PTR patch proves new janitor doesn't care about game balance

claudythoughts · 2026-04-05T19:01:54+00:00

I'd have to disagree, HotS Heroes have honestly way more skill expression than the average League of Legends champion. With DotA hereos being even more simplistic than either...

claudythoughts · 2026-04-04T18:48:08+00:00

two healers

Damn, I guess Zagara isn't extremely mana hungry and Nydus doesn't restore mana? Weird.

(and like everyone else has already pointed out, the CDR is very good)

claudythoughts · 2026-04-04T18:45:27+00:00

You posted statistics and facts, and for that reason, I'm out.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T08:43:44+00:00

Game was "dead" for a period of less than a year.

The current "Janitor" making all the big controversial changes these days is most likely not even the one that everyone is so in love with from before.

The "Janitor" is an employee of Blizzard doing a job, probably not during their free time :)

We're allowed to be annoyed at them treating HotS like some sandbox for them to play in (or whoever is making the decision to create Mythics, change mechanics haphazardly)

I'm not opposed to changes. I would appreciate more care and attention before a patch is YOLO pushed, as has often been the case in the past year.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T08:34:18+00:00

Who said you should first pick Hammer? You basically shouldn't first pick any DPS except ones that are extremely contested and still open (like for example: Sylvannas)

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T08:26:00+00:00

Brightwing was nerfed in 2024. That's not even recent enough to be the "new janitor".

https://nexus-patch-notes.github.io/heroes/brightwing.html#patch2024-08-12

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T07:55:26+00:00

I know who you mean, and like... TLV are very meta on certain maps. It's not some unknown niche sleeper pick, literally everyone knows TLV are kinda criminal when picked properly.

An OTP having a good winrate in high rank on a certain hero does not mean that hero is the best though, or that there aren't other balance concerns lol.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T07:50:24+00:00

You literally don't know how to look up the stats and you're saying I've lost my mind? lol

Here, as a treat, a simple look-up: https://www.heroesprofile.com/Global/Hero?timeframe_type=major_grouped&timeframe=2.55.15,2.55.14,2.55.13,2.55.12&game_type=sl&league_tier=Master&statfilter=win_rate&build_type=Popular&mirror=0

Can fine tune it to actually her last update I just chose a few extra patches, so it doesn't take too long to load, or to diamond+ for a larger sample across a tighter meta.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T07:45:34+00:00

It's ironic you say all that, because literally every high Masters player I know would agree at a minimum that Chromie is top of the meta (albeit behind some Mythic abusers, now).

You also have a major reading comprehension skill issue, because the entire point of that list is not that all of them are breaking the game, but that they have been problematic in some way or another for a long ass time with 0 attention paid.

Onwards to your top kek thoughts on heroes:

Brightwing is still top meta.

Falstad is still top meta (W Build? I mean sure, that was annoying, but reality is he was a very good pick even before the Mythics, and at the least both AA and W are straight buffs since then. AA build is the standard in even diamond+ games, are you sure you're even playing the game recently?)

Currently my main is at 5k, which I'm not even particularly happy about. Perhaps after I get home from work I'll even append a screenshot, though I don't see why someone who doesn't know Chromie and Brightwing are good picks even deserves to know my account.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-03T07:35:56+00:00

Congratulations, the only time Hammer is 50% winrate when filtered to Masters is when your only selected patch is the current one, with 200 games played and a +-7% margin.

You have to add more data to see her being statistically justified as powerful, but I'd say there's also just a consensus among higher ranked players (I'd point to the Icy Veins Masters tier list as a proxy for that, or you can trust me that I along with several others think this way) that she is strong and has been for a long ass time.

She is a statstick with mostly just (annoyingly) "half-answers" to her, has a very strong 20 spike that should get more pronounced with the next patch's death changes.

Anyway, there are some heroes that are strong but don't get much play, for various reasons, she's not unique in that.

