1. #2901
    Quote Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK View Post
    Is it just me or does Puck fall off towards the later game? His spells do little damage compared to a lot of other heroes and Dream Coil just feels like it's overall worse than, say, Ravage nine times out of ten. 500 damage with scepter boost (and ONLY if they break the coil) compared to 450 right up front, and the stun isn't really much longer than Ravage's (3.5 total stun time compared to about 3.2.)

    Because his spells do so little damage and have semi-long cooldowns he's not amazing at pushing or counterpushing. Seems like the only thing he's good at in the later phases of the game is just staying alive.
    Build him as a carry. (no really)

    After a generic blink/guinsoo's throw in skadi/mjoll which is always the favorite caster combo and a buriza. If you can farm all of that gold you won't fall off at all, the ability to constantly chase someone with that much auto attack damage will keep you extremely relevant if you play properly. Puck can easily gun down some pretty tough heroes just by being able to constantly dodge and blink around. Imagine a fed SB who can't do anything because every time he gets next to Puck, Puck just phase/blinks away and keeps attacking him until he's dead.

    Of course, you might say "anyone is good with those items," but again, if the game is over at blink I don't see why he needs to be relevant late game, the game is already over. Most games are over in 30 minutes and his spells are still pretty relevant. As much as any other int hero, anyway. Compare him to Lion who does waaaaaaaaaay less damage in a team fight. Two very reliable CCs, yes, but that's the trade you get to make as an int hero > CC for damage. If you have a Dark Seer to vac everyone together, Puck by himself can hit two thousand damage with his two basic spells, that's pretty neat. Lina does more, but Lina doesn't have Dream Coil or phase, either.

    I personally don't like Puck because I just can't stand his early game. Cower at the tower and shoot off Illu orbs to try to scrape together enough last hits for energy boots so that you can start spamming creep waves for blink so that you can FINALLY be useful beyond ult>die. Talk about your crappy auto attacks from a hero with pretty much zero lane presence.
    Last edited by Lysah; 2012-10-09 at 06:44 AM.

  2. #2902
    Quote Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK View Post
    You're always reliable for useful feedback and discussion.
    My point is, you need to stop arbitrarily comparing one skill to another. What do Puck and Tidehunter have in common? Next to nothing, yet you still choose to compare Dream Coil to Ravage, which also happens to easily be one of the most powerful abilities in a game. Much like Smoke Bomb is better than Grave Silence, but Krobelus can function well without GS while Rikimaru is nothing without Smoke. Visage is a lot different to Lycan and Familiars should be used completely differently than Wolves, which makes a decent comparison between them very hard.

    All of this could be relevant if this was a game where you pick your custom hero for whom you could pick whatever skills you want. Sure I'd make a hero with Ravage instead of Dream Coil and Chaotic Offering instead of Summon Familiars, but unfortunate as it is you can't separate heroes from their skills in Dota which makes comparing random parts of different packages moot. "These skills are both ultimates, they should be equally strong" and similar statements only cause headache for me.

  3. #2903
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    My point is, you need to stop arbitrarily comparing one skill to another. What do Puck and Tidehunter have in common? Next to nothing, yet you still choose to compare Dream Coil to Ravage, which also happens to easily be one of the most powerful abilities in a game. Much like Smoke Bomb is better than Grave Silence, but Krobelus can function well without GS while Rikimaru is nothing without Smoke. Visage is a lot different to Lycan and Familiars should be used completely differently than Wolves, which makes a decent comparison between them very hard.

    All of this could be relevant if this was a game where you pick your custom hero for whom you could pick whatever skills you want. Sure I'd make a hero with Ravage instead of Dream Coil and Chaotic Offering instead of Summon Familiars, but unfortunate as it is you can't separate heroes from their skills in Dota which makes comparing random parts of different packages moot. "These skills are both ultimates, they should be equally strong" and similar statements only cause headache for me.
    It's a point of comparison. Where else are you going to draw data points necessary to evaluate the relative strength of a skill or a hero's kit from? Obviously Tide and Puck are different heroes with different niches, but if you're comparing their ultimates for the purposes of initiation, Dream Coil just seems weak, even combined with the rest of Puck's kit.

    If you aren't comparing abilities between heroes that share similar roles, what are you going to be drawing your data from? Just random "oh hey this feels like it'd be a good idea"?
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  4. #2904
    Quote Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK View Post
    It's a point of comparison. Where else are you going to draw data points necessary to evaluate the relative strength of a skill or a hero's kit from? Obviously Tide and Puck are different heroes with different niches, but if you're comparing their ultimates for the purposes of initiation, Dream Coil just seems weak, even combined with the rest of Puck's kit.

