The Capitalist's HoN Blog

NEW VERSION! Sure there is a list of buffs and nerfs but which ones mean anything? And in turn, what does it mean for competitive play?

Patches are always the most exciting time for any e-sport, particularly MOBA games. Nerfs, buffs, new items/heroes, and redone old heroes all mean one thing- a new and exciting competitive play with a potentially different metagame. While S2 has yet to give us new heroes or items, they have done so many nerfs and buffs to various parts of the game that it could mean a huge difference in competitive play. While it’ll take a week or so to fully explore the effects of this patch on the metagame, here is my thoughts for now.

ITEMS-

Elder parasite is an item that is rarely seen in both HoN and DotA competitive play. The reason? When activated, the increase in movement and attack speed is hardly worth the extra 30% damage taken. A buff reducing the dmg multiplier to 20% has the potential to reintroduce elder into the metagame. It will still be rare, but will be a viable item on heroes that rely on massive amounts of physical burst dmg (i.e. HAMMERSTORM)

Nullstone was another item that was considered trash by many players, considering the huge advantage given by a shrunken head. While nullstone still lacks some viability due to the ease with which players can work around a nullstone block, the decrease in cost, and increase in mana regen and dmg are small incentives when facing high dmg nukers (Soul Reaper) or long disablers (polly, witch, electrician).

Wards giving 50 kill gold? Talk about a nice incentive to by counter wards. Should players really need incentive for limiting the other teams vision? Probably not, but still nice.

HEROES-

Small but inconsequential buffs/nerfs- Keeper, Plague, Puppet, Pyro, Slither, SR, Succubus, Valk, Vindicator, Warbeast, Witch Slayer, BH

Moderate Nerfs: Zephyr, Ophelia, HB, Dsham

Moderate Buffs: Pharoah, Thunderbringer, Andro, Nymphora, Glacius

Major Buffs: Voodoo, Maliken, Legionnaire

Major Nerfs: Blacksmith, Chronos

LEGIONNAIRE! Just enough buffs to make this hero competitively viable. Charge is a welcome early game buff that allows him to initiate fights without that blink dagger. Still want blink dagger (just like a pesti with flight still uses one) Hopefully this will increase legionnaires spin #, as many players have noted that he does not spin as much as his DotA counterpart.

Slither wards give 5-6 more gold? Worthless nerf when you fight a level 4 ward and lose a tango charge in exchange for 10 gold. Still incredibly versatile hero with amazing pushing power.

Expecting heavier Slither ward nerfs? TOO BAD ITS ME BLACKSMITH!
Everyones favorite gambler received a huge nerf, with some basic stat nerfs and a reduction to the effectiveness of flaming hammer. People who claim blacksmith is now shitsmith forget that multicast didn’t receive any nerfs. This means that comboing nukes with blacksmith will require more timing during the laning phase, but his raw nuking power still remains. Still competitively viable due to the massive amount of agi carries.

Deadwood nerfs! The dreaded blink/nuking of deadwood has been all-around rescaled, decreasing early game domination while increasing mid game viability (small late game buffs). Biggest buffs- no more cone str reduction.

Demented Shaman: Decrease in stats hurts this heroes early game harassment that was so deadly. Still hugely competitive, but just enough nerf to hurt his ultra-babysitter status.

Massive nerfs on Chronos! Small nerfs on time leap is welcome, but the largest nerfs come from his stun and chronofield. Chronos will not be able to steal quite as much agility, and won’t be able to stun as often. Chronofield reverted back to freezing everyone! The SoTM is an irrelevant option for potential Chronos’ as his position as hard carry means no time or gold for a SoTM.

Chronos: Early/Mid game viability greatly reduced. Still remains a hard carry and viable in competitive play, but no longer fp/ban status.

Glacius/Voodoo Buffs: These babysitters gained some stat buffs. Voodoo also getting faster spells from cask and cursed ground. On top of the DS nerfs, these heroes are now much more viable to babysit.

Hellbringer- the void’s armor reduction nerfed, just enough. Now for a blood boil nerf! Still fp/ban

CD: Base dmg reduced? Helpful for heroes looking to win the solo mid lane early on. Yes please!

