Playtest 188 - New Ultimates, Visuals, Balance!
Treisk
Member, Administrator
Tonight's playtest features a handful of ultimate ability, balance, quality-of-life, and visual changes.
Squad Changes
Celesta
- Crystalline Hawk no longer awakens neutral camps.
Eris
- New Ultimate ability!
- Reset (F) - Immediately resets the cooldown of all of your squad abilities.
Grath
- Trample (R)
- Windup time: 0.8 ⇒ 0.3 seconds
- Movement speed bonus: 175% ⇒ 225%
Hive
- Beetle Swarm (F)
- Beetle lifetime: 6.0 5.0 seconds
- Lay Egg (Q)
- Now casts in formation and as a group.
- Cooldown: 60 ⇒ 40 seconds
- More Eggs upgrade cooldown reduction: 30 20 seconds
- Scarab
- Health: 550 ⇒ 700
- Physical Resist: 0 ⇒ 25
- Hive Nest (W)
- Hatch time: 20 15 seconds
- Beetle duration: 30 20 seconds
Ryme
- Frostfall now properly draws a line to help guide the placement of its additional AOEs.
Wind
- Wind has received a visual update with new Cyclone (D) and Warp Pad (F) VFX, and new ability icons! No more flowers!
Vela
- New Ultimate ability!
- Diplomatic Measures (F) - Grants all of Vela's units (globally) bonus movement speed and invisibility for a few seconds or until they attack.
- Several upgrades have been adjusted to now affect Basic Snipe (W).
Vex
- Chaos Bolt has been renamed to Pyroblast and given to Vex.
- Now also applies Ignite and burns Oiled units!
Questions
- What did you think of the new ultimates on squads that have them?
- Were there any particularly bad squad matchups you experienced?
- What were the best "feeling" squads you played tonight? Not necessarily the most powerful, but the one that felt the most awesome and fun to play?
- What was the worst "feeling" squad you played? Not necessarily the least powerful, but the one that felt the least awesome and fun to play?
Comments
Replay for Hydros + DEV_Fire vs. DEV_Fire + Vela
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Not much to say today.
First game: Ryme vs Illusion on bottom. Illusion seemed fairly weak: slow and non-threatening. Our team steadily gained map control and pushed for the win.
Second game: Poison vs Eris on bottom. Eris got his 2x gold expansion right away, stayed ahead of me in upgrades, dominated the map, denied me any gems and easily won the game. If you're playing as Poison on bottom and your matchup is Eris, swap with a teammate immediately. Mad props to @Ursadon, you played a perfect game.
The best feeling squad to me right now is Ryme. His units and abilities fit well into the "fantasy" of the squad and are all useful. Hydros is a close second for similar reasons.
I didn't have a bad time playing Poison because of the squad, I had a bad time because I got destroyed. I need to branch out more and play squads that I didn't like at first to see how I feel about them now. I generally play squads that I like, so I guess I don't have a good idea of what squad feels the worst to play to me currently. If I had to pick one, I seem to remember Grath not feeling all that cool.
What did you think of the new ultimate on squads that have them?
You guys changed Vela's Ultimate.
I am really not a fan of Vela's new Ultimate! It makes me feel less impactful. When I used the SNIPE ultimate a I got immediate results. BOOM he's dead. It doesn't matter if I'm behind or ahead I got results.
The New stealth Ultimate doesn't feel punchy to me. Especially If I'm behind or any squad that has a dash... or armor... or aoe abilities that rip through my weak units... When I read the description, everything sounded good. it sounded fun, exciting, adding a stealth element to the game but in gameplay I ended up using it more to retreat when my army was getting obliterated. Not as a fun tide turning ultimate.
Were there any particularly bad squad matchups you experienced?
Vela vs Eris. This felt absolutely hopeless. From the very start his units can dash onto mine and kill them. Because they are so fast I can't kite. I don't feel like mine do enough damage and if he focus fires against me I don't think any amount of careful positioning will save me. It only gets worse when Destructive Prophecy becomes unlocked because my units are so slow they have a very hard time getting out of the way.
