Time to discuss some buffs

[GTSaiko]

Most topics on this forum are about nerfing this or that character. And I agree a healthy balance needs nerfs for those blatantly strong heroes. But it also needs a helping hand for those who are weak. But posts asking for buffs, seem to be somehow ignored, so I’m going to try to revive some of those discussions

• Castellan: His bronze skill, the sentry turret, is a joke. Try this, for fun. Go to challenge and pick Castellan. Tell your friend to pick the weakest hero they can think of. For example, Sentry. And let your turret try to kill said hero.
  In the example I gave (Castellan vs Sentry, both platinum) I destroyed the cover beforehand, to make it even faster. It still took more than a minute and half (counting from the moment I deployed the turret). And that is the weakest enemy possible, standing without cover, and waiting to be killed.
  His gold skill makes his turret harder to destroy, but since his turret isn’t a threat to begin with, it’s also useless. This means that half of his skills are almost useless. The only real use for the turret is to speed up cover breaking, but his shotgun already does a great job with that.

• Operator: I personally think this hero is lacking. The concept of a tanky support who can survive some punishment is great, but in reality he fails to save others, which means he can be ignored, which means his survival doesnt really make a strong impact. I think a small tweak to either his damage (to make him a bigger threat, while still being able to do some decent supporting) or his utility, would be good.

• Savage: I may be wrong here, since my Savage is just silver, but it seems to me that he has no use apart from Halo/Savage combo. If one hero depends on another specific one to be useful, it looks to me that said hero has some kind of problem.
  As far as I know, he used to be a chubby ball of death (I wasn’t here when Savage was running wild), and he was nerfed to his current state. But maybe he was nerfed too much?

• Steele: I really like Steele concept and his skill set. His skills sound good in paper. A tank that gets stronger if ignored, that reduces damage of enemies and is able to stun lock enemies with his supressing fire.
  But I have NEVER seen Steele in PvP (not counting bots). I don’t really know if that means he needs some balancing. As I said, I have literally never seen him, so I have no clue how good/bad he can be. I’m just throwing his name here because I guess that the fact that I have never seen him implies he doesn’t perform good at all.

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What are your personal thoughts? What hero do you think needs a buff? Who is lacking, and what would you personally do to fix it?

[Sogui]

I don’t really care about the specifics but I would like to see more sweeping buffs with each monthly update so we can shake up the meta a little.

All we seem to get are modest buffs for heroes that already see significant amounts of play (Moss and Caine got buffs this update, lol). When off-meta heroes get buffs they are often really, really small - nothing anywhere close to the gap between them and meta-heroes.

HHG needs to cut loose and realize that some heroes are so deep in the hole of unplayability that they need something more than a 5% buff to their survival to make them usable. There’s a lot of untapped mechanics too that they could use to make the buffs more interesting than boring % increases. For example, Beck has some fun passives but they are completely ruined by the limitations she’s been given. Evasion Field only lasts for 1 second? All Scrappy buffs are cleared by a single evasion? Lame.

Make skills that give a bonus when they interrupt an enemy skill. Change some skills to work like Panzer so they can impact the game immediately (As a running example, Beck would be a lot more interesting if disabling shot was available at the beginning of the match to counter BIG DPS + 4 support teams). Add more survival tools so more heroes aren’t completely dependent on supports to survive the first 10 seconds of a match. HHG has a ton of options so it’s really disappointing to see them ignore dozens of heroes that are virtually unused and we have to rely on the new heroes to shake up the metagame.

[WalleWu]

Cross is a Hero where I really like the concept. He has a good damage, solid health and, in theory, good skills.The only problem is, that you can´t make use of his damage, because he only has three bolts, misses at least one of the three and then has a long reload. His Bronze skill could be great, dealing damage over 12 seconds can get really anoying. But it´s so low (~8k at gold +1) that its easily covered by any heal. Same with his Silver. Poisining and stunning the opponent is great, but three seconds and low poisen damage kind of destroys it. The stun isn´t even long enough to hit the Bronze, which in fact isn´t hitting anybody, because it takes forever to get at you.

I would give him a magazine of 5 or 7, buff his skill damage a bit and make his Bronze faster, so it can hit. Or at least make the stun of his Silver long enough, that you can hit the Bronze while the opponent is stuned.

[Sing]

GT I totally agree with your post and suggestions.

Sogui, I agree with your analysis that the devs are way too conservative about the no-hope heroes, giving slight buffs are still crap since they are so bad.

WalleWu I also like your ideas on Cross (by the way I won a pvp game against you recently, though you were prob running your B team @ around 38k power).

Here is my buff list:

Ronin: The trouble with Ronin is that he deals no damage. This is because his base damage is low. He has even less base damage than Pris! Let that sink in… Pris!

As a result although it looks good on paper, Eviscerate hits like a wet noodle and takes too long to charge up. Bide Time… well it only bides time until he eventually dies.

He needs to bring his damage up to scale with his leaping death colleagues (Sapphyr, Hideo and Odachi) - he is the only ninja-like leaper who sucks!

All this guy needs is to bring his base damage up to scale with Pris and he’ll be semi-decent. However, even with that, the Energy hero stable is very full so I don’t know if he’ll ever get a space against Fortress, Oracle, Gammond, plat Halo, Saphyr, to name a few.

Oro: His EDPS (effective DPS) is low because of his reload time. His Gold skill is unreliable because it exposes him to danger and lands up killing himself.

Seriously, he has very little viability and maybe it would be better to just leave him alone and let him die. In my personal opinion, he is beyond fixing.

No one loves Oro. He design is ugly as hell too.If I could delete one Hero it would be Oro. Alas I have him at 6 stars.

Bolt: Bolt is like Cross, but worse. First off he’s a Mech and he is supposed to be an easily available early game DPS character. But erm… Dogface?

Further, unlike Cross who has early game viability because of his typing and few-ish bio alternatives in the early game (and Cross also has an interesting Plat skill if you wanna take him that far) Bolt is simply worse than all other options. He has no viability in PVP due to his reload rate and lack of decisive role (damage, support, control or healing). For a Hero who was supposed to be the face of Hero Hunters, his suckiness is disappointing!

Francoise: Francoise is simply, the worst native 5-star hero(ine). She beats Phoenix by some margin. She’s not a damage dealer. She is not a healer. She does not offer battlefield control. Her buffs kick in only in a complicated tiered way and their effects are not even that good (perhaps because she is quite weak to begin with).

Plus, she’s a bio and easily one of the worst bios (if not THE worst). Easily accessible bios like Maven, Salvatore, and of course Mandrake are in every way better than her right out of the gate. Cinder is accessible now and is great. Cast is better than Francoise even in the early game. She’s worse than Moss and of course Heimlock. Callidus offers something different and Artemis in the right hands can be dangerous if left unchecked. Francoise, however, no matter how you play her, is terrible.

Francoise is badly in need of a buff. In her current state, she is hard to get and a waste of a 10x pull - if you get her and Phoenix, you’re basically being trolled.

Devs, I understand that not every hero can be good, but surely, those on this list should not be allowed to be this bad.

[ULFPAM]

I will never agree with the widespread Savage negativity. He’s often my top pick for Assault On City Hall etc. His Bronze skill is damned powerful and together with Silver he’ll add some healing into the butchery. His normal attack is terrible though and his Gold skill is embarrassing at best. He’s got very high health as well.
Let’s talk about Surge though.