Feedback - 1.28

[Deacon (AYC)]

Nerf Inquis' canon shit asap. Was pubstomping all day with it.

[Merlin]

Let's keep in mind that you were laning against a DR who had never played before. :p

[Deacon (AYC)]

Hence 'pubstomping,' haha. I think it's important to make sure discouraging shit like that doesn't happen though, he eventually rq.

[Gorbadoc]

I've noticed a strong correlation between buying witches/mages and winning the game. So long as it's not a stomp:
If I buy lots of mages, I win.
If I don't buy mages, I lose.

Part of the problem is that druids (the strongest unit in a spawn wave) are critically weak against nuke spells, and upgrading to mages is currently the only way to deal with this weakness. It doesn't matter how well I cover the spawns in a push. More than half the heroes in the game can get away swooping in to kill a pack of druids just before they start attacking towers.

Mages deal with this problem by having enough hitpoints that it takes more than one Wake or Leave it to Cleaver to kill them off.

Unfortunately, they overcompensate by also being the best anti-hero spawn, the best anti-spawn spawn, and the second-best spawn at piling up in a siege.

My suggestion:
Add alternative ways to keep a spawn wave semi-safe from nukers. You want to swoop in and murder an entire wave with an AOE nuke? It should have to be a 1-2 punch.

The 1 in this 1-2 punch can be a variety of things.

• Picture an antimage unit with an aura that significantly reduces spell damage. He can have otherwise mediocre combat stats; the important thing is that, if anyone tries to crush a wave without picking off this dude first, they'll find magic only somewhat successful.
• Picture an antimage with an autocast buff that significantly reduces incoming magic damage. Balance the cooldown and duration so a single antimage can protect perhaps 3-5 of his fellow spawns. This way, there's an incentive for the attackers to keep at least a certain number of these antimages alive; if the attackers balance their upgrades so they aren't blowing money on redundant antimages, then the defenders have an incentive to pick off the antimages of an advancing wave.

There are, of course, countless other things that could be added to make it trickier to wipe out a wave of spawns. In any event, though, that a defending hero has to pick off one specific unit before he can instantly massacre the rest of the wave.

[Merlin]

Excellent post. I really think it's important to make defending forever a difficult thing to do. Right now the game sort of grinds to a halt after the expansions fall because the defending team has a disproportionately easy time just sitting in the main and nuking every wave down, whereas the attacking team can't really stop them because they have to keep running back to the fountains.

That is, unless the attacking team has been upgrading mages/witches for a while. Then you pretty much roll them.

However if both teams lose both of their expansions, just call it a draw, because the game will never end. Seriously, I've played for 2 hours before doing this back and forth bullshit.

[Fledermaus]

The other problem is that mages have medium armor, which takes reduced damage from piercing (towers), while knights have heavy, which takes full damage.

[Merlin]

I was thinking about small ways to passively improve base defense, and I figured that walls could be more useful than just path blocking. Walls should have a chance to block arrows. Obviously mortars/wagons would shoot over, but low flying projectiles should be less effective, sort of like how cliffs make ranged units miss targets on the high ground. This gives heroes an additional reason to knock down walls, and also gives mortars an advantage over mages.

[Viikuna-]

I still think heroes die really fast.

Stuff like spell power, 3 spell points on level 1, and bloodbath give heroes a lot of damage potential. Focusing some guy down is really fast.

And not only focusing. Even one or two heroes can deal fatal amount of damage really fast. Its really dangerous to be out there without full health and loads of blood to be ready to give you health boost when attacked.

And because only way to regenerate is fountain, you are kinda forced to play really aggressively or going back to heal all the time.

And because travelling is slow and map is big, it takes a lot of time to go back for a heal.

Because of slow travelling, its also really hard to be there in time to defend expansions, which are really important.


Id like to see some travelling/teleporting stuff for easier moving around, some items for regenerating without having to go back all the time, and maybe not antimagic potions, but at least something to make you harder to kill in few seconds.

So yea, an item tree would be cool.

[Merlin]

When you compare to N, yes, definitely. With exceptions for spells like TGP, Boat, and JEW, N has a pretty steady damage, especially because you can time pots at critical moments aka AMS dodging. O, overall, not only has much higher damage, but much spikier damage, and no ways to protect yourself from focus fire except stacking large amount of spell evasion or reflection. Part of that is because items are completely broken (triple Boat with Reliquary and Brightdarken, etc), but also some heroes are just plain strong. Cow with nothing but additional mana will fuck your shit up with his combo. I have fun playing O, but it simply isn't competitive in its current form.

