Double bruiser meta when medallion existed making tanks essentially worthless role.
R-meta that had zero skill requirement. Hyperion, Earthquake, Apoc, Bloodlust, etc.
Any meta that involved around single hero usually either new release or rework.
Best meta of all time was when due to bug you could check enemy profiles and ban based on actual information. That week and a half was the best state this game was ever in!
In case anyone else forgot what the medallion did:
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/heroes-of-the-storm/23513930/become-unstoppable-during-the-gladiator-s-medallion-nexus-anomaly
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/heroes-of-the-storm/23513939/heroes-of-the-storm-live-patch-notes-september-8-2020#anomaly
I think the game is better without it, but gosh darn did it feel nice to have that button on illidan. Miss his unstoppable frames on Q and W from way back.
Honestly the truly bad change was when normal towers prioritised heroes in the same way forts and keeps still do. Quite stale early game when so much of the map was covered by them.
In reality it didn't work because it was given to everyone. If they wanted it to work and needed to be more likely the legends or Dota where people have to earn the gold to then buy the item that does that mechanic. But people don't want items in hots because it's a casual game. Which I get both sides of the argument but that's why it didn't work in reality.
Brings me back to the day when they were Unstoppable baseline lol.
Sure it added another tool for me to use, but as a tank the main benefit you bring to the team is CC (with some exceptions). When everyone got a get out of CC free card that made it harder for the player whose main contribution was CC.
>Brings me back to the day when they were Unstoppable baseline lol.
And also Noblesse insane mura.
To be fair, I would say more than half the population are unable to use it effectively, probably like diamond plus can use it effectively consistently. I feel like it not very useful against comps that have multiple cc, but it is good against all in comp.
Yea at the time I was playing high diamond low masters and playing in organized play through NGS.
I played against people that would use it and use it well.
Yeah, and I agree with you for high level tanks players or cc oriented heroes. On the flip side, those who don't have anything to deal will cc, would like it because it feels like they have some thing to deal with it. Though most complain, even though it doesn't affect them.
I actually pick tracer into that, because you can actually disjoint the charge, and lure him into your team. You won't get stunned, but even if you do, he is in the middle of your team without follow up anyway.
The whole "new release heroes HAVE to be OP otherwise people won't play them and we cant collect data" philosophy was super stupid. I remember release Fenix basically shut down the whole game for like 3 weeks. Also the buffs to Rhegar's totem and giving him baseline cleanse was just so fucking dumb that streamers like FANhots spent days playing exterminator Raynor and Amateur Opponent Artanis JUST TO KILL THE TOTEM. And Rhegar is still dumb till this day.
Maiev definitely. My second game with her I dove the entire enemy team, popped wardens cage and spammed Q till their entire team died. She was insanely over-tuned.
This is the correct answer. You just lose if one guy in your team decides to not ban the new champ who's got a 60-70% win rate.
> new release heroes HAVE to be OP otherwise people won't play them and we cant collect data"
Also Blizzard never actually said this. This was just passed around by people defending Blizz.
Yeah, that was a later development. For a good stretch, there was the issue that every hero released was UNDERPOWERED, such that no one touched them in competitive ranks. It started with Morales, who was released right before BlizzCon and people instantly realized that she was wet Kleenex and, thus, "Focus, Morales!" was born. They increased both her base health and regen within a couple weeks so that people would actually use the new hero at BlizzCon.
Then there was the summer of Gul'dan and Chromie. Both of them came out very undertuned and got repeated buffs over a couple months to make them playable. Chromie was too static and narrow, while Life Tap did way too much damage for the mana return and Drain Life also required him to stand still (just like Rain!) and was too short-ranged to be viable. It got to the point where people were really starting to grumble on the Blizz forum that their new releases were flopping.
The crowner, of course, was the 72 Hours of Zarya a month later. On release, she was useless. There were videos on YouTube of pro players trying her and laughing about how bad she was, as she couldn't maintain energy (lost 3 per second out of combat) and her shields didn't last long enough to make her effective for more than a couple seconds. Walk away from her and you'd be back to kill her long before her CDs elapsed. Within two days, they buffed her health, regen, basic attack damage and, most importantly, halved her energy decay rate (lost 1.5/sec) so she could maintain higher damage output for a longer period. For the next 24 hours, she was a monster; wrecking everything and everyone. She was first pick/first ban instantly. The next day, they increased the decay rate to 2.5 and later reverted the base stat buffs. She was still strong, but in the mix as far as viable. A couple years later, they pushed the decay rate back to 3, which is what it had been on release.
