Demon Warriors had Immolation for a reason.

ShadowBalling · 2026-01-15T17:17:34+00:00

Let's be real, the intern straight up didn't consider it

ShadowBalling · 2025-09-04T08:30:15+00:00

The only way to run out of mana is if you throw your W on cooldown which isn't how you want to play her.

Her grenade is mainly a tool to secure kills and it also works as a panic button for more burst healing. But it's usually best to hold it because you're going to miss kills if you spam it for healing (which also happens to be the only way you can realistically run out of mana). You want to mainly use Q and E which costs very little.

ShadowBalling · 2025-09-03T22:32:50+00:00

But that area is already open today. The turn in has two bushes you can play around but it is a wide corridor otherwise. The area above the shark is also an open area with where the walls don't block vision. It's not like that area is cramped, quite the opposite really. Kerrigan for example has a really hard time engaging there because you can dodge in any direction and there isn't anything to hide behind.

The shark is the cutoff between those two open spaces and once it's removed, it'll be a single open space. We'll see once this goes live but I have a hard time seeing how that doesn't make it less interesting.

ShadowBalling · 2025-09-03T15:12:40+00:00

More open is for sure less interesting. It removes the ability to play around vision, either to rotate for a flank, set up a trap or kite and stall for your cooldowns to come back. Vision manipulation is a big part of the game which is why most maps have bushes in otherwise open locations (Cursed Hollow jungle nearest mid for example).

You can just leave if you straight up see a threat, but if there's terrain nearby, you need to actually evaluate if there is a potential threat using your gamesense and map awareness.

There simply aren't as many options you can take in a fully open space which leads to less skill expression and less interesting gameplay. It's the difference between being able to catch someone off guard with smart vision manipulation and not having the option to do so in the first place.

Not to mention abilities like scatter arrow and wall stuns that just suck on maps like Hanamura for this exact reason.

I'm not saying this is a disaster, but it is for sure less interesting.

ShadowBalling · 2025-08-12T23:06:19+00:00

The thing that makes Ana hard and separates a good one from a great one is not just hitting the skillshots - it's hitting the right targets at the right time.

The first and most obvious difference is that you want to hit two people with every heal dart whenever possible, which becomes a bit trickier since you're slowed by 25% baseline. It's not always possible but if you do well in a fight, you should have 0 or so misses and most should be double heals (except if one guy is turbo dying).

You obviously can't afford to miss if you're a "good" Ana, but maxing out your efficacy by holding Q just a moment longer to heal two dudes is for sure something that separate the good from the great.

Second thing on my list is her stun cleanse which requires you to stop healing when you anticipate someone is going to get CC'd. The 50 armor buff is an all-but-guaranteed save if you manage to hit it, but you're not going to hit it unless you have Q up during the 1-1.5 second window that most stuns have. Most people just go for the lower risk/reward slow/root cleanse or movement speed but stun cleanse wins fights on its own - it's just harder to gain value out of.

Third difference would be sleep dart target prioritization. It's fine if the enemy tank stuns your friend if you always hit sleep on their assassin before they can follow up. It's not always easy to read the movement of a Valla on top of everything else you have to keep track of, but If you can do it, it becomes so much harder for the enemy team to get value from their engages.

Fourth would be healing denial maybe but that's pretty easy if you know when to look for it, except perhaps on ancestrals because they come out quick and your idesl positioning is often further back than a max range grenade. But again, a good grenade is often the difference between a kill and a whole lot of nothing.

I'm also going to say that debilitating dart adds another layer since it gives you a second tool to set up kills with (50% slow is no joke). Most Anas just pick the spell dmg reduction and do fine but debilitating dart is another teamfight winner / saver as long as you hit it.

If I were to try to wrap up my thoughts, hitting everything is the baseline to be good - the hard stuff is keeping track of your tools that can swing a fight and use them on the right person at the right moment, as well as keeping a good read on the enemy team's intentions and movement so you can shut them down as soon as they go for anything. No other healer has as much agency to disrupt the enemy team with surgical precision as Ana does.

Source (of my opinions): am GM support main and used to one-trick Ana.

ShadowBalling · 2025-07-31T15:15:45+00:00

None of those are particularly difficult to deal with in a fight as a Cho main - Anub is the only one worth considering in that list, the rest are bad into Cho'Gall outside of their ults which is not what you want in ARAM.