The problems I experienced could be due to low player skill but just my impressions.
EDIT: after watching a few replays of others playing Vela I feel like maybe poor play was the reason I did so poorly in my games. Maybe Eris vs Vela isn't that hopeless. Still not super excited about Vela's ultimate.
EDIT2: I see that in AtlasoPedia the description for Fair Warning now says
**Passive
Stride- All of Vela's units move 25% faster while out of combat. **
That's new right?
That could be very nice. This makes her units 3.8 speed go to about 4.7. I like this change and can't wait to try it out. 5.3 with dual wind auras.
New Ultimates
(1.1) - Somehow I appear to have managed to not play any of the squads with new changes to Ultimates, or if I did, not make it to the point where they came into play. This confuses me now, thinking back. Played against the Vela Diplomatic Measures, and that was cool. It threw me, definitely felt like one of those cat videos where what ever they are watching disappears, and they get all "wait, what?!" The new pyroblast is so sweet, craziest thing was blast vs. blast team battles. Super fun, even being in the middle of them, particularly because of the chaotic maneuvering needed to get in and around the blasts.
Bad Squad Matcups
(2.1) - I didn't feel like we ran into any bad matchups. I did run into some cases where the build necessitated having an ill-formed matchup for a bit, or where I misjudged what was needed, but adjusting to this was possible and fun. I think this is a good thing.
Best Feeling Squads
(3.1) - I still really like Ryme. The boosted Rhino charge was a lot of fun to play with, but overall, Ryme definitely had the highest fun factor. While the changes to Ryme for this test don't really effect much, playing with teammates that have high damage output but tricky skill shots is a blast when you're working together. Especially toward the middle and late game, having so many options for selectively locking down areas of an engagement makes this hero feel very "commander"-ly.
Worst Feeling Squads
(4.1) - For the game I played as Grath, I felt super resource starved, like the units were more expensive for what I needed to do with them than other squads. Worth it to run those Rhinos, though. Still, if I had to pick a "worst feeling squad," that would be it, with the disclaimer that this squad wasn't necessarily that far behind the others, and I had a lot of fun tonight with all of them.
What did you think of the new ultimate on squads that have them?
Vex felt really good with the new ultimate, both to play with and against.
I saw Vela ultimate used once and it did get a disengage. I'm not sure if it's intentional but you can still see the T3 aura while the squad is invisible which allows for a bit of deception; I never saw it used in an impactful way.
I rarely actually noticed the Eris ultimate when playing against except for the off fight where I was paying attention to how many times they jumped.
Were there any particularly bad squad matchups you experienced?
Ryme into Vela was really rough, I should have teched for range on the W faster and maybe have gotten a small window with which to get to the ultimate and have a chance. Fighting into Vela T3s as Ryme is really difficult to engage. In theory I guess you could get the range on glacial guys and the range on w and try to force it but I think you're too far behind in numbers.
Best Feeling Squads
I had a lot of fun playing Poison and Vex. Vex feels like he can hold his own into anything and is just overall solid and poison was similar when played in the duo matchup.
Worst Feeling Squads
I didn't really branch out at all so I guess Ryme because I felt like all I could do in the solo was stall the game until we could take a decent fight as a team and win the game.
I played two games as Hive and one as Fire.
Hive seemed okay. The Scarabs feel balanced now; they lack the initial offensive power to overrun your opponent in the early game, but they remain tanky into the late game. I meant to try the changes to the Hornet, but found myself in match-ups where I felt upgraded scarabs would be better.
In terms of match-ups, I noticed that the infest ability of Queens can provide exceptional levels of sustained pressure vs squad's with many tiny units like Eris and Wind.
On the other hand, Vex still demolishes Hive through a combination of armor type advantage, ability damage, and tanky T2s. I am still figuring out how to play Fire, but it stands out to me that the Pyrosaur's stats are similar to what the Scarab's have been in the last few builds. The Pyrosaur's have lower health and no gap close, but they are backed up by stronger and cheaper T1 units.
What did you think of the new ultimates on squads that have them?
