Not quite. Gradually aging into less relavent heroes is not the same as being forcibly changed into that state. Vivica is less useful in context because her stats and abilities have not kept up. However, she still does exactly what she has always done. Telluria on the other hand does not. Telluria no longer heals as much as she used to, nor is her mana gen reduction as strong as it once was. Conflating these two is not being honest.
Which dodges the point. Was she still used after the nerf, yes. But was she used as much? Guvnor himself acknowledges that the rates at which she appeared were much higher before the nerf. This suggests that clearly many people no longer saw her as valuable enough to keep at tank. If on May 1, 2020, Telluria had gone live in her current state, many who stopped using her post-nerf would not have summoned for her and would not have invested resources in her at that time.
This does not follow at all from anything I have said. In fact, I actually am firmly against such levels of powercreep and have argued (unsuccesfully in most cases) for toning down many heroes to hit beta.
But powercreep is a separate, albeit related issue. The issue at play here for me is not whether the heroes are too strong or not. That said, to me, balance is something that needs to be kept in mind before a hero is ever released. If a hero is clearly unbalanced, or even potentially gamebreaking, it should never make it into the live game. The issue for me is that I believe players should know what they are summoning for and investing resources (food/mats/feeders/etc) in.
Nerfing so many heroes after release is a direct attack on the ability of players to know what they are summoning for.
And yet SG is entirely to blame here, and in every case of heroes needing to be nerfed. Every hero that is released overpowered is a failure in the design process at SG. The fact that there have been many heroes nerfed of late means the developers need to stop and reevaluate their process and take a more thoughtful approach. To me, thus would require the following changes to beta:
- Starting discussion on each hero with a vision of what SG intends for the hero to add to the game.
- Longer rounds of beta testing. This would enable testers time to thoroughly consider heroes and synergies that might be too powerful so as to provide better feedback. Especially with so many heroes coming out, it is difficult to find the time to adequately test them all so things will slip through the cracks.
- Better communication with beta testers. Understanding what adjustments (if any) were made and why (or why not) coupled with having a vision of the hero’s place will help fine-tune heroes that are useful, but not gamebreaking.
- More rounds of beta testing. Many heroes need adjustments in beta and having more rounds would allow for more iterations to be tested with feedback provided between iterations.
- Adding summary polls to each hero’s thread. Often posts will receive likes which do not seem to be taken into account. These polls would provide a brief overview of tester’s thoughts on how balanced heroes are.
For example, there were many voices saying Kalø was too strong. However, no changes were made to him after the first iteration. Having better communication on why SG disregarded those concerns would have at least enabled a discussion on that to take place that may have culminated in a Kalø that did not need to be nerfed. Having a vision of what Kalø was supposed to be would have enabled feedback to be more focused on ensuring that he fit the desired role (which was obviously not “hero who can destroy 5*”). Having longer testing periods would have enabled testers to play with him more and experiment and would have provided more data to SG on just how powerful he was.
That ultimately is a decision every player must make for themselves. Specifically regarding what constitutes exciting and desireable heroes. I personally find many of the heroes in beta to be very powerful, but not really exciting or desireable.
Take for example Goseck who deals 350%-600% to all at slow speed (compared to Quintus’ 270%). I found him to be highly undesirable because he does nothing but damage. I know damage will eventually increase so I can just wait until a faster hero comes around dealing the same damage. Or perhaps another slow hero dealing even more damage.
On the other hand, heroes that offer utility functions are highly desirable to me. Take for example Iris. No one is claiming Iris is overpowered. However, she offers essentially 3 dispels in one special that allow her to be used very strategically against buff heavy teams.
In short, I look for very specific key skills rather than damage. Healing/overhealing, dispel, cleanse, buff blocking, etc are skills that will always be useful even if the damage attached to these heroes does not keep up. One of the biggest disappointments to me is the lack of new support heroes in favor of “hit-harder-and-faster heroes.”