For funsies, and since I totally trust all of you to not misinterpret this data in any way, shape, or form, the top 5 heroes as of the Imperius patch who are Level 10+ with the Hero, in Hero and Team League, and at 1+ MMR are:
Take from that what you will! =)
There's not a day that goes by that I don't. =)
Just for some transparency, in high level ranked games Samuro is currently the 4th highest winning hero in the game at 54.7%, so there's not really justification to buff him. He's been sitting in this space for a very long time. Normally we'd have heavily nerfed a hero like this by now but he's so niche that we don't feel justified in doing so.
While I'm open to the idea of "buffing" him by finding ways to make him feel better without actually making him win even more, i'm wary of changes like his W not resetting his crit counter, as those kinds of mechanics are part of the nuance of mastering a hero and they usually are a large contributor to why players enjoy playing them. While removing them or making them easier to do makes them much more accessible, it also can really upset the players who took the time to master that mechanic. You can look at any of the recent Abathur threads related to his Symbiote gameplay for a real-life example of that phenomenon. While i'm not saying something like that would never happen, it would definitely require a lot of playtesting and probably other changes to his kit, which would be too disruptive to the hero to do in a balance patch.
Hey mrdakam,
I honestly don't know - there are always many moving pieces with hotfixes and production always works hard to wrangle them, get them committed, tested and released as quickly as possible.
I do believe we have a fix for this though, and it is slated to go out at the same time (as long as testing gives the green-light).
Good afternoon Reddit!
Thank you for the reports on the AI issues. We are working on a fix to the Mercenary issue now and should have it available in a incoming hotfix.
That said, this patch has introduced some new AI tech for us but did not have the accumulators that give finer control of their logic. This tech is slated to come in next patch and it should hopefully be in a much cleaner state at that time.
Thanks again for the report and please keep sending any issues you find - we greatly appreciate it!
Hey Everyone,
Thanks for the reports! We are aware of numerous issues currently affecting A.I. behavior. We hope to have this fixed as soon as we can.
We have updated the Known Issues List with the currently tracked A.I. issues. Please let us know if you continue see any issues that are not listed there!
Thank you,
~ Fizivix
Hey IamYozu & JPB,
Thanks for the reports! We are aware of numerous issues currently affecting A.I. behavior. We hope to have this fixed as soon as we can.
We have updated the Known Issues List with the currently tracked A.I. issues. Please let us know if you continue see any issues that are not listed there!
Thank you,
~ Fizivix
Good evening!
To give a little context, and I should have done so with the patch notes as well (I will try and have it added):
Since her initial inception, the balance team has had a hard time leveling out her builds when it comes to interactions with her level 4 talent tier. It is the chronic design problem where one build just takes over due to one talent tier (also one of the reasons why we very often don't build trees like this any more). At her core, Whitemane's Mana efficiency is both her mini-game and the main driver of her skill-ceiling, so the talent at level 4 that made this easiest to sidestep has dictated her build, meaning very little diversity in talent choices throughout her tree.
We are currently looking at ways to fix this beyond just number tweaks, but that takes a lot more time to hammer out. For now, she has still been performing very well in organized play and has some wonderful draft compositions that highlight her abilities. We may have some tuning changes coming in for her soon, but we are definitely aware of the underlying issue and are looking for clever ways to solve it :)
Hey Sully,
Thanks for the report!
Any Mac users currently experiencing this issue, please post your details in the following Tech Support Thread:
Hi all, We’d like to gather some info about the Mac OS version that’s being used, for those that are experiencing the launching issues. Please let us know what Mac OS you’re currently on. You can check by clicking the Apple icon in the top left and selecting About This Mac. If you haven’t done so already, update the Mac OS to the latest version and try launching the game again.
Thanks,
~ Fizivix
Hey all!
We were just talking about this earlier in the design bullpen (well, not the 5 Chromies, but Sgt. Hammers overall state in ARAM). We have disabled a couple other Heroes that tend to make the mode feel less fun and were discussing whether Hammer should be disabled as well.
We would love to hear more on your thoughts here!
Love the Pig Probius. <3
A legendary response from a legendary Abathur player <3
Hello!
There have been a lot of Abathur threads lately and a lot of misinformation in regards to the intent behind his rework, and his effectiveness after his changes. I wanted to clarify a few things, particularly for those who love playing Abathur and are scared of what's changing, particularly in regards to how Symbiote works.
