Junkrat and Roadhog

Welcome back heroes!

I spent most of last week trying to decide between two topics, but I ultimately decided I didn't have enough thought put into either of them yet to make one interesting post. While I don't really like skipping a week of writing, we got rewarded with a couple of exciting new heroes for Overwatch. Fall 10th is quickly approaching and every announcement and preview for Blizzard's newest IP reminds us that it can't come soon enough. Last week we got two new faux news posts via the Overwatch Twitter referencing a couple of fugitives wanted for among other things, a bank robbery.

My initial though upon seeing the wanted poster was "So Professor Putricide and Fat Bane are our next heroes". I was excited about the possibility of new heroes obviously, but there wasn't much there providing any depth. But  when the heist map came out I got a lot more excited.  The map gives a little insight into the kind of characters we are dealing with. The comedic relief is there in a way we haven't really seen yet.

By no means is Overwatch a super-serious or hyper-realistic game based on what we've seen so far. But all we have been given insight into is the a global robot crisis and a eventually sabotaged world organization striving for redemption. We haven't seen the breadth of possibilities in a world based on our own. One of the greatest benefits of a game based on future Earth is how easy it is for players to relate to the places, characters, and issues. An ongoing struggle between Orcs and Humans, or a race of Alien locusts a million strong threatening to consume all life in the galaxy are fantastic worlds to experience and make for amazing games, but there is something cool about the possibility of people and places you can truly relate to. Every time a new hero is previewed, there are comments on Reddit posts and twitter about how awesome it is to have a medic from Switzerland, or an activist DJ from Rio de Janeiro. Fighting through King's Row and seeing Big Ben, or making your way to a capture point in Hanamura and seeing cherry blossoms, both give a feeling of being somewhere you can really relate to. Whether is on the internet or in person you have seen those things. They are iconic parts of the world we live in today. I think this map is our first glimpse into the humor of the world of Overwatch, and I think it's really important to the immersion into it's universe. But enough about the world. Let's talk about these heroes.

Tuesday we got our introduction video for Roadhog and Junkrat and in my opinion they are both really exciting. These guys both look like they came straight out of Mad Max. Hailing from the now irradiated Australia (as if the Outback need to be more dangerous), they are on a robbery spree spreading from England to Japan to California. They have visual aesthetics and, at least from what we can tell from Junkrat's ability preview, personalities like nothing we've seen from Overwatch so far.

Roadhog is our next Tank hero and his kit is really strong. His main weapon is a shrapnel shotgun with both short and slightly longer range fire mode, which really really promotes an in your face style of play. His longer range fire looks devastating in choke points or narrow corridors. That up close style combines perfectly with his Shift ability. Rather than a skill to increase his movement speed to get to some hard to reach location, Roadhog has a Chain Hook he can use to pull enemies to him. This type of ability has been used in all kinds of games and has been ridiculously strong every time when used properly. His E ability "Take a Breather" heals him for 300 health, half of his total health pool, on a 6 second cooldown. That kind of healing is nothing to scoff at and it will be invaluable considering he has no real escape mechanism or shielding ability like other tanks. Finally, his ultimate ability "Whole Hog" sprays scrap in a frontal cone for what seems like an eternity, knocking back everyone it his with each shot. While I don't think the scenario from his preview video where he knocks 3 players back about 20 yards and off a cliff will ever realistically happen, this ability will be very strong when it comes to controlling an area like a capture point or payload, or perhaps interrupting any channelled abilities that come out as the game grows. Overall I think Roadhog is a nice contradiction to some of the other tanks currently in the game. He will want to be on the front lines actively pushing against the other team as opposed to a Reinhardt or Winston excelling at defending a location.