I played both Eris and Vela in this test (surprise surprise). Most of my games were on Eris, as the reset ultimate is a drastic shift in overall style from Chaos Bolt. My gut reaction from reading the notes was fear; how will I manage lategame fights without Chaos Bolt? The answer I found was "4 meteors lol". I shifted to a much bigger focus on coin and rushing out two Apocalytes, and with this shift, I was able to make good use of Reset. I didn't test to see how 4 dashes felt, because 2 is already plenty, and resets on War Dance don't feel as great on a squad that is otherwise quick and bursty. I could see that perhaps helping if an engage goes poorly and you need an escape, but otherwise, Eris' fights usually end before war dance expires anyways.
The animation associated with Reset felt weird to me though. I wasn't sure if my cooldowns were resetting as soon as I hit the button or after the animation completed. As far as play, I was able to dump meteors all over purifiers with impunity, but I still got hit with that confusion every time I saw the animation.
I only played a single game as Vela this test, but her new ult is definitely interesting. I felt much less powerful without the old snipe, but basic snipe covers much of the same ground without also turning Fair Warning into an immediate death sentence for any opposing hero who gets marked. I'm not sure what the intended use of the new ult is, but boy howdy is it a good escape tool. Seven seconds of invisible movement helped me get out of some sticky situations that otherwise would have resulted in losing everything.
Were there any particularly bad squad matchups you experienced?
I didn't get stuck against any bad matchups, no. But I do feel like Celesta suffers a bit vs Vela because a lonely purifier is as good as dead once Deadeyes get out. Thanks, Deadeyes, for making that wording weird.
What were the best "feeling" squads you played tonight? Not necessarily the most powerful, but the one that felt the most awesome and fun to play?
What was the worst "feeling" squad you played? Not necessarily the least powerful, but the one that felt the least awesome and fun to play?
Answering these two together. Eris and Vela are both tried-and-true fun squads for me. I enjoy both of these squads a ton in any even or favourable matchup, but always find them hard to make comebacks with, Vela slightly moreso, as she lacks a tool like meteor that can start a comeback. That said, popping ion cannons with basic snipe always feels good.
Maybe it's me coming from Hydros, but I absolutely. Loved. Ryme. Hands down, might've been the most fun I've had, in part because I felt empowered to respond to situations if I were paying attention.
I got to dabble in the movement denial/control aspect which I felt was lacking on Hydros. I went up against Vela - this is a bit funny considering Nib's feedback but maybe it's because I did exactly what he cited: I got the ranged upgrade rather early on because I noticed that my gem nodes were being denied quite handily. I felt I would be zoned out if I didn't get that upgrade.
I always had something to do with Ryme. Even if I couldn't straight-up catch my opponent out of place to engage, I could Frostbolt a unit just to grab a little xp and whittle his forces down. If I did manage to see a worthwhile engagement, I could make the choice to either Cold Snap near the opening of the engagement (if it were a REALLY advantageous one for me) to force the fight, or save it for later if I were unsure (send a volley of Cold Snap'd attacks, then retreat so that the army couldn't effectively follow). DECISIONS!
And Frostfall...oh Frostfall. It may have been my favorite thing about actually fighting. There were so many ways to use it.
With 2+ Frostcallers, I could slice through the enemy army (ala SC2 force fields) to not only force units to take damage, but also slow their approach (thus somewhat negating their range advantage) and clog up units in the back. I could cast it preemptively when I saw an approaching army near a choke - it makes the bottleneck all the more of a bottleneck and dares the opponent to either trod through it or find a longer way around. All the while I could be buying time for my neutral weapons (or those of my allies) to do damage. I can't say that I immediately noticed a difference when I got the Snowstorm upgrade at tier 3, I might do a bot game later to see the differences in screenshots.
The key thing was this: DECISIONS! I had so many decisions to make at any given time with my abilities which in turn led to very engaging gameplay. When I died, I felt like it was because I did something wrong vs something being out of my control. When I succeeded (esp long-range Frostbolt snipes on enemy heroes by trying to predict pathing), I felt like I absolutely did something right.
