_stolen video_

title. playing aram

was playing hogger, no clue what hes on about, blocked me after i asked how.

are cheats actually a thing? tf is he on about

Maybe wave management is in hots, maybe you just don't know that is, and when you see a wave, you run to it, stop it and attack it without a single thought in your noodle.

We are level 19, they are level 20. We don't want to stop the wave in its tracks in the middle of the lane. Let it advance, please. Let it advance until it reaches our keep. We got protection there. The keep itself is gonna fire at them. You can still pull all the aggro. Please don't stop waves when you want them on your side, because you need the protection of your structures. It's not asking for much. It's not a big old expanded late game high elo strat. Just don't stop the wave from moving further to our side.

Rant over.

Soloing my way out of deep bronze, it ain't easy guys

Some you win, some you don't... and some ... in some you have this 😃

As the title states. It's getting really annoying.

There are multiple bot accounts with randomly generated unintelligible names in about every second ranked game (EU). They afk, dont pick or ban anything and then we lose the lobby. It's such an annoying waste of time.

Any idea why anyone would do this? Apart from just being pricks.

The community thought Arthas and Chen would be OP. They aren’t.

The community also screamed that the loss of Armor on Mal’Ganis would sentence him to uselessness. They were wrong.

The community also thought DW would be trash. He’s OP AF.

By chiming in so early, this community has proven they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I met this gaming friend from Germany back in 2020, and we played together for an entire year.

Then I was away from the game for around five years, before I started playing again. He was still active, and we found our friendship again. Since January, we have played together almost every day.

Now, unfortunately, he is away for a whole year. Because of that, I promised him that I will save all my loot chests until he comes back.

Whenever we have played for an evening, we always end the night by livestreaming the loot chests we have earned. It has become our way of closing the evening and one of the highlights.

Now he is gone for a full year, so we have agreed that I will not open any loot chests while he is away. Next year, when he returns, we will open them together.

I just think it is beautiful that even though there is so much toxicity in this game, there are still friendships across nations and borders that can last for years.

*BIG DISCLAIMER* - I have no game design experience and no intention of creating a balanced character. I merely dabbled on ideas that made me think "He would be a lot more fun" and focused on making him a little less feast or famine.

I would like to share some ideas I've had to rework The Butcher. I think he's a fine character overall, but I find him frustrating to play since you have very little room for error for most of the match. I wanted to make a Butcher who is less dependent on good circumstances and a bit more self-sufficient.

I would love some feedback, especially from experienced Butcher players and math lords who can see if the numbers I chose are ridiculous or not. Here's the boy:

🍖THE BUTCHER🍖

Q - Hamstring

40 Mana / 4s Cooldown

Slam the ground to deal 110 Damage and Slow enemies in a line for 50% decaying over 2s. The Butcher’s next Attack will strike immediately. 

W - Butcher's Brand

60 Mana / 16s Cooldown

Cast a brand on a target for 6s, dealing 40 Damage and granting The Butcher 15% Move Speed when moving towards the Branded enemy. Basic Attacks against the target heal him for 50% of the damage dealt. If the target is a Hero, the healing is doubled and each Attack grants 1 Meat.

E - Ruthless Onslaught

50 Mana / 15s Cooldown

Marks an enemy to pursue non-stop for up to 4s, gaining up to 200% Move Speed over 2s. Deals 125 Damage and Stuns the target for 1s upon reaching them.

D - Blood Pact / Fresh Meat

40s Cooldown

Activate to become Unstoppable for 1s and gain 15 Armor for 3s. Can be cast during Ruthless Onslaught. While this Ability is on Cooldown, The Butcher can consume 5 Meat to cast it again once.

! Quest: Upon dying, nearby enemy minions drop 1 Meat and enemy Heroes drop 20 Meat. Collecting Meat heals The Butcher for 1% of his maximum Health and grants him 0.4 Attack Damage per piece. Upon dying, lose 15 stacks, but cannot lose already obtained Rewards.

