Last week, Blizzard developers hosted a Reddit Q&A, where they answered some burning questions from the playerbase. Among the hot-button issues were potential heroes, map rotation, talent build diversity, and changes to some of the game’s oldest tank heroes.
But let’s start with the headline news. The Diablo II amazon hero is not off the table, the Novazon skin notwithstanding. The skin was greeted with disappointment by many, assuming that it meant the actual character would never be released.
“A skin that shares a similar theme does not guarentee a hero never getting made,” said Blizz KinaBREW, pointing to the Starcraft Medic hero that was announced at Gamescom despite Uther having a similarly inspired skin.
With the addition of the latest warriors and tanks, such as Leoric and Johanna, many of the older heroes in these roles have begun to feel sub-par by comparison. These include pre-release heroes such as Diablo, Chen, Stitches and Arthas, who “are heavily on the radar”. Currently the goal is to focus the strength of individual characters to counter specific team compositions (auto-attack focused or heavy crowd control teams, etc.).
The powers at be are also moving steadily closer to solidfying a map rotation system, having settled on 6-8 maps as the ideal number. While battlegrounds will be taken in and out of play, especially as they receive updates, there are “no plans to ever permenantly retire a map,” according to Blizz JeDeShazer.
Build diversity has been a persistent concern for some time now, with some heroes having almost mandatory talent choices for a single viable build path. Since talents were meant to be the Heroes answer to items in terms of customization and strategy, this is something of a problem when a hero can’t spec to do more than one thing. Said Blizz Daybringer:
“In the case of hybrid builds and the talents pointed at them; I think we can do better.”
Ending on a forward note regarding the newest map set to drop next week, “Infernal Shrines”: if the Punishers seem somewhat overpowered then they’re doing their job, even if the result means that one team can possibly snowball an advantage because of it.
“We intend for our battleground map mechanics to be an integral aspect of how matches play. We have fully intended Punishers to be threatening to our players and to be an anti-player mechanic.”
– Blizz JDeShazer
To see if any of your own questions were answered, check out the full Q&A on HeroesNexus.com.
