A New Look for Stealth in Heroes of the Storm

[Charge me Doctor]

Maybe you can't target them but I'd assume if you have some kind of AoE you can still hit them?

Sure, assuming you have that AoE spell ready at this very moment and don't bother using it against stealth character, instead of, say, using it on someone else. Take Uther for example, he can either throw his W to heal, or to reveal stealth.

[jstnw89]

Hopefully this will finally end my streak of thousands of games being the only one on my team able to see and unstealth enemy stealthies.

Not sure why blizzard even shot for the "casual" moba market and then included heroes designed to absolutely shit on bad players..

On the other side their design is just boring as hell.. bursting out of stealth and then running away, ironically attracting bad players needing stealth as a crutch.. to play them (so they're in basically every QM game)

[Stormcall]

, it's just because he didn't played enough against stealth heroes to see ripples.

Some people have eye issues that simply prevent them from seeing the ripples at all. Same with people who play on low settings. I recently got a new PC, and am finally able to play on high settings. On my new PC, I see them fine. But on my old PC, you could tell me EXACTLY where the stealth person is standing, but I STILL wouldn't see them cause on the low settings, there IS NO RIPPLE.

[Charge me Doctor]

Some people have eye issues that simply prevent them from seeing the ripples at all. Same with people who play on low settings. I recently got a new PC, and am finally able to play on high settings. On my new PC, I see them fine. But on my old PC, you could tell me EXACTLY where the stealth person is standing, but I STILL wouldn't see them cause on the low settings, there IS NO RIPPLE.

You are right, another reason to push this change as positive one. It gave too much of an advantage for stealthed player with very little ways to counterplay to others

[Stormcall]

You are right, another reason to push this change as positive one. It gave too much of an advantage for stealthed player with very little ways to counterplay to others

The stealth changes were announced before I had my new PC, and I had no way to see stealth. I still opposed them. Stealthed heroes SHOULD be scary. The problem isn't that they were too scary for some people, it's that they weren't scary enough for other people. But at least with the ripple, it could be overlooked in the middle of a team fight or while something else was going on, even by people who know what to look for and can see the shimmer clearly. With this change, stealth doesn't exist. Even in a team fight or with other stuff going on, the "stealthed" hero is only slightly less noticeable than Nova whipping off her top and waving it around under a neon light.

[Deleted]

The outgoing system was just bad. A test for eysight has no business in a strategy/action game and it was extremely random; I would see stealthed heroes depending on the map ground textures, reasonably easily on Volskaya Foundry or Tomb of the Spider Queen, on the other hand I would be completely 'blind' on Garden night time. While I would have preferred the solution to make steathers completely invisible - and balance from there - the new sytem can only be better than the mess we are finally leaving behind.

Curious how the part time stealthers Samuro, Greymane, Dehaka, Tyrande will be balanced; Murky stealth is just a gimmick connected to a bad talent anyway.

[Deleted]

Hopefully this will finally end my streak of thousands of games being the only one on my team able to see and unstealth enemy stealthies.

Not sure why blizzard even shot for the "casual" moba market and then included heroes designed to absolutely shit on bad players..

On the other side their design is just boring as hell.. bursting out of stealth and then running away, ironically attracting bad players needing stealth as a crutch.. to play them (so they're in basically every QM game)

I 100% agree!

I don't know how many games i have played where i have to spam ping a stealth character so that the low health assassins react to them.. And even then most still don't react. It's super frustrating to see you teammates die to something that's completely obvious to one self, that being eye test or just playing around the mechanic long enough.

I guess the reason they did not go full stealth is because it's insanely hard to balance. You can't have a nova who has the team fight potential of non-stealth skillshot based hero and who also has 100% stealth between fights!

[Charge me Doctor]

I 100% agree!

I don't know how many games i have played where i have to spam ping a stealth character so that the low health assassins react to them.. And even then most still don't react. It's super frustrating to see you teammates die to something that's completely obvious to one self, that being eye test or just playing around the mechanic long enough.