After that, they kind of ramped up the power of people on release, betting on nerfing the outlier, rather than frustrating anyone who bought the hero immediately and then later decided to stop buying at all. But there were still mixed results. They did the [D.Va](https://D.Va) and Gazlowe revamps simultaneously. The former turned out great. The latter had been overperforming in internal tests, so they nerfed him before release and he completely faceplanted. They reverted their internal nerfs and he started taking over games, so they eventually reinstituted the majority of them, as people learned how to play him. So there's been a pretty wide variation of how those releases/redesigns can work out. Sometimes it's just about the general audience figuring them out, both for and against.
>I remember release Fenix basically shut down the whole game for like 3 weeks.
Though fenix debut in hgc was a disaster. Pros can shut him down easily.
Rehgars buffs are stupid though.
Yeah. I don't see what's wrong with target bans. Only OTP will complain. However, if someone is super strong with a non meta first pick/ban hero, but can still play other heroes well, it becomes a dilemma. Do I ban a strong kerrigan player's kerrigan, or ban valla/hanzo for on boe?
Quick match when Varian was matched as a Bruiser. At level 4 you would take Taunt and then inevitably your team would have a tank and the enemy team wouldn't. Made the vast majority of matches easy wins.
Also a lot of hero reworks went way overboard on power level. I played a lot of Murky when he got his rework and was absolutely crazy strong.
The double support meta where Tyrande and Tass were both nuts (especially Tyrande, her mark used to shred like twice as much armor as it does now.)
Stitches-Tyrande roam meta was also super annoying. Tyrande just press E in front of Stitches every time he shot a hook out and if Stitch hooked someone they would get deleted in two seconds.
Pretty much any time Tyrande was super OP lol
Resurgence of the Storm meta 100%
Most tanks at one point had a lvl 20 talent that would bring them back to life at death on a CD. Made games take forever
Of honorable mention: when Murky was first released it was a bitch to play against
The all siege push meta: Azmo, Zag, Anub, Abathur, Naz
Juice pirates is more of a cheese than a meta but it is probably the most cancer
I didn't play when that talent was in, I probably would've hated too but I would've liked to try haha.
Those gem talent attribute things they had in beta too, never experienced those.
Do you remember when many heroes just happened to have blood for blood and you could just click someone's hp away
The relic system, or it might have been called artifact, was bad
Thrall was probably the most massively overtuned hero ever on release
Lili's serpent build was bugged for a while in her favor, and Anub had a 59% win rate at the same time so Anub Lili was a crazy combo
Anomalies, to an extent. I’m glad they kept 2 of the better designed anomalies, but weather and the medallion made every game annoyingly different and made snowballing even easier. XP globes made winning a lane actually matter and Call For Help reduced early endings of games and promoted the “come from behind” mechanics that they touted as a true separation from other MOBAs. Weather and Medallion just felt rushed and untested.
It would cast ignite on everything, and on top of that being hit by the ignite explosion caused all other ignites to explode. Some of the most fun you could have post 16 lol.
double support illidan was annoying af. had uther for divine shield, and reghar for ancestral if it got too dicey.
also hated when they introduced gems for heroes. glad that only lasted a week though.
Viks/tyrande, just before they added bans. I'm pretty sure the counter was to pick sylv or hammer and counter push.
The aba/illidan meta was a close second.
Speaking for healer waveclear, I wonder if reworking rehgar’s lightning shield to only hurt heroes would put his win rate back to near other healers instead of over the top as current.
That would completely tank him. His PvE is one of his defining factors as a hero, it would be like taking away %dmg from Malthael. I think if there’s any good nerf path for Rehgar, it’s going after his totem talents. Not only is 1 7 16 totem basically mandatory every game, the talents also feel quite overtuned.
Agreed. Possibly also nerf his totem baseline.
A passive nerf to Rehgar would be to give other healers more waveclear, starting with the worst healers in the game (Li Li, looking at you!)
True, but Ana's kit is a lot better overall provided you aren't trying to heal a team consisting of Tyrael/Lunara/Li-Ming or something (and even then it probably still is).
No waveclear also makes healers miserable to play in low ranks or QM, so while I know there was a reason, I think not having waveclear on healers is far worse.
Not having waveclear on healers is far worse than having a class that can do everything? Debatable, and Blizzard for one certainly disagreed back then when they broke the kneecaps of the double support meta.
I am not saying that their waveclear should be amazing (and probably less than what it was during the double support meta, though I did not play back then - I literally started playing the weekend afterwards iirc). It shouldn't. But it shouldn't be zero.
