Hots taem

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IskatuMesk
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

Yeah. I mean at the least I can always just go a poke build. But her damage isn't enough to defeat a lot of the supports, so we'll definitely need more dps.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by SteakofStake »

I used to be a great specialist with zagara, but I never played her in favor of a different hero/we already had xul or someone, but after the patch I find her kinda boring now. I can still have global map presence, but the enemy team generally won't let me have that much grip on the map since I would be teamfighting more often than creeping.

That being said, other than zagara I don't have many specialists I enjoy to play. Xul just feels sluggish half the time, unless the other team has 2-3+ melee. TLV I love playing still, and I think I need to branch out to different maps more, and use more strategies in how I use my time. I found out olaf can solo bruisers at level 13 with burning rage + 25 or so regen globes. Abathur is fun to play, and I can play him fairly well. but other than those 2, as murky I can never find a middle ground of dealing damage and living, which bothers me, and I hate azmodans kit in general. I was thinking about picking up gas louie, though. I have seen success on temples map with his robo goblin, where he just took all of the merc camps and controlled the map while we fought and the other team either had to choose to defend temple or defend base.

I hate support I am finding. I don't want to play a character that makes people rely on me heal-wise. Monk was fun but after a few games just got boring, and rehgar isn't really what I thought he would be when I played him. Like warrior, though, I find double support to be fun, and with auriels release being the next hero (and that she looks to have an aoe damage ability and a stun, AND a straight revive ult) I might pick her up.

As I have found out in solo queue, I can be solo tank anub or rexxar. The problem with me being anub is that I see my team cowering in fear of a johanna while I have their whole backline stunned and they can easily access the backline to damage them. (in solo) With rexxar, I can see divers being a problem. But rexxar has a very high winrate right now, but is a last-pick warrior when they don't have more than 1 heavy diver. His boars are underestimated, but when you aim them right you can slow an entire team by 40% for 5 seconds (or root them for 2 seconds at level 20) every 60 seconds. People see him as a pve "go solo boss" character when really he is a great team fighter.

For the immortals map. and just looking through hotslogs stuff, SUSTAINED MEANS GAIN. Bwing, gaymane, morales, sylvanas, and tracer are the 5 heroes with highest winrate on that map, with chen being the warrior with the highest win rate on that map. (I was also thinking of getting chen after last night) NEVER pick abathur on this map, he has less than a 40% win rate on it. Uther, illidan, xul, jaina, and sonya are also on the lower end of the win rates.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by Krazy »

Steak, we've done best with your DPS lili (against heavy autoattack comps), your lost vikings (on garden and dragon shire), your dehaka (I think you know which maps I don't remember), and your false dad (I don't think I was in some of those games?). I think that's a fantastic hero pool, although it does mean your picks are a split of map-dependent and comp-dependent, which means sometimes you need to be a first-pick (vikings on garden) and sometimes you need to be a 4th+ pick (battle lili to counter autoattack/melee spam). I DO think that if you wanted to be a first pick False Dad, that might be good for us and we could work with it. I'd like to see your false dad more.

We haven't done well with your kharazim and I don't think you need to force yourself into that role. You play only off-support as dps support. I'm fine keeping primary healer roles between me, Ouroborus, and Raxyl. That's not the hero pool our group is most struggling with.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by Krazy »

Yeah, with zags, I find there's a lot of comps where you just have to take Maw, otherwise you're going to lose too many team fights.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by SteakofStake »

As false dad I always feel like I am not doing enough and that I can't do enough. I always end up being on the lower end of the damage scale for a false dad. I have been kinda mixed on what I want to buy. I don't want to buy a support because i just don't like supporting in this game. I want to buy zeracool because of how many builds and bullshit he can do (still mad about any tankatul), but then i want to buy chen and gas louie too...I might buy chen and gas louie since im close to 11k gold

/e
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

gas loui abathur stomping the team fights
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

krazy >

I watched your recording of that dragon shire game, and on your end you actually see the hammer from muradin come out and hit us (no idea how it hit us, but at least you see it). On my end it was invisible, especially ingame. I only can assume it's due to low fps and the fact the sc2 engine movers seem to be very bad at synchronizing (chromie projectiles tend to hit things nowhere near them for me).

