Heroes of the Storm (Closed Beta Begins 13 Jan)

[ChaosOS]

For the first ~20 or so heroes they released it was pretty random, but since then it's been release date based (For example, I remember when azmo was released)

[Gandariel]

One thing that kinda puzzles me is how the gold cost for particular heroes is determined. At first, I thought it might be difficulty-based, but Illidan is listed as 'Very Hard' and costs 4,000g, while Azmodan is listed as 'Easy' and costs 10,000g. So, then I thought it might be based on popularity, either making the easily recognizable and popular characters the cheapest to get people invested early, or make them the most expensive to cash in on fans wanting to play their favorite character. But, that doesn't seem to be the case either - Raynor and Kerrigan were both main protagonists in their own games, both with ~17 years of seniority, and they cost 2,000g and 7,000g respectively - a big gap.

Is it just kinda random? Do they make a hero, then roll a die to see how much they'll cost? :smalltongue;

And it's not even " good heroes cost more", because Valla is 2k and Murky is 10k :P

I suppose they make "cool heroes" cost more. Like, the ones that are unique and cool and people would like to play as.

[Draken]

As ChaosOS said, the "original set" have relatively random pricings, but there is a pretty simple structure to the pricing of heroes that have been released since.

Namely:

Newest Released Hero: 15,000 gold.
Last Few Released Heroes: 10,000 gold.
-----Conjecture line-----
At some point afterwards: 7,000 gold.
Further down the line: 4,000 gold.

[Xefas]

Played some Quick Matches today. Pretty much exactly what I expected - my teammates yelling racial slurs at each other right up until our eventual victory .

Also - forgot to post this earlier - my tag thingy is Xefas#1830, in case anyone wants to hang out with a noob and do whatever it is that noobs do.

As ChaosOS said, the "original set" have relatively random pricings, but there is a pretty simple structure to the pricing of heroes that have been released since.

Namely:

Newest Released Hero: 15,000 gold.
Last Few Released Heroes: 10,000 gold.
-----Conjecture line-----
At some point afterwards: 7,000 gold.
Further down the line: 4,000 gold.

So, the expectation is that older heroes will eventually move down in price as newer heroes are introduced? I guess that's cool.

[Gandariel]

Finished the week, finished playing through the free heroes.

I confirm my statements about Muradin, Arthas,Raynor, Tyrande and Nazeebo.

Thrall: Feels pretty nice and strong. Really powerful, and really scary to face in battle. Can 1v1 pretty much anyone with his sustain, root, and straight up damage.

Brightwing: Hilarious, really really strong, has a ton of support options (i sometimes struggled to cast my Shield, E, R, and Mass shield at 20 all in time to save people).
really crazy healer, nice teleport, Polymorph is really strong, actually-not-too-shabby damage too.

The only thing i can complain about, and the reason i'd never ever play him often, is the annoying annoying voice. Oh my god that voice, i can't stand it.

[The_Jackal]

Have they added Sylvannas yet? Or, have they announced a go-live date? I don't have a beta key, and the founder's pack seems like a REALLY bad deal for a Free to Play game.

[Happy Gravity]

The only thing i can complain about, and the reason i'd never ever play him often, is the annoying annoying voice. Oh my god that voice, i can't stand it.

"Hellooooooo! I am happy to meet you!"

I was neglecting playing for a while because I wanted to get some quests to sync up. Guess what I got?

Play 2 games as a Diablo Hero.
Play 2 games as a Starcraft Hero.
Play 2 games as a Warcraft Hero.

Have they added Sylvannas yet? Or, have they announced a go-live date? I don't have a beta key, and the founder's pack seems like a REALLY bad deal for a Free to Play game.

No, no, and yes, it is.

[The_Jackal]

No, no, and yes, it is.

Aaand, I got a beta key today! Once I log in, I'll post with my Blizz ID.

[Draken]

"Hellooooooo! I am happy to meet you!"

I was neglecting playing for a while because I wanted to get some quests to sync up. Guess what I got?

Play 2 games as a Diablo Hero.
Play 2 games as a Starcraft Hero.
Play 2 games as a Warcraft Hero.

I believe there is only one appropriate response to this.

[Olinser]

So I've been gone for about a month, I added in the new players to the list (let me know if I missed any).

In that time, has Blizzard given any indication of exactly when they plan to fix their crappy matchmaking for Hero League? I just played a couple games today and yesterday, and if possible its even more of a mess than when I left - disregarding the teams being matched against solo ques (which is a product of not having a team que, so it is what it is), the system seems to have no rhyme or reason to who it throws into games. I've only played about 25 or so games so I'm still in the low 40 ranks - and today I was matched with somebody rank 11 that was NOT grouped. How the hell does that make any kind of sense? (Even less sense because he was actually pretty terrible). If you aren't going to match people at least reasonably close in rank wtf is the point of a rank?