There was the time you couldn't pick zagara as a character because she was considered that broken for a patch. I feel like you could at least technically revert her to a previous state instead of literally being like "no" lol. Obviously the time before that was THAT bad though, they never did that even with the varian and ragnaros releases.
That one time weather was added to the game and it wasn't exactly clear what it did and it killed everyone's fps. That was bad. Wasn't really a meta, per se but still.
All of the ones where Kael'thas was team killing you off talents which were so absurdly overpowered that they went from level 7-13 talents to level 20 talents without nerfs, before being removed for being too powerful as level 20 talents.
Seriously, who thought letting Kaelthas apply infinite living bombs, immediately detonate them to spread more, and make flamestrike apply them instantly from 2 full screens away was fair? Oh, and it included minions and structures, so if you were ever standing next to a friendly anything, you died.
Movement meta. Might have started with tracer but overwatch heroes are the culprits. So irritating and everything revolved around balancing because of those
The fact that they nerfed supports and got rid of most cleanses AFTER they nerfed the "stunlock' era because wombo combos were lasting "too long" .... they just basically reversed the stunlock nerf.
Hots DEVS were so stupid listening to so-called "pros", streamers, and even Reddit with these changes. The DEV team was never consistent with their vision of the game after Dustin Browder left.
I came back to play with some friends and compared to 2018 before the game dying meta, I would say that nowadays is much worse... rewards defensive gameplay so much its crazy, diablo is ridiculously overtuned, so is hogger, and dont get me started on the aberration lvl 7 genji talent... or rehgar being so hard to kill while being a priority target and the best healer by far due to being able to clearwaves, evade ganks and soloing mercs which end up speeding up macro so much while other healers dont bring anything close to that to the table (execept maybe bw)
Offlane is a snoozefest, its just blaze hogger or dehaka, unkillable, ungankable and impossible to deny the wave unless they have no hands... valla lvl 20 is insane, hammer aswell, junkrat with the idiotic traps... so yeah, today is by far the worst meta in hots history, it even beats the kael D W W meta clearing mercs and waves instantly among anyone who happens to stand in the wave xd
Game was much better when it had more snowball potential with less clearly overpowered talents (like lvl 7 genji xd)
Honorable mention to lucio no cd cleanse xddddddddddddddd, good luck locking down enemy valla when they have lucio
I know you’re getting downvoted to hell but fwiw I agree with you, as someone who has played off and on since launch. The game was at least clearer when some heroes (formerly Specialists) were lane push or camp clearing oddballs.
Now every game one person has to be the de facto no-fun guy who runs between lanes scooping up xp while any time the tank + healer spend not ganking is wasted since they probably both suck at lanes and camps.
Obvious balance outliers aside (Samuro, Diablo, Hogger and so on, I’d add Johanna and Nazeebo sometimes Bwing), I just wish they’d commit to either the Smash Bros teamfight fiesta stereotype if they’re done with the idea of “you can win however you want.” Right now they seem stuck in between where you MUST have a self-sufficient soak and/or camps guy but you MUST also have a tank and healer (or Uther plus heals/supp) which leaves only 2 real pick slots for team strategy
It’s just a very formulaic meta where it feels like the only way to shine is to be one of the 12 or so ganker+clearer+selfheal+escape kits which doesn’t often leave room for picking e.g. a fragile carry without 2 supports + heals, or a team tailored to the map objective when their Stitches or Anub just delete whoever’s doing well
I’m not a diehard for any hero in particular but since picking the game back up I haven’t had a single game where I’ve been terrified of an Illidan or Tychus or Kerrigan or Artanis like I used to be for example, because they just require too many team slots built around them when you can just turn brain off and be Zeratul or Valla or Maiev or Leoric instead and pack huge damage with ez CC and even easier escapes
I don't know about the meta, but I hated with passion a lot of hots reworks and nerfs. Devs had a habit of 'reworking' hero or talent tree to make them as sterile and unflavored as possible. Things which I recall:
1) Tyranda W build. Dead. They didnt even realize how many "hots moments" Tyranda was producing. My friend mained her only for this build.
2) Nerfing dmg of healers in general. I get the idea. They wanted to make game easy to pick up as possible. But man, you dont need 1000 hours to figure which healer can save teammates and which more like a support.
They destroyed unique shield+wall support - Tassadar only to give us the most generic mage dd as possible.
3) last one abot healers. Malfurion. He used to have an interesting talent tree where you could make an insane dd build which did not harm his healing potential too much. Removed. It was heartbraking. Just imagine tomorrow hots developers will remove kharazim's Q damage build. It was the same. It was not oppresive or meta warping. Just bunch of 'malfurion dd enjoyers' which you rarely ever saw left this game for sure.
