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Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Been looking forward to having the armor system is BG for a long time, let us know what you think! Should help to increase hero diversity and allow us to design major and minor impact hero powers while maintaining hero balance. https://t.co/4DvkksxZWs

Been looking forward to having the armor system is BG for a long time, let us know what you think! Should help to increase hero diversity and allow us to design major and minor impact hero powers while maintaining hero balance. https://t.co/4DvkksxZWs

  • Iksar
    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
    Been looking forward to having the armor system is BG for a long time, let us know what you think! Should help to increase hero diversity and allow us to design major and minor impact hero powers while maintaining hero balance. https://t.co/4DvkksxZWs

    • Iksar
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      The biggest risk is a negative impact to gameplay from the total increased health pool. Leveling becoming more prevalent, games lasting longer, end-game comps all reaching their final destinations, etc. These are all things we’ll be tracking closely at all ratings.

      • Ranlit_HS
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        @IksarHS Gotta say, my first impression is that we’re encouraging players to play more bad heroes by making all of them have Patchwerk-like effect. The intentions are good, but I don’t see this as something “interesting” :-/ Would have much preferred buffs & reworks & reduction of pool

        • Iksar
          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
          @Ranlit_HS The balance design space of hero powers isn’t very big. In theory ‘just balance all the heroes’ is a good strategy. In practice, less good. At least if the goal is diverse choices.

          • Iksar
            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
            @Ranlit_HS There are just so few knobs to turn, sort of like how balancing 8-drops to be in line with one another is a lot easier than doing so with 1-drops.

    • Mandatar5
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      @IksarHS Sounds really cool and flexible. Reminds me of Small World class selection (https://t.co/NSyIlaur5H) Over there, by selecting a hero/class you raise the value of the unpicked ones. That would require dynamic armor for BGs.

      • Iksar
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        @Mandatar5 We thought about going by pick rate, but ultimately it only ends up punishing the heroes pick because they think they are fun. Opted to go by win-rate. TBH, unclear if we'll keep it around forever. If players love it, we'll probably come up with an automated solution.

    • Jkirek_
      Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
      @IksarHS From a high mmr perspective: It's hard to imagine this amount of armor makes me pick an otherwise worse hero over a better one, so it feels relatively unimpactful; every few games with a hero, you might get (half) a placement higher thanks to the armor, however...

      • Jkirek_
        Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
        @IksarHS Other heroes in the lobby do similar stuff, making it "cancel out" too. At the same time, some heroes' average placement is lower because their strengths change highly based on minion types: they get more armor, even when their good tribes are in, and that armor is very abusable.

        • Iksar
          Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
          @Jkirek_ Well, let's assume for examples sake that the result of this means basically every hero is equally powerful. Would that change who you pick on average?

          • Jkirek_
            Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
            @IksarHS Making every hero equally powerful this way means most heroes' strength comes from armor which lets them live long enough or level fast enough so the heropower is irrelevant - I'd likely pick whichever hero is most skill rewarding; usually that'd be the currently strong ones.

            • Iksar
              Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
              @Jkirek_ The goal is that you end up picking the heroes you personally enjoy most rather than what a tier list says you should pick. If for you, that means the skill rewarding heroes, then the system achieves its goal.

              • Jkirek_
                Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                @IksarHS I'm concerned that this way of balancing makes every currently bad hero patchwerk; if the best way to play a hero is to ignore the heropower and abuse the armor, that's not going to be anyone's favorite hero.

                • Iksar
                  Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                  @Jkirek_ We're monitoring pretty closely the effects on normal gameplay. When do people tier up, what impact does it have on game length, final game compositions, etc. If armor leads to everyone playing tier up fast strategies then we'll likely adjust or remove the system.

                  • Iksar
                    Posted 3 years, 9 months ago (Source)
                    @Jkirek_ I suspect that this change will increase the variety of heroes, not really change the way most people play those heroes, and just give armored heroes a half a turn longer of a game on average. A big enough impact to put them in line with more powerful heroes.
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