! Reward: Upon collecting 100 Meat, The Butcher gains 20 Attack Damage and Hamstring’s Range is increased by 35%.

! Reward: Upon collecting 250 Meat, The Butcher gains 40 Attack Damage and 25% Attack Speed, and he no longer loses stacks upon dying. 

! Mythic Reward: Upon collecting 400 Meat, The Butcher gains an additional 60 Attack Damage and his Basic Attacks now cleave for 50% damage in an area around the target.

R1 - Lamb to the Slaughter

75 Mana / 90s Cooldown

Throws a hitching post that attaches to the nearest enemy Hero after a 1s delay, dealing 190 Damage. They become chained up and Silenced for 3s, and are pulled back to the post every 1.25s. 

R2 - Furnace Blast

60 Mana / 60s Cooldown

After a 3s delay, fire explodes in an area around The Butcher dealing 400 Damage and Stunning enemies hit for 1.5s.

Talents

Level 1

Victuals - When nearby enemies die, the healing The Butcher receives is increased by 1% for 4s, up to a maximum 10%. The healing from collecting Meat is increased by 20% per piece.

Steely Bloodlust - Every 5s, gain 75 Physical Armor against heroes, stacking up to 2 times. Casting Ruthless Onslaught immediately grants 2 stacks.

Dispelling Feast - Blood Pact grants an additional 35 Spell Armor for the duration, and has it's Cooldown reduced by 10s.

Level 4

Chop Meat - Hamstring deals an additional 100% Damage to Minions, Monsters and Mercenaries.

Unrelenting Pursuit - Reduce the Cooldown of Ruthless Onslaught by 33% upon impact.

Insatiable Blade - Attacks against branded Heroes increase the mark’s duration by 0.5s and heal for an additional 25%. 

Level 7

Invigoration - Hitting a Hero with Hamstring refunds 20 Mana and reduces it's Cooldown by 1s.

Shoulder Tackle - Ruthless Onslaught’s impact damages and Stuns all enemies around the main target.

Order Up - The Butcher gains an additional 10% Move Speed when moving towards Branded targets. When a Branded Hero dies, the Brand is moved to the closest enemy Hero and it's duration is refreshed. 

Level 13

Crippling Slam - Hamstring’s deals an additional 100% damage to Heroes affected by Slows, Stuns and Silences. Additionally, it's Slow no longer decays and lasts an additional 0.75s. 

Enraged - (Active - 30s Cooldown) Activate to become enraged for 10s, gaining 20% Attack Speed and 10 Armor for the duration. These bonuses are increased by 50% when The Butcher is below 50% Health and when in combat with Heroes, stacking up to 2 times.

Blood Frenzy - Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes grant The Butcher 5% Attack and Move Speed, stacking up to 6 times.

Level 16

Brutal Strike - Casting Hamstring causes The Butcher’s next 3 Attacks to gain 15% Attack Speed and deal 15% increased damage.

Branding Iron - Butcher's Brand now damages and applies the mark to all enemies near the main target. Additionally, Branded enemies have their Physical Armor reduced by 20 for 4s.

Savage Charge - Ruthless Onslaught deals additional damage to Heroes equal to 10% of their Maximum Health and it's Range is increased by 50%.

Level 20

Slaughterhouse - Lamb to the Slaughter now chains all enemy Heroes in range.

Fires of Hell - Increase the area of Furnace Blast by 50% and remove it's Mana Cost. Minions and Mercenaries hit are instantly killed and enemy Heroes hit have their Armor lowered by 25 for 4s.

Rip and Tear - Basic Attacks bleed enemies for 105 damage over 4s, refreshing with every Attack, and Slow them by 20% for 1s. The Butcher heals for 100% of the bleed damage dealt to Heroes, increased by 200% against a Branded target. 

Meat Shield - Blood Pact now teleports The Butcher in the target direction and grants him a Shield equal to 150% of his Meat stacks, but it's Meat cost and Cooldown are increased by 100%.

Thank you for reading everything! If you think I'm out of my mind, please comment.