Reviewing that game again as I laid in bed sweating unable to sleep, the most major thing that really stood out to me was how we gave them a perfect engage every time, with ricky always being in front.

Primarily, Ricky does not seem to respect the engage potential of many characters and offers himself freely. As a team with raynor in general we needed to be very separated to fight them. We were rarely separated.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

After reviewing some more replays and some of krazy's fpvod I have a few thoughts on recent stuff.

A trend I notice is that very aggressive comps/mus tend to lean heavily in our favor, particularly with emu. I see a trend on his brightwing where the disengage he offers enormously offsets our more greedy fights. It's really the same advantage False Dad offers but on top of map-wide presence. There is no surprise at all this hero is at the top of our winrates. One of the games I casted bill completely shut down like 3 major engages that would have seriously hurt us, and at least two of them were from us overextending.

The big deal about the brightwing winrate is definitely the pigeon's ability to pull out of our overextension tendencies. This becomes far more valuable the more engage heavy our comp becomes. I don't know of anyone else who plays BW in our group other than bill... which leads me to the next phase of considerations.

We rolled a game with Ricky as moralsees. I can't remember if it was ranked or not, but the only really notable thing I recalled was some stim misstimings (don't worry, every morales does that to some extent). I am sure that is something I or someone else could vocalize for him. In any event, the only real difficulties Morales proposes for new players is A.) positioning and B.) using Safeguard correctly. Safeguard is super important and it's quite a huge buff for someone about to get burst. What makes it difficult is that you need to use it preemptively and not reactionary, and this is a trouble most experienced healers in rpg's don't understand very well. Suffice to say Morales can solo heal once she masters that particular ability.

However, I recall Emu running morales and us having a lot of trouble keeping people off of him. Though I believe the game in my head was my major Abathur game on Cursed Hollow and the only reason we lost it was due to a silly throw.

Since the question of compositions comes up often, especially when it comes to the very common li-ming ban and a fold of potential picks not really getting decided on anyone, I have somewhat of an idea of how we can pick around that. Krazy had us playing a peculiar combo of Arthas, Jaina, Kerrigan, and it was working quite well, despite Emu's protests about being a "bad" Jaina (no comment there, didn't watch him, but he didn't particularly die a lot or anything). I know Steak's few games with Jaina went well for the most part, but it was also as a multiple threat team and not a solo threat like I do not fondly remember. To me, a comp with very high CC and multiple range threats and engage potentials like the aforementioned trio has a lot of room for someone like Morales to thrive in, particularly if milf does not seem the ideal pick (and he isn't always, it's just a comfort thing). I also thing BW/Morales as a duo support could be as strong as milf/lili if not stronger in the right circumstances. Especially since both have some disengage. BW brings the anti-magic damage and disengage, and morales focuses on either stimming a target or, if we got good enough with her, map control with the medivac.

The main reason Morales stands out to me is because multiple people can play her and she's not terrifically difficult to actually play, she's just environment awareness based (your heal target, your position, safeguard) which are all things pretty much all of us can improve upon dramatically. Just don't be solo pushing lanes up to their keep... Emu. Actually, never be alone. Ever. Good practice for Ricky should he actually listen to us for a change and follow us.

Before I continue with this, I should point out the main reason our QM strategies don't work in TL is because of the far higher appearances of other brightwings, False Dad, and disengage capable comps or CC/engage heavy comps with actual co-ordination. The kind of co-ordination the Tyreal/Kerrigan comp required was something I have yet to see in QM, so it's hard to "prepare" for that other than to keep spamming games and learn from them. Which is why it's really frustrating to keep going against opponents that way outmatch us as a team and I tend to give up rather easily on them. I know why they're winning but there's nothing I can do about it, there's always a ton of little mechanical things going on that it doesn't help to continually point out. It isn't in my ability to just say "don't do this, don't do that", no one will listen without experiencing it over and over and learning how, when, and why like I did. Also this game is very snowbally so it tends to be obvious when a game is decided unless some people decide to just throw (which, in the cases of the diamond games, they often do try to throw but we don't have the overall skill level to take advantage of it, we always tend to slip up in the same way we did early game).