Junkrat is a new Defense hero, and he brings a lot to be excited about. He is probably the closest we will get to Team Fortress 2's Demoman with his grenade launcher as his basic fire. As you would expect, these grenades bounce off of walls which will allow Junkrat to flank and harass defensive set ups from a position of safety. His Shift ability, Concussive Mine, serves as both a mobility tool and a disruption ability for the other team. He tosses out a mine, and then has the option of when to activate it and send whoever it hits flying. We will have to wait and see how difficult it will be to use the Mine as a reliable way to get around a map, but the fact that it can be used that way will allow skilled players to make awesome plays with it. His E ability tosses out a trap that will immobilize the first opponent to run through it as well as deal a small amount of damage. This is another useful took for zone control, which remains the main theme for these two heroes. I really like how there is a visual indicator on the UI whens someone triggers the trap. This will allow Junkrat to toss a trap in a strategic location, focus on defending another area with his grenades and concussion mine, and then when his trap is triggered, turn and try and secure a kill. Not having to babysit the trap, but still be able to take advantage of it is really nice. I might even like to see something similar for Symmetra and her Sentry Turrets. Junkrat's ultimate ability, "Rip-tire", is really unique and will be really useful in the right hands. You take control of a bomb-rigged tire and can drive it into enemies where it explodes on the first target it hits. The ability will be really useful when it comes to breaking through defenses. We have seen the strategy of setting up a Bastion and/or Torbjorn turret in a choke point or a capture point used in a couple of the preview videos. The Rip-tire gives us the option to send it along a wall or around a corner and explode on top of this set up potentially giving us the window we need to break through. From the video it looks like the tire has a 50hp health pool. This suggests that the tire is killable by the enemy team. If that's the case it will require good driving in order to make good use of the ability. I also want to know what Junkrat's status is while he is controlling the tire. Is he immobile and attackable, or does he become immune while it's out similar to Abathur's Ultimate Evolution ability in Heroes of the Storm. His passive ability causes his grenades to explode after he dies, potentially finishing off whoever he got into a skirmish with, but I expect once players have a chance to Junkrat has a really fun personality and what seems to be a really high skill cap. I'm really excited to see what the top players will be able to do with him once we finally get a crack at this game.

Both of these heroes get me even more excited for the kinds of characters Blizzard can bring into this game. I also expect the bank heist map to be one of the next maps we see, but given the origin of these guys, a radioactive area of Australia including a disheveled Sydney Opera House would be amazing. Blizzcon is quickly approaching and if we don't see a beta announcement at the European Road to Blizzcon event (where Overwatch will be playable), that's where we will find out when we can finally get off the hype train and into the game. I expect Blizzcon to be heavily focused on Overwatch, a Diablo expansion, and Legion details, but I will get into that in another post leading up to November 6th. 

Thanks as always for reading. Let me know what you think about these heroes or what you would like to see from future heroes. Also, let me know what you expect to see at Blizzcon!

Till next time, 

Chris

Diablo 3 Patch 2.3

Welcome back Nephalem! GLORIOUS!

I remain impressed with the work the Diablo 3 team is doing at Blizzard. After possibly the rockiest launch in Blizzard history, and amidst a tremendous amount of criticism in the games first year, they have repeatedly released updates to the game that vastly improved the gameplay experience. Reaper of Souls added Adventure Mode and the Rift system that helped alleviate the repetition of restarting games to farm the most populated zones over and over. Patch 2.1 brought Seasons, Greater Rifts, and Leaderboards to bring back the feeling of the D2 ladder system. And patch 2.2 began the revamp of some underwhelming Legendaries and Set items, as well as the introduction of some new extremely powerful ones. Patch 2.3 is following suit and all of these updates, with the exception of Reaper of Souls itself, were 100% free to the players. In a gaming space dominated by release day patches, and first month paid DLC, I just have to point out how awesome that is. But enough fan boy talk, let's get into some of the details of 2.3.

Adventure Mode Revamp:
The big change here (other than Kanai's cube which we will get to later) is the change to Rifts and Greater Rifts. Nephalem Rifts no longer require keys to be farmed from bounties, and Greater Rifts no longer require trials and instead Greater Rift Keys can be used to open a GR at a difficulty of your choice that you have unlocked. Trials to enter greater rifts were ridiculously tedious and only really served to add a step before you could start ranking up in Greater Rifts. The only thing I don't like about the change is that you can no longer slow roll greater rifts while you are gearing up at level 70. In previous seasons you could run a rank 1 GR and steamroll through it in no gear at all, and then you could just wait until about 4 minutes remaining on the timer, then kill the Guardian and your key would only rank up one level. You could repeat this process until you couldn't clear anymore. This would net you a decent number of legendaries and would really speed up the initial gearing process. Because you no longer have rank specific keys, you need to farm a key for each level you want to increase so that gearing tactic isn't really an option.