If Brightdarken stays in the item tree, it has to be remade. Perhaps like this:

When you kill or assist in the killing of an enemy hero, your ultimate ability's cooldown will be reduced by 30 seconds. 10 second cooldown.

[ChainsOfChaos]

Another idea for brightdarken is just make it a super duper expensive item and you have to make it like a recipe , so you can't get it early on and it will be late game usually when you get it.

[Cassiel]

That. There's no such thing as "too powerful," only "doesn't cost enough."

[nooK]

+1000dmg sword pls, whoever gets 10000gold first wins the game...
ah and yes, we had this discussion already

[Merlin]

That. There's no such thing as "too powerful," only "doesn't cost enough."

I don't know what you're planning, but how can you make an item which Pirate can wipe an entire team with possibly cost enough? It would have to be exceedingly expensive, or have numerous comparatively inexpensive counters. I'm reminded of Awesome, but Impractical.

[Merlin]

Void Stones may have to be looked at to get damage under control. Right now I'm thinking of the League of Legends solution, but that's because I don't know any other AoSes with scaling spells. If you're not familiar with LoL, I'll explain.

In LoL, there's a stat called Ability Power (AP). It's a flat number, found on most caster oriented items. Nearly every ability in LoL scales with either Attack Damage (AD), and/or AP, unless they use True Damage, which doesn't scale, but instead ignores armor/spell resistance. Spells that use AP to scale have an Ability Power Ratio, which is the ratio a spell coverts 1 point of AP to 1 point of additional spell damage. This APR is the number they manipulate to balance individual spells.

Example: APR = 0.8, therefore 5 AP increases spell damage by 4.

The reason I'm worried is because 60 addition damage on Boat for every Void Stone scales way too fast, and it effectively cost much less to upgrade Boat than for other spells. This applies to other similarly high damage spells too.

This doesn't translate so well to ToB because Spell Power affects the primary effect rather than damage, so I'm not sure what to do about this problem.

[Cassiel]

I don't know what you're planning, but how can you make an item which Pirate can wipe an entire team with possibly cost enough? It would have to be exceedingly expensive, or have numerous comparatively inexpensive counters. I'm reminded of Awesome, but Impractical.

Pretty easily, actually. Cost is about more than just gold. Having to kill an enemy hero to use Brightdarken is a cost, for example. So are all of the other bonuses items would acquire as part of an actual tree. Like if the Reliquary also comes saddled with +25 Int, which you have to pay for, how cost-effective is it for your Mariner then?

[Merlin]

I guess it is possible to balance through cost alone, but then you're left trying to raise the cost-effectiveness of everything else to match one of the strongest plays in the game. To increase the cost of Brightdarken you probably need to remove the kill assist portion, as players who buy it already have the ability to kill heroes very well, and probably shouldn't be benefiting from assists as well. There should at least be the danger that you don't get the final blow.

[nooK]

so work is being done on an item tree? I would love to once test O in a real playable state at lan with my friends. oh man, how many times we played N.. good times.

[Merlin]

I think the current plan is to fix the remaining bugs before any new content is rolled out, but I'm not involved in the development of the map. I just try to figure out and reproduce bugs.

[KStolen]

That. There's no such thing as "too powerful," only "doesn't cost enough."

See Footman Frenzy for a good example of this. Some of the items in the item shop are worth huge amounts of money. They basically amount to - if you can afford this, you should have won already.

[theboogleman]

I guess it is possible to balance through cost alone, but then you're left trying to raise the cost-effectiveness of everything else to match one of the strongest plays in the game. To increase the cost of Brightdarken you probably need to remove the kill assist portion, as players who buy it already have the ability to kill heroes very well, and probably shouldn't be benefiting from assists as well. There should at least be the danger that you don't get the final blow.

Cass is right, there are many ways to alter the cost besides gold. Why not after it's used your ultimate costs 2 x mana? Or three times? Assists could lower the CD by half or something similar.

I really feel like playing some tob. What time are you guys usually on? Also what timezone just so I know when to log on.

[Merlin]

6pm EST, though I'll generally host whenever someone whispers me through my bot (Psychobot), if I'm not afk.

[Cassiel]

Would it be poor form if I made an item called the Date Rapier and gave it the ability to put a target to sleep?

[Turkey_Slayer]

You pushed the limits of amazing with that one.

[Fledermaus]

It'd be poor form not to.

[ChainsOfChaos]

I wants Leto!! make his ult look coooooool P.S. I rape you Fleder :3