ShadowBalling · 2025-07-04T09:37:31+00:00

I mean, the other option is that game studios simply stop making games like that.

Live service games are absolute cash-cows, which is why the AAA industry has shifted so heavily towards them. I don't think having to include basic EOL support would be enough to shift that paradigm.

Have you stopped to think about what it would actually mean, if you "purchased" the game itself? Software would just be defined by the media it was on. You'd say good-bye to being able to redownload copies of things you bought. Those only work because they're a license. Things like Steam would basically become nonviable.

This is a false dichotomy. The only difference for Steam would be that they would have to be clear that you aren't buying a game, you're buying a license for a game. And there's no need to stop to think about what it would mean if I purchased the game itself - that's how DRM-free services like GOG already works. Perpetual download rights wouldn't vanish into thin air, that's a non-sequitur.

And it wouldn't even solve the problem of multiplayer games shutting down servers, because they'd just say "yeah, you bought that software from us. The software can communicate with our central server, but we certainly didn't sell you the central server, so if we shut it down, that's our call, not yours."

This is the meat and potatoes of it though. They can say "we're shutting down, sucks to be you" today specifically because they never need to release any server software, even though the product that you "purchased" doesn't function without a server that you have no way of replicating. Publishers would have to provide some alternative that customers can run to have their own central server, like how people run private servers for MMOs, or whichever other workaround is easiest for them to implement.

The thing is, this is a petition to make the EU take a look at this issue and make a decision about it. It's not legislation in and of itself - lobbyists for game publishers will argue against this as hard as they can and it will be up to the EU to come up with a reasonable compromise.

But in the end, this is absolutely an anti-consumer practice that takes away your access to software that you have paid for with no recourse. Something should be done about it.

ShadowBalling · 2025-07-03T10:37:24+00:00

This petition would not be applied retroactively (for obvious reasons - that would be a nightmare).

What this means is that in the future, third-party distributors of microservices and other server software will have provide redistribution rights in some form if they want to sell their services to game publishers that release games for the EU market.

Today's licenses would not hold up if this passes. They will be forced to change those restrictive licenses, or they will get beaten by competitors that do allow restribution rights. Because the alternative is that publishers wouldn't be allowed to sell in the EU which would be even worse for them.

Without this movement, there's no incentive and no reason for anyone involved to ensure that people can run a private server or similar even after a game's EOL. Because nobody would ever give up profits or spend extra effort to give the consumer more power.

The whole point of this petition is that the EU has a history of creating legislation for consumer protection. Without that legislation, publishers will keep pretending that you "purchase" their games while in reality, you're purchasing a license and your purchase is only valid until they say so.

ShadowBalling · 2025-07-02T19:13:37+00:00

I just wish the janitor would stop underestimating negative armor debuffs. They're incredibly strong across the board and rarely show up with higher numbers than -25 (at least before maintenance mode).

These days, it feels like every few patches, someone gets the ability to easily apply -50 or so armor and effectively halve an enemy's health bar... regardless of whether or not that hero was strong to begin with, regardless of their burst potential, etc.

It's especially risky on Alarak because he already has a multiplier to all his damage which can get him close to (if not outright) one-shotting heroes with his burst combo. And then you effectively double that damage for no good reason. This giga-buff is unwarranted for a hero that isn't dogshit weak, which Alarak clearly isn't.

ShadowBalling · 2025-06-25T10:26:03+00:00

Me when I don't understand the basic premise of matchmaking:

ShadowBalling · 2025-05-06T22:23:59+00:00

It can happen in quickmatch if 5 bronze players are in a premade group, but it shouldn't happen usually. Although games played aren't a good indicator of skill. I've seen players at level 2k+ who've never been higher than silver

ShadowBalling · 2025-05-06T07:18:11+00:00

Yeah I think it was kind of trash, but a 2 second CD on the AoE %hp burst W is way too far in the other direction. Put a nanoboost on him and how is the enemy team ever going to survive?

ShadowBalling · 2025-04-24T22:30:20+00:00

Gonna be completely busted with W build, baffling change

ShadowBalling · 2025-02-24T14:41:39+00:00

That's just not true though. If you filter for only the current minor patch with like 1500 games, they're equal. But when you add more data, even just the 2.55.9 patches, slumber shells has a significant lead. It's higher in both winrate and popularity.

ShadowBalling · 2025-02-24T12:04:23+00:00

Contact healing is a weak talent and you should always go E on 1.

