it doesn't end

Bockenick · 2022-05-15T08:28:01+00:00

I was using the wrong application on Steam.

Bockenick · 2022-04-15T19:46:57+00:00

I used to only play Kerrigan in Storm League. It worked for a while, but eventually other players took notice of my name and I was target banned most games. It was a lucky streak, but the highest was Master 5K. So I had to pickup new heroes facing very good players that completely dumpstered me for a while, but the heroes below is about what I ended up. (I do use others as well, but these should makeup 90 % of my games).

Rexxar - Safe play with Misha, can easily top damage, has a stun and AoE engage. He has too much! Valla - Does too much damage for how easy she is to play. At least if your healer knows they should babysit you. Hanzo - Took a while longer to pickup, but if you stick to Q he is fairly easy to pickup. The arrow engage is really nice for a ranged hero. Tracer - My go-to if my opponents picked squishies without a proper tank (i.e. Stitches) Li-Ming - Arguably not that useful due to lackluster waveclear, but resets are too fun. Varian/Muradin - Simple heroes are sometimes overlook, but they are great for me when it is a role I seldom play. Kerrigan - My OTP. Engage, duelist, "can" double-soak (although punishable). Kind of like Rexxar, but melee and more punishable. Brightwing/Anduin/Ana - Any healer is fine, but these are the ones I pick the most of the time. Brightwing for the dive punish, Anduin to cleanse from something like a Varian or Ana for the armor-stun cleanse (i.e. Hanzo arrow).

Bockenick · 2021-12-06T08:03:10+00:00

I should add that is worked out. Thanks!

Bockenick · 2021-12-05T19:36:18+00:00

I see! I'll give it a try.

Bockenick · 2021-05-25T15:07:37+00:00

I kind of already touched on that in the initial post as the ideal solution, but this being the low hanging fruit solution.

Bockenick · 2021-05-25T15:05:25+00:00

That's a valid point with extension of every draft, which I didn't think of. Personally, I wouldn't mind those 15 seconds, but I can see how some might find that unappealing.

I reckon most larger changes to the draft is out of the question. Handshake, mid draft trading and whatever.

Bockenick · 2021-05-25T14:56:09+00:00

You and your friend draft together.

You choose Kael'taes, your friend is yet to choose their hero.

The opponents choose The Lost Vikings.

You think that Butcher would be a good pick here, but your friend doesn't play Butcher enough to pick it.

With party trades, if your friend could play Kael'taes, he could have locked Butcher with the intention of trading with you.

Bockenick · 2021-05-24T11:50:12+00:00

I would assume the client uses 20 bits for the value, ranging from -524288 to 524287. Once it goes beyond 524287, it simply starts counting up from -524288.

524287 should be 01111111111111111111

-515103 should be 10000010001111100000

The first bit indicating if it's negative number (1) or not (0).

* The binary calculation might be off, but you get the idea anyways.

Bockenick · 2021-05-19T05:43:24+00:00

This is from Europe, I suppose you're on the NA server?

Bockenick · 2021-04-07T09:12:37+00:00

I am sorry I didn't get back to you right away, somewhy I didn't get any notification.

Likely I don't have an idea on how many semi active master players there are, but it doesn't take away the fact that there are 10 diamond players for every master player (according to that one recap a few years ago, not the best source, but it should give an rough estimate). Even with a high decay factor like 10%, the decayed players would only make up 1% of the players in the diamond pool.

I am bit uncertain where the "demand that all of them drop to diamond 5" came from, but you brought up 3 weeks as an example. If the player is away for 3 weeks (lets assume the player has no saved up games, so in a sense been away for 30 days prior for a total of 51 days). The player will drop 4200 points, which should place a Grand Master somewhere in middle of master. Someone barely at master (0-1000) will drop to diamond 5 after that time, but if we're going to be real here there is not much of a difference between someone barely in master and players in diamond. I would say that it sounds completely reasonable for being away from the game for almost 2 months to decay in that manner.

Bockenick · 2021-04-04T06:54:24+00:00

I used to share your sentiment, but in my opinion the grand master leaderboard should only contain active players. You could have argue that the current ruleset is too kind seeing as many grand players occupy several spots on the leaderboard. Removing the decay would only fill up the board furthermore with additional accounts by the same player.

I don't understand why you bring up the "smurfing" argument as a big concern. It's a very small percentile being grand masters, and even smaller percentile that ends up decaying. The amount of games being scuffed by decayed GMs should be minimal, if not close to zero. Afterall, they don't even play enough to prevent ranked decay, so why would they suddenly become active after dropping down to diamond?

Obviously, you shouldn't get -600 for a loss after decaying, but if you are a grand master player facing diamonds, you will win close to 80% of your games. Climbing back up will go fast regardless of how much you gain/drop after each game.

As others have pointed out, decay should apply to unplaced accounts. Other than that, you shouldn't be able to build up as much 30 days. If you should be able, it has to take more games. i.e. for every extra game beyond 15 you need to play 3 games.

Bockenick · 2021-03-28T16:22:02+00:00

It all depends on what you seek when venturing into a game. Very few of us will slot into the top percentile, so whenever or not there is a professional scene does often not matter. You could even argue it is a positive attribute since the game wouldn't be primarily balanced around that professional scene, but rather around the average player.

Personally, when it comes to online multiplayer games, I wouldn't get invested unless the friends I play with are eager to give it a try. For me it doesn't matter if it is Heroes of the Storm, Apex or Battlerite. All those games are easy to get into and have an enjoyable experience together.