I guess the reason they did not go full stealth is because it's insanely hard to balance. You can't have a nova who has the team fight potential of non-stealth skillshot based hero and who also has 100% stealth between fights!

the best part is when you ping 3 times showing the path stealthed nova will take to take a snipe on 10% health asshole recalling in the middle of a lane and she shoots right from the last point you pinged.

[Demona3]

Sounds like LTP problem. Had no issues sneaking on opponents as Valeera. Sounds like you played only against opponents who couldn't see old stealth ripples even if their life depended on it

LOL. Ok. I just had a game last night with a Zarya who saw me every single time (live game, not PTR). It was a fun challenge to get to her and try to destroy her. I've been playing a Valeera a long time. You're quote back to me, is stupid. If you haven't tried new stealth on the PTR, don't even bother commenting to me.

[Charge me Doctor]

LOL. Ok. I just had a game last night with a Zarya who saw me every single time (live game, not PTR). It was a fun challenge to get to her and try to destroy her. I've been playing a Valeera a long time. You're quote back to me, is stupid. If you haven't tried new stealth on the PTR, don't even bother commenting to me.

I have tried it, and since i take my usual approach that "stealth doesn't make you invisible to players" i'm already ready for this change, while you are obviously aren't. You don't blindly walk in as Valeera into the fray, expecting that enemies won't see you - if you do that you put power into your enemies hands, the only way it can work is when you have death from above and will open with ambush all the time, but thanks to this talent being, basically, baseline and work on all openers - it's not a problem anymore. There is very little chance that when you move out of fog of war into unsuspecting (or even better - long-range nuker, who looks at almost a screen away from his position) enemy with 12,65 vision range - you have to cross just 7,65 range units until you land on top of his head at 4,3 (*1,2) per second. That's less than 2 seconds of movement against someone who spotted you at their max vision range, while you move faster than them

[Demona3]

I have tried it, and since i take my usual approach that "stealth doesn't make you invisible to players" i'm already ready for this change, while you are obviously aren't. You don't blindly walk in as Valeera into the fray, expecting that enemies won't see you - if you do that you put power into your enemies hands, the only way it can work is when you have death from above and will open with ambush all the time, but thanks to this talent being, basically, baseline and work on all openers - it's not a problem anymore. There is very little chance that when you move out of fog of war into unsuspecting (or even better - long-range nuker, who looks at almost a screen away from his position) enemy with 12,65 vision range - you have to cross just 7,65 range units until you land on top of his head at 4,3 (*1,2) per second. That's less than 2 seconds of movement against someone who spotted you at their max vision range, while you move faster than them

I'm sorry, but Valeera along with nova and the other stealth are stalkers. They are not meant to stay in bushes. If people see you moving from the gate to said bush, they know you are there and know where to expect you from. This completely ruins the "stalking" aspect of the game.

[Charge me Doctor]

I'm sorry, but Valeera along with nova and the other stealth are stalkers. They are not meant to stay in bushes. If people see you moving from the gate to said bush, they know you are there and know where to expect you from. This completely ruins the "stalking" aspect of the game.

Huh, i thought stalkers are supposed to hid in bushes, instead of being completely invisible to their pray.

No, until you go to wrong conclusions - they are not, they are not completely invisible and you have to outsmart your opponents instead of relying on permanent invisibility and hope for them to not notice you

[FelPlague]

152 levels of Valeera fun will be gone soon...

you seriously have 152 level valeera?

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I'm sorry, but Valeera along with nova and the other stealth are stalkers. They are not meant to stay in bushes. If people see you moving from the gate to said bush, they know you are there and know where to expect you from. This completely ruins the "stalking" aspect of the game.

people have ALLWAYS been able to see stealth heros. Just that those without good vision were fucked.
Now everyone can see them, even those with poor vision, and the heros are being buffed to compensate for this...