I kind of want to play more with other squads in order to both better understand the game as well as offer feedback, but the joy I felt with Ryme was pretty cool and it's going to be hard not to want to go back and get more of it. If I had one complaint it was that his ultimate feels pretty underwhelming - it's great that it covers such a huge area, but if it's to prevent engagements or retreats, then it feels like Frostfall does a better job (the slow is more potent anyway). It could be due to the map as well - in a more "chokey" area, a line of slow-effects across a bottleneck has the same result as much as a slow across a wide radius.
What did you think of the new ultimates on squads that have them?
Vex getting Pyroblast just feels right. I'm not sure if it's actually atronger than his old ult but it's definitely more fun.
Eris' new ult feels amazing, but I do wish it had a better visual indicator haha. I had one game where I saw 2 meteors go off as Wind, so I thought I was safe to engage, then much to my surprise 2 more meteors went off and killed half my army.
Vela's new ult feels a lot more interesting than the old Ult to me; the old Ult basically just did what the Squad already does really well anyway and the new one adds a way for Vela to do new things, i.e. disengage safely or ambush unsuspecting armies.
Were there any particularly bad squad matchups you experienced?
None that I would say are unexpected; Hydros vs Poison was just silly, it felt like there was nothing Hydros could do since your hero ability and tier 2 become useless and Scuttleguards do pitiful damage so all Poison had to do was target down the Aquadillos with their right click + Tier 2 ability and win. The Aquadillo also requires a monumental investment to be good at the moment, requiring 2 200g upgrades in addition to the base cost of 275g and being the only real source of damage Hydros has and thus the #1 target for the opponent to focus down. Losing one just feels terrible, like you can't do anything until it respawns, and saving them is very difficult since the best way to use them offensively to to have it literally jump into the middle of all of your opponent's units.
I also played a game as Grath since I wanted to try out the melee squads and lost very handily to Eris / Vela with a Fire ally. Wouldn't say it was unwinnable, I might just be bad with Grath, but it felt pretty painful.
What were the best "feeling" squads you played tonight? Not necessarily the most powerful, but the one that felt the most awesome and fun to play?
Wind (Sprite only), Celesta (Wisp + Precognitor) and DEV_FIRE (Sparkbot + Pyrosaur + Ignitor) were the three most fun to play today for me in that order.
Sprite only Wind is just a blast to play. I actually think it's one of the weaker squads at the moment, with a strong early game that falls off quickly if you don't get a huge level and/or gold advantage. Even with a level / gold advantage there comes a point in late game where you just can't win straight up army vs army fights. That being said, Wind is also the squad with the greatest potential to win games despite not being able to win straight up fights with it's high DPS and fast movement speed letting it collect gems around the map and quickly kill towers / bases / the nexus. Wind is the only squad where I feel like I can literally take the game into my own hands and win even in the worst of circumstances. Going back to what @Cycle was saying in one of his feedback posts about not being able to 3v1, with Wind I feel like I actually can 3v1 to some extent even despite not being able to win a 1v1 engage.
One thing I'm really worried about with Wind at the moment though is that this ability is dependent on my opponents not knowing how to counter me. I feel like over time the particular style of Wind I play that relies on non-engagement strategies will get figured out.
Celesta is probably the squad I have the most experience with, and I've always played Celesta very Wisp heavy and only adding on Purifiers after I got a critical mass of Wisps. However, I felt like this composition fell off in late game when most teams had the ability to engage on Purifiers quickly and easily and had enough AoE to demolish Wisps. With the change that allows for significantly more Tier one however I decided to play a few games as Celesta going for Wisp + Precognitor, and I have to say it feels pretty amazing. Wisps have always been strong and fun to use in early game, just a basic unit with good stats and lots of micro potential. Precognitors in their current form however just dominate battlefield manipulation. Blinding Smoke now fills a role that I felt Celesta was lacking, which is the ability to make a difference in team fights. You can use it to reduce the range on Ion Cannons and force most mid range units into either pulling back or committing hard into an engagement, getting free shots off in the mean time either way, and it gets more powerful the more units are clustered together. The defense ability which felt useless against AoE feels quite powerful against mass Tier 1 when you cast it on your first couple of wisps right before engaging, letting them soak up tons of damage. Precognitors are also just way more fun to use than Purifiers in their current form, I actually really enjoy using Siege Tanks (specifically marine tank vs marine tank) in SC2 but in Atlas I feel like the map is too small to use Purifiers in an interesting way.
