Source
r/DotA2•
infinitywraith

Has the trend been to keep buffing everything? My thoughts...

Hi r/dota2,

I had a question and I was curious about people's views on this: in most of the recent patches, there have been more buffs than nerfs. For example, spells get longer duration, more damage, longer range, less mana cost, cheaper items, etc. If you scroll through the update, you'll see that 90% of the changes are buffs, with only a few nerfs. Instead of making the strong heroes weaker, they are making the weaker heroes stronger. While this is understandable because it'll probably lead to less people complaining about nerfs, it does indicate a trend that may be undesirable.

What do people think about these changes? It seems like it will make the game more action packed since everyone becomes a bit squishier with the presence of stronger spells. However, if the trend continues it seems like it might make the game more arcade-like since everything just becomes quicker than before with stronger spells and items.

Thoughts?

Posted Dec 17, 2014, 8:02 PM UTC

014
ez-R-ez-Gaem•

yes. And its good. When everything is OP, nothing is OP. And its better than putting some heroes back into trashcan and annoying everybody who liked to play them.

3
CombustiblePandaImma boat ya•

Cough cough league cough cough

3
420unfriendly•

I also think it makes games more fun and intense feeling. If everything feels strong as fuck you never feel like you just lost because someone picked a shit tier hero like Chen (Perhaps not anymore?). Also, I think they have started to prefer indirect nerfs rather than direct ones, which I love because I think it actually balances play. Like the Golem aura is a good nerf to carries and cores as it'll take way longer to farm them. Whereas the courier price drop was a big buff to support players like me!

1
IAmNotACreativeMan•

This has been Icefrogs mentality for a long time. In general, buff things up to the same level instead of nerfing things down. If a specific hero needs a nerf, don't nerf the OP thing about a hero, nerf other stuff on the hero to balance.

3
infinitywraithOP•

This makes sense, however it doesn't seem like he's buffing the HP pools of that many heroes, while he is buffing the strengths of many spells. Doesn't this result in all heroes ending up squishier?

-1
IAmNotACreativeMan•

It does, which makes positioning and skillful play much more important. It's not meant to be forgiving.

5
420unfriendly•

This.

1
umimanInvoker•

There's this one game. Don't know if you know it. But all they did was nerf. Not just minor nerfs. A crippling slap with the nerfbat of doom to whatever is the flavour of the month.

Your favorite guy you spent $45 on? Fuck him, he's now completely useless lololol.

That character that was just getting exposure after being considered trash for years? LOL! GOODBYE BACK TO GARBAGE WITH YOU.

Some pro plays a guy well in a strange role and people are starting to pick him? HAHA FUCK YOU OUR RULES ONLY PLEASE.

Yeah. I prefer buffs.

2
diracspinor•

the thing is, power creep is fine. it generally leads to heroes doing new, weird and exciting things. far more meaningful and unusual interactions, that's the fun of dota. most of the rest just boils down to numbers, you can balance a nuke by reducing the damage or increasing other heroes hp pools or their possible responses in terms of interactions. in general it wont make heroes squishier, so the rest doesn't follow.

2
bdzz•

Wasn't that always the case? "Everything is OP nothing is OP".

Also the "indirectness" of the balancing (not touching the problematic hero, ability, item etc. but rather the other stuffs around it). My fav example is the balance of Batrider after TI3 (6.79) http://i.imgur.com/nvj3xZ0.png

1
teerre•

Is is tho?

We have 68~ heroes changed, which means there are 32~ unchanged. From those 21~ are nerfs, that's 30%~ nerfs.

1
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
kith3k•

It's short sighted as shown by how many years this game has been balanced and the viability of heroes constantly oscillating over the course of the games lifespan. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I wish for once they would take the approach of nerfing something hard enough that it falls out of favor, then rebalancing it later. Since they balance around the competitive scene, competitive players are simply too scared to draft heroes they are uncomfortable with. So force them to come up with new strategies or play with an inefficient draft.

That said, I have come to accept that this game will never leave its flavor of the month type dynamic. There will be overbuffed heroes who will dominate for a few patches until they get nerfed enough and the next set of overbuffed heroes takes their place. It is a cycle that has been going on for years and there it seems there is no goal in mind when it comes to balancing.

1
rashandal•

Yes, it has been the trend. and i dont really like that power creep. the updates should have a healthier balance of buffs and nerfs.

of course it's easy to understand why theyre doing it. it's way easier to buff the few heroes falling behind than nerfing everyone who's ahead of them.

0
Tublerone•

how new?

0