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LOL. Ok. I just had a game last night with a Zarya who saw me every single time (live game, not PTR). It was a fun challenge to get to her and try to destroy her. I've been playing a Valeera a long time. You're quote back to me, is stupid. If you haven't tried new stealth on the PTR, don't even bother commenting to me.

and yet all of a sudden everyone seeing you every single time will be horrible so much you refunded your stimpack?

[Demona3]

you seriously have 152 level valeera?

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people have ALLWAYS been able to see stealth heros. Just that those without good vision were fucked.
Now everyone can see them, even those with poor vision, and the heros are being buffed to compensate for this...

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and yet all of a sudden everyone seeing you every single time will be horrible so much you refunded your stimpack?

Absolutely. This is the dumbest change EVER. I mean, look at WoW when you PvP. Do you SEE those stealthed players coming up behind your ass? The thing is, you can still SEE stealth players without this "Wonder Woman's invisible cartoon jet" view. It's absolutely dumb.
This is a prime example of children crying they can't see the stealth and blizzard changing it to better suit them. They basically said fuck you a massive amount of base players who play stealth to accommodate a small percentage who "can't see stealth" in it's current state.

They have characters in the game which can reveal stealth already, and the amount of characters that can reveal the stealth, out number the amount of actual stealth characters. Hell, they even gave Hanzo a flare ability.

I played this on the PTR, several games in fact. It is absolutely horrible. Remember that smoke bomb Valeera has in an attempt to try and get away? Yeah, no more. And the tru-sight to towers... seriously? So... lets fuck over stealth, but give Aba and Murky's egg complete safety.

To add: Yes, I did get a refund on my stimpack. Why should I continuously pay for something when they took NO ONE'S insight as to how they feel about the change? They just up and did it, asked no opinions on what the community thought. The best way to get the word to them is to close your wallet.
This is what happened in WOD. They announced no flying. Regardless of what people posted on the forums, actions speak louder than words. Wallets closed, accounts closed, suddenly.. HEY, WE'RE ADDING FLYING BACK!

So hopefully my action sends a message. Hopefully others do the same. Regardless, it was my decision. I enjoy Valeera play, I tested it out on the PTR, I'm against the change.

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Maybe you can't target them but I'd assume if you have some kind of AoE you can still hit them?

You can see them walking up to you in "stealth" and any direct hit will bust them out of "stealth", like normal gameplay. The main difference, you will know exactly where they are when you take aim. :P

[AwkwardSquirtle]

You can see them walking up to you in "stealth" and any direct hit will bust them out of "stealth", like normal gameplay. The main difference, you will know exactly where they are when you take aim. :P

Wasn't that the case for experienced players anyway? From what I've heard the mechanic is nullified in HL since everyone knows exactly what to look for, you may as well not be stealthed.

[Charge me Doctor]

Wasn't that the case for experienced players anyway? From what I've heard the mechanic is nullified in HL since everyone knows exactly what to look for, you may as well not be stealthed.

Exactly, it's a change that favors/hurts only unexperienced players (i'm leaving people with bad vision and PCs outside of equation). It's the same case of C&D Spy in TF2 - when you play on newbie server - you are unstoppable murder machine, when you get into decent server - better get your dead ringer out or you won't get any kills unless you plan to sit like a crab in a corner waiting for someone to shove you with their back.

All stealth characters got significant buffs after this stealth change. I've played 5 games on Valeera and didn't feel crippled because people can see me coming if i fuck up my pathing, in fact, built-in gap closer feels ridiculously good combined with movement speed increase. The big noticeable nerf was cheap shot one, now you can't simply pick someone in the fight and yell at your divier/nuker to blast the target away, you need way more coordination than before

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Wow is a different game if you didn't notice, and you used to see stealth in wow. Rogues complained and stealth detection got nerfed significantly.
What do you even mean by "wonder woman's invisible cartoon jet"?
No, they kinda said "hey, we are going to balance this thing that have 0 effect in high leagues and 100% effect in low leagues", overall level of happiness increased.