[Gandariel]

hum, strange. I haven't reached that level yet, so I can't complain about it :P

Anyways, I didn't get to play much this week, but I'll probably be able to play some more today.

I did try out Diablo, Zeratul and Tassadar, which are all nice and fun!

Zeratul does what it does, that is stealth take down everyone. One on one, there's very little that can beat him (and I don't even take Vampiric assault)

One game i tried his skill where, when you use Blink, for a few seconds you can press E again to get back to where you were. Fun, works for sniping, but ultimately waaaay weaker than Double bomb.

Diablo is really satisfying to use. Smashing his skills makes it feel really powerful, and I liked his gameplay. (I didn't get to do the "use your E and pull a guy behind your walls" thing, though)
He is completely screwed when you're being chased, sadly. But I suppose the Lord of terror isn't meant to flee.

Tassadar is a decent support (although the fact that his heal is not permanent, which hurts) AND does a surprising amount of damage. I found myself sniping Vallas and doing more damage with my basic attack than I thought I would.

One final note: I *LOVE* the quotes of the characters.

"Not even death will save you from me!" is what you heard when you finally opened Diablo's chambers, and this was a scary and exciting moment 10 or so years ago in Diablo 2. Love the fact that I can hear that again now.

But my favourite are actually Sgt. Hammer's: she says the same manly quotes as the tanks in Starcraft, but the fact that she says them in a female voice makes it all the funnier

[Olinser]

hum, strange. I haven't reached that level yet, so I can't complain about it :P

Anyways, I didn't get to play much this week, but I'll probably be able to play some more today.

I did try out Diablo, Zeratul and Tassadar, which are all nice and fun!

Zeratul does what it does, that is stealth take down everyone. One on one, there's very little that can beat him (and I don't even take Vampiric assault)

One game i tried his skill where, when you use Blink, for a few seconds you can press E again to get back to where you were. Fun, works for sniping, but ultimately waaaay weaker than Double bomb.

Diablo is really satisfying to use. Smashing his skills makes it feel really powerful, and I liked his gameplay. (I didn't get to do the "use your E and pull a guy behind your walls" thing, though)
He is completely screwed when you're being chased, sadly. But I suppose the Lord of terror isn't meant to flee.

Tassadar is a decent support (although the fact that his heal is not permanent, which hurts) AND does a surprising amount of damage. I found myself sniping Vallas and doing more damage with my basic attack than I thought I would.

One final note: I *LOVE* the quotes of the characters.

"Not even death will save you from me!" is what you heard when you finally opened Diablo's chambers, and this was a scary and exciting moment 10 or so years ago in Diablo 2. Love the fact that I can hear that again now.

But my favourite are actually Sgt. Hammer's: she says the same manly quotes as the tanks in Starcraft, but the fact that she says them in a female voice makes it all the funnier

Most of the pros are saying that Tassadar is the best support now that Brightwing got meganerfed (though some are claiming Uther, which still leaves T Dog as the #2). Just in his basic kit - his D reveal is as close to a hard counter of both Nova and Zeratul as you can get, along with giving him a zero-risk way to check objectives, his void escape prevents him from being 100%ed unless you are completely CCed, and his shields are instant and extremely powerful.

For skills, Healing Ward not being killed by AOE was an unbelievable buff to the big T man, and Mule is stupidly OP on maps like Blackheart Bay or Sky Temple. Add in Shrink Ray and you have an unbelievable amount of utility and still pretty respectable damage.

[Gandariel]

how about Rhegar? I haven't watched many pro games, but in a few of the ones i watched the bans were Uther and Rhegar

[Olinser]

how about Rhegar? I haven't watched many pro games, but in a few of the ones i watched the bans were Uther and Rhegar

Rehgar is decently strong, but the way I understand it bans on him are more due to his healing ult's potential to swing fights rather than the overall strength of his kit. From what they say, my impression is that Tassadar and Uther are both considered to be stronger overall supports, but Rehgar's ult is swingy enough to make it ban worthy (Uther's kit is strong enough by itself but the reason his AOE of winningness is banned needs no explanation).

Basically the way I understand it is that Rehgar is strong, but he's not good enough to merit a first pick, but at the same teams don't really want the other team playing him.

[Gandariel]

Interesting!

And I must say, I enjoyed in some form all of the roles in the game, although my favorite is definitely Specialist: Nazeebo, Sgt Hammer, Zagara and Azmodan are all so fun to play.

EDIT: AAand they're the most expensive ones :/
Luckily we have Azmodan this week :D
Also, i have 23k and never bought anything. I really have to decide what to buy!
I'll probably buy Valla and Nazeebo first

[Olinser]

As though we needed any more proof about how stupid and retarded the matchmaking in Heroes is right now:

Spoiler

Show

Those 2 were duo qued and streaming at the time.