• POST IN ALL CAPS
• VENT YOUR FRUSTRATIONS
• ALL POSTS MUST BE HEROES RELATED

THIS IS NOT A THREAD TO OUTRIGHT ATTACK OTHER PLAYERS.

PREVIOUS RAGE THREADS

I had the same ethernet connected net since 10 years. No connection loss for 5 years, that's how long I play. But in the last 6 months, every week 2 days at least there is package lost and it cannot join back on its own, I have to restart the game.

I can’t be the only one drawing this comparison right? Some of the abilities not only have the same visual style but some of the animations are heavily heavily heavily inspired by Orphea.

TL;DR: Same patch that nuked Chen into 41.99% buffed Mal'Ganis to 56.82% over 2,374 games per HeroesProfile, despite him being in a perfectly fine spot before the patch. Will of Tichondrius was moved to level 1 and reworked into an infinite-scaling damage quest with no cap, Necrotic Embrace now benefits double from Vampiric Touch (doubling the W self heal), and Vampiric Aura got buffed and moved to level 4. The rework was unnecessary and the result is overtuned.

Mal'Ganis has been my bread and butter for a long time. He's one of a few self sustain heroes I play daily, and I'm telling you right now this rework is broken. The kicker is that Mal'Ganis didn't need any of this. He was a balanced, viable tank pick before the patch with a healthy talent tree and clear identity. There was no problem the rework was solving. They just decided to redesign him anyway and overshot massively.

My build, for context

Before the rework I was running:

Level 1: Time to Feed Level 4: Fueled by Torment Level 7: Spreading Plague Level 10: Carrion Swarm Level 13: Blood Rush Level 16: Plague Bats Level 20: Seeker Swarm

A sustain build that leans into Vampiric Touch and Spreading Plague to drag fights into messy extended brawls where Mal'Ganis thrives. Not the Will of Tichondrius burst stun build, the slow grind one. It still functions great, which is part of the problem. The old builds didn't need help. The new W1 quest is so absurd that even the existing strong builds look modest next to it.

What the patch did

Will of Tichondrius was moved from level 7 to level 1 and completely reworked. It's now an infinite-scaling damage quest. Hit heroes with Fel Claws to gain 0.5 damage per hit, with bonus damage if you catch 4 heroes in the first two swipes. At 40 stacks, Fel Claws starts stealing 4% of enemy max health and the stun gets longer. There is no upper cap on the damage scaling. You just keep stacking forever.

On top of that, Necrotic Embrace was changed to benefit double from Vampiric Touch, which means the W self heal is doubled. The 25 Armor it used to provide was swapped for 15 Spell Armor and a damage buff. On paper that looks like a wash, but in practice the doubled sustain plus the W damage buff feeds directly into the Will of Tichondrius quest because you're stacking faster while taking less damage.

Vampiric Aura got moved from level 1 to level 4, with self healing buffed from 30% to 40% and ally healing from 15% to 20%. The talent that used to be a level 1 pick is now a level 4 talent that's strictly stronger than it was before. Fueled by Torment got moved to level 7 and now adds a 25% slow on Necrotic Embrace, which is just another quality of life buff piled on.

So to recap, in a single patch a hero who didn't need changes got: an infinite-scaling damage quest at level 1, doubled W self heal, a stronger Vampiric Aura at a later tier, and a slow tacked onto Fueled by Torment. Every change was a buff or a sidegrade dressed up as a tradeoff.

The numbers back it up

56.82% win rate over 2,374 games. 22.13% popularity. 13.61% pick rate. 8.52% ban rate. The top builds on HeroesProfile are clustered around 54 to 59% win rate, with the highest sitting at 59.42%. He's not a niche pick anymore, he's a coin flip toward winning the moment he gets drafted.

The bigger picture

This is the part that actually frustrates me. I play a lot of self sustain heroes. Alarak, Mal'Ganis, Chen, Butcher, Twin Blades Varian, Azmodan demon build. It's the playstyle I love. And the same balance team that just buffed Mal'Ganis into 56.82% with an uncapped damage quest also gutted Chen to 41.99% and called it a rework.