Therefore, to even consider attempting something more aggressive, we're going to have to be prepared to deal with the bullshit that is already giving us a ton of problems. If we let Kael through it's at the very least a 3/4 chance we lose statistically. No one can deal with bomb and Kael's damage is absolutely nuts. If we don't let him through, False Dad or Thrall are usually the ones to get through, both of which serve very similar purposes but in different ways. False Dad does idiotic amounts of damage, avoids death at every turn, can hit the entire map and counter all split pushing, has the strongest disengage/engage capability in the game, and has two really strong build paths at the least. His only weakness is his large hitbox, really. The thing is that for every decent false dad there's a dozen scrubby ones, so our winrate vs him is not too bad. That will change the more we run characters like Arthas and Kerrigan who have to walk up to him to do anything to him. Gust will become far stronger than it is vs our otherwise largely ranged based comps. We can deal with it, but controlling our greed in particular will be the major point - the biggest impacts his ult has on us tends to be when he uses it to force us to re-engage after we attempt to run away from a losing fight. Most False Dads aren't fast enough on the trigger to totally shut down a losing team fight without some kind of loss, but that doesn't mean we can be surprised when it starts consistently happening.

Even if both Kael and False Dad are accounted for, Thrall is still a huge problem. His windfury will take off 1/2 of Kerrigan's health in late-game even when you are mid-ult with defensive talents. That's absolutely fucking nuts. Not to speak of how badly his cataclysm buttfucks positioning and you really can't even do anything about it. Kerrigan is not necessarily bad against him, but you absolutely need to have more CC to drop him when he comes in. Target priority is very important, and to be quite honest, most of us are so bad at target priority I am certain fixing that will raise out overall winrate by 20-30% especially against these opponents we have MMR advantages over. Way too often I see tanks getting beat on with their healer just padding their numbers behind them. Sometimes you can only access the other target, sometimes I have to wonder.

In a double tank composition, heroes like morales and brightwing become stronger than milf in my eyes because of their point and click CC or ability to improve the damage output of those tanks. In much the same reason Abathur becomes stronger the more combat intensive games become, because he just adds "free" stats onto individual fights. Without considering the loss of a body, free attack speed, stab damage, and other things easily tips the scale in scuffles. BW being able to offer magic shield to people who don't have it, instant CC shutdown, disengage, movement speed, and other things is kind of broken. Milf's major advantage is his mana which is really nice to have on li-ming at the least and the silence is nice. But if I'm not playing li-ming, I would rather have hard on-demand CC.

Assuming we don't have Thrall, False Dad, or Kael to worry about, tanks become the next big concern for me. ETC is an obvious one. But I think we could actually roll a dive-heavy comp against ETC if we grab BW and someone with a longer ranged CC than bw on top of it. We'll have to deal with ETC sometimes anyways, so may as well get used to that fact and figure out how to play against him. I would rather be banning false dad than ETC but I know certain individuals are attracted to death like french magnets.

Amidst all of this is Danny who Oro, Steak, and myself have been playing, though only the former two (iirc) have run him in TL with various, but generally promising, lengths of success. Danny is strong against certain characters like thrall and lunara, but has a clear and innate weakness against cc. Danny doesn't exactly rake in the damage numbers, he really can't be a solo threat like li-ming. But he's an excellent "filler" DPS addition when you aren't quite sure what you want but you are pretty sure you can run about anything. He is very independent, can solo lanes, waveclear, and sustains well in extended fights. Although I prefer Fear, Oro has been using the aoe ult to some degree of effectiveness. The main issue he has is that pre-20 he has no escapes. But at 20 he has the strongest escape in the game hands down if he chooses to take it. I very much expect him to get buffed soon on top of it all.

Of course, we dominantly run Diablo and it often seems like there are very few cases Diablo doesn't work. The main counter for him seems to be Leoric who we incidentally have a poor winrate against. Diablo can't really do anything to him if he chooses to avoid it, takes shittons of damage from him, and can't really deny him access to the back line. Leoric's % damage wrecked dehaka really bad as well. Personally, I am starting to feel that Johanna doesn't work for us for the reasons Krazy explained to me in the past. Not because she's bad, but because of the comps we run and the comps we run against. I think her strongest ult is falling sword and is best applied with either a double tank comp or a very bruiser/dive heavy comp, especially if we have Danny or Hammer (she keeps them in range). That ult also offers an escape.