The craziest part? We were WINNING before our Nova DCed. On that note.... is there any way to rewind a stream? I'd like to record that game for posterity, it was some of my better work

[Olinser]

Heh, never mind, the VOD was posted.

http://www.twitch.tv/gosuzuna/v/3895856 if anybody is interested. My game starts at 16:00

Although I would like to point out - I did NOT stream snipe him, I didn't even look at the stream until after the game. I play a lot of Azmodan

[Draken]

Well, that is simply not loading at all.

Also, anyone else having annoyingly long queue times?

[Olinser]

Well, that is simply not loading at all.

Also, anyone else having annoyingly long queue times?

The video not loading? Twitch kind of sucks on a lot of computers, to be frank, I've had to set it to 'Low' or even 'Mobile' quality just to get the thing to load videos in a reasonable amount of time.

I just checked it, it did freeze initially, but after I clicked on a random point in the video, paused and then unpaused, it started fine.

As for que times - somebody was telling me the whole server crashed earlier, so it could just be a lot of people gave up and quit playing, resulting in your long que times.

[Olinser]

Well, that is simply not loading at all.

Also, anyone else having annoyingly long queue times?

Just played a game - it was actually an extraordinarily FAST que, usually I'm waiting around for 3-5 minutes that one popped in like 30 seconds.

[Olinser]

So, I just noticed and went through my match history.

Is there something wrong with the map RNG? Because it's been THIRTY-NINE GAMES since I saw Dragon Shire.

[ChaosOS]

I think that they manipulate map RNG to a certain degree given that it's in beta, it does seem to be unusually streaky given that there's 6 maps we can play on now.

Bets on when we get the next patch?

[Olinser]

I think that they manipulate map RNG to a certain degree given that it's in beta, it does seem to be unusually streaky given that there's 6 maps we can play on now.

Bets on when we get the next patch?

Probably soon, they've gone about 1 patch a month since Beta started.

EDIT: At a minimum they should be pushing Sylvanas out pretty soon here, most people were expecting her this past Tuesday and there was a lot of backlash against Blizzard that they've pushed her back for such a ridiculous amount of time (even releasing Lost Vikings FIRST). Even if there is no 'patch', I'd fully expect Sylvanas within the next 2 weeks.

[ChaosOS]

"Pushback about Sylvanas" ? They were pretty explicit at blizzcon that she was still very much in development, while Lost Vikings were playable at blizzcon. I'm hoping for a patch tuesday but we'll see.

[Happy Gravity]

EDIT: At a minimum they should be pushing Sylvanas out pretty soon here, most people were expecting her this past Tuesday and there was a lot of backlash against Blizzard that they've pushed her back for such a ridiculous amount of time (even releasing Lost Vikings FIRST). Even if there is no 'patch', I'd fully expect Sylvanas within the next 2 weeks.

People saw a pattern where none existed and got pissed when their own expectations were not met. Tsk.

Play 2 games as a Diablo Hero.
Play 2 games as a Starcraft Hero.
Play 2 games as a Warcraft Hero.

I got this again.

[Olinser]

"Pushback about Sylvanas" ? They were pretty explicit at blizzcon that she was still very much in development, while Lost Vikings were playable at blizzcon. I'm hoping for a patch tuesday but we'll see.

Blizzcon was ages ago.

This particular pushback was about Blizzard at PAX just under 2 weeks ago (I think it was March 5th). While I didn't attend, there was apparently a major showcase of Sylvanas, to include information and videos on all of her abilities, and confirmation that she would be the next hero released. (Also a breakdown of the new map, Tomb of the Spider Queen).

Whether it was warranted or not, the major package on Sylvanas gave the impression to the fan community at large that she was going to be released, and Blizzard made it worse by not confirming or denying when she was going to be released.

[ChaosOS]

PAX East was on the 6th. We've only had one tuesday since then. Beyond that, Jaina was not released immediately after blizzcon. I don't get why you'd assume we'd have Sylvanas by now.

[Draken]

He's not talking about himself, he is talking about "the community".

Namely the noisy mob of entitled forumites who demand everything for yesterday. They are not in this forum, generally.

[Olinser]

He's not talking about himself, he is talking about "the community".

Namely the noisy mob of entitled forumites who demand everything for yesterday. They are not in this forum, generally.

Entitled or not, Blizzard has done an extremely poor job of managing expectations with regards to Sylvanas, which has caused a lot of annoyance from the community - and not just the vocal ones in the forums.

From a business standpoint it was incredibly poor planning on Blizzard's part. They released a major showcase on a hero, significantly increasing interest in the hero, and then have failed to take advantage of it by releasing the hero, or offering any further information, causing the interest to degenerate back into the same it has been for months, with most people feeling 'meh'.

I mean if she's not ready, she's not ready, but stop releasing scraps of information and then lapsing back into total silence.

[Hyena]

I'm incredibly annoyed at the lack of Starcraft warriors. Why is Tychys an assassin? He would make a much better warrior.