    If you aren't comparing abilities between heroes that share similar roles, what are you going to be drawing your data from? Just random "oh hey this feels like it'd be a good idea"?
    You need to compare the entire heroes or just not compare at all. Picking two random abilities and comparing them yields no useful information whatsoever. 90% of your posts you either do this or argue that some hero is OP followed by 3 paragraphs of you explaining what their abilities do as a justification for your argument. My shitty jokes containt the same amount of useful information. You established that Puck, an int hero without any natural boost to her damage falls off in the late-game? And that Ravage is good? How very interesting.

  5. #2905
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    You need to compare the entire heroes or just not compare at all. Picking two random abilities and comparing them yields no useful information whatsoever. 90% of your posts you either do this or argue that some hero is OP followed by 3 paragraphs of you explaining what their abilities do as a justification for your argument. My shitty jokes containt the same amount of useful information. You established that Puck, an int hero without any natural boost to her damage falls off in the late-game? And that Ravage is good? How very interesting.
    Again, it's a point of comparison. Tide doesn't get any boosts to damage, either, but Ravage is devastating throughout the entire game. Dream Coil occupies the same general concept - blink in and drop it on the enemy team - but doesn't retain that same "oh shit incoming ravage" effect into the late game.

    So why is that? Where do you draw the data from? How would you make both ultimates - which occupy the same general niche - both be equally scary? Is Tide/Ravage too good, or is Dream Coil/Puck too weak? Is it just due to the way teams are currently playing and operating (the "metagame") or is it an issue that would be present regardless if things shifted so that they favored a hero like Puck?

    How else are you supposed to obtain objective data to make decisions with?
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  6. #2906
    Quote Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK View Post
    Tide/Ravage too good, or is Dream Coil/Puck too weak?
    Either is possible, but you will never get any kind of conclusive argument or debate by not looking at the whole picture but focusing on random parts of them. DC could be the absolute shittiest ability in the game and Ravage could be the most powerful one, and it would still be possible that both Puck and Tide are perfectly balanced in contrast to each other and every other hero in the game.

    If you can't do that, you might just as well debate on the differences of couriers.
    Last edited by Hermanni; 2012-10-09 at 09:19 AM.

  7. #2907
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    Either is possible, but you will never get any kind of conclusive argument or debate by not looking at the whole picture but focusing on random parts of them. DC could be the absolute shittiest ability in the game and Ravage could be the most powerful one, and it would still be possible that both Puck and Tide are perfectly balanced in contrast to each other and every other hero in the game.

    If you can't do that, you might just as well debate on the differences of couriers.
    You should maybe actually read before responding to bits out of context. I'm specifically asking that in the context of their play and responsibilities within an entire game. If we said that both Dream Coil and Ravage were equal in terms of initiation strength, but Tidehunter is used more frequently/wins more frequently than Puck in games above a certain threshold of player skill, how do we interpret that?

    Is it just due to the "metagame," that Tide's kit is just preferred over Puck's? What if both are acceptable within the current play environment? Does that just mean one is more of a niche pick than the other, or is one too strong or too weak?

    That's the point, that's why I'm asking. Where does Icefrog pull his data from? How is he determining what needs improvements, what needs nerfs, what needs no changes at all? Knowing that would lead to a much better understanding of the game.
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  8. #2908
    Quote Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK View Post
    You should maybe actually read before responding to bits out of context. I'm specifically asking that in the context of their play and responsibilities within an entire game. If we said that both Dream Coil and Ravage were equal in terms of initiation strength, but Tidehunter is used more frequently/wins more frequently than Puck in games above a certain threshold of player skill, how do we interpret that?

    Is it just due to the "metagame," that Tide's kit is just preferred over Puck's? What if both are acceptable within the current play environment? Does that just mean one is more of a niche pick than the other, or is one too strong or too weak?

    That's the point, that's why I'm asking. Where does Icefrog pull his data from? How is he determining what needs improvements, what needs nerfs, what needs no changes at all? Knowing that would lead to a much better understanding of the game.
    You're comparing both heroes only in terms of initiation. Consider laning, roles and scaling and you might get your answers. It's been said a million times in this thread already, but drafting trends in the competitive scene often have next to nothing to do with relative hero strength.