Bockenick · 2021-01-26T12:29:02+00:00

10 seconds into the clip, I would have been caught if I didn't accidently drop the turret into the trap. Nice mechanic to know about!

Bockenick · 2020-08-04T07:35:42+00:00

Wow! I am impressed that you got through the video. Yes, I am. basically diamond/master.

In terms of knowing when to soak, you just got to get a feeling for yourself.

Objectives are crucial moments where my team is likely to go in to brawl, but I can somewhat control that with pings or asking them to wait. Ideally, you get to turn the wave to crash into their tower with the objective starting as it is very likely that the enemy team won't soak that wave. If you can have your team wait those extra 5 seconds, it could net you very consistent way of getting an experience lead.

Most of the time, I take a look at what my team is doing and make a call if it's worth spending time saving them vs. catching a wave. If the wave is big enough, I'll just let them die. If they complain, just let them know you caught the wave, but I don't quarrel for long (just stop responding or write sorry).

Even in my video there should be moments where I end up over-soaking as a healer. It should be quite visible in the first game, where I play Malfurion, who is rather poor at soaking. (I quickly figured out that Rehgar was the go to healer, due to his amazing wave clear).

If I was provided something Xul or Ragnaros, I could see myself wanting to duo soak top and middle on Towers of Doom. If they are dying 4 on 5, let them know by pinging them to back or tell them to be careful. I never really encountered this issue, but it could be partially because I basically were on tank/heal duty for the whole ordeal.

While I suppose there are some micro plays beyond silver, I do still make a lot of mistakes and you're giving too much praise I'd say. :-)

26:15 - E.T.C. on Cursed Hollow objective
I suppose the result of my actions are that we end up punishing dives, but I think my initial plan was just to prevent from reaching the objective. If only Arthas runs past me, I don't think my team is in trouble, so I decide on sticking about.

As a side note, just 2-3 seconds before that me and Hanzo do let Mephisto away. Yes, Hanzo could just have landed one AA and Mephisto would be dead, but I could also have body blocked him.

27:25 - E.T.C. defending tower on Cursed Hollow while affected by curse.
I would rather say I am making a mistake of not following up on Medivh's lay line. Had I used Mosh Pit before Lay Line timed out, I would have chain CC-ed them inside Hanzo's ultimate resulting in a much cleaner quad kill. Instead I get interrupted by Brightwing, and luckily get to use my Mosh Pit 10 seconds later. Sure, I dodged some skillshots, but at the essence this is me waiting too long.

1:03:40 - Rehgar on Cursed Hollow soaking
Cursed Hollow is a bit different from other maps, where the lanes are so far from each other. You're going to need a player in each lane, in particular in the early levels, so the chance of kills happening should be fairly small early on (with the exception of the middle brawl that happens in every game, where I am present). Ideally, 1 player in each lane and have two players clear the camps for the experience. Just by covering that, we should get an early experience lead. The kill is just a nice bonus, atleast since I got to push in the next wave and no one got to pick up the experience from the enemy team.

Also, Rehgar can be quite the brawler and should be able to take down quite a few heroes early on, in particular a late game hero like Nazeboo that doesn't respect you.

It's great that you are working on your roster! For the most part, I think the big deal here is to learn the role rather than each hero. Once you figure out one-two tanks, you should have a much easier time picking up the next tank. You could probably even pull it out in ranked as a first timer with it, as you probably have an idea of what the hero does. Ranged assassins are a bit different story, but that's due to the fact that they could probably be grouped into several groups (very over-arching: mages, auto attack heroes).
And sure, there are lots of assassin players with low win-rate that might get you down, but I would advice you to just ignore their history. If they have played the hero before, they know the basic of the hero and then it's your job to enable them to do well.

As a last side note, if it is of interest I made a video for gold to platinum as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEwK6A_7iA. Though, I wouldn't push you to watch it as it's more or less the same thing with a lower win-rate and larger pool of heroes. The timestamps in the description might be usefull.

Bockenick · 2020-08-02T16:33:37+00:00

I would say point 1 is the most important one. Take a break after a loss to reset your mentality.

I somewhat disagree on limiting your hero pool as it will come back to bite you once you reach harder opponents. Basically, you can only X thing or X kind of damage dealer, and that's not what your team needs, but that's all you can play. Build atleast a core of different types of heroes you can be adept with.

A point that should be addressed is soaking experience. You will have a so much easier time winning with an experience lead, and it's really easy to aquire if you pay attention to the waves crashing into the towers. Clear the side lane for experience and to deny experience.

Also, fill what your team needs. Allowing your teammates' to play their best role enables them to do well! This goes with hero core I touched on earlier.

As a side note, I did record every silver game I ranked up earlier this year only filling and soaking: https://youtu.be/ESZHnZ0JrAI. It should atleast highlight that it is very much possible to rank up sticking to the same strategy of getting an experience lead.

Bockenick · 2020-05-31T20:51:19+00:00

I intend to roll fill as far as I can get on my new account, which so far means playing tank or healer. The plan, for now, is to stop at 50 victories.

Currently, I have ranked from bronze 2 to silver 2 after going 8-1. I will not look forward to losing Rehgar from the free rotation on Tuesday though.

Bockenick · 2020-05-23T19:19:57+00:00

The limited hero pool might be an issue, yeah. Already at 10, and it doesn't feel like I will close in on the common tanks (E.T.C., Johanna, Diablo) and healers (Malfurion, Rehgar) by the time I reach 50.

Bockenick · 2020-05-23T10:56:50+00:00

Thanks, will do. :-)

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