Summoner's extremely strong, just people are bad.

Assault doesn't excel as a DPS hero, it's much better as a support. I don't know why you think it's a DPS hero.

The game is broken, everything scales with damage? What happened to the spells having utility. And no, assault is not support it's just a dps'er like every other role in the game.

The question is, what's the point of that? A hero shouldn't be arbitrarily restricted in an attempt to "provide more counterplay" for their opponents. The point of a hero is to be enjoyable for the person playing it, not for whoever he's playing against. There are already enough heroes that can counter his minions, which itself gives him an incentive to come out.

What made Summoner fun was the freedom to play him how you want to while remaining viable, and one of the biggest appeals was that he can operate semi-effectively from safety via remote-controlled minions (aka, via summoning). It was a pretty unique hero, it was fun, and it worked. Trying to force players to come out of safety to play a summoner as a melee class is extremely counter-intuitive to the hero, and there's seemingly no reason that it would be necessary, warranted, or even desirable.

As the old adage goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."


I mean, Summoner is supposed to focus on summoning. That's assumed not only from the name, but from the original hero's playstyle. The debuff leash is restricting his summoning ability for a completely arbitrary reason. Similarly, Fungal Growth doesn't really fit with the hero, and shifts the focus even further toward "the summoner should fight using himself just like every other hero does" instead of "the summoner should fight with his summoned minions".

Dark Swarm worked because it was used with his minions (or potentially with other heroes), but it did nothing by itself. It only served to make his minions more viable, giving them a buff, and that was enough incentive to make him come out and expose himself. That's how buffs can be used to incentivize one playstyle without punishing people for a different one.

Fungal Growth, on the other hand, is useful by itself and has no relation to the hero's summoning, it seems like it's just tacked on for the sake of giving him a generic snare and trying to detract from his summoning so he'll spend more time engaging people himself. He not only shouldn't be engaging people himself, he shouldn't even be able to. If he isn't summoning (or his minions die), he should be useless by himself. This "get right in their face" style might be good for the other predominantly melee heroes here, but it shouldn't be necessary or even possible for a long range summoning mage hero.

His abilities could have been used to really enhance the summoning gameplay, to make his summoning ability even more relevant. It feels like a wasted opportunity, and similar to the debuff leash, like it's trying to force a playstyle that is contrary to the Summoner's ability to summon.

If the Summoner needs a snare, it seems like something relevant to summoning would be much more appropriate. As a very rough example which I'll just come up with as I type, all of his summoned minions could be given a small PBAoE snare on each of them which affects enemies and stacks when they overlap. This would result in requiring the strategic use of multiple minions to apply the snare as effectively as possible, and seems like a much more relevant way to give a snare to the Summoner hero.

Another idea is to give him an ability that somehow allows the minions to become effective barricades, which would also be a relevant snare/root, depending on how well it was implemented and used. The "split upgrade" could increase the durability/size/whatever of said barricading minions.

These are just two random ideas, and I'm sure with some dedicated focus, even better ideas could be come up with.

@Summoner
I believe the Summoner is still very unique and still has a lot of freedom with his summons. His leash is long enough to let him double lane, and if you have armor/hp ups, you can still take your zerglings everywhere.

You do bring an interesting point about the debuffing being negative, so I'll definitely see if there's a way to reverse it to a buff while in leash instead.

Fungal Growth, while it may not fit the TS1 hero, it fits and makes sense with SC2 players. It also serves as a good support and an alternative DPS if you go for corrosive damage. I agree that it would be cool if L2 also focused on summons, and I can think of an idea already: summons under the fungal growth AoE gets healed.

We are also planning to do something with Ultralisks on the corrosive side of things, so maybe a snare or some other utility from there, rather than pure DPS.
I can't promise anything, though. Summoner is a hard to balance hero and we've all agreed on the leash and feel his abilities are right for what the hero is (at least for now). I can only say that I'll keep your points in mind.

@Fashioned.
Coming from DotA2/LoL/HoN, it is easy to be misled that all "MOBA" games (i still prefer calling the AoS games, but that gives Aeon of Storms too much credit ) need to contain the same elements. Heroes that carry, dps, support, and etc. Remember that these are all conventions, and while TS2 and TS1 borrows a lot of elements from them, it is not a direct clone. Most heroes in TS1 and 2 are capable of killing (and thus, DPS'ing) each other, which serves the 3 lives system. Abilities are also made with the lives system in mind, and thus deal good DPS if compared to hero counterparts of other games. There are a few heroes like Dark Mage and Medic which are more geared towards utility.

The reasoning of Assault being support is because his spells are have very low damage in the long run compared to other heroes. I agree his base damage is high (almost too high ) but auto-attack doesn't serve as a good "carry".

Look lets get to the nitty gritty here. Summoner does not have a lot of freedom, that is how you "feel" but that is not how he plays. In fact, it is a pain in the ass to even level with him. You need massive amounts minerals to even start leveling, but wait you need mana, but you cannot get mana because you need minerals from farm and your lings are complete garbage if you are not in range which means no farm. Okay you go in range but you are so vulnerable and your early game is so bad that it is nigh impossible to do so, then everyone has DPS so they rush you and you die. When you have mr OP volt rushing you chain stunning you with his DPS STUN you cannot do anything. To top it off, in a 5v5 game you WILL NOT farm period. I also have no idea how the SC2 engine works, nor am I a mapmaker but armor in this game almost seems to do next to NOTHING which just exacerbates the problem.