    Puck does get picked, but not as often as Tide. Soon there will be 100 heroes in the game, that would mean that for every hero to be evenly picked you'd see every hero in one out of 10 games. That's not a lot, and with the amount of carries and hard carries in the game that isn't even remotely possible within the confines of the meta-game. Tidehunter can lane well in any position except jungle and solo mid, while Puck demands a solo lane. Flexible heroes will always get picked more often just because of drafting strategy alone. Niche heroes will always get picked less because there's more options for their position. There aren't a lot of good support heroes, so the good ones get picked a lot because most of the time a team wants to pick one or more of them.

    If you don't buy that, take a look at the TI2 statistics. Puck gets picked/banned at 10% of the rate of Tidehunter but has 78% win rate compared to Tidehunters 52%. Obviously Ferrari_430 and Dendi along with small sample size have a lot to do with the high win rate, but the point still stands.

  9. #2909
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    You're comparing both heroes only in terms of initiation. Consider laning, roles and scaling and you might get your answers.
    That's what I was trying to imply when referring to a hero's entire kit, sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

    Puck does get picked, but not as often as Tide. Soon there will be 100 heroes in the game, that would mean that for every hero to be evenly picked you'd see every hero in one out of 10 games. That's not a lot, and with the amount of carries and hard carries in the game that isn't even remotely possible within the confines of the meta-game. Tidehunter can lane well in any position except jungle and solo mid, while Puck demands a solo lane. Flexible heroes will always get picked more often just because of drafting strategy alone. Niche heroes will always get picked less because there's more options for their position. There aren't a lot of good support heroes, so the good ones get picked a lot because most of the time a team wants to pick one or more of them.
    Yeah. The question is, should this just be accepted as part of the game, or would it be possible to try and make adjustments here and there to try and make every hero (or as many as possible) have multiple ways of playing them? Like you said, Tide can do a lot of different things, and so can heroes like Profit, Dark Seer, and some others, which would lead to them being used more frequently than other choices simply due to their versatility.

    Do you think trying to have as many heroes as possible have this versatility is a good design goal, or do you think it's better to have a handful of all-rounders with most of the other heroes fill in specific roles and niches?
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  10. #2910
    Quote Originally Posted by PizzaSHARK View Post
    Yeah. The question is, should this just be accepted as part of the game, or would it be possible to try and make adjustments here and there to try and make every hero (or as many as possible) have multiple ways of playing them? Like you said, Tide can do a lot of different things, and so can heroes like Profit, Dark Seer, and some others, which would lead to them being used more frequently than other choices simply due to their versatility.

    Do you think trying to have as many heroes as possible have this versatility is a good design goal, or do you think it's better to have a handful of all-rounders with most of the other heroes fill in specific roles and niches?
    No amount of adjustment will ever make all heroes equally popular. You will have to consider the amount of practise it would require of teams to be able to run all heroes regularly and strategies needed for them to be able to utilize said heroes and actually win with them. Meanwhile another team could focus their practice one a more limited group of heroes and a few strategies and win with more perfected execution. You can look at Team DK, many predicted that their BurNIng + 4 strategy and lineups would be their downfall, but even everyone knew how they would play they still made it to 4th place in TI2.

    I don't really like the idea of enforcing change in meta any more than I like the idea of Riot enforcing no change in meta in lol. Dota pro scene has shown it's ability to transform and evolve on it's own many times before, and I prefer seeing the players discover and try out new things on their own to everyone rushing to pick the freshly buffed new fotm hero. Adjustments are good, as most in the latest patch are, but they should be made with time and consideration and not because people want to see that hero that hasn't been picked in a month. e.g. Morpling.
    Last edited by Hermanni; 2012-10-09 at 11:51 AM.

  11. #2911
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    No amount of adjustment will ever make all heroes equally popular. You will have to consider the amount of practise it would require of teams to be able to run all heroes regularly and strategies needed for them to be able to utilize said heroes and actually win with them. Meanwhile another team could focus their practice one a more limited group of heroes and a few strategies and win with more perfected execution. You can look at Team DK, many predicted that their BurNIng + 4 strategy and lineups would be their downfall, but even everyone knew how they would play they still made it to 4th place in TI2.