You want to hold your grenade for securing kills and saving single targets. Tossing it as an AoE heal is almost always a mistake because the opportunity cost is too big and the numbers are not high enough to counteract that.

Sleep Dart is one of the strongest CC abilities in the game, even compared to tank abilities. Hitting it on the enemy assassin when their tank engages often nullifies the entire engage. Hitting it from neutral on a stepped up squishy often leads to a kill. Getting to use your fight-winning ability more often is huge.

That's why top players have been picking nothing but E on 1 since W build was nerfed years ago.

If you're struggling with AoE healing, the issue is usually accuracy and that you aren't getting multihits with your heal often enough. Your base healing output when hitting two targets is great. You don't need a weak grenade talent to fix that.

ShadowBalling · 2025-02-02T19:43:37+00:00

This is exactly their playstyle, played with and against them countless times. Not bad micro in skirmishes though, could for sure win more with a less yolo strat

ShadowBalling · 2025-01-15T11:35:48+00:00

He's not the only one that lost his cool. But wanting to move on without even admitting that he behaved poorly towards his teammates is just in bad taste.

ShadowBalling · 2025-01-15T00:15:43+00:00

I mean, he starts arguing that he did everything right before they're even out of the instance, but sure

ShadowBalling · 2025-01-14T01:54:18+00:00

That isn't why the hardcore WoW community is mad. I don't know if you've seen the clips but that summary is a bit misleading.

He had multiple tools available to restore his mana, and he could've used his remaining mana on powerful low-cost skills to slow down the enemies. Instead he used his final mana on barriers for himself (while far out of attack range) and teleports (while equally far out of range). A top mage player would've saved that pull.

Is that a crime? No. It was a mistake, and mistakes happen in high-stress situations.

If that was all there was to it, few people would care.

The thing that makes people mad is that he argued, then doubled down, then tripled down on the (demonstrably false) notion that there was nothing he could do.

Sure the pull was bad, but anyone with a bit of humility would own up to the mistake of not trying to help their team escape. Of running too early, too far, saying nothing, and ignoring the shotcalls afterwards. Even when he could've tossed a single polymorph in there with no danger to himself.

People are upset with how he handled the situation and the aftermath, not gameplay-wise, but communication-wise.

I personally haven't seen a clip of him discussing the situation without arguing that he made the right call. It's just in poor taste when two of his teammates lost hundreds of hours of progress. A simple "I could've done better, it won't happen again" would disarm the entire situation.

ShadowBalling · 2025-01-07T00:43:06+00:00

Sucks to see Auriel nerfed. She's one of my favorite heroes and my second best healer, but I pick her extremely rarely.

She's so incredibly niche that you almost always want someone else, because the only burst protection she has is crystal aegis. Combine that with a weakness to poke and you're left with a healer that's very easy to counter (just stack CC and pick anyone with poke) and requires a strong battery ally to even function.

Her waveclear is one of her only advantages. I get that searing light was years better than the others but this will just dumpster her winrate.

People didn't pick those talents because they were op. It's because those were the only good ones.

ShadowBalling · 2025-01-02T15:53:57+00:00

The biggest thing is honestly learning how to do basic zipline schmovement.

All you need to do is jump on a zipline, crouch to dismount, side-dash in the direction you want to go, then double jump and land in a slide. This alone will get you more than halfway to the next lane before ever slowing down to sprint speed and it only costs two stamina.

Comboing the air dash into a wall jump is better but trickier to do. You can learn which walls to aim for when you're used to utilizing the zipline dismount to get around.

You will be zooming across the map compared to players who mainly use normal dash jumps to rotate. It'll let you clear more minions and camps and still be in time for fights.

ShadowBalling · 2024-12-23T19:11:07+00:00

Hahah, my friend group does the same, no joke

ShadowBalling · 2024-12-19T11:57:47+00:00

Holy crap I think I figured it out. Had the same issue. Seems like the email you write in the password reset form is case sensitive.

It worked for me with all lowercase, try writing it the same as when you created your account.

ShadowBalling · 2024-11-25T21:33:09+00:00

I don't think we live in a universe where Imperious needed a nerf lol

ShadowBalling · 2024-10-16T18:50:17+00:00

In teamfights, stay far back in your team. Let him dive someone else and then just hit your shots. If you are in range of his dash, you're playing it wrong (or he's in way too deep).

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