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[Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

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footpatrol2
Posts: 1093

Re: [Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

Post#221 » Wed May 17, 2017 6:55 pm

I agree with jaycub on the WL has the same problem as Roadhog. Or at least how you described roadhog. (never played that game)

I don't agree that the WL is as reliant on forced opportunity mainly due to what he had to give up for its current form. The WL still has a decent armor debuff coming from his pet with trained to threaten.

This is off-topic so I will put it in a spoiler but it is about forced opportunity and what was given up for it.
Spoiler:
Forced Opportunity in its current form at one time didn't exist. Echoing Roar used to be where forced opportunity is now. Guardian spec had a 5 point abilty called forced opportunity. Forced opportunity required that you parry a attack to use and was a undefendable attack for a little damage. The ability would buff your pets critical strike chance to 20% for 10 sec's. The ability had a 5 sec cooldown. Which mean's if you were lucky in your parries you could perma keep up the pet buff. Guardian spec WL's used to be FEARED. When forced opportunity was switched to a large armor debuff it killed the guardian spec line for more mirror pushing. I was playing a WL at the time of this nerf.

It does not unbalance the game if destro has a larger armor debuff then order can get.
I personally don't think the armored debuff on the WL is absolutely needed for the class to stay competitive.

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TenTonHammer
Posts: 3807

Re: White Lion - Pounce

Post#222 » Wed May 17, 2017 10:03 pm

Jaycub wrote:
On my time before I deleted my WL, partly due to this change and the reception it received. I noticed that of all the DPS classes in the game WL was the epitome of a PUG slayer class. By design the class heavily punished not playing properly, especially in the case of being out of position without guard/peels and heals (the most common mistake). You'll notice in that latter statement it's implied that being in a proper group is required... and it is to deal with pre nerf WL who has a premade behind him (notice I don't say 1v1).


There is a phenomenon in gaming, were a certain class/hero has a kit that is seemingly built around punishing something that the casual playerbase at large is guilty of doing. I could go on forever with a few examples, but in this case I'll just use the recent game overwatch and its hero Roadhog as an example.

Roadhog has a medium long range "hook" ability that pulls anyone it touches into extremely close melee range, enter his shotgun... and you have an extremely nasty 1hko in a lot of cases just for simply being hooked. Now in the competitive scene, and high level play players actually play like a team and don't run around like chickens with their heads cut off, they play behind their tanks and their shields and push as a group which can save a player who gets hooked and down a hog in seconds thanks to his gigantic hitbox and limited mobility. But in PUG play, people rambo in 1 by 1, they don't push as a team, and they don't think of the game as a team game so much, so they lack the countermeasures like say a zarya bubble etc... So every day you go on gaming sites, Bnet forums and there would be thread after thread after thread of NERF Roadhog, and thankfully after months that's never happened because blizzard hasn't given in to it's casual playerbase.

I really believe WL to be a very similar case, just replace hook with pounce. It's my opinion that this change was giving into a pug argument, and I'm sure most of you want to crucify me for saying this.

Regardless, after saying all that do I think WL isn't viable anymore? No. WL is still a top tier DPS, but there lies a very big problem with that. Ask yourself "Would WL still be good if it didn't have the armor debuff", and you begin to see the class is pretty much held on by a thread called force opportunity. Any changes to armor, as discussed in the state stabilization thread, or changes to the meta in terms of entry of classes with armor debuffs (like IB), can drastically sway WL's place in the game/meta. But if we look to mara, who has the mirror ability, that class is still perfectly viable without cutting claw. I've recently been playing the monstro spec in ORvR and it's a shining example of what a MDPS should be in large scale ORvR fighting, and that spec doesn't have cutting claw or even thunderous blow. And even from a single target perspective, losing cutting claw isn't the end of mara for a myriad of reasons.
I want to go on a tangent first before addressing white lion part in your post
Spoiler:
Firstly Overwatch is an FPS and quite frankily instakillas have no place in an fps outside of sniper headshots and in OW's case; ultimate's

Secondly unlike many other games like say DOTA2 blizz's design team is not JUST balancing that game based on competitive play nor even the top level of play like GM or Masters rather they stated they want to "balance for all levels of play" so citing "pro play" means nothing here, nor their ablity to balance and design well, Orisa was designed to be a main tank and she utterly fails at that, Blizz stated that they expect Reapaers pick rate to rise with the rise of winston, that did not happen at all.

Thirdly with ultimates like earthshatter, graviton etc, 5 man deathball pushing behind a rien shield is very punishable and; furthermore, if you look at the most effective and popular style of play in comp and higher levels of play its mobile dive comp with triple dps

Next, pointing out things like zarya bubble as a "counter" is not legitimate in the grand scheme of things when its 8s cd cant be guaranteed for a hook counter when you have to use it to protect your team mates from other things such as a rien pin etc, becuase its not only hog, there are 5 others to contend with too. His large hit box is off set by his high base hp and the ability to heal up to 50% of his base hp on a short cd and feeding enemy ults is offset by him feeding his supports ult too.

Lastly, his lack of mobility is off set by the fact that he can make any target within 20 feet of him come to him and even if you bait and dodge the hook he can still insta kill you with alt fire. Even if hog does not shoot you after hook, he has still set up a garruntted kill for his team by pulling an enemy target into his team to set up an easy kill.

