I don’t expect Blizz to care, after all they have already garnered the opinion of GM’s and pro gamers. I understand how companies work and thus realize they will ignore this post. The only reason I thus post is because it to highlight (and hopefully build some community understanding) that the game is very badly flawed, certainly with regards to laneing.
I currently level Plat 4 and have oscillated between Diamond 5 and Gold 5… maining Gazlow/Azmodan. It is far easier for me to win at high levels than the hell is that Gold and lower, which in itself is a problem. But that isn’t what I’ll be writing about.
The core problem I have is the following. It is more beneficial when one plays Gazlow/Azmodan (or a number of ‘spec’ heroes) to kill a minion wave and allow your own minions to die against the enemy’s towers, than to push with your minions and try take out the towers.
When you push with your own minions, the towers will auto attack any additional turrets or lieutenants that you might create. This allows for your own minions to survive longer and thus giving your enemy more time to recover, defend and reap the same/similar xp by basically just standing next to their tower. This
Defeats the purpose of a ‘spec’ type hero.
Discourages engagements against superior lane pushers by simply standing around and waiting for the enemy minions to attack your towers.
If I were to play against Zagara, a very strong lane pusher, basically I would do nothing other than run around the first minion wave while Zagara kills my minions and thus saving mana… and only then retreat to the sanctity of my own tower, throw a single turret and wait for his minion wave to be killed.
Of course in the past this tactic would not work as towers had a limited number of ammunition. Thus the better lane pusher had an advantage. Currently with unlimited ammunition however, any normal player can counter a lane pusher by simply playing this basic tactic.
Again, I appreciate Blizz wouldn’t really care at this point, but I do feel I should point out this is flawed. As XP is actually the most important factor in this game and pretty much ignored by 60% of players, this should be rectified.
This doesn’t exist anymore. Specs stopped existing when they removed ammo from buildings. Now they officially removed that classification during “hero role expansion”.
Gazlowe is melee assassin, Azmodan ranged assassin.
Now days its more about fast clear and two lane soak then it is about pushing, which mostly people do on bruisers, like Xul or Sonya, Artanis, Rexxar… etc…
I agree and disagree. Just because they reclassified heroes (and removed ammo) does not mean that Gaz, Zag, Lost Vikings etc aren’t still effectively specialists. If we are going to play hero brawl, you will never pick Zagara. There are thankfully still other assets to the game that these specs excel at.
I agree that Gazlow can be a melee assassin (if you go robo build), but he can also be an expert at lane clearance, camps or late game stun if you go explod/grav build.
There is the problem. Let’s start by agreeing that HOTS lost out to other moba’s despite being the best looking moba out there. Gamers aren’t however interested (and I’ll give away my age by stating that I played the original DOTA on WCIII) single lane hero brawl type of games, rather a game that stimulates strategy and tactic. A game that flourished among RTS players on WCIII. The greater variety and tactics the better, this is far more appealing to players that one dimensional hero brawls.
XP is still crucial in this game. Having a 10-9, or 16-15 lead is massive when it comes to contesting and objective. However the way XP is gained is flawed.
The core problem here is the dynamics of how to contest a lane and soak xp . The original ‘ammo’ towers made 100% sense. If you win your lane through superior play and minion clearance, you gain the advantage of having your opponent’s towers use ammo to kill your minions. This rewards superior play, why wouldn’t you? With the current unlimited ammo towers setup, it does not reward a player for being better in a lane. It encourages defensive, boring , stagnant, defensive laning which serves no purpose. It rewards a player that does not use any special abilities (i.e. mana preservation) to clear minions, because the player simply deliberately loses the central minion battle and retreats. This is boring.
If Blizz wants this game to not be a deathball all in type of hero brawl, it needs to promote split laning. It currently doesn’t do that nearly well enough.
Yeah…im agree!
They should work for that!!
And post in reddit too!
But problem is in player base…they dont know when exactly to defending vs these players( heroes Azmodan, Gazlowe,Zagara).
Even they change towers again…this problem will still exist…BECAUSE EXIST SO MANY DEAD BRAINED YOUNG PEOPLES IN EU!
The first is to push as fast as possible. It allows you if you are fast to take some mercsbor help a teammate.
If you say the hero can hide behind the gates and wait for your minions to die then you can put down the turrets after the minions reached the walls. You can also put them as far as possible so they can still hit the structures but they are also targeted last (the structures hit the nearest non hero first).
The second is to zone the enemy. That means that you have to keep the minions fighting between them while the enemy cant stay near them for exp. You don’t try to kill the enemies but you try to weaken yours so as to keep the wave near your gates(but not to hit the structures) while the enemy is far away. Achieved through hero poke and damage.
While I do agree ammo mechanic was cool and fun, innovative and all… it created a lot of problems and very cheesy gameplay.
Such as Chen + Morales, drain all your ammo, completely making some lane undefendable. Zagara, Azmodan draining your entire lane in 2mins with summons.
Lane without ammo is as good as no lane at all, becomes dumb easy to gank and very hard to defend.
