighted that a comeback mechanism is needed. Taking that away would mean more snowballed matches.
Regarding your point 2 it is no different than waiting for an echo to be off cooldown before engaging or something similar to that. Everyone wants to begin teamfights only after they have everything up(buffs,infusions,ults) so I don’t think it has an impact on the game speed.
I do think flask is good because of defense nerfs and low survivability in general, if someone gets hits by heavy burst and pops flask they can probably port back with 5% health and don’t have to wait for respawing but still have the disadvantage of flask timer and their team being in a 4v5 teamfight.If not for the flask the average laner has no way to heal up and reengage because the number of healing treants in 5v5 is the same as in 3v3 with 4 more players in the rise.
You are saying that flask has a free slot and costs no gold which is a fair point, how about making it cost 300-500 G based on levels and having to purchase one everytime the current one is used? The free slot is still available but it has a flask only after purchasing it which sort of balances it out
It’s important to note that only 1-2 heroes have an echo in a game at most, but EVERYONE has a flask.
Ofc, I do think that the game would need to be rebalanced to accomodate this. I would also add Halcyon Potions back into the game that would somewhat equate to a flask in the earlier game (or be better).
This is actually super interesting. I never thought of that.
if the introduction of Halcyon potions is brought back, would it be in a dedicated slot?
also, the introduction of pricing on such items would lead to a tendancy to rely heavily on this potion and eventually trolling due to a item deficit, due to a gold deficit.
I believe they did extensive testing pre - 5v5 stage with potions and flask…
Why would they remove it everyone gets one its not like it gives an unfair advantage or something. Using it actually requires skill for instance bad players use it as a potion to heal themselves whenever they’re low while the best players hold on to it untill the perfect opportunity to use it.
a potion that cost gold. ok, players need to buy it… leading to complaints about “why do we need to buy it”… ( pre determined during the testing stage)
ok, so they make the arguement that “just don’t forget”… so everybody buys it, and it’s equal to everyone abusing it.
so, there’s the abuse problem, which they solve by giving it a CD. and since everyone is going to buy it regardless, giving it a cost is counterproductive and will just lead to longer games.
Its true that the flask is too powerful early-game. And about accidentally pressing it, I do it all the time and its annoying. It should be replaced to a location farther away from the abilities. And it shouldn’t be activable if one is at full health. That might solve some of the problem if placing it somewhere else isnt possible.
one problem with halc potions back then was that mages would be able to take it to easily solve their mana problems (i think. i remember this was a point someone made in og forums)[quote=“ThePinkOtter, post:5, topic:2978”]
Ofc, I do think that the game would need to be rebalanced to accomodate this.
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i think, right now, i’d rather not have the game rebalanced a lot more. right now we already have lots of problem heroes + no comeback mechanic, once 5v5 is more balanced (let’s face it 3v3 isn’t getting repaired) to the point where no one’s particularly under (phinn, ozo in this ps/sf meta :c) or overpowered (celeste n malene n others) then i’d be fine with rebalancing the game just to accomodate the removal of healing flask.
Some easy examples are Ozo, Vox and Malene. Ozo is obvious, and Malene/Vox have very short CDs on their escapes, so the half a second stall that the shield can give you is vital.
That’s true. I just wanted to bring up the fact that Flask kind of sucks (IMO) though, which was worsened in 5v5 due to it having its own slot.
Just 5v5 things.
Solution 1: Make Flask work like Kestrel B (but up to 5 seconds) so you can’t activate it in the middle of team fight.
Solution 2: Make a special slot where you can put “useful” items (and maybe items that are t1 and t2). I don’t want to sell t3 item on late game just to buy minion candy.
Solution 3: remove it from ranked. Leave it for casuals.
Unfortunately, SEMC won’t do anything.
Make regen slower at first and then increase the number. Total won’t change. This will abolish the problem of annoying heroes who are THIS close to dying, but they keep regening like crazy after flask
Your points are valid, though I personally haven’t had many issues with it. However, I don’t think it should be removed simply because it is easily fixable. Since you point out you are forced to play cautiously without it, simply reduce the cooldown and lessen the potency