Yeah, like 10 characters with abilities on 30 seconds cooldown. While stealth has what, 10 seconds cooldown? They also don't put you out of stealth, you simply become visible and targetable (which is bad enough if you 1v5), your stealth buff is still there and you still can use your openers.

Smoke bombs use is not "attempt to get away", it's a "i'm going to stay here and murder your Morales while you watch" ability. Anyone who use it this way are akin to Uther using bubble on himself to run away from a fight first. You are talking in extremes now, if Abathur sits under a tower he is still vulnerable to dive regardless of stealth change, the only thing that changed is you being unable 100-0 him alone and get away with it without effort.

They took a lot of insight for this change, and changed it for good. They get their feedback via "did you enjoy this match?/hero?" and forums. General consensus that stealth either irrelevant (for those who got used to ripples), or that it sucks (for those who don't). The only ones who enjoy stealth are those who are using it. Even then, when i play Valeera i sometimes despise myself, because how utterly easy it is to navigate and kill people. It's just not fun.

[Demona3]

Exactly, it's a change that favors/hurts only unexperienced players (i'm leaving people with bad vision and PCs outside of equation). It's the same case of C&D Spy in TF2 - when you play on newbie server - you are unstoppable murder machine, when you get into decent server - better get your dead ringer out or you won't get any kills unless you plan to sit like a crab in a corner waiting for someone to shove you with their back.

All stealth characters got significant buffs after this stealth change. I've played 5 games on Valeera and didn't feel crippled because people can see me coming if i fuck up my pathing, in fact, built-in gap closer feels ridiculously good combined with movement speed increase. The big noticeable nerf was cheap shot one, now you can't simply pick someone in the fight and yell at your divier/nuker to blast the target away, you need way more coordination than before

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Wow is a different game if you didn't notice, and you used to see stealth in wow. Rogues complained and stealth detection got nerfed significantly.
What do you even mean by "wonder woman's invisible cartoon jet"?
No, they kinda said "hey, we are going to balance this thing that have 0 effect in high leagues and 100% effect in low leagues", overall level of happiness increased.

Yeah, like 10 characters with abilities on 30 seconds cooldown. While stealth has what, 10 seconds cooldown? They also don't put you out of stealth, you simply become visible and targetable (which is bad enough if you 1v5), your stealth buff is still there and you still can use your openers.

Smoke bombs use is not "attempt to get away", it's a "i'm going to stay here and murder your Morales while you watch" ability. Anyone who use it this way are akin to Uther using bubble on himself to run away from a fight first. You are talking in extremes now, if Abathur sits under a tower he is still vulnerable to dive regardless of stealth change, the only thing that changed is you being unable 100-0 him alone and get away with it without effort.

They took a lot of insight for this change, and changed it for good. They get their feedback via "did you enjoy this match?/hero?" and forums. General consensus that stealth either irrelevant (for those who got used to ripples), or that it sucks (for those who don't). The only ones who enjoy stealth are those who are using it. Even then, when i play Valeera i sometimes despise myself, because how utterly easy it is to navigate and kill people. It's just not fun.

We can honestly go back and forth all night. Smoke bomb is most commonly used as an "oh shit" ability. As far as Morales getting murdered in it, if she doesn't move out of it, then she deserves to get murdered.

To address the comment about "not being fun", I do play Tracer as my other main, and I do hate it when I get murdered by a stealthie I didn't see sneak up on me. Is it annoying? Yes, but I know to look for shimmers and attempt to avoid them unless I have a pulse bomb at the ready to stick it to them to get them out of stealth.

Stealth is already weak in this game, and admit it, if you see a stealthy person come out of stealth, you try to kill it with the team. It's the mentality. This change is going to make the entire enemy team focus that "stealthy" even more so now that they can see them.

As far as wonder woman's jet....