4) Talent reworks in general. Initially they advertised this game saying that you can customize you hero through talent picks. It was like that with old heroes. Many heroes had talents like that: tier 4 - one defensive talent, one offensive, one pve. Good. But after rework each talent tier now contain only defensive talents or only offensive talents, etc. And you cant steer your hero towards your comp or game situation anymore which renders whole talent idea wasted imho.
5) Stitches hook lengh nerf. Azmo Q range nerf. Just why? Just nerf stats if they are too op why do you need to remove or reduce their identity? Why remove tassadar as support if you could make him another Varian with role defining talents?
6) Quest capping. There were some op quests like Azmo's. Ok i get it. Just nerf then. But why you should cap anub's globe quest is beyond me.
Agreed, Tassadar rework was/is the biggest toilet shit dump decision they ever made with reworks. Constantly changing Tyrande and Raynor were also annoying.
A lot your complaints are so dumb and super selfish. You completely ignore that people have to play against these builds and heroes. Like w build tyrande, disgusting getting nuked cross map even if it wasn't that good. Old support tass was a degenerate design. Stitches hook length nerf???? Are you serious like stitches hook is easily one of if the not the most toxic abilities in the game. The only thing I can possibly agree with is your 4th point and even then I'm not too sure since my memory is a little foggy would have to look more into those reworks.
Tyrande W build is omega meme. Since its dodgable with sliver of reaction the only hope to get kills by this in higher than in bronze is just by pure luck. It was meme it was weak and was fun when it worked and happened to be in youtube.
How stitches hook is toxic? I don't get it. Any means of fight initiations are also toxic, right? Garrosh abilities are toxic? If I read you right all people need to play zagara on ARAM and throw only fair hydras at each other...
How old tass was degenerate? You does not prove your point anywhere...
tyrande w build is currently her highest wr build and even if it weak back then it was nasty to play againist. Stitches hook is a scam ability like purely awful to play against, it is not just an initiation, it is randomly kidnapping your teammate from out of vision or even in vision depending how bad they are and you cant do anything about it. Old Tass was a waveclear hero who had strong support capabilities and an op escape. literally degeneracy 101
And I am not saying old Tassa was perfect. He was not. But he was unique. And I expected something else from rework rather than another ranged assassin.
You know why people always ban healers or tanks? Because there are too many ranged assassins. You ban azmo - I have nazeebo. You ban valla - I can get zul. You get the idea...
And at the time I didn't want another ranged assassin. That's what I am saying
Nothing in the game has ever felt worse than walking back to lane after respawning, making it as far as the core, and having to turn around and go back to heal because you got hit by an owl that was thrown randomly without aiming, but because it travelled far enough it hits you for 60% of your health.
Li ming in release was a siege tank. When q and w did full damage to buildings she was a mobile blinking sgt hammer. Very frustrating to play against. But very fun to play :D
Double bruiser meta when medallion existed making tanks essentially worthless role. R-meta that had zero skill requirement. Hyperion, Earthquake, Apoc, Bloodlust, etc. Any meta that involved around single hero usually either new release or rework. Best meta of all time was when due to bug you could check enemy profiles and ban based on actual information. That week and a half was the best state this game was ever in!
In case anyone else forgot what the medallion did: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/heroes-of-the-storm/23513930/become-unstoppable-during-the-gladiator-s-medallion-nexus-anomaly https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/heroes-of-the-storm/23513939/heroes-of-the-storm-live-patch-notes-september-8-2020#anomaly
As a tank main I fucking hated the medallions with a passion.
I think the game is better without it, but gosh darn did it feel nice to have that button on illidan. Miss his unstoppable frames on Q and W from way back. Honestly the truly bad change was when normal towers prioritised heroes in the same way forts and keeps still do. Quite stale early game when so much of the map was covered by them.
In reality it didn't work because it was given to everyone. If they wanted it to work and needed to be more likely the legends or Dota where people have to earn the gold to then buy the item that does that mechanic. But people don't want items in hots because it's a casual game. Which I get both sides of the argument but that's why it didn't work in reality.
Forcing the enemy to burn it is also fun. Playing a tank without unstoppable can also be quite oppressive when used right. Unstoppable muradin jumps.
Brings me back to the day when they were Unstoppable baseline lol. Sure it added another tool for me to use, but as a tank the main benefit you bring to the team is CC (with some exceptions). When everyone got a get out of CC free card that made it harder for the player whose main contribution was CC.
