I see the direction you want to take Sylvanas. She is my main and highest leveled hero by far. I also have reached GM #38 with her, so I believe to have some insights into her kit.
What you did was decrease the skill ceiling and lift the skill floor, narrowing her skill cap in the process. The only thing you raised the skill ceiling on is the effective choice of talents and usage of her passive.
Sylvanas is not a hero for new players to just pick up and have a good time with. She should be harder to play and one should need to put some thought into his actions while playing her.
The effective playstyle of Sylvanas before was very opressive in winning games. Here some changes you can make to create a better feeling for new Sylvanas.
I will mark priority changes with a * - these changes would increase player satisfaction by a ton.
Regarding Q, Withering Fire:
- *Revert the Q mechanic back to the old one - with the ammo system. Not being able to shoot every pew when you want it feels bad. The recent change decreased Sylvanas’ skill-cap.
- *Increase the speed at which the arrows fire. 1.5 seconds is too long. The old Q was more satisfying by a huge margin.
- Give back the ability to gain a charge on minion kill. This is playmaking potential, giving players something to think about when fighting with or against Sylvanas in a minion wave.
- Fighting minion waves without the Unstable Poison (4) talent feels bad. I’d suggest putting increased minion damage for Withering Fire on the Mercenary Queen (4) talent, so players get the option to use Q on waves back. This increases her single target mercenary damage, too, making it easier to take camps in a timely manner.
Regarding E, Haunting Wave:
- *Decrease the time Sylvanas is locked out of using Haunting Wave’s second cast. Now that you increased Haunting Wave’s projectile(?) speed, the time we are locked out of using the teleport is even more noticeable than before. This robs Sylvanas players of the ability to reactively dodge CC by going into banshee form.
The combination of the Windrunner(13) talent with a higher Q rate of fire and the ammo mechanic, plus earlier reactivation time on Haunting Wave will potentially shorten Sylvanas’ burst window, increasing short-time DPS in the process, her escape and movement options however would all be exhausted, leaving her vulnerable.
I can see this burst damage being rather high, so I’d suggest to:
- Decrease Q, Withering Fire’s range a little, so Sylvanas is more exposed when choosing to use her full burst at once.
These are all quality of life improvements, so tune down her Q damage a little if necessary.
Just don’t touch her health.
I will report with feedback of her other builds should this get Blizzard’s attention.