This is basically what stealth looks like now.

Again, as I said, we can go back and forth all night. You might be right, I might be right, but at the end of the conversation, we will both have different opinions on this overall and we are both right. Regardless of what you say, I'll keep feeling like this is a horrible change to the stealth characters.

[Stormcall]

All stealth characters got significant buffs after this stealth change. I've played 5 games on Valeera and didn't feel crippled because people can see me coming if i fuck up my pathing,

Valeera is complete fucking TRASH now, not sure how you consider her new shit state a "buff". Picking Valeera in this state is essentially telling the other team "enjoy the win, you're now playing 5v4" based on my experience.

[Charge me Doctor]

snip

I find it extremely hard for Morales to move away when silenced and crippled, while me being almost immune to damage in certain team compositions. I rarely use smoke bomb as "oh shit" button, because i don't find myself in a situation when i (a stealth character) get ambushed, and usually it's me choosing terms of the fight i i don't find myself close to Arthas, i don't get knocked out of stealth by Chromie combo, i don't get caught by Greymane.
Yes, i do get focused in fights, but that's why smoke bomb is there - if enemy focuses on right click and pick&click spells - you pick smoke bomb to be able to live in fights, if they don't - you get CoS. Smoke bomb in general is shitty ability to save your ass when caught alone, and it's shitty ability against comps with, say, Jaina.

Yes, it's not fun to be 100-0 with no ability to counteract that. A player "on receiving side" have to do a lot more than a stealth-character player, he has to be constantly aware, don't stay close to LoS blocking shit, don't stay exposed to enemy LoS, don't use his skillshots, be good enough to his a shimmering target with MS buff, don't walk into fully invisible player who was smart enough to wait for you to clear the lane and move on "safe" path. While stealth-player has to do... what? Wait 3 seconds for stealth to pop up? Use a "D" button? That's just ridiculously unfair.
Now blizzard removes almost all of the above, forcing stealth player to use LoS smartly, and utilize their full invisibility more, instead of hurp-derp running around in plane sight. Yes, stealth players who enjoyed their unfair advantage (you know, games who give full invisibility usually make all-can-access items to reveal it and cooldowns for stealth-users) will find it difficult to play now, but those who used stealth properly won't (like this one Nova player i've stumbled upon recently, god she's good and she loved the change, because it'll filter down bad players from stealth characters)

Stealth is only weak in high league games, it's pure cancer in low league games and/or quick matches, when you may or may not get zero ways to reveal reliably. I don't understand that "mentality", if spot Valla far enough (if she was dumb enough to walk from her backline, into her frontline, into enemy frontline, into enemy backline), knock her back with Hammers knockback - why focus her? She doesn't present any danger without her gap-closer opener on weak target. Let her scratch Muradin for as long as she wants. It's different with Nova and Zerathul tho, but there is no reasON TO INSTANTLY SWITCH TO A STEALTHY 'CUZ HE LOST HIS CLOAK WAAAGH.

Yeah, i think we'll just agree to disagree. I still think that from the very beginning stealth was designed poorly, it allowed two approaches - risky, "i expect people to not see me", and careful "i expect people to see me". Since spotting a stealth character is kinda hard for beginners - a lot of players decided to "main" stealth characters because of that - to get that unfair advantage, because in low leagues you can risk-free roam around revealed land and not be afraid of getting spotted. Fuck, even just standing on an objective and contesting it for 10-20 seconds is possible, but try the same thing in plat and higher - instant death. Blizzard just says that it's not how they intended players to use stealth.

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Valeera is complete fucking TRASH now, not sure how you consider her new shit state a "buff". Picking Valeera in this state is essentially telling the other team "enjoy the win, you're now playing 5v4" based on my experience.

Because poisons working for 4 seconds and not for 1st application, built-in 5 range gap closer (with 12 range being vision range and with 5 range movement speed of stealthed Valeera) on all openers, increased talented blind duration, armour reduction, and various other buffs she've got. Yeah, complete and utter trash, because she was used only to run around in plain sight undetected by bad players. Not because of her burst, utility and lockdown options.