At the end of the day, I would like to see Steak on False Daddy more often and see what comes of it especially if we are doing something like a double support with lili. Especially in those cases we don't have an emu. If we are able to choose between a double tank or a false dad, the latter is worth the risk at this stage in our practice. The big issue here being we always have different people every game so I can't just say "X should focus on Y" because our composition has to be kind of flexible. I also think it can be an early pick if not a first pick in the event li-ming or another valuable is banned. Even so, I don't particularly fear li-ming as Kerrigan, Jaina, Lunara, or Danny and I will happily run Murky against her and beat the everloving shit out of her. It's mostly the consequences of our team facing her that concerns me (HKS and ricky seek them out like the holy grail). But if they get something like Li-Ming AND false dad, then the ability to engage their threats becomes next to impossible for virtually anything we could run. In a game dominated by CC and snowballing, it becomes clear why their popularity is so high.

I have been spamming Abathur games in QM/draft and testing various builds. The short of it is that split push builds suck because False Dad and Zagara are hard counters to split pushing and can just appear anywhere you have even the slightest presence and instantly ruin your work. He excels in hat builds and mine builds, but especially hat builds with stabbing and AS. Particularly when we have Rainbowdash, I think a high sass comp with tracer/thrall or similar + abathur can work in TL. But it's not something I would run with most anyone else because the DPS has to be good enough to do the work for both of us. Chen is great in such a comp because a hatted chen is some truly annoying shit, especially on a map where denial is important (like tribute). A big factor in Abathur success is definitely Evo targets. At the top of that list is Jaina and in some cases tracer, but Arthas is an incredibly strong evo and Kerrigan can be as well. Should Steak or someone else run abathur, I can certain run one of those characters for evo. It just so happens the AS is also strong on most of those heroes.

Cho`Gall is hilarious with morales. If we actually want to run him seriously, we should have morales instead of milf.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by SteakofStake »

I want to play the masked bearman more, even in ranked, since he currently has a high winrate. Not as an early pick though, and preferably with double warrior/strong chase damage. I favor boars over his other ult a lot since it can affect an entire team by lowering movespeed by 40% (pre-20) for 4~ seconds. I think we could run him as solo warrior if they don't have divers, but with divers double warrior is much better.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by Krazy »

bears + blondie + arthasbro + kerriganchan + MORales?
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

Was really digging the anub/kerri combo. The CC lockdown was real. Anyone who got caught by us except for ETC or tass was just rip on arrival and I think at least once tass wasn't able to invul out of the combo and died anyways.

And that illidan...

also, stabbing bears

/e

NEVER play danny vs... nova/kerrigan/tracer/whatever the fuck else there was in that bullshit immortals game.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

Next replay batch is up on gayproc

Bulletpoint highlights from the pack -

- Krazy getting too thirsty/out of position as D vs a dive heavy comp (who subsequently punished the fuck out of us for bad laning and bad engages throughout the game). This is sort of a consistent thing for many of our tanks though HKS has been reeling it in and some of these replays show some good peeling from him (and Krazy as the games later go on, though I think he shows his strongest plays in more recent times that I haven't gotten up to casting yet).

^ Watching this game again, Krazy shouldn't have been solo lane vs reghar and should have just hard peeled Lili in top lane while I could have gone bottom and held it.

- HKS' Tychus being one thirsty nigga but somehow managing to avoid too many deaths in some cases

- I am bad at positioning as Lunara and really should avoid running her against gaymane if I can avoid it. Also should have gone poke ult..

- Dual specialists carrying games

- Wibod and martin talking about unrelated shit over everyone and being annoying

- Ricky being Ricky
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Re: Hots taem

Post by Krazy »

I remember that game. I had like, never seen rehgar before, and didn't know he could be that annoying vs. early game diablo. It was kinda ridic.
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Hots taem

Post by IskatuMesk »

In general we needed to be much more defensive in that game.
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Re: Hots taem

Post by SteakofStake »

for the thirsty warrior problem, lemme play rexxar, I play really conservatively with him
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