The other big change to Adventure Mode was the addition of the act specific crafting materials. When you complete all the bounties in a specific act, in the cache you will also receive crafting materials for use with Kanai's cube. This isn't a huge thing but it is an added incentive to step away from rifts once in a while. Late in the season the repetition of grinding rifts and greater rifts over and over for slight upgrades can really get old. Most players who fully invest in a season will probably get all the crafting materials that they need early in the season and then ignore them, but for the average player I think it's nice to have a change of pace to keep things interesting.

New Sets 2.0:
2.3 gave us three new sets for the classes that got neglected in in 2.2. The least impressive set is probably the Seeker of the Light set for Crusaders. The Hammerdin is back baby! The feeling of tossing out hundreds of hammers was a blast in D2 and I can confirm that this set is a ton of fun to play, but the overall power level seems to be behind the other two new sets. The main problem I have with the set however is that it suffers from some of the same issues as the Roland's set before it. You are at the mercy of what mobs are around you and you kind of need to stutter step through a rift and on higher difficulties it can be really tedious. Spirit of Arachyr is the new set for Witch Doctors and while some people are having some success with it, the real new set for them is the Helltooth Harness. The new Helltooth's damage scales insanely and you have a ton of options in what skills you want to use. In past seasons Witch Doctors have been relegated to support duty in group play, and have been a few tiers behind other classes on the leaderboards. This season Witch Doctors are right in the mix at the top and this set is the reason why. If you haven't tried a WD yet or maybe have played them in the past but left them behind for another class, then I urge you to give it a shot this season. And that brings us to the flavor of the month, the Monk. Uliana's Stratagem is the new hotness and it seems like virtually everyone is playing a Monk this season because of it.  Exploding Palm has been a fan favorite ability capable of HUGE damage, and the new set combined with different legendaries from this season and seasons past have brought it all together. Monks have possibly the best mobility in the game between Dashing Strike and Epiphany, now on top of that this set emphasizes non-stop use of their hardest hitting ability, and an ability that grants complete invulnerability in Seven-Sided-Strike. My goal going into the last two seasons was to clear Greater Rift 40 with each of the new sets.  I got it done pretty easily in Season 3 so I look forward to trying it in Season 4 with these new sets.

Kanai's Cube:
The biggest addition this patch is without question Kanai's Cube. The cube does multiple things to speed up the intitial gearing process, as well as help you find those few items that you just haven't been able to find or get from Kadala. The ability to equip the effects of legendary items without having it take up an equipment slot gives a huge increase in power as well as gives us something to do with crappy versions of legendaries we otherwise wouldn't be able to use effectively. Builds in the past have been limited by useful items taking up the same slot. Carnevil and Mask of Jeram for Witch Doctor Fetish builds is just one example. But the other abilities on the Cube are equally important. I found both of my Monk's fist weapons as well as the staff that I broke down in the cube, by using the Upgrade Rare Item recipe on Kanai's cube. Optimal builds are sometimes locked behind the barrier of finding a specific item. Kridershot enabled a build last season for Demon Hunters with unparalleled sustained damage, but it was literally impossible without it. We can take extra pieces of a set and use the Cube to turn them into different pieces of the same set in order to finish our sets faster. And once you have completed your sets and gotten all the pieces of gear your need to begin pushing the leaderboards, you can reforge pieces to try and get the perfect item. The cube opens up entirely new styles of play and makes some difficult to find items obtainable without an absurd amount of play time.

All in all I really think 2.3 brought more to Diablo 3 than any patch besides the initial launch of Reaper of Souls, and the things I went over aren't even close to everything. I'm continually impressed with the work Blizzard is willing to put into a game that hasn't been paid for in years except by new players. I'm excited to see what they have in store for us at Blizzcon in a couple months.

Thanks as always for reading, until next time.
Chris

Random Musings

Hello Team and welcome back!