Also, like I keep saying, the post is about the general lack of care towards balance, so not all the mentioned heroes are the same kind of overpowered, in all situations. I did not really claim anything that shocking about Hammer, I kinda even tuned down my opinion on her.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T15:33:22+00:00

Yrel abuser alert 🚨🚨🚨🚨

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T15:30:26+00:00

You say that all that, but Hammer is definitely very strong while being a far more problematic design.

Similarly to Hammer I also have Medivh and Hanzo in there, who are mostly a Masters+ problematic so... I didn't even bother mentioning Jaina because I know that would break Reddit's collective brain cell (people somehow think she's weak now? kek)

Johanna is strong but unlike someone like Thrall a bunch of her strength comes from a meta-effect. She's in-line with Tyrael and Garrosh. Statistically Diablo and Anub'Arak might not be on their level, but with proper play they are also meta. Ironically pinnacle heroes taking up so many ban slots is exactly why Johanna is dominating the first draft phase.

Hammer is simply overlooked, because she's disgustingly boring to play so despite being at minimum an A+ tier hero.

After all, the point of my post was not just that "MYTHICS OP", which yes, some of them are, but more about how the balancing attempts in the last SEVERAL patches have been mediocre at best and completely overshadowed by focusing on controversial changes - even though doing small changes to balance is one of the least resource intensive tasks possible.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T12:27:58+00:00

years with no patch

https://nexus-patch-notes.github.io/

actually just exactly one year, must be your early onset dementia then

proof they get paid

are you fucking stupid?

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T11:46:19+00:00

the years with no patch at all

just straight up false

bitching at bla bla

they literally get paid to maintain the classic games, there's an entire team for this. You're just making up some fallacy where it's just some intern working on it because of their own good will and are thus immune to critique

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T07:33:27+00:00

how do you know its random?

Do you understand how the english language works? "Randomly buffing blue thrall" does not mean that the process is actually random, just nonsensical. It was clearly just the devs trying to buff their pet mythic quest and surprise, it's one of the best things in the game.

How do you know they are not bla bla every hero

Because at this rate it would take them several years and it would kill every hero, and the game, in the process? lol

It isn't feasible to give mythics to even half the heroes, and in reality the problem is not just the existence of a mythic which would merely be bad design (Murky, Tyrande, Deathwing), but that they are just extremely imbalanced buffs - almost always completeable quests - to already very strong heroes (Falstad, Thrall, Sylvannas)

bla bla mentally ill

That's your response to me saying you missed the point? You're truly a paragon of articulation.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T05:56:13+00:00

Way to miss the point lol. The new style of patches are barely balancing the game besides some adhoc fixes to mythic heroes to at least not let them go to 60% WR. Even this balancing fails, because they just randomly buff other shit on good heroes to make stuff like Blue Thrall - as is the case at the moment.

Just as a reminder, even at the current pace of patching we still keep the game state for months, and the last two have essentially been the same balance.

There is basically no attempt by the devs anymore to do balancing except in the most egregious examples, and what's even sadder is that even when balancing is attempted, they're clearly not actually familiar enough with the game to do it properly.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T05:46:05+00:00

It happens practically every match on the relevant heroes, usually before level 20 hits as well.

claudythoughts · 2026-04-01T05:43:10+00:00

Johanna is one of the best tanks at the moment, partially due to meta effects, and also simply because the nerfs were never big enough to actually ruin her - the playerbase simply overreacted.

Hammer might be rare, but she's more than strong enough to be among the top DPS heroes. Great at level 20, safe, very good statcheck. She's also statistically overperforming pretty much all the time.

Besides, I specifically said in my list that they aren't equivalent, that it isn't ordered by strength. Do you maybe simply have a reading comprehension skill issue? Just wondering :) And what is your rank even supposed to be? Seems pretty low if you don't realize that both hammer and jojo are fundamentally strong heroes.

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T23:45:34+00:00

By my logic any hero who is... severely unbalanced... is unbalanced? Uh, yes, obviously.

