I kind of expected this to be a big deal after the mid update balance changes, and have been quite surprised to see no one mentions it. It’s such an achievement for a MOBA on any platform and really isn’t the norm.
Damage items in 3.8 are in a perfect place. Every single hero has multiple viable build paths (within cp/wp paths), and you can really put together a build for any scenario.
Committing to a breaking point is a distinct path compared to a burst, or dps crit, and counter building pierce is something you need to keep an eye on. On the crystal side of things you can throw almost any item together based on what you need.
I don’t know, it just surprised me it’s not a big topic as this was always something people complained about for the entire history of VG, yet when it’s not only addressed but pushed further it’s not even acknowledged.
Definitely agree we need more items, but 10 is a little much. More items doesn’t necessarily mean more diversity unless they are slowly tuned really well. Not to mention the goal is to have as few items as possible to keep clutter down.
We know Zekent and Sonata are planning more items, I’d expect them to come ou 2-4 at a time as anything more than that in a single patch just hurts the game.
I agree Breaking point need a buff on mele heroes, but it’s in a decent spot.
It’s because its best to complain instead of praising. Praising won’t get anything done because the real way to praise is to throw some cash so it becomes inherently easier to complain.
This observation was made multiple times but I wouldn’t say that it’s completely balanced. CP path is good on both ends with burst and long burst, but the defense tree besides the defense items (MJ and husk playing respective roles) the utility section of that tree (Pulse, capacitor and rooks) have become complete doodoo because Cruci and FoR is just better in general. Utility role swapped from being in the top lane to the jungle because of how much gold one can get from efficiently farming.
I think other than BP on melees, the WP tree is pretty close to being at a PC MOBA standard, at least in the current patch.
CP is pretty wack. You kinda build SF first on every character than can proc it as part of their damage pattern and don’t think about it. BM is kinda mandatory too, still. Eve is still pretty mediocre, especially in 5v5 where CP buff exists and Aftershock procs don’t feel good to land (Needs a scaling TBH).
Eve is a mandatory item on Vox, Celeste, and Skaarf. I would say Sam too but his damage is kinda bad compared to them so I think he’s better off getting a 4th damage item even though he doesn’t spike in late game…
I want a none burst cp defensive item. In general I want a buff to aegis and new defensive items.
About builds, I don’t think there is that much mobility though, Silvernail and kinetic build the same in all matches doesn’t matter what, mages do the same. While damage items may be balanced (I still think PS needs a buff and so do crits), there isn’t the variety of builds you are saying.
Hmm I don’t think I’ve played enough to comment, but one thing that definetly needs a buff is Lifesteal. Because they have so many mortal wounds, and this dumb system where Lifesteal isn’t stackable, the only way to make it work is to give “sustain” heroes insane natural Lifesteal (Krul, Ozo, Reim). When was the last time you saw Serpent’s mask or EoH used? They’re both completely useless. Get rid of “Vampirism” bring back normal Lifesteal, and buff them two items.
But, lifesteal is a popular option for most heroes. If you are going for burst strait CP is better, but mages often buy EOH, and SM/PS are also popular options.
What needs a buff are sustain heroes not sustain items. Sustain heroes don’t even necessarily buy lifesteal items.
Whelp, looks like you got a new CP defense item haha.
There are still item choices for Silvernail and Kinetic. In pro play/tier 10 at least kinetics will either go SB, TT, or SM/SB, BP as first two. And you can branch out from those starts as well. Silvernail actually does farily well with bonesaw because of his double attacks. If he’s using a Bp build bonesaw let’s you stack on tanks crazy quickly as well as a 3rd or 4th item.
You’re right: damage items are in a pretty good place right now. The only time I’ve ever complained about them was with with TB before the recent balance patch. I think most people will work with whatever works, so it is really only worth complaining about when one build is too far superior.
Right now the only damage item which is really bad is Stormcrown. There is a need for something to help CP junglers farm in the early game, and to give tanks (with no real damage built) add at least a little damage later. The current version is hobbled by its cool down, since a cool down of any length makes it slower and less reliable for farming and objectives. It’s not a dire problem, since most heroes (especially newer ones) have higher base damage or CP basic attacks baked in, but there are still heroes where it would be nice to have something which makes farming less painful, or to get a bit of reliable damage out of a captain build.
DE and BP probably need to be tweaked a bit to make them more useful to melee heroes. Maybe the stacks should fall off much more slowly for melee? The reality is that melee heroes simply can’t take very long building up stacks, but they might be able to do it if they could hold stacks while they disengage for 10 seconds and then hop back in. No melee damage dealers can stay on the front lines of a team fight for more than 5 or 10 seconds (tanks can, but not really damage-focused heroes), but there are several who can hop in and back out before they get focused too hard. Just giving melee heroes an extra 5 or 10 seconds before decay starts would help a lot.
Other than that, the cool down cap needs to go away or else every cooldown item needs to be reworked. Heroes that relied on their abilities over their basic attacks (like Skarf and Celeste) still do, and their basic attacks are still next to useless; the conditions that pushed them into maxing cooldown never changed. On the other hand, a ton of builds are fairly useless now because it’s so easy to hit redundant levels of cooldown. Part of why Stormcrown is a bad item now is because the types of heroes who benefit from it would also want other cooldown items, so it’s stats are wasted. Ideally, other stats would be important enough that going for a cooldown item would mean giving up something else. If mages were always stacking cooldown, then maybe CP wasn’t powerful enough?
Overall though, the damage items are in a really good place.
Yeah, I agree melee heroes in general get less use out of the current item set. Mages can take so much better advantage of stuff like spellfire, clockwork, eoh, BP, TT and so on. The only cp damage item that is really geared toward melee heroes is aftershock.
I feel like Tornado trigger should give 15% move speed to melee heroes, breaking point should stack faster for melee (right now the damage required to scale is lower, but the base 100 is the same), probably lowered to 80. Dragons eye regardless of fall off time will never work for melee in its current state. It needs to stack more quickly.
