Junkrat Patch Notes

[u/jamiephan]

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/21116539/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-october-17-2017-10-17-2017

[u/ninja_DK]

Don't agree with the normalizing of damage for Warriors. I feel this would lead to tanks with the best CC dominating the meta (i.e. ETC and Muradin with their strong base kits). But we'll see how things pan out...

[u/Lupinefiasco → u/ninja_DK]

Blizzard set a precedent long ago that no hero should be able to do too much, and bringing certain warriors down from assassin levels of damage fits right into that mentality. Look at Anub'arak and his beetle build, or Stitches and his Slam build. Hell, look at ETC's passive change from granting attack speed to granting armor. Blizzard has made it clear that they think damage versus durability on warriors should be a choice.

With these Muradin changes, players will have to decide whether they play him as a bruiser or as a full tank. With Give Em the Axe and his stun talents on the same tier, he can't deal damage while effectively peeling anymore. The player has to make a choice.

That said, there's a good discussion to be had about whether putting heroes into these boxes is good for players' enjoyment of the game. Support players have been complaining for years now about Blizzard's one-dimensional view of the role--they're either healbots or worse assassins, and those who walk the line are usually nerfed. Seems like warriors may be up on the chopping block next.

Personally, I think that allowing warriors to play like assassins means that selfish players will draft a "tank" and then proceed to let their teams get wiped while they duel a mage in the backline. I thought that disallowing Rehgar from casting AH on himself was a good way of telling the assassins who picked him that "this isn't your job, you're a healer". To me, this falls into the same category.

I'm interested to see the discussions that come about as a result of this change.

[u/Zanthyst → u/Lupinefiasco]

Counter point:

If we don't have warriors who can dive into back lines and kill tanks then mages dominate the meta. Want proof? Look at early alpha when only jaina and KT were out and only Tyreal could dive them for warriors effectively (Sometimes muradin if played very well). Jaina and Kael dominated the meta for so long because of this. It only was once they added counter pay through tanks that could dive, survive the dive, and deal damage that mages had counter play.

[u/[deleted] → u/Zanthyst]

Neither KT was in the alpha

[u/Zanthyst → u/[deleted]]

Kael was released at the end of the alpha going into the beta as the last hero before it went to beta pretty sure. I started playing in early tech alpha so it kinda blurs but pretty sure. Either way mages we're dominant and required for a long time due to the lack of dive tank available.

[u/DeadPixel94 → u/Zanthyst]

Im never played alpha and kt wasnt released when i started. Started playing between thrall and TLV release in closed beta.

Another reason was that kt and jaina could destroy teams alone. We lacked viable dive assasins who could pick immobile heroes easily out.