Fire is my favorite straight up engagement squad at the moment. With Wind and Celesta I rely more on running around outmanuevering my opponents than winning engagements, but with Fire I get to enjoy the feeling of fighting straight on, dealing massive damage and using micro / abilities to win engagements. The addition of Pyroblast to the squad feels great. My only real faults with the squad at the moment is that the Ignitor doesn't feel as fun to use as other tier 3 casters like the Apocalyte or Precognitor, and the Pyrosaur feels a little underwhelming in mid-late game.
What was the worst "feeling" squad you played? Not necessarily the least powerful, but the one that felt the least awesome and fun to play?
Vela just feels bad to me, both as and against. This has to be a stylistic thing because I think Vela might be the most played squad at the moment so obviously other people enjoy it. I just feel like I can't do much when playing as Vela besides stay close to my ally and right click / use abilities on high value or out of position targets. On the flip side when playing against Vela I feel like the game becomes much less dynamic because you can't really try to assault positions with only 1-2 Neutral weapons because Vela can just pick them off, and you always have to back off vs Vela unless you have a chance to dive in on her. There also isn't a lot of build diversity against her because getting Tier 2 / 3 units quickly just means she has a target to pick off. I also continue to have a very high winrate against Vela despite often feeling behind in early-mid game.
As previously mentioned, playing as Grath and Hydros felt terrible. Again this is probably largely stylistic and balance oriented. Hydros I feel like doesn't do damage and the Aquadillo requires a huge investment to be good right now, Grath was more fun but still suffered from opponents just outranging or outrunning him and never being able to force a straight up fight.
Also played one game as Illusion and felt pretty much the same as last playtest, flashy and fun but no ability to turn that into game changing plays or wins.
Just a tooltip oversight; Vela had that for a bit and we scrapped it. Sorry about that!
Regarding Vela's ult -- We're still tinkering with several squad ultimates to find good fits in terms of executing both the gameplay pattern and aesthetic/flavor of each squad. We may have missed the mark on this one; will need to continue investigating before we can come to that conclusion though. Eris is another example of an ult that we're rewiring and need to investigate further.
Regarding the rest of your feedback -- Awesome, awesome stuff. Balance and identity are at the forefront of our minds re: squads right now, so all of this is super helpful. Thanks!
Eris has a lot of weird matchups right now. We're suspecting an early-game balance problem, but we're not acting on it just yet.
Awesome to hear. We're still chipping away at reworks for both of these squads to double down on that fantasy, so I'd love to hear your feedback on those changes once they go in!
Thanks for testing and posting! :D
If we keep this ult, we're almost-certainly going to add a very clear visual to it. Right now it's definitely a bit too subtle.
I think this matchup late-game might depend too much on the ultimate/W getting good mileage. But as you alluded to, the range upgrade on the W is quite helpful here. Would still like to see this game for myself and get a feel for whether you had options, though.
Could you link the replay for this game? Would love to investigate this!
Thanks for testing and for the feedback! <3
Grath is definitely due for some design love fairly soon. We still need to spend some time thinking on what's missing here though. Likely won't adjust too much until after the next test weekend.
Thanks as always! :D <3
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Scarab balance is a bit of a tough nut to crack. I suspect we're going to be backing off on its stats, then slowly adjust from there until it lands in a good place. Slow iteration will likely be the key here. This might also be one where we have to step away from statistical relativity and just trust our guts.
This is always a bit of a challenge to balance when we have unit values ranging from 25 to 150 of the primary resource. Some things are just going to be way better against some things than others. However, we welcome this challenge and the added texture that comes with it.
Thanks for testing and posting! Good stuff!
Definitely some weirdness and kinks we have to work out with this ult if it sticks around. But we do like that it expands Eris's toolkit just a bit compared to Chaos Bolt. TOTALLY agreed on War Dance; we might just give some special treatment to post-6 War Dance at some point if we stick to this ult.