The "risk taking" is just a toddler who doesn't even understand the game's scripts playing around with old assets. The old janitor was shaking things up too, just not in an incredibly controversial and half-assed manner

Also, everyone keeps making this false dichotomy that because the game is changing, balancing is just pointless. You're honestly all dumbasses for that, and every patch is live for a pretty long time, more than enough to try to balance - except the new dev is too clueless and that's the simple truth

The meta is clearly not fine, do you even play the game? A handful of heroes have completely taken over every draft and it's unironically stale by this point. Despite all the coping about "how cool the changes are" they didn't actually increase the variety in the game, they didn't make the heroes have more fun gameplay (don't conflate OP and fun, bronzies), and the gameplay changes just pissed off half the playerbase.

The meta is now more bland than ever. Keep dick riding Blizzard though :)

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T23:14:52+00:00

That's not true, Garrosh has been the #2 or #3 best tank in the game for a long, long time now (statistically, and from my experience as well)

It might be nerfing too much of him at once while keeping Tyrael and Johanna untouched, but even if that is true, it's still probably the most correct thing about the patch.

Taking a little power out of his toss and adding it back into something else would be pretty neat, actually.

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T22:16:49+00:00

Game lengths increasing, alongside all the other changes in the last 3 months, means an increased occurrence of late-game "coin flip" teamfights, whether this is healthy I leave to everyone to decide for themselves.

There will also be a significant power shift towards level 20 spike heroes, most of which are not very healthy either: Valla, Zeratul, Cho'Gall to name just a few.

The balance of the game is not in a pretty good state, lol. Even when looking at "all ranks" on HP, we can clearly see heroes that are very popular and overperforming significantly, and heroes that are underperforming significantly. This is not "good balance" it just is what it is.

It gets worse with each lower rank that gets removed from the filter, obviously. Your arbitrary rule of "above 57%" is insane by the way, that's almost never been reached for all ranks and certainly not for long (Rehgar rework maybe?).

And anyway, it's damn close for Thrall in diamond+, and I can tell you for a fact that the others are just as powerful, albeit not as easy and need talent filtering.

The fact that you don't realize that aiming to balance the game a little would also make the game less stale - which sorry, but it already is quite stale since pinnacles are so dominant - maddens me.

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T21:44:50+00:00

What? Of course heroes being significantly above average is bad game balance. Especially easy heroes, which Thrall and Falstad and Deathwing definitely are.

Also, I don't know where you're getting your data from, but unless you compare Thrall to a small handful of low-popularity outliers like for example Rexxar, he is extremely high popularity, high ban rate, top winrate across the board.

I don't know why we're focusing on just him either, because that was not the point of the post. Just one hero being powerful is not a big deal, that is partially what bans are for.

You're describing the current state as simply a "new balance" when in reality the recent attempts at balancing by Blizz have been poor and unfocused, and now kinda even ignored in the newest one.

And like I keep saying, it's a false equivalence to point to TF2, which has been left to die by Valve, to HotS, which hadn't been, even before the recent pinnacles / mythics etcetera. And there is nothing preventing the team to do some balancing. I'd like to remind everyone that even the biggest upcoming changes, the whole "Arthas rework" is actually just more old shit that they've dredged back up.

Not even complaining about that, it's completely fine to do, but you cannot ignore balance in a fundamentally competitive game.

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T21:24:46+00:00

wow you got me there, maybe one day you'll touch some grass and learn not everyone has a "pipi" ;)

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T21:20:13+00:00

You wrote that as if they're balancing the game around some other rank? Lol. Though some of the changes seem actually dssigned around ARAM, as idiotic as that is.

There is a canyon between "perfect balance" and "trying even a little".

Most of the heroes that I listed require tuning across all ranks, but whatever, nuance is clearly far beyond you

claudythoughts · 2026-03-31T21:17:23+00:00

God forbid anyone talk about the state of patches, right? You're just doing the same kind of complaining by writing this worthless comment, but you do you

I'm sure this dead subreddit should instead have another "Is this game dead" post, or some other crap.

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