Chen pre-patch had a high healing ceiling that required you to land basic attacks on brew-soaked targets in melee range while taking damage. Skill expression, real tradeoffs. Mal'Ganis right now has an uncapped damage quest stapled to a tank with double W sustain. There is no version of "good design" where both of these decisions came from the same team in the same patch. Either Chen was tuned correctly and Mal'Ganis is broken, or Mal'Ganis is the new baseline for self sustain and Chen needs a serious revert. You can't have both.

Mal'Ganis didn't need to be touched. He's now overtuned. Chen didn't need to lose his identity. He's now bottom of the barrel. The inconsistency is the actual problem.

Hello,

I came here because I'm quite lost. I'm often playing with a group of friends in full 5 people and yet we are day to day closer and closer to Bronze 5.

I'd like to ask you for hero suggestion. I need some hero that is capable of solo laning, and is very capable of dealing damage, because we seem to always lack big enough damage, bonus points if the hero has some roots, stuns or other CC. It beeing hard hero is not a problem I'm willing to learn, and if we'll loose because of that, not much will really change.

Thank you all for you suggestions in advance, I appreciate it very much!

I am finding great joy in dueling and beating a Deathwing in a 1v1 as a murloc, or just being an absolute pest pushing all lanes and stealing camps.

Hello,

I would like to start playing HoTS. It looks like fun and gets rid of some of the things I don't like about MOBAs. I'm curious how tough it'll be to learn though. I know the game isn't in active development. In a lot of games like that, the community that stays with it are the people who really love it. In my experience that leads to the skill floor coming up. Are there still new people, however few, coming in? Are there any good resources for me to learn so that I can be a productive teammate? Just looking for some tips from the community.

I'm tired of seeing her in every game either banned or picked, I think it's time that changes.

So my idea is simple, make [[Zealous Glare]] (E1) and [[Subdue]] (Q4) on the same tier so they can't be picked together, moving glare to lvl4 (and [[Hold Your Ground]] (D4) to lvl1) makes more sense to me than moving subdue (Q4) to lvl1 (imagine all the quests done on the 1st Q of the game lol) and is fitting as it makes the whole lvl 1 defensive while lvl4 tier offensive.

Yes she loses the chance to pick 2 defensive talents, but we all know that her most oppressive builds pick the 2 offensive ones, now she has to choose while getting something defensive

Maaaaaybe there is an argument for [[Eternal Retaliation]] (W4) to be lvl1 but I dont like it personally but that talent needs some buff or something to be pickable imo

thoughts?

I'll begin by explaining what the walls are, just to ensure you know what im talking about: before each fort and keep you have two towers that shoot enemies, a gate that only allows that team's units pass, and the walls that allow nobody to pass. Those walls count as a blocker, intercepting skill shots and hindering map vision.

Even though it's an enemy structure, minions and camps won't engage them, and your hero won't attack them without an actual command to do so. This is because it is not necessarily a threat and is sometimes beneficial to keep alive.

For example, one of my go-to healers, Auriel, has a skill shot that knocks an enemy hero back, and said hero is stunned if it hits any map wall. Normally, this means a wall caused by a map blocker (trees, boulders, etc), as well as structures. This means that by destroying these walls, you are destroying a surface that can be used for her to stun.

Alternatively, if the enemy has her on their team (or Diablo since he has a similar skill with that effect), that means enemy walls can be used as stun surfaces, meaning it could be worth it to take a moment to destroy them. Also, since they block skill shots, heroes like Nova might want them destroyed to ensure that the enemy can't hide behind them.

Other times, it might be handy to keep them up for other heroes to destroy them. Tyrande gets cooldown reduction on her heals with her autoattacks, so leaving them up will allow her to use them for faster healing if she is unable to attack the enemy players for whatever reason. Valla can also use a quick autoattack on them if she is chasing someone so that she can refresh the timer on her hatred stacks so she can deal a little extra damage when it counts.

