Big update as always. I’m interested in seeing the new cel shading on characters.
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Common Mo & Krell buff wins.
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.
Glad they’re pushing urn as a comeback mechanic even more with the slightly easier deposit point.
Also changing the comeback benefit to only kicking in at a 8% soul gap makes sense, was kind of dumb that having a 1k difference had them kick in lol.
Lot of other changes too, haven’t had a chance to read them all.
Shiv nerf. Been waiting for that.
Interesting urn changes, there are now six drop off locations, which will change depending on what team is in the lead. Losing team will be able to drop it off closer to base, winning team has to take it towards enemy base.
Oh boy Paradox got a fun change. You can now increase the pulses on the time bomb by increasing ability duration. I got eight pulses totaling over 2000 damage (plus they apply damage amp stacks) by using superior duration+magic carpet (which is the only other item that gives ability duration for some reason).
Throw in a echo shard and range extension and you can make some zones enemies REALLY wont want to be in :D
Vindicta: Fire rate now scales with Spirit Power (0.14)
Vindicta is the new Grey Talon
Lots of huge changes, not sure how I feel about some. I love the Urn adjustments toward being a better comeback mechanism, it was definitely more of a snowball mechanism before.
The changes to backdooring and to Walkers and Guardians I’m very on the fence about. It’s very clear they want game speed to go down (and at least in my Emissary games they have definitely often been going 40+ minutes). Will be very interesting how it plays out, from the looks of it all your buildings will just fall apart after 14 minutes now. Also really encourages rat gameplay, splitpushing and suiciding objectives which I don’t really enjoy.
Not surprised Shiv got the nerf bat, he was out of hand. Very surprised Infernus and McGinnis weren’t nerfed harder, especially Infernus. For me personally I’m happy about the Mirage buffs as I spam him, I think the Spirit build will be actually good now.
Kinda sad to see Leap gutted even though it was clearly overpowered. There is something to be said for allowing items that are that fun to be a little broken.