Maliken: The one hero that bounces back and forth between God and shit. Some welcome stat buffs, with some minor rebalancing of sword throw. Removing the mana cost from the heal sword, while buffs to the hurt sword bring this heroes early game viability. Maliken can now farm properly in lane, bringing back his status as a viable carry. More viable but not huge.

Madman: Reverting the last nerf on madman, stalk now does not slow him after the invis is out. Ulti costing less can mean a lot early in the game on an agi carry where mana can be an issue. Like Maliken, competitively viable again, but not a whole lot.

It has been an on-going discussion in the DotA community on the nature of overpowered heroes in the game and how to balance them. DotA has many problems due to its large variety of heroes and items and thus has a large discussion on imbalances, however HoN has had it’s own hiccups with large imbalances prompted flaming from the forums.

The discussion has encouraged me to write on the same topic, only from a HoN perspective. However, this topic is too complex to cover all at once, and requires a base of mutual understanding and knowledge to cover everything, so instead I’ll handle it piece by piece. Hopefully this will prevent people getting confused and frustrated, allowing them to follow a linear track of thought. Since I’m still writing things out, I can’t promise anything, but these are the parts for now:

Part 1: What does overpowered mean? What does it mean for a hero to be overpowered in the context of a MOBA game? Examples?
Part 2: Examples of questionably overpowered heroes/items. Can items be overpowered?
Part 3: Should MOBA games allow OP-ness? The nature of imperfection in games and how imbalances make MOBA smarter games that are more diverse, competitive and enjoyable.

Part 1- In gaming, overpowered means a part of the game, whatever it may be, gives a clear and decisive advantage over the opposing player with little repercussions. Whether it is characters in SSBB, weapons or add-ons in FPS games, or the plethora of advantages a certain race can have in RTS games, players all say certain things are overpowered. They may not agree on what is OP, but they all see imbalances in their favorite games. In the context of MOBA games however, there are types and degrees of op-ness (oh penis?)

My own standards:
A) What this hero counters
B) # and ability of other heroes to counter said hero
C) # and ability of other heroes to combo with said hero
D) Strengths and Weaknesses and their validity in-game

Strengths and weaknesses is the trade-off every hero takes when being assigned his role. In other words, high dps agility heroes trade damage in exchange for low hp and lack of nuking power. They may have high burst dmg potential, and can genocide teams later on, but it is typically dependent on their farm.

This is category is the source of most imbalances, however, they are easy to fix and are a bit more glaring. These heroes are identified quickly in competitive play and banned/fp accordingly. It is obvious to most players when a hero has too good of base stats or their combination of skills is too powerful. Again, this is the most obvious and common source of imbalances, however, every patch typically changes the list of heroes whose stats do not scale out with the rest of the game. Since this category is pretty simple (boring) I will not expend more energy on the subject.

E) Input (Effort) vs Output - This is a stupid argument, because MOBA games are not as much effort-intensive as they are experience/strat-intensive, but still valid. This is really more of a % chance of success equation

2) There ARE overpowered heroes! The statement that HoN is a team game consisting of 5 heroes or that there are counters (heroes/strats) to every hero is completely true! Unfortunately those statements are misleading and irrelevant.

3) Because of #1, most continuously overpowered heroes (patches nerf or change them but they still are effective) are heroes consisting of uniquely powerful abilities that other heroes/items cannot achieve, at least not in the effectiveness and range that said abilities can. These abilities typically give them better strengths vs weaknesses (especially when their ability is INVALUABLE) and combo incredibly well with a multitude of heroes. They also have very noticeable affects on the metagame (but we’ll go over that later)

DotA example: Dark Seer is a DotA hero who has a very unique ability called vacuum. Essentially, this skill takes all enemies within a radius and instantly sucks them into the middle, doing damage. While the dmg, cd, and radius can be easily assessed and categorized, the ability to force enemies together on a single spot cannot be- it is “invaluable” While this hero is very good for other reasons, the most important and relevant imbalance of this hero is this one ability. This hero has good “strength vs weaknesses” and combos incredibly well with the plethora of AOE nukers making him overpowered.