First, the goal of the rework in regards to hatting a single target vs. the active playstyle that he has on Live is not to nerf the way that current players play him. In fact, the entire reasoning behind the changes to Symbiote and its relationship to Carapace with the rework (where we're making it so that Carapace stays on targets beyond Symbiote being removed) is to teach players from a base level that it's OK to use Symbiote on a target, use all 3 of his abilities, and then leave the target to find another place that is in need of help, since Carapace won't immediately go away when Symbiote is cancelled. If the goal was to force Abathur players to stay on a single target and play like Gall, what we instead would have done was just made it so that Abathur's cooldowns aren't refreshed with each cast of Symbiote, thus shutting down any reward for removing his Symbiote from a hero.
On Live, if an Abathur wants to stay on a single target, they get a lot more value by using Symbiote, then all 3 abilities, then immediately cancelling and re-casting Symbiote again on the same target to get their cooldowns refunded (mostly for Carapace). This is incredibly unintuitive as a new player, and artifically makes the hero harder to play since it's incredibly punishing to not play Abathur in this way. In addition, the fact that at a base level Carapace is removed when Symbiote goes away adds a layer of complexity that makes it even more weird to do this behavior, as it leaves the host target vulnerable for the short amount of time that he's un-hatting and re-hatting the target. Our view on these changes was purely to make it more forgiving and intuitive at a base level for people who want to play Abathur, not to nerf his current playstyle in any way. I anticipate that the current way of playing Abathur on Live will not change in any way for higher level players in this regard, as after casting all of your abilities, you're still going to want to un-hat and immediately look at the game state when deciding where the best place is to cast Symbiote next. It's still going to be optimal to play Abathur in this active way, and it isn't being nerfed in any way with the rework.
In regards to the healing of Regenerative Microbes, this was to solve a fairly severe balance issue with Abathur at the higher levels of play. We had consistently received feedback from higher level players that the large amount of healing from Regenerative Microbes was not only warping the reason that Abathur was taken on a team, but was also imbalanced and incredibly un-fun to play against. In this regard, we agreed to a point with this feedback.
It was not intended that Abathur be taken to replace the Healer role on a team. While it's a cool idea on paper, there are a few reasons why this goes into scary territory for us. The first reason is that he is such a unique hero that if he can fully take on the Healer role, then other unique reasons why Abathur can be brought to a team have to be toned down severely to match the power pie of other Healers in our game, namely his ability to manipulate the map by split pushing, his ability to make any other hero in the game immediately more powerful, and the amount of damage and general utility he can bring to a team. Abathur also has a unqiue advantage over all other heroes in this Supporting regard, in that he doesn't have to put himself out of position in any way to heal heroes who would normally need special Support assistance, such as Tracer, Genji, and Zeratul. Healing is incredibly powerful in our game, and has to demand a fairly high cost in a hero's power pie in relation to other things that they can bring to the table. In this regard, we are making a stance that i'm willing to say is controversial in that we don't want Abathur to consistently replace other Healers in that role on a team. Instead, we see him as a pseudo-support character in the same vein as Medivh and Zarya. Teams with him are a bit tankier, but having only that hero won't replace the damage mitigation that a team with a full Healer would have. This is a number that can easily be tuned if it is too low, but we are starting on the lower end so that we have room to play up the other parts of his kit that are unique and make him fun to play.
I hope this clarifies some of our reasoning behind the changes beyond the dev comment that I made in his patch notes. As always, we'll be keeping an eye on him and are totally down to buff him in various different ways if he does end up being too weak after the rework.
Hello friends!
This is a bug that was introduced by another bug fix - happens all the time! We have a new fix in that should be hitting with the patch next week.
That said, A.I. is a very tricky thing and we are constantly trying to make it better. So please keep sending us feedback and bugs and we will do our best to keep improving them!
Junkrat's Gotta Trap 'Em All. It's not a hugely popular pick, but on the right maps where the quest can reliably get done (Tomb or Braxis for example), it's an absolute monster with Chattering Teeth. Having 3 traps set up makes it incredibly difficult for the enemy team to do anything when you want to fight around any map objective area, and makes Junkrat incredibly safe against heroes like Tracer or Zeratul who usually give him a hard time. Seriously, try it. It's insane.
All joking aside, we have thought about (and explored) this kind of ability. It has some complications but they don't seem insurmountable. slight pun intended
Thank you for the kind words!
We love this game just as much as you guys do, and we have so much more in store (honestly, insane amounts)! I can promise you that we are still working on a bunch of future content, and we are extremely excited to keep making improvements to the game!
I have a feeling you may be hearing from us a lot more soon™ ;)
Thank you for yours! <3