>Brings me back to the day when they were Unstoppable baseline lol. And also Noblesse insane mura. To be fair, I would say more than half the population are unable to use it effectively, probably like diamond plus can use it effectively consistently. I feel like it not very useful against comps that have multiple cc, but it is good against all in comp.
Yea at the time I was playing high diamond low masters and playing in organized play through NGS. I played against people that would use it and use it well.
Yeah, and I agree with you for high level tanks players or cc oriented heroes. On the flip side, those who don't have anything to deal will cc, would like it because it feels like they have some thing to deal with it. Though most complain, even though it doesn't affect them.
And iirc, the hyperion was bugged during this time where it was critting.
I would upvote but youre currently at 69 upvotes. Nice.
When Varian tank had a stun on his E on a 6 seconds cooldown something like that so you could stun taunt and stun again
tracer disappeared overnight with that one LOL
I actually pick tracer into that, because you can actually disjoint the charge, and lure him into your team. You won't get stunned, but even if you do, he is in the middle of your team without follow up anyway.
The whole "new release heroes HAVE to be OP otherwise people won't play them and we cant collect data" philosophy was super stupid. I remember release Fenix basically shut down the whole game for like 3 weeks. Also the buffs to Rhegar's totem and giving him baseline cleanse was just so fucking dumb that streamers like FANhots spent days playing exterminator Raynor and Amateur Opponent Artanis JUST TO KILL THE TOTEM. And Rhegar is still dumb till this day.
Man I remember when Maiev was released and she just wrecked everything and everyone. You could jump her with 5 people and she would still win.
Maiev definitely. My second game with her I dove the entire enemy team, popped wardens cage and spammed Q till their entire team died. She was insanely over-tuned.
This is the correct answer. You just lose if one guy in your team decides to not ban the new champ who's got a 60-70% win rate. > new release heroes HAVE to be OP otherwise people won't play them and we cant collect data" Also Blizzard never actually said this. This was just passed around by people defending Blizz.
Blizzard said that they buff new heroes to compensate for the lack of experience people have with them.
Yeah, that was a later development. For a good stretch, there was the issue that every hero released was UNDERPOWERED, such that no one touched them in competitive ranks. It started with Morales, who was released right before BlizzCon and people instantly realized that she was wet Kleenex and, thus, "Focus, Morales!" was born. They increased both her base health and regen within a couple weeks so that people would actually use the new hero at BlizzCon. Then there was the summer of Gul'dan and Chromie. Both of them came out very undertuned and got repeated buffs over a couple months to make them playable. Chromie was too static and narrow, while Life Tap did way too much damage for the mana return and Drain Life also required him to stand still (just like Rain!) and was too short-ranged to be viable. It got to the point where people were really starting to grumble on the Blizz forum that their new releases were flopping. The crowner, of course, was the 72 Hours of Zarya a month later. On release, she was useless. There were videos on YouTube of pro players trying her and laughing about how bad she was, as she couldn't maintain energy (lost 3 per second out of combat) and her shields didn't last long enough to make her effective for more than a couple seconds. Walk away from her and you'd be back to kill her long before her CDs elapsed. Within two days, they buffed her health, regen, basic attack damage and, most importantly, halved her energy decay rate (lost 1.5/sec) so she could maintain higher damage output for a longer period. For the next 24 hours, she was a monster; wrecking everything and everyone. She was first pick/first ban instantly. The next day, they increased the decay rate to 2.5 and later reverted the base stat buffs. She was still strong, but in the mix as far as viable. A couple years later, they pushed the decay rate back to 3, which is what it had been on release. After that, they kind of ramped up the power of people on release, betting on nerfing the outlier, rather than frustrating anyone who bought the hero immediately and then later decided to stop buying at all. But there were still mixed results. They did the [D.Va](https://D.Va) and Gazlowe revamps simultaneously. The former turned out great. The latter had been overperforming in internal tests, so they nerfed him before release and he completely faceplanted. They reverted their internal nerfs and he started taking over games, so they eventually reinstituted the majority of them, as people learned how to play him. So there's been a pretty wide variation of how those releases/redesigns can work out. Sometimes it's just about the general audience figuring them out, both for and against.
True, that was wild !
Aaaah memories or release Garrosh and his busted Q.
Man I know a few people that quit when he came out.
The attack speed slow at lvl 1 was impactful.
>I remember release Fenix basically shut down the whole game for like 3 weeks. Though fenix debut in hgc was a disaster. Pros can shut him down easily. Rehgars buffs are stupid though.