Roadhog is a 900 ehp dps with 3 different ranges of lethality, and unlike every moba hook hero ever who is valued for their initiation/set up potential and cc ability that made then picked and relevant at all stages of the game, hog was made into a better tank buster than reaper (leaving the latter with no role) and given a cheap insta kill mechanic instead of making hism a real tank by making his kit about cc and disabling targets

I dont feel that mara should be the standard we hold WL or any other mdps to, because quite frankly the jack of all trades, amazing at everything class is just overtuned and are just simply too good in my eyes and needs to be brought down, rather i feel that it is slayer and choppa are the standard that mara and wl need to be held to, strong classes but not on their own and need support to truly shine.

Ofc the WLs skills and trees need to be redone, getting rid of the PvE garbage and give it some real skills , but people will need to really decide whether shammy and herders with run away! is still such a huge problem that they want wl to be about target catch or whether they want the class to be a more general purpose mdps.

Wl without an armor debuff would still be good if more of its kit was spirit dps cause then it could still synergize with SM but no high armor debuff would hurt slayers dps a bit
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roadkillrobin
Posts: 2773

Re: [Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

Post#223 » Wed May 17, 2017 10:15 pm

Stripping Force Oppurunity from WL will also increase the use of Ironbreakers for small scale as the armor debuff is one of the big selling points for WL atm.

I also agree that WL should do more spirit dmg to synnergize better with SM instead of being self reliant on armor debuff. Especially i feel that Slashing Blade and Whirling axe should have a spirit dmg component to it for the large scale fighting.
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Aurandilaz
Posts: 1896

Re: [Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

Post#224 » Wed May 17, 2017 10:29 pm

How about making all the RANGED abilities of WL in line with the class being a MELEE dps?
Currently Fetch comes from god knows how far and Pounce is 65 feet plus some extra feet in case of server lag.
Meanwhile WH bullets reach 30 feet, because you know thats how guns work apparently?

Say, Pounce and Fetch get adjusted to 30 feet range, something that could be considered "maximum melee range", instead of the current "lol im almost a ranged class" distance.
(counterargument could of course be that superior elven leg muscles easily jump 65 feet but puny human engineering can only make guns that shoot 30 feet distance...)

The question also is, whether WL is supposed to perform as a semi ranged mobile medium armour high burst awesome armour debuff Superman class, or whether it should be "just another mortal melee dps".

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trebla
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Re: [Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

Post#225 » Wed May 17, 2017 10:52 pm

I don't care what you do with the class, someone will cry to much or to little.

All I do ask, cause I have to ask for something. :roll:

Is give an indicator on the pet when it's sent out to fetch or KD, no other class in the freaking game can disguise it's CC better than the WL making it impossible to know what is coming. Maybe the SW KD but that again is another discussion.
Every other major CC in the ball park of game changing is telegraph to even the field. Magus rift, Engi magnet, Mara pull, lol choppa's get to the choppa, SH needs a certain pet for KB, so on.

I don't care if its paws light up red when its in fetch mode, ANYTHING that allows a player to be proactive to the CC not just see WL pet coming and watch half your teams squishy running clear out of the battle or spamming some kind of anti CC.

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footpatrol2
Posts: 1093

Re: [Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

Post#226 » Wed May 17, 2017 11:06 pm

I could definitely get behind slashing blade and whirling axe being spirit damage.

Maybe make hack n slash tactic turn hack and slashing blade into spirit damage along with the ap reduction.
Hard Turn whirling axe into spirit damage.
Last edited by footpatrol2 on Wed May 17, 2017 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

freshour
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Re: [Implementation Feedback] White Lion - Pounce

Post#227 » Wed May 17, 2017 11:07 pm

As far as fighting quite a few white lions is concerned, I will say that there is a massive difference in the good and bad like any others. The thing is that when played well they have such a good kit that on my melee DoK I went from hah, WL... byyyyyyye to wait... did he just... then he just... now i'm dead? Like fetch is really good, we all know that. It is better than mara pull by a mile, we all know that. But using fetch at the right time negating a classes ability to do anything besides insta casts hurts. Combine that with a KD when you land... you are just dead. Combine that with an armor debuff and you are really really realllllly dead.

Fetch is good, but whatever, we all die to random stuff so sure, they get a good move. Pounce is extremely good when used properly, but okay in itself it isn't OP. Their kd is just another part of their kit, it is good but proper timing makes it a nightmare. Armor debuff in an armor meta... yah.. very good. Pet that does pretty insane dps as it is a pet isn't anything special, but add everything else to it that it and the WL can do are what makes the class a must have a lot of the time.

So while I hate to say that the white lion isn't some pick me up class like "road hog" - it is definitely more a Genji (Overwatch reference numebr 2) - in that it has an extremely high skill ceiling more so than most classes, Mara being one of them that when played right is fun to watch but it feels like a totally different game then watching the other classes. Mobility (pounce and sprint), utility (30% reduced attack speed, armor debuff), cc (KD), it has a fullllllllll kit. It can make slayers animals, SW's crit for huuuuuuge, engis will pick you apart. Pounce back at a squishie, pounce to a frontline tank, you're safe, you got off 1 move and pounced back and the 456823498 engineers and SW's finish it.

The fix to pounce while you are flying through the air will probably be a sizable nerf to the highest skilled WL's, but rather than break their kit with other nerfs, I think toning it down would be better and still allow for higher level play, but not at a level that is so far above basically every other class other than a mara which are few and far between when compared to a WL. (Yes I have counted).

I just hope that whatever changes only tone down the beast and don't tame it.

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