Note: The main reason this skill is overpowered is both its unique capabilities and its place as a normal ability, NOT an ultimate. This means that the ability has a low cd, low mana cost, and the advantage that it poses can be spammed throughout the game.

HoN example: Accursed is an incredibly good support due to the combination of his abilities and his role. Accursed (should) play a heavy support hero who can give both heals and preventative dmg shield/nukes at a very low cd. This by itself is respectable but not necessarily OP. What DOES make him OP though, is his ultimate, which not only makes him invulnerable but heals him if he takes dmg. “So what? Just don’t hit him when he pops his ulti and kill him afterwards” This sounds like a great idea but when you work in his role as support into the equation, it doesn’t work out that way. First of all, due to massive amounts of AOE damage flying around, it isn’t realistic to NOT hit the accursed during teamfights, so he’s going to heal up whether you like it or not. Second, support heroes are traditionally squishy because they provide the carry with a huge advantage and typically have low cd abilities that make they carry stronger throughout teamfights. However, Accursed, with both his base stats and his ultimate, is a tank that lasts a long time (usually last or 2nd to last to die) in teamfights. Due to his low cd abilities, he is constantly healing/shielding other heroes in the fight, extending the battle much longer than it should. For this reason, he combos well with carries that benefit from long, drawn out team fights, and counters nukers/disablers very well making him overpowered.

These heroes/abilities hold a special challenge when developers try to balance them out. The only ways to attempt to balance these heroes is to change their stats or dmg/cds which have little effect on their unique abilties (nerf vacuums dmg or range, its still incredibly powerful skill) but nerf it too much and the hero becomes obviously useless, rendering the hero's unique play mute due to its lack of competitive viability.

4) HoN is an incredibly complex game consisting of millions of variables, the influential being the most obvious- hero, lanes, items etc. This means that there are different aspects on how a hero is overpowered or not.

It all started like this:

“If you completely ignore a hero, and it farms up and wins the game. I have understanding about that kinda dota. I appriciate it too. But if you have ganked someone alot of times, it should pay off more. It seems to be better to kill a tower then to kill a hero - which is nothing wierd. But when its better to kill 1 tower then to kill 5 heroes then im questioning it. Simply, is it really what we wanna play and what we wanna see?

So my pure suggestions, what would they be?

- Remove or completely rework magicstick.

- Make it pay more gold to be near and inside herokills - why not even more experience? And make the one not lasthitting also get gold for the actual kill. Even if they are 5.

There are possibly tousands of more ideas to make the game more actionpacked and less farmoriented. What ideas do you have?”

That was the last little bit from Drayich’s blog on what direction he would like to see DotA go and why magic stick should be removed/reworked out of the game. An interesting discussion on the future of DotA and MOBA games in general with some valid opinions. Thoughtful, interesting, but no big deal right? Wrong! Whether it was other professional players criticizing Drayich’s ideas, writing their own thoughts on changes to be made, or the huge backlash of criticisms, ideas, and commentary from randoms, the response from the community was as varied as it was thought-provoking (with the exception of the posts by flaming trolls)

DotA, being a worldwide e-sport, is limited to the huge changes that can be implemented. The game can be balanced, tweaked, and new items/heroes introduced, but a completely revolutionary overhaul of the game would make competitive players’ heads explode and make e-sports dump DotA faster than your cheating ex-girlfriend.

HoN, however, has the chance to be a little less rigid in their standards, as it is still in beta, and has a whole entire company and engine to support this change. A lot of people (including myself) often long for more and more ports directly from DotA and criticize HoN unfairly for its differences. However, you can’t copy a game that is so capriciously fluid due to its complex nature. Instead, you can figure out what the community wants from its gaming experience, and how to deliver the results that DotA can’t. Granted, it is not doubt too late to change the direction S2 wants to go now, but I still like to hear feedback from the community.

So my question to the community is this: Where should HoN’s metagame go? How do we move it there?

It’s simple to say it should be faster (gank-orientated) or slower (farm-orientated) but it’s something much more complex to discuss the finer points and what gaming mechanics/items/heroes/strategies should be implemented to create the changes you desire.

I hope this will be an active, on-going discussion on HoN’s metagame! Post your comments below!