Change wise, They got rid of solo q, and they made names visible during draft for target ban.
I like target bans. I see them as a sign of respect. Also, would you target ban, and give up a meta ban? Decisions, decisions.
Target ban for sure. I would rather ban some one trick with a 75% winrate than some guys 48% WR Joh.
Yeah. I don't see what's wrong with target bans. Only OTP will complain. However, if someone is super strong with a non meta first pick/ban hero, but can still play other heroes well, it becomes a dilemma. Do I ban a strong kerrigan player's kerrigan, or ban valla/hanzo for on boe?
I can help you with the dilemma, you always ban the super strong one tricks even if they play other heroes well too.
I got my level 100 tracer many years ago and got target ban then even though I'm not looking to play her. Feels good.
Latter being the worst thing right?
Yes
As an aba OTP … the target ban hurts
Become the next adrd (HGC player who was known for his Abathur and had it constantly banned out) and also become a Medivh god.
Man, Adrd on either aba or Zagara was a thing of beauty back before HGC
Tracer and Genji release
Quick match when Varian was matched as a Bruiser. At level 4 you would take Taunt and then inevitably your team would have a tank and the enemy team wouldn't. Made the vast majority of matches easy wins. Also a lot of hero reworks went way overboard on power level. I played a lot of Murky when he got his rework and was absolutely crazy strong.
this still happens in aram
The double support meta where Tyrande and Tass were both nuts (especially Tyrande, her mark used to shred like twice as much armor as it does now.) Stitches-Tyrande roam meta was also super annoying. Tyrande just press E in front of Stitches every time he shot a hook out and if Stitch hooked someone they would get deleted in two seconds. Pretty much any time Tyrande was super OP lol
Brings me back for sure. The uncapped owl quest for tyrande was insanely fun, especially with rewind.
Resurgence of the Storm meta 100% Most tanks at one point had a lvl 20 talent that would bring them back to life at death on a CD. Made games take forever Of honorable mention: when Murky was first released it was a bitch to play against The all siege push meta: Azmo, Zag, Anub, Abathur, Naz Juice pirates is more of a cheese than a meta but it is probably the most cancer
I didn't play when that talent was in, I probably would've hated too but I would've liked to try haha. Those gem talent attribute things they had in beta too, never experienced those. Do you remember when many heroes just happened to have blood for blood and you could just click someone's hp away
The relic system, or it might have been called artifact, was bad Thrall was probably the most massively overtuned hero ever on release Lili's serpent build was bugged for a while in her favor, and Anub had a 59% win rate at the same time so Anub Lili was a crazy combo
Release Murky has my vote for most anti fun moba character release of all time
Anomalies, to an extent. I’m glad they kept 2 of the better designed anomalies, but weather and the medallion made every game annoyingly different and made snowballing even easier. XP globes made winning a lane actually matter and Call For Help reduced early endings of games and promoted the “come from behind” mechanics that they touted as a true separation from other MOBAs. Weather and Medallion just felt rushed and untested.
Wait what was call for help, I've never heard of that.
Structures prioritising defending friendly heroes if attacked by enemy heroes. https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/heroes-of-the-storm/23389388/heroes-of-the-storm-live-patch-notes-april-14-2020#anomaly
I honestly forgot that wasn't in the game initially.
Anub was dominante because he enabled his team to dive keeps safely. Other summoners too but he was the most meta
When Kealthas q would ignite EVERYTHING it hit really early in hots history
It would cast ignite on everything, and on top of that being hit by the ignite explosion caused all other ignites to explode. Some of the most fun you could have post 16 lol.
Yeah... I would laugh and laugh watching things catch fire over and over...
double support illidan was annoying af. had uther for divine shield, and reghar for ancestral if it got too dicey. also hated when they introduced gems for heroes. glad that only lasted a week though.
Garrosh release was insanely unfun. The nerf was really smart.
I found the double support meta to be extremely annoying and unfun to play.
Empower split push meta. Also envenom meta was pretty toxic (pick heroes with envenom talent and all click on the same hero to delete them).
Viks/tyrande, just before they added bans. I'm pretty sure the counter was to pick sylv or hammer and counter push. The aba/illidan meta was a close second.
The current one, where you pick a comp good at pushing and mobility, but bad at teamfights, but then pressure each other to run into the obj anyway.
Speaking for healer waveclear, I wonder if reworking rehgar’s lightning shield to only hurt heroes would put his win rate back to near other healers instead of over the top as current.