Sorry for the week delay on this post. My original plan was to wait and do a Diablo patch 2.3 review and quick breakdown, but the as I started playing through the patch I decided the post would be better saved until I had more time to dive in. There are a lot of changes for Season 4 and I want to have a chance to try everything out before I give an opinion on them. This week I want to just touch on a few things across the scope of Blizzard games that have gotten my attention as of late.

World of Warcraft:
6.2.2 is FINALLY here and with it flying in Draenor. I have said in the past that I really like the compromise Blizzard made in allowing flying after a reasonable group of achievements are completed. I have no problem with them wanting us to experience the content they spent a lot of time and effort creating before simply flying over it. Unfortunately, I feel like it took entirely too long after  the 6.2 launch for flying to be unlocked. I spent weeks completing all of my Tanaan Jungle dailies, farming rares, and taking in the zone. But as time went on I got frustrated with running across the map every day, only to not make it to Terrorfist or Vengeance in time to loot them. As a result I simply stopped logging in until flying was released. If flying came within the first 3-4 weeks it would have served to prolong the enjoyment of a new zone and content. Instead we ended up with flying after a new expansion announcement that undoubtably pushed a number of players away until it's release. This left flying as a less exciting last hurrah of an underwhelming expansion.

Starcraft:
In typical Blizzard fashion we got an announcement of an announcement this week. They announced that we will find out the street date for Legacy of the Void, as well as get our first look at the intro cinematic, on September 13th. The cinematics are my favorite part of a new release from Blizzard and they knock it out of the park every time. And with Legacy of the Void being the finale of Starcraft 2 there are a ton of story threads for them to bring to life. The release date is nice, especially for the players worried that we may not see the game before Blizzcon. We don't know for sure that we will get it before then but I think this announcement date makes it more likely.

Hearthstone:
The Grand Tournament is in full swing and things have definitely been shaken up on the ladder. Paladin of many varieties have taken over. The most surprising of all has been the Secret Paladin (or Riddler Paladin, or Christmas Tree Paladin, or whatever you want to call it). That list is just one of many that people have been having success with, but eventually there will become a stock list and in return people will learn how to play around that stock list. But for the time being this deck is everywhere and there are a ton of first time legend posts all over the Hearthstone reddit praising Uther with a bunch of ?s around his head. Other decks taking advantage of the new set are a Dragon Priest that just plays above budget minions on every turn of the game and never loses control of the board, and a resurrection of the Token Druid decks of seasons past. Overall it seems like TGT has had a less drastic effect on the metagame than GvG had, but it is still making things feel somewhat fresh. I've been having a ton of fun with Tempo Mage with the only additions being Effigy and Rhonin, but the Secret Paladin deck has brought back some of the Secret hate so it's becoming a riskier play at higher ranks. All in all I'm pretty happy with how things are shaping up.

Everything Else:
I want to group the other games together and just touch on them briefly for different reasons. Diablo 3 season 4 has begun and so far I am loving the changes and the new items. Like I said before, I want to commit a full post to that so I won't go into it here. A seemingly large portion of the Heroes of the Storm player base seems to have a huge problem with the new ranked play system. It feels like every stream I watch features the streamer on his high horse about how broken the matchmaking is and how the people he is paired with are so much worse than he is. This has rendered Heroes unwatchable for me for a couple reasons: 1) Stop fucking complaining about it. We all know the matchmaking isn't where it needs to be and Blizzard has said as much. And even if you are in fact better than EVERYONE you are playing with, people don't want to hear you cry about it. If you want to make sure everyone on your team is at your level, build a 5 stack. 2) Matchmaking is broken for everyone. If you have someone still going through their placement matches in your games, then chances are the other team is going through the same thing. Your team doesn't exist in a vacuum so communicate with your team and play better than the other one. I'm sure people will disagree with me but I felt the need to rant on this a bit. Finally. there has been zero Overwatch news to report on since the Gamescom reveals. Blizzard has joked a few times that the beta will start on "Fall 10th" so lets just hope that thats sooner than "Soon TM".

Well that's gonna do it for this week. Sorry again for the delay and thanks as always for reading,
Chris