Undecided on the gameplay changes, I will need to get into some games tonight and see how they feel. However, I am pretty happy with the direction of the hero changes this patch, particularly the nerfs to Shiv and Seven’s balls. Not that Seven was OP, but he was extremely obnoxious and un-fun to play against considering everyone was building into the ball and spamming it constantly.
I mostly play Paradox and Vindicta, so I’m happy to see some changes to them. Paradox was fairly well balanced already in my opinion, but the buffs to Kinetic Carbine play into the high movement, roaming ganker playstyle which is very fun. Vindicta has felt quite a bit tougher to play since the mega-nerfs a while ago, so hopefully this update helps with that though she will always be a difficult hero to balance because her movement and range is so unique. It’s kinda sad to see the Assassinate souls-sharing be removed entirely as I thought it was an interesting team support mechanic on a hero that otherwise feels like it has a very stereotypically selfish DPS carry kind of vibe. Again, I get that it was a difficult mechanic to balance due to its uniqueness so maybe it’s for the best. We will see if it returns.
I think the removal of the soul sharing on the ult is a nerf to Vindicta overall, but we’ll see. It’s easier to counter one hero with big net worth than having it evenly spread across her whole team. At least in theory.
I played a few games on her last night. She definitely felt a lot stronger with the fire rate and flight time changes but it did feel like the souls sharing wasn’t as impactful. I had one game where I had 14 kills in the first 13 minutes but, aside from creating some space on the map and helping to take a couple of objectives, those kills ultimately didn’t translate to a meaningful advantage for my team. Part of that was definitely just the fact that our team had 4 useless players on it and it was basically myself and this cracked Grey Talon hard carrying. But also, like you predicted, the enemy team organised themselves and started hard focusing me in every fight after that big opening kill streak which limited my effectiveness for the rest of the game (I went 10/5 after the 14/0 opening). I feel like maybe previously those early kills would have made given my team more momentum than they did in that game. But it was only one game that stood out so maybe it was just a bad one. Overall she does feel more viable as a carry than she did prior to this patch.
I mostly build around gun damage, Kinetic Carbine and high movement. I try to be aggressive in lane, then roam the map looking for ganks and split-pushing opportunities before carrying in the team fights. The Pulse Grenade is only really important for area denial in laning; later in the game it just gets relegated to clearing waves and jungle camps. I used to build more into cooldowns for the classic Paradox combo but at my level getting picks in a team fight matters a lot less than just being able to hard carry through raw damage output (because players are unorganised and generally pretty bad) and I am winning a lot more since switching to a DPS carry kind of role.
Undecided on the gameplay changes, I will need to get into some games tonight and see how they feel. However, I am pretty happy with the direction of the hero changes this patch, particularly the nerfs to Shiv and Seven’s balls. Not that Seven was OP, but he was extremely obnoxious and un-fun to play against considering everyone was building into the ball and spamming it constantly.
I mostly play Paradox and Vindicta, so I’m happy to see some changes to them. Paradox was fairly well balanced already in my opinion, but the buffs to Kinetic Carbine play into the high movement, roaming ganker playstyle which is very fun. Vindicta has felt quite a bit tougher to play since the mega-nerfs a while ago, so hopefully this update helps with that though she will always be a difficult hero to balance because her movement and range is so unique. It’s kinda sad to see the Assassinate souls-sharing be removed entirely as I thought it was an interesting team support mechanic on a hero that otherwise feels like it has a very stereotypically selfish DPS carry kind of vibe. Again, I get that it was a difficult mechanic to balance due to its uniqueness so maybe it’s for the best. We will see if it returns.
I think the removal of the soul sharing on the ult is a nerf to Vindicta overall, but we’ll see. It’s easier to counter one hero with big net worth than having it evenly spread across her whole team. At least in theory.
I played a few games on her last night. She definitely felt a lot stronger with the fire rate and flight time changes but it did feel like the souls sharing wasn’t as impactful. I had one game where I had 14 kills in the first 13 minutes but, aside from creating some space on the map and helping to take a couple of objectives, those kills ultimately didn’t translate to a meaningful advantage for my team. Part of that was definitely just the fact that our team had 4 useless players on it and it was basically myself and this cracked Grey Talon hard carrying. But also, like you predicted, the enemy team organised themselves and started hard focusing me in every fight after that big opening kill streak which limited my effectiveness for the rest of the game (I went 10/5 after the 14/0 opening). I feel like maybe previously those early kills would have made given my team more momentum than they did in that game. But it was only one game that stood out so maybe it was just a bad one. Overall she does feel more viable as a carry than she did prior to this patch.
Do you build a railgun Paradox and or do you build into the time bomb at all?
My playstyle on her is mind gaming people into standing somewhat still, for long enough to eat a bunch of time bomb pulses.
This duration change, along with the area growing with each pulse, added in the last big patch, now makes the time bomb utterly insane imo.
I mostly build around gun damage, Kinetic Carbine and high movement. I try to be aggressive in lane, then roam the map looking for ganks and split-pushing opportunities before carrying in the team fights. The Pulse Grenade is only really important for area denial in laning; later in the game it just gets relegated to clearing waves and jungle camps. I used to build more into cooldowns for the classic Paradox combo but at my level getting picks in a team fight matters a lot less than just being able to hard carry through raw damage output (because players are unorganised and generally pretty bad) and I am winning a lot more since switching to a DPS carry kind of role.