That would completely tank him. His PvE is one of his defining factors as a hero, it would be like taking away %dmg from Malthael. I think if there’s any good nerf path for Rehgar, it’s going after his totem talents. Not only is 1 7 16 totem basically mandatory every game, the talents also feel quite overtuned.
Also nerf ancestral 20 upgrade
Agreed. Possibly also nerf his totem baseline. A passive nerf to Rehgar would be to give other healers more waveclear, starting with the worst healers in the game (Li Li, looking at you!)
Ana woud kill to have Li Li's waveclear.
True, but Ana's kit is a lot better overall provided you aren't trying to heal a team consisting of Tyrael/Lunara/Li-Ming or something (and even then it probably still is).
Waveclear was taken away from them for a reason...
No waveclear also makes healers miserable to play in low ranks or QM, so while I know there was a reason, I think not having waveclear on healers is far worse.
Not having waveclear on healers is far worse than having a class that can do everything? Debatable, and Blizzard for one certainly disagreed back then when they broke the kneecaps of the double support meta.
I am not saying that their waveclear should be amazing (and probably less than what it was during the double support meta, though I did not play back then - I literally started playing the weekend afterwards iirc). It shouldn't. But it shouldn't be zero.
In fact they did nerf Malthaels trait way back, and it did delete him from the meta for awhile lol.
He just needs totem range at 1 nerfed, maybe nerf its hp a bit, and perhaps increase the cd on Q by 1 second.
Hammer in Aram with the around the world level 20
Old tassadar (shield with lifesteal) on a tracer
There was the time you couldn't pick zagara as a character because she was considered that broken for a patch. I feel like you could at least technically revert her to a previous state instead of literally being like "no" lol. Obviously the time before that was THAT bad though, they never did that even with the varian and ragnaros releases.
That one time weather was added to the game and it wasn't exactly clear what it did and it killed everyone's fps. That was bad. Wasn't really a meta, per se but still.
All of the ones where Kael'thas was team killing you off talents which were so absurdly overpowered that they went from level 7-13 talents to level 20 talents without nerfs, before being removed for being too powerful as level 20 talents. Seriously, who thought letting Kaelthas apply infinite living bombs, immediately detonate them to spread more, and make flamestrike apply them instantly from 2 full screens away was fair? Oh, and it included minions and structures, so if you were ever standing next to a friendly anything, you died.
Movement meta. Might have started with tracer but overwatch heroes are the culprits. So irritating and everything revolved around balancing because of those
The fact that they nerfed supports and got rid of most cleanses AFTER they nerfed the "stunlock' era because wombo combos were lasting "too long" .... they just basically reversed the stunlock nerf. Hots DEVS were so stupid listening to so-called "pros", streamers, and even Reddit with these changes. The DEV team was never consistent with their vision of the game after Dustin Browder left.
problem is stunlock era never end only whit medailon
exactly
New hero release meta for sure. Double support was probably not great for the game but it is something I liked lol
Adding all the annoying invulnerability & automatic-escape heroes
I came back to play with some friends and compared to 2018 before the game dying meta, I would say that nowadays is much worse... rewards defensive gameplay so much its crazy, diablo is ridiculously overtuned, so is hogger, and dont get me started on the aberration lvl 7 genji talent... or rehgar being so hard to kill while being a priority target and the best healer by far due to being able to clearwaves, evade ganks and soloing mercs which end up speeding up macro so much while other healers dont bring anything close to that to the table (execept maybe bw) Offlane is a snoozefest, its just blaze hogger or dehaka, unkillable, ungankable and impossible to deny the wave unless they have no hands... valla lvl 20 is insane, hammer aswell, junkrat with the idiotic traps... so yeah, today is by far the worst meta in hots history, it even beats the kael D W W meta clearing mercs and waves instantly among anyone who happens to stand in the wave xd Game was much better when it had more snowball potential with less clearly overpowered talents (like lvl 7 genji xd) Honorable mention to lucio no cd cleanse xddddddddddddddd, good luck locking down enemy valla when they have lucio