[Demona3]

I find it extremely hard for Morales to move away when silenced and crippled, while me being almost immune to damage in certain team compositions. I rarely use smoke bomb as "oh shit" button, because i don't find myself in a situation when i (a stealth character) get ambushed, and usually it's me choosing terms of the fight i i don't find myself close to Arthas, i don't get knocked out of stealth by Chromie combo, i don't get caught by Greymane.
Yes, i do get focused in fights, but that's why smoke bomb is there - if enemy focuses on right click and pick&click spells - you pick smoke bomb to be able to live in fights, if they don't - you get CoS. Smoke bomb in general is shitty ability to save your ass when caught alone, and it's shitty ability against comps with, say, Jaina.

Yes, it's not fun to be 100-0 with no ability to counteract that. A player "on receiving side" have to do a lot more than a stealth-character player, he has to be constantly aware, don't stay close to LoS blocking shit, don't stay exposed to enemy LoS, don't use his skillshots, be good enough to his a shimmering target with MS buff, don't walk into fully invisible player who was smart enough to wait for you to clear the lane and move on "safe" path. While stealth-player has to do... what? Wait 3 seconds for stealth to pop up? Use a "D" button? That's just ridiculously unfair.
Now blizzard removes almost all of the above, forcing stealth player to use LoS smartly, and utilize their full invisibility more, instead of hurp-derp running around in plane sight. Yes, stealth players who enjoyed their unfair advantage (you know, games who give full invisibility usually make all-can-access items to reveal it and cooldowns for stealth-users) will find it difficult to play now, but those who used stealth properly won't (like this one Nova player i've stumbled upon recently, god she's good and she loved the change, because it'll filter down bad players from stealth characters)

Stealth is only weak in high league games, it's pure cancer in low league games and/or quick matches, when you may or may not get zero ways to reveal reliably. I don't understand that "mentality", if spot Valla far enough (if she was dumb enough to walk from her backline, into her frontline, into enemy frontline, into enemy backline), knock her back with Hammers knockback - why focus her? She doesn't present any danger without her gap-closer opener on weak target. Let her scratch Muradin for as long as she wants. It's different with Nova and Zerathul tho, but there is no reasON TO INSTANTLY SWITCH TO A STEALTHY 'CUZ HE LOST HIS CLOAK WAAAGH.

Yeah, i think we'll just agree to disagree. I still think that from the very beginning stealth was designed poorly, it allowed two approaches - risky, "i expect people to not see me", and careful "i expect people to see me". Since spotting a stealth character is kinda hard for beginners - a lot of players decided to "main" stealth characters because of that - to get that unfair advantage, because in low leagues you can risk-free roam around revealed land and not be afraid of getting spotted. Fuck, even just standing on an objective and contesting it for 10-20 seconds is possible, but try the same thing in plat and higher - instant death. Blizzard just says that it's not how they intended players to use stealth.

The thing is, it's been this way for over 2 years now, then suddenly they want to change it. But yes, we can agree to disagree. Also, after reading your post here, it's very obvious both of us have very very different play styles! And that is the beauty of HoTS, everyone plays differently and at different play levels.

Please don't get me wrong, but I absolutely love HoTS. I've been playing it since technical Alpha and went through the first complete wipes they had. I even remember when they tried implementing "gems" to enhance your characters that you would consider a main (which obviously, it didn't work out). I used the gold they gave to the alpha players to buy said gems to buy Nova instead. I loved stealth since the beginning, because it gave that "thrill of the hunt" feel. I've failed lots of times too, but that is the nature of the game. That being said, I am a long time player, I definitely have the player levels to prove it and own every hero (except Garrosh). So this honestly is a huge blow to me, especially since I consider Valeera my main with Tracer backup.