I’ve tested. As soon as a tower has finished taking out a minion, the next object it targets (irrespective of positioning) is a turret. This causes your minions to last longer, thus effectively giving your opponent more time to react and not lose XP.
Yep, this is a good idea, but to some extent now relies deliberately throwing the first wave of engage in order for your opponents minions to push to your tower.
It basically is a statemate. Both players gain (potentially) by allowing their own minions to die first, having the opponent’s minions push to their towers where hopefully the next minion wave battle takes place at which point you can then zone the enemy.
The core problem here is the intricacy of how to win this battle. This is certainly not very intuitive. Any normal player will want to kill the enemy minions as fast as possible and give their minions a chance to do damage to their opponent’s towers. The game should make sense, not rely on really complicated mechanisms like the ones were are discussing.
Fair enough, but the way to achieve this is
Winning a mid lane (i.e. between towers) minion battle in the first place allowing your minions to reach the opponent’s towers or
Not adequately defending a lane against a Zagara/Azmodin/Gazlow ect.
It seems a far better solution or balance fix would have been to allow towers to replenish ammo a bit faster. Even so, the way to counter something like this would have been to select assassin heroes to pick off heroes that push that deep.
Whatever HOTS can do to encourage split lane play, IMO they should do. Whatever HOTS can do to encourage different types of heroes, they should do.
It is counterproductive to have melee heroes be able to easily counter lane pushers like Zagara, Gazlow, Sylv as well as subsequently having an advantage over these heroes in a teamfight.
In the end though, it boils down to the same thing… which specialist can win his lane vs another specialist. Same as it is now, which brawler can win lane vs another brawler.
Just that meta has changed from 2-2-1, to double soak and other rotating.
It doesn’t. That is the entire point **and problem **. A non-specialist can negate a specialist by playing defensively and mitigating the superior minion damage by constantly retreating to his own tower where the advantage lies.
I know this because in order to counter Zagara with Gazlow I run around soaking XP, literally doing nothing, not even attacking (i.e not wasting mana)… and then wait for my towers to do the work. The skill level is basic.
Long and short, the better spec does not necessarily win.
So, your actual issue is that there are no more specialist roles… yes, and no more ammo?
Thats not true however, eventually if you are just soaking and allowing them to push, they will destroy the lane sooner or later. Minions will gradually start taking down stuff.
Difference now is only that there is no free reign anymore, because there is no ammo, so minions are always killed. But again, eventually they will push the lane if you are just passive.
There are still specialist roles (for camps, xp soaking (e.g. Azmo, Aba), however their importance with regard to pressuring lanes has diminished.
At most levels, you will never allow a minion wave to push (you still want xp), however the ability to stop a minion wave with unlimited ammo towers makes it unnecessary particularly with say ‘self healing’ heroes, to have to actively be a stronger laner than your opponent. For example, Sonya or Artanis should not be able to solo Zagara. A strong melee hero should be able to easily negate a spec.
Yep, this is a good idea, but to some extent now relies deliberately throwing the first wave of engage in order for your opponents minions to push to your tower.
It basically is a statemate. Both players gain (potentially) by allowing their own minions to die first, having the opponent’s minions push to their towers where hopefully the next minion wave battle takes place at which point you can then zone the enemy.
.
It is not true(being a stalemate) as the enemy doesn’t get the experience so they will get levels slower.
You could also try to build up a force of minions by killing only the archers and the mage and then pushing with 2 of your waves to overwhelm the defences. At that point you should put as many turrets as possible.
Scenario 1 - Hero v no Hero: 1 hero + minion wave will kill another minions wave (no hero), most often without losing a minion (i.e. no xp has yet to be lost). These victorious minions and hero now march onto the enemy tower trying to do damage. The Enemy hero now however runs to the tower (perhaps from another lane), engages in a fight at the tower and soaks up all the XP. The outcome is thus even, with the exception of course that the enemy hero had to expend little/no mana in order to gather XP.
Scenario 2 - Uneven heroes: Player 1 hero and minions beats Player 2 hero minions by say 3 minions. Player 1 one now marches to Player 2’s tower (as player 2 retreated) and player 2’s tower quickly clears up the remaining minions.
Scenario 3 - Even heroes: Player 1 hero can counter Player 2 hero evenly and every engage at the middle of the lane will see both sets of minions dead with no winner. The only loss is mana. At some point after 3 exchanges both heroes will need to hearth. OR Player 1 does not use any mana to kill minions, allows his minions to die, pulls back to tower and then uses minimal mana (with help of towers) to kill off new wave of minions. Player 1 has mana advantage over player 2.
Scenario 3 above is a big problem as a ‘better’ player will thus not contend a minion wave to ensure they come out with a mana advantage. This is a farce really and not how the game should be played.
That is an idea. But just FYI against someone like Gazlow that won’t make a difference as Gaz excels in killing minions on mass. Doesn’t really make a difference whether 5 or 20 minions. Still an interesting idea :)