    I don't really like the idea of enforcing change in meta any more than I like the idea of Riot enforcing no change in meta in lol. Dota pro scene has shown it's ability to transform and evolve on it's own many times before, and I prefer seeing the players discover and try out new things on their own to everyone rushing to pick the freshly buffed new fotm hero. Adjustments are good, as most in the latest patch are, but they should be made with time and consideration and not because people want to see that hero that hasn't been picked in a month. e.g. Morpling.
    Yeah. I ask because there were several changes in 6.75 that made me go "wait, what?" They seemingly came out of left field to fix something that in my eyes didn't need fixing. It's why I'm wanting to know where Icefrog is pulling data from, because maybe he's seeing something I'm not.
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  12. #2912
    5 second level 1 cogs is pretty absurd.

  13. #2913
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Can someone explain to me the buff to PA's ultimate? I seriously don't understand the reasoning behind that. It's a completely RNG ability that doesn't really involve player skill at any level, so why was that skill in particular buffed? If they felt she was underperforming, weren't there other areas they could've addressed?
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  14. #2914
    What else would they change? Such a simple/boring hero can't really be changed much other than to be more RNG.

  15. #2915
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Lysah View Post
    What else would they change? Such a simple/boring hero can't really be changed much other than to be more RNG.
    I don't know, I didn't think she needed changes to begin with. It's why I can't figure out why the hell they'd make that change - if she's weak, the solution is to make her even more reliant on a coinflip?
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  16. #2916
    How is she reliant on coinflip? PA gets a lot of attack speed from Blink Strike, combined with Stifling Dagger or any other disable she should get plenty of hits in in a short time like BKB duration. Surely you can have shit luck and not crit at all or have great luck and crit every other hit, but most of the time you'll stay within standard deviation.

    Relying on high crits is basically the essence of the hero, so what you're looking at is a buff to her damage. Perhaps in response so some heroes getting their armor or health buffed, or to give her targets smaller margin to wait for the crit before using a defensive ability or escape.

  17. #2917
    Titan PizzaSHARK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Oklahoma, USA
    Posts
    14,844
    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    How is she reliant on coinflip? PA gets a lot of attack speed from Blink Strike, combined with Stifling Dagger or any other disable she should get plenty of hits in in a short time like BKB duration. Surely you can have shit luck and not crit at all or have great luck and crit every other hit, but most of the time you'll stay within standard deviation.
    Yeah, but it still becomes coinflippy on a case-by-case basis - I've seen PA get no crits for three solid seconds, and I've seen her blow someone up with the first hit. Over the course of a game it's no more random than stout shield/vanguard, Axe's helix, etc, but on an individual basis it's still coinflippy. That's always been the reason I've heard trotted out for why pros don't seem to consider using her much.

    Relying on high crits is basically the essence of the hero, so what you're looking at is a buff to her damage. Perhaps in response so some heroes getting their armor or health buffed, or to give her targets smaller margin to wait for the crit before using a defensive ability or escape.
    Why not improve the chance of crit, then, to make it less likely her first swing (maybe the only swing she'll get) fizzles?
    http://steamcommunity.com/id/PizzaSHARK
    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan Cailan Ebonheart View Post
    I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.
    Quote Originally Posted by SUH View Post
    Crissi the goddess of MMO, if i may. ./bow

  18. #2918
    Well, I would prefer if they changed all RNG heroes, for the most part, in some manner. A dice roll should never be allowed to determine games on a competitive level, but there is no way to keep things interesting without it. It already exists in variable auto attack damage, somewhat in automatic creep behavior, in rune spawns, etc.

    Still, it is absurdly annoying to run up and impale/finger a 300 health void only for him to walk away with....300 health. But of course when you play him you die every time.

  19. #2919
    I personally like it, it's a part of particular heroes' flair. Chaos knight for example, damage variance and low crit chance with huge multiplier sometimes makes you able to solo the opposing team, and sometimes you fail 1v1, but he's supposed to be "chaotic". If they get picked for tournament play, there's always risk/reward factor which we need more of (I hate universal heroes like invoker, he has damage, regen, incredible skill set an he's ranged to boot, more specialized heroes would promote more teamplay and importance of items in my opinion). Hell, we could even see more dynamic metagame, instead of same picks/bans every tournament.

  20. #2920
    It's not bad when it's a fairly decent chance and reliable. Headshot, for example, no one complains about. It's very annoying but at roughly a 1/2 chance per shot you can expect it to hit you all the time so there's never a OMGWTF moment. The lower the % chance gets the more ridiculously annoying the procs are. Take Gambler, for example.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •