Heroes of the Storm Live Patch Notes - December 3, 2019

[Stormcall]

There’s like less than five people who regularly post here, on a rather inactive sub forum. The hots subreddit hardly ever has more than 1k people on it at a time, and their front page (hottest posts) are all threads with like a few hundred to only a few dozen upvotes, which is super inactive for a subreddit.

I didn’t say the subreddit “didn’t count”, I said they were small communities where negative opinions are quickly buried. English isn’t hard, dude. Learn to read it the right way, okay? The point to takeaway is that the hots subreddit isn’t a place where many people outside of very loyal fans go to anymore, so you’re going to be hard pressed to find any popular negative opinion concerning anything in the game there.

I’ve seen tons of people complaining about him in game and in other communities I visit. But you go on plugging your ears and pretending no one disagrees with you like a child would do. I think Deathwing plays like shit, some of the people on this forum don’t. Only *one* of us is stamping their feet and screaming NO ONE AGREES WITH U, though. Gotta stop and ask yourself, why are you like that? Is there a reason for it?

I read it exactly as you stated it mate. The majority of people still playing the game are loyal fans. HotS doesn't have a huge audience so dismissing the most active communities(where people still criticize things regularly without them getting "buried" despite your claims otherwise) for it out of hand kinda seems like a disengenous way to "prove" your point without having to actually prove anything. Also it's pretty funny you talking about someone's reading skills. Remember when you said "English isn't hard"? I guess it must be for you since I wasn't "screaming" about anything and I never once said "NO ONE" agrees with you. I said I don't see any evidence of "a lot" of people agreeing with it. Quite the opposite, actually. I dunno chief, maybe you should learn to read it the right way? Sure, there are some people who think he plays like shit. But most people I see seem to like him. I know the people I see in game are pretty positive about him(I don't play him myself, I may check him out in a couple weeks assuming his price goes down) and the comments on the communities I frequent are, for the most part, positive. Maybe you can let me know what communities you frequent with lots of people sitting around saying he plays like shit?

[therealstegblob]

I read it exactly as you stated it mate. The majority of people still playing the game are loyal fans. HotS doesn't have a huge audience so dismissing the most active communities(where people still criticize things regularly without them getting "buried" despite your claims otherwise) for it out of hand kinda seems like a disengenous way to "prove" your point without having to actually prove anything. Also it's pretty funny you talking about someone's reading skills. Remember when you said "English isn't hard"? I guess it must be for you since I wasn't "screaming" about anything and I never once said "NO ONE" agrees with you. I said I don't see any evidence of "a lot" of people agreeing with it. Quite the opposite, actually. I dunno chief, maybe you should learn to read it the right way? Sure, there are some people who think he plays like shit. But most people I see seem to like him. I know the people I see in game are pretty positive about him(I don't play him myself, I may check him out in a couple weeks assuming his price goes down) and the comments on the communities I frequent are, for the most part, positive. Maybe you can let me know what communities you frequent with lots of people sitting around saying he plays like shit?

Unpopular opinions are very quickly downvoted on the HotS subreddit. This isn’t a trait unique to that community; it’s something that happens all over Reddit. I will not argue about this or some “lack of proof” concerning it, as that’s just fucking stupid. Anyone who uses Reddit and isn’t being disingenuous or willingly ignorant knows that Reddit is notorious for its echo chambers.

People who don’t like Deathwing’s design aren’t going to go to the HotS subreddit, usually. They just don’t care enough, and wouldn’t be allowed to express their opinion anyways.

I think you really need to learn to read. Like startlingly badly.

[Stormcall]

Unpopular opinions are very quickly downvoted on the HotS subreddit. This isn’t a trait unique to that community; it’s something that happens all over Reddit. I will not argue about this or some “lack of proof” concerning it, as that’s just fucking stupid. Anyone who uses Reddit and isn’t being disingenuous or willingly ignorant knows that Reddit is notorious for its echo chambers.

People who don’t like Deathwing’s design aren’t going to go to the HotS subreddit, usually. They just don’t care enough, and wouldn’t be allowed to express their opinion anyways.

I think you really need to learn to read. Like startlingly badly.

But if "lots" of people dislike Deathwing, as you claim, it wouldn't be an "unpopular" opinion, there'd be people upvoting it just as much as downvoting it. That's how reddit usually works. The posts that get downvoted are usually ones that "lots" of people disagree with, not the one that "lots" of people DO agree with. Why is it, in your mind, is there some weird rule where it's mostly people who aren't big HotS fans that dislike Deathwing? And again-my reading skills are fine. You continue to show some serious issues with yours, though.

[therealstegblob]

But if "lots" of people dislike Deathwing, as you claim, it wouldn't be an "unpopular" opinion, there'd be people upvoting it just as much as downvoting it. That's how reddit usually works. The posts that get downvoted are usually ones that "lots" of people disagree with, not the one that "lots" of people DO agree with. Why is it, in your mind, is there some weird rule where it's mostly people who aren't big HotS fans that dislike Deathwing? And again-my reading skills are fine. You continue to show some serious issues with yours, though.

As was already explained to you, the HotS subreddit is a haven of people who are primarily loyalist fans who either genuinely just like most of the things in the game or are content to not express negative opinion. Only very popular negative opinions tend to exist on subreddits devoted to fandoms, especially on smaller ones like the HotS subreddit.

If you could read, you would understand that by now. Unless you’re going to seriously propose that Reddit isn’t a collection of echo chambers, which is ignorance at best and intentional bad faith acting at worst, and I will not argue about further.

With so few players in the game and with some serious hype blinding, it’s impossible to say “most people hate Deathwing”, but that was never my argument. I’m just saying lots of people do dislike him, and if you think such a unique and especially non-conformist design like Deathwing would be anything but rather controversial, especially in a fucking video game community, then you’re either helplessly naive or a troll.

There’s already been someone else who expressed not enjoying the hero here, combined with me that makes up, what, like 30% of the shared opinion between the handful of people in this thread? But I’m sure it’s just us two.

At any rate you’re clearly a defensive fanboy who can’t fathom that, dun dun dun, people don’t like a new HotS hero (I would’ve loved to see you when Qhira was new lolol) and at this point you’re not even creating a dialogue, you’re just derailing the thread with blind denials of what is really quite fucking obvious if you’re not pointing to sanitized fan communities. I don’t want to read your posts anymore now, or ever again, and I’m blocking you now. This thread has been spammed with this long enough.

[Nerraw]

Cool it with the bickering. Disagreeing with positions is fine, but keep it to that.

[Donald Hellscream]

My first few games as Deathwing was a fucking mess, but after I got a hang of his kit and how to play around the wind up on all his abilities I really started getting work done with him, also getting a multikill when slamming down on low health heroes is immensely satisfying.

[ophion1990]

But if "lots" of people dislike Deathwing, as you claim, it wouldn't be an "unpopular" opinion, there'd be people upvoting it just as much as downvoting it. That's how reddit usually works. The posts that get downvoted are usually ones that "lots" of people disagree with, not the one that "lots" of people DO agree with. Why is it, in your mind, is there some weird rule where it's mostly people who aren't big HotS fans that dislike Deathwing? And again-my reading skills are fine. You continue to show some serious issues with yours, though.

I don't now about that, brother. The reason I ended up unsubscribing from the WoW subreddit is because I couldn't handle the "Blizzard hates Alliance" circle-jerk anymore. It might just be that people with extreme opinions are more likely to downvote/upvote than people with a more well-reasoned look on things, I'm not sure. Either way, it definitely hasn't been my experience that Reddit is a good place to get a feel for the general opinions of the player base.

Just in case anyone wanted to, I'm using WoW as an example, let's not derail the thread with that stuff.

That aside, I do agree that DW feels kinda clunky sometimes due to his large hit-box, inability to B (or heal at the spawn, at least) and long wind up on spells. I feel like if they bring him down to a point where he's actually balanced, a good amount of people might change their tune on how much fun he really is. He is busted, though and they definitely nailed the raidboss feel for him, since he's rarely in any danger, even in situations where he's outnumbered.

[msdos]

The globe change feels really awful on Sgt. Hammer. I either have to talent moving siege mode or leave siege to collect the globes, making her extremely predictable. Like all you have to do is leave the lane, watch it and wait for orbs to collect, then you can come kill Hammer the moment she goes for the orbs. She's literally being baited by the game.

Wow... Not sure about this one.

Deathwing seems fine to me, the problem now is that everyone around him needs to be looked at. Leoric needs to be buffed and I think he needs Arthas treatment. As long as he in range of brawlers, he should be able to land Drain Hope. Needing to be point blank for drain hope isn't working anymore. I'll play games where everyone just stands at max range while Deathwing kills everyone with zones. Also going against Anduin teams with no range is a nightmare, Anduin can be off screen and still be rescuing people while everyone else has to be in kissing range to do anything.

The short ranged assassins need more survivability now. Jaina can't do jack anymore and Lunara is trash. The slow, short range, no survivability casters need to be looked at and the offensive healers need their base heals looked at. Kharazim heals for so little it's actually amazing he is considered a healer and people cry so much over Kharazim players.

I wish this game had less tension between offensive healers and what players expect from a healer. Half the player base expects you to be Morales and the other half expects Tyrande.

[Nerraw]

The globe change is amazing for the mindgames you play in the solo lane (I'm the solo laner on my Lounge team). For everything else, it kinda sucks that last hits don't automatically pick up the globes.

[therealstegblob]

I've played Deathwing for about 30ish games now and I have more concise thoughts concerning him. Trigger Warning: I'm not going to say nice things.

To summarize most of my points;

-He's overpowered, but NOWHERE NEAR as broken as I see so many people giving him credit for. There've been a few other heroes that were way more broken than Deathwing when they came out. Deathwing's weaknesses are glaring.

-He's badly designed.

-One of his biggest weaknesses is that once you commit, you commit. Even if you're unstoppable and have 40 Armor, Deathwing doesn't have a ton of health and he has literally no escape (Cataclysm is a shit escape ability; it will rarely ever actually save you due to the massive delay, you might think 'oh it saved me lots of times!!', but if you examined the situation you'd find that most of the time Cataclysm didn't make or break your escape or death, you'd have escaped without it just fine or died anyways). Once you commit.

-Mulling it over, I honestly think it's entirely not necessary that Deathwing is 'immune' to his own team. You don't have a huge ton of health so your armor doesn't really go that far before it's gone. Deathwing's biggest weakness is his inability to be healed by his allies or by the fountain (which I think is really going too far). There's so many moments where you'll be caught out with no fucking health, with Dragonflight down and no fountain available. And you're just fucked. You stand around like an idiot, just waiting to try and heal somewhere.

-At the same time, Deathwing would literally be busted as all fuck if he could be Life Gripped or clutch healed. This is just part of what I mean when I call him badly designed. I spoke before about how his design was stuck between being outright overpowered and "balanced", like Blizzard didn't know what to do with him.

-I honestly see no reason for World Breaker to exist. I mean maybe people are out there doing big combos with it or something, but the delay to switch between his forms and the general weakness of the World Breaker spells vs the Destroyer spells has me pretty much never, ever going World Breaker. I just see no point in it.

-Deathwing isn't so strong that his spells need such fucking huge delays on them.

-There are literally no other heroes that feel as bad as Deathwing when it comes to mobility issues. Off the top of my head I believe Garrosh is literally the only other hero with as little mobility as Deathwing, but Garrosh is far far tankier and, of course, can actually be healed and helped by teammates.

-Deathwing is a grossly divisive hero when it comes to how he performs vs. different teams. If the enemy team counters you, they fucking COUNTER you. If you're enabled to jump right into them and spam your Incinerates and cause mayhem for their support, then you'll top kills/damage/siege damage without even trying.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. My final prognosis is that I'm unchanged in my first impression. You can like him, you can tirelessly drag out his win rate (for a hero who has been hyped to the point of easily being one of, if not the, very best selling hero on launch ever; in a dying game with almost no competitive scene or high level player scene left), you can think he's fun until the cows come home. But bottom line is that you're hardpressed to make an argument that he's not badly designed, and funny enough no one has really tried doing that.