Primary use case is definitely as a disengage tool. But internally we found it works as an engage tool decently-well too; no worrying about getting caught while getting a strong position. Very risky though!
Thanks for testing <3!
Funny story, Ryme's getting a new ult soon. Or rather, a very old spell is returning to the game AS his ultimate. Daily testers from before, I want to say, July will recognize it. And hopefully it gives you some new moments of joy.
Stoked to see you speak highly, even passionately, of your fun with Ryme. Battlefield control was the core focus of the Ryme rework. Though I fear in some places we may have made it a bit too easy. We're going to let this one breathe a bit before jumping to conclusions, but two places we might be looking to make some adjustments are Frostfall's range and duration. Still, with an increased focus on squad fantasy, we're VERY happy with where this squad is, and hope that the new ult plays that up a bit more.
Thanks!
Hydros rework is around the corner. For that matter, poison's isn't that far down the road either. In the next few weeks, we're expecting the changes to both sides to solve this particular set of crummy interactions.
This is an interesting point that we haven't really talked about much. I've always seen Cannonball as the "going all in" engagement ability, but having tanky units that the player feels agency over the ability to keep alive is core-enough to the squad that maybe we need to think about this one a bit.
Stated it in an above response as well, but want to restate that we're going to take a few looks at Grath coming up not too long from now. Grath is functional, and even mathematically in good shape, but is really lacking fun moments (short of Trample, especially Galvanized Trample).
We're hoping to not lose too much of this with the very big game-mode switch we're making soon. In fact the new map hopes to play up the harass-y style of Wind quite a bit. The thing that risks this squad's health the most is the new resourcing. You'll see and hear more about this post-Wednesday. In terms of opponents not knowing how to counter you, I think this is largely a true statement. Lategame Wind is something we have our eye on longer-term as well.
Toyed with this composition right around the same time you did. The Precognitor has been a quiet unit for a while now, but every time I see it it's a real difference-maker. And as Sean alluded to, I love things that operate outside of the damage/health interaction space, so Blinding Smoke just always feels great to turn engagements with. Stoked that you enjoyed this composition, would love to hear more of your thoughts on this composition (and Precogs in a rounded comp) going forward!
More comments that get me excited about our new map! WOO!
The latter point, we might be a bit more okay with. Regarding Ignitors not feeling as impactful, we talked briefly on Tuesday about giving this unit a little more standing room on its own and decided that there's nothing actionable just yet, but that it's something we want to spend time thinking about at some point. Feedback like this reinforces the idea that it's worth having some conversations about. Great to hear it!
Going to likely bring this particular comment up on Monday and have a chat about it. We've heard a handful of comments that touch on each of the points you made, and there's likely a problem in here somewhere that needs solving. We may also hold off on doing anything until after the new game mode, to see what problems get solved by that suite of changes.
Hydros fairly-deliberately does the lowest damage of any squad, and that's deliberate; but being this far below might not be okay longer-term. We're going to see how the Hydros rework coming down the pipe shakes out before changing that identity at all.
Will also re-state that Grath's fun-factor is being given a hard look soon. Especially the things you're alluding to, where you either wipe an army trivially or you can't get any ground at all, depending on the matchup.
Illusion is getting a lot of love in the next few weeks as well. As Sean mentioned, it's somewhere in the range of 40-60% of a complete idea. We have the flavor, we just need the function. There are some mechanics that we like and are going to double-down on, and we look forward to hearing what you think.
Thanks for playtesting! :D
@Treisk
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I think this is the game ID but I'm getting the can't find game post-game screen.
I definitely think there was more I could do in the matchup but it was the first time I'd played Ryme since the updates and was looking at what my upgrades were as I went. I had enough zoning potential to lose slowly so we still won the game but wasn't able to contest gems and was stuck on level 5 for ages in the midgame.
I think fighting before T2 will always go in Vela's favour but with T2 and range upgrade before Vela gets T3s you could be stronger though I'm not sure how long that window lasts.