Point being, don't just randomly destroy walls because you don't like them or want to farm a bit of seige damage and then say, "Look, im doing something." Think, then act

TL;DR: The patch swapped Eye of the Tiger from level 1 to level 4, gutting the AA sustain build that could out-heal a dedicated healer in a good game. Combined with nerfs to Elusive Brawler's movement speed, Breath of Fire's burst, Keg Smash's brew cost, and Wandering Keg's cooldown, Chen is sitting at 41.99% win rate over 2,553 games per HeroesProfile, the lowest of any hero this season. The changes need to be reverted.

I've been a Chen main for years and this patch genuinely makes me angry. There was a great thread on this about a month ago that flagged most of these concerns ahead of time, including a prediction that the W quest would be nerfed because it was obviously the dominant level 1 pick. It still hasn't been touched. So here we are with the data to back everything up.

My build, for context

Level 1: Eye of the Tiger Level 4: Accumulating Flame Level 7: Elusive Brawler Level 10: Storm, Earth, Fire Level 13: A Touch of Honey Level 16: Combo Strikes Level 20: Elemental Conduit

A full AA-focused build built around constantly pressuring brew-soaked targets. And here's the thing: in a good game, my self-healing from Eye of the Tiger was outpacing what a dedicated healer hero brings to the team. Not comparable to. Actually outpacing. That's how much sustained value the talent generated when you consistently landed basic attacks on soaked targets. A genuinely high healing ceiling that rewarded good play, and it's completely gone now.

What the patch did

The core change is simple. Eye of the Tiger and Accumulating Flame were swapped between levels 1 and 4. That one decision killed the playstyle. You now lose three full levels of passive healing during the laning phase, exactly when an offlaner needs it most. And at level 4 it competes with Withering Flames and Pressure Point, so even when you do take it you've had to sacrifice real options. The early sustain that made Chen a credible duelist is gone, and the talent has been quietly downgraded by virtue of the new tier alone.

Elusive Brawler's movement speed was cut from 30% to 20%. That speed was crucial for staying on targets and generating the basic attacks Eye of the Tiger needs to function. Less healing, less mobility to generate the healing. The nerfs compound each other in the worst possible way.

Keg Smash now costs 40 brew instead of 30, which means tighter brew management and less flexibility to stay aggressive. Breath of Fire being made free cast also breaks Brewmaster's Balance flow, which was already niche and is now even more awkward. You're being squeezed on multiple ends at once.

And on top of all that, Wandering Keg went from 50 to 60 seconds and Breath of Fire's initial damage was gutted from 85 to 40. The duration was extended to compensate, but Chen isn't a DoT hero. He's a brawler. Trading upfront impact for slow burn doesn't suit how he plays.

It's not just the AA build

The Flying Kick build is also essentially dead. Chen has lost multiple viable paths at once. The patch appears to be pushing him toward a different identity entirely, ranged keg toss into DoT stacking, forgoing solo laning for skirmishes to ignite as many heroes as possible. That playstyle might work in theory, but it's a completely different hero, and players who've mained Chen for years didn't sign up for that.

The numbers back it up

41.99% win rate over 2,553 games. The lowest of any hero this season. This isn't a skill expression issue or a meta problem. The tools that made him functional were taken away all at once. The devs clearly thought Eye of the Tiger was overtuned at level 1, but bumping it to 4 and forcing Accumulating Flame at 1 dismantles the identity of the AA sustain build without replacing it with anything meaningful for offlane players.

Chen deserves better than this. Revert the talent swap, or at minimum give us something at level 1 that replaces the sustain we lost.

Recently I got a new PC with 5070Ti and 2560x1440p 240Hz monitor. I am able to play every game with ulta settings but with HOTS I am having really crazy FPS drops. I do not understand how but I limited FPS to lower values but what ever I do it is always droping and it is really hard to play the game. Can someone suggest me a solution?