When the game launched, a cathegory of heroes called “specialists” were designed, at their core, to be effiscient at assaulting structures. They were not tanks, not assassins, not supports.
Then, the specialist role was removed entirely. And all these heroes who weren’t designed to be anything else than specialists, got shoved into these others categories. What we have now in QM is a situation where these heroes are paired against assassins. This creates a huge imbalance where one team clearly has the advantage in teamfights, and forces these players to build as an assassin, effectively leaving half of their kit untouched because playing and building them as they were originally designed equates throwing the game.
Furthermore, reworks like Sylvanas were made in a phase where Blizzard weren’t trying to make the game fun, but competitive. This changed her to go away from that specialist role and become a true-ish assassin. I believe this rework should be entirely reversed, and specialists should go back into their specialist role, in which they will be paired against others specialists.
Well playing back then was an even greater struggle for “Specializts”.
Because for one they were all placed under the sub category “Useless” and if a single soul decided to run double specializt then the whole team would have a mental break down and most likely AFK.
Also they don’t and didn’t all have talents that were specificly based upon sieging, most of them were building just like they are today.
Xul needed the rework because he was being used on a single map in ranked, and besides that left untouched.
Gazlowe needed the rework, he was fun but quirky, and most people threw tantrums when he got picked.
Azmodan got a rework for the better, he is the same, but now has 3 quests to choose from, which was healthy for him, to help him with his playstyle, one of thsoe quests are more towards sieging aswell.
Also the whole category was abit wierd, like where did Medivh fit in?
He is a HORRIBLE sieger, same goes for Zarya.
They would then be placed in a support category alone, almost like they now.
Also the Sylv rework was also for the better, her talents got updated to a point where there was actually several ways to build her, what they did remove though was her Passive, which was HEAVILY needed, i remember running down fort after fort with her passive.
Much like KT before his rework, where ignite spread through buildings, it was a mess.
sylvanas trait still disables buildings… and she can wipe even 2 minions waves (stacked on the towers) within 2 seconds, with her lvl4 talent.
If left alone in a lane, she still will take down fort/keep really fast.
And if ganked by a single hero, a syl that went Q build, with most probably blow up the ganker (which was something that not happened before)
Before, if somone gank sylvanas, she would just run back to towers,
Devs didnt take sylvanas push power away (may be reduce it a bit) , but, the devs gave syl some balls. A gud syl can 1v1 more than half the roster
Sylvanas revolved entirely on her passive to be a fun character to play. There were tons of ways to make it more balanced, one of which was to simply make it so that only abilities could disable structures, not auto attacks.
On to the abilities, it looks as tho the devs thought really hard about the best possible way to make each of them as unsatisfying as possible compared to the original. Her Q went from a charge system with fun interractions to a boring button press. Her W now needed you to hit ennemies with auto attacks in order to actually use it, and didn’t spread beyond the first target anymore. There again, there were many ways to make this ability more balanced without drying all the fun out of it.
And her ult. Now I get why the point and click mind control was a bit unbalanced, but did they really have to turn it into a lame taunt?
Yeah QM has a lot of problems with characters being put into the bruiser classification and then they proceed to match against characters MUCH stronger and far better at bruising than themselves like the new gazlowe.
Mediv matches against abathur and looses. Zarya is terrible and matches against either.
Some assasins are generally worse at being assasins and shouldve stuck to being specialists.
But the W change was also needed.
I mean there is a point where fun has to be replaced with balance.
Her W spread like wildfire, the reason she now needs to AA her targets first is for her to not have such a MASSIVE poke on top of a heavy super easily played initiate.
Her passive was reworked well, it was a passive with an ult effect, it was broken as heck to have it passivly.
They fixed so she actually has to think about when to use it, and so that there was a way to actually counter it.
Everythink they did to her was to add counter elements, so that it was possible to play against her an punish her for her mistakes.
The mindcontroll though i get, because that turned into something lame, it was broken as heck previous, but the new one is extremly meh.
It’s like a worse Cassia Valkyrie, now that they buffed it, it is stil kinda meh, but abit better than it was, not much of a mind controll though.
And on topic of fun with Sylvanas, she is stil plenty of fun.
If the problem was that it could spread infinitely, then I don’t see what the auto attack thing does to help here. They could’ve just made it so that it couldn’t spread beyond the first target, or reduce the spread range, or both…
If auto-spread is a problem, why aren’t they nerfing Thrall so that he has to basic attack someone after using his Q on them too? How about KT bomb, why doesn’t he need to basic attack his target in order to spread the effect?
It’s not about having to spend longer on a target, because a basic attack is almost instant. It’s not about range, because they could’ve just reduced dagger range. It just makes it clunky: “Oh I hit my dagger but it was useless because I forgot to right click it”.
Now your just being unreasonable
KTs ignite needs the enemy team to clump up after 2 seconds or so.
And Thralls Chain has low dmg on top of it being limited targets.
Sylvanas W can spread to ALL targets in an area, INCLUDING minions.
The little cast time on W, actually hinders you from INSTANTLY using an autoattack, which is abit of the point.
You actually have to stand stil for a little while to be able to trigger the W.
If you’ve played her alot you would know that her W isn’t super easy to spread nowadays, just like KTs.
She was unbalanced out of proportions earlier, she is now in a good spot.
Less fun i will agree to that, but stil balancewize, she is in a good spot.
And to be honest, i prefer having a balanced game, since that makes the game actually fun.