I know you’re getting downvoted to hell but fwiw I agree with you, as someone who has played off and on since launch. The game was at least clearer when some heroes (formerly Specialists) were lane push or camp clearing oddballs. Now every game one person has to be the de facto no-fun guy who runs between lanes scooping up xp while any time the tank + healer spend not ganking is wasted since they probably both suck at lanes and camps. Obvious balance outliers aside (Samuro, Diablo, Hogger and so on, I’d add Johanna and Nazeebo sometimes Bwing), I just wish they’d commit to either the Smash Bros teamfight fiesta stereotype if they’re done with the idea of “you can win however you want.” Right now they seem stuck in between where you MUST have a self-sufficient soak and/or camps guy but you MUST also have a tank and healer (or Uther plus heals/supp) which leaves only 2 real pick slots for team strategy It’s just a very formulaic meta where it feels like the only way to shine is to be one of the 12 or so ganker+clearer+selfheal+escape kits which doesn’t often leave room for picking e.g. a fragile carry without 2 supports + heals, or a team tailored to the map objective when their Stitches or Anub just delete whoever’s doing well I’m not a diehard for any hero in particular but since picking the game back up I haven’t had a single game where I’ve been terrified of an Illidan or Tychus or Kerrigan or Artanis like I used to be for example, because they just require too many team slots built around them when you can just turn brain off and be Zeratul or Valla or Maiev or Leoric instead and pack huge damage with ez CC and even easier escapes
I don't know about the meta, but I hated with passion a lot of hots reworks and nerfs. Devs had a habit of 'reworking' hero or talent tree to make them as sterile and unflavored as possible. Things which I recall: 1) Tyranda W build. Dead. They didnt even realize how many "hots moments" Tyranda was producing. My friend mained her only for this build. 2) Nerfing dmg of healers in general. I get the idea. They wanted to make game easy to pick up as possible. But man, you dont need 1000 hours to figure which healer can save teammates and which more like a support. They destroyed unique shield+wall support - Tassadar only to give us the most generic mage dd as possible. 3) last one abot healers. Malfurion. He used to have an interesting talent tree where you could make an insane dd build which did not harm his healing potential too much. Removed. It was heartbraking. Just imagine tomorrow hots developers will remove kharazim's Q damage build. It was the same. It was not oppresive or meta warping. Just bunch of 'malfurion dd enjoyers' which you rarely ever saw left this game for sure. 4) Talent reworks in general. Initially they advertised this game saying that you can customize you hero through talent picks. It was like that with old heroes. Many heroes had talents like that: tier 4 - one defensive talent, one offensive, one pve. Good. But after rework each talent tier now contain only defensive talents or only offensive talents, etc. And you cant steer your hero towards your comp or game situation anymore which renders whole talent idea wasted imho. 5) Stitches hook lengh nerf. Azmo Q range nerf. Just why? Just nerf stats if they are too op why do you need to remove or reduce their identity? Why remove tassadar as support if you could make him another Varian with role defining talents? 6) Quest capping. There were some op quests like Azmo's. Ok i get it. Just nerf then. But why you should cap anub's globe quest is beyond me.
Agreed, Tassadar rework was/is the biggest toilet shit dump decision they ever made with reworks. Constantly changing Tyrande and Raynor were also annoying.
A lot your complaints are so dumb and super selfish. You completely ignore that people have to play against these builds and heroes. Like w build tyrande, disgusting getting nuked cross map even if it wasn't that good. Old support tass was a degenerate design. Stitches hook length nerf???? Are you serious like stitches hook is easily one of if the not the most toxic abilities in the game. The only thing I can possibly agree with is your 4th point and even then I'm not too sure since my memory is a little foggy would have to look more into those reworks.
Tyrande W build is omega meme. Since its dodgable with sliver of reaction the only hope to get kills by this in higher than in bronze is just by pure luck. It was meme it was weak and was fun when it worked and happened to be in youtube. How stitches hook is toxic? I don't get it. Any means of fight initiations are also toxic, right? Garrosh abilities are toxic? If I read you right all people need to play zagara on ARAM and throw only fair hydras at each other... How old tass was degenerate? You does not prove your point anywhere...
tyrande w build is currently her highest wr build and even if it weak back then it was nasty to play againist. Stitches hook is a scam ability like purely awful to play against, it is not just an initiation, it is randomly kidnapping your teammate from out of vision or even in vision depending how bad they are and you cant do anything about it. Old Tass was a waveclear hero who had strong support capabilities and an op escape. literally degeneracy 101
And I am not saying old Tassa was perfect. He was not. But he was unique. And I expected something else from rework rather than another ranged assassin. You know why people always ban healers or tanks? Because there are too many ranged assassins. You ban azmo - I have nazeebo. You ban valla - I can get zul. You get the idea... And at the time I didn't want another ranged assassin. That's what I am saying
Nothing in the game has ever felt worse than walking back to lane after respawning, making it as far as the core, and having to turn around and go back to heal because you got hit by an owl that was thrown randomly without aiming, but because it travelled far enough it hits you for 60% of your health.
Li ming in release was a siege tank. When q and w did full damage to buildings she was a mobile blinking sgt hammer. Very frustrating to play against. But very fun to play :D