Medics only two good spells are her L2 and L3, and the L3 does MASSIVE damage dps. The damage in this game is so high that a 10 second HP buff is garbage, really useless L4, Low amount of HP and a laughable low amount of time for the L4. Volt gets more HP in his ultimate and gets to cast spells in his ultimate form. Her ultimate is relegated to the dustbin.


Where to start?

Assault has a Speed boost and a Attack Speed steroid which pumps his DPS and makes sure if you are low you cannot get away. Furthermore, he can SUCK YOU IN slowing and debuffing your attacks still making sure you cannot get away but now you cannot attack him either this is TANTAMOUNT to a RANGED TS1 VOLT L2 W/ DEBUFFS! Further more it is an L1 and has no risk associated with it. Then the L3 which does INSANE amounts of damage and takes SO MUCH TIME to kill and SLOWS YOU. Plus he gets to hit you with it for free practically if you are sucked in to his L1 and debuffed. You do not realize how powerful this hero is, his ultimate sucks but who cares his other three spells are just ridiculous, actually his ultimate while not that great is just icing on the cake. Oh he can destroy buildings in 3.5 seconds on top of all this and you say he is a support hero? Come on how can you even say that with a straight face?

This is a hero who can do EVERYTHING: CC, AOE DPS, DPS, AS Steroid, AOE CC, AOE debuff, Anti-DPS spells, Mobile, Mobility booster, destroy buildings fast, good auto-attack, AoD spells. EVERYTHING. No he is not a support.

You also forget yea people could DPS in TS1, but Assault didnt have "DPS Spells" except for the firebomb which was hard to land. Everyone in this game has DPS spells.

Why volt has damaging spells is beyond me. You cannot deliver enough punishment with the free 4 auto-attacks you get via stun? Then for L4 he gets a full heal and is able to use his skills while in this form, all the while EMP is non-existent?

In the "Long run" it does not matter, because with three hero kills from this guy the "Long run" does not matter when he is fed as hell. Also Volt is op'd, he was trash capture hero in the first one. Now you just damage and stun people to death at the start and if you are low you just charge you shiels and return to the fray. This is ludicrous.

What you guys forgot is that many heroes in TS1 had utility spells but yet could still kill, in fact DPS spells were NOT the norm. Sin: Utility to the Max his only DPS spell was his niche spell and was hard to land. Assault: ALL Utility but still powerful. Volt: For him to kill you reliably by himself it took and invstment of 200+ mana but did he have a single DPS Spell? Nope, in fact he was stunner mana drainer! Why is he randomly a DPS hero now?

There are some hilariously broken aspects to this game. Blink decap assassin? Unplayable summoner? Teleporting, invincible LM's? Medic relegated to her MASSIVE DPS spell? Volt can cast spells in his L4 form? Hell we cannot even pick mech because he was out of control. I think you guys might need some outside help or someone to help you with balance changes because there are just some things here that clearly do not mesh. I also feel the 5v5 aspect is just tacked on. Overall the game is a mess.

Also port Phantom and Scion

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2013, 2:13 pm by HighGuyInBankai.

Dude, this is NOT a remake. They are making a new game based off the original but why would they limit themselves to the SC1 Heros when they can recreate them how they originally wanted them. The counters are different now so stop comparing units to their SC1 counterparts.

@ Mech
Mech has been disabled because it's broken due to the patch. For some reason Mech's siege mode is missing abilities that he had before the 2.0.4 patch. I've created a thread in Blizzard's forums and I hope that they will look into that some day.
Another problem the bug introduced is that units that are moved around via triggers can't be hit by unit-targeting projectiles anymore.
His L4 was clearly OP, if used with bike mode and L2 as he only needs to move around and everything receives massive damage around him.

@ Volt
Why shouldn't Volt be able to cast spells in L4? Why would you go L4 then, if you can't use your spells? Is it fun to play a hero that has a tanky mode that doesn't alter the unit much, but disabled the spells for some reason reducing your required skills to attacking and moving?

@ Blink - Decap
We are working on a new L4 for Assassin replacing Decapitate.

@ Summoner
Summoner is really hard to balance. He can demolish the enemy, if he receives enough farm on the map, but he is completely useless vs some heroes in a few lanes because he can't reliably deal damage to receive enough experience.
I'm aware of your concerns with Summoner in a 5vs5 environment. I experienced them myself in a harder environment versus a Light Mage which could kill all minions in the wave back then . If you can't use your lings, try to use fungal as a reliable farming spell.

Also, we might need to reduce the experience gain from killing Summoner's lings. I feel that it is too much for early game. I personally was thinking about a weapon for Summoner available at start, but I think the team agreed on a weapon as an upgrade. I'm not sure if that has been released, yet. (I believe it hasn't.)

@ Medic
It's hard to balance her only damage spell, Contagion, properly. It deals most damage on heroes with full health, but deals only very little damage to units with low health. It either feels too weak or too strong. It's hard to hit the perfect spot. Medic's main weapon is terrible versus armor and many targets. Medic is unable to free herself from surrounds in a lane without L3.

@ all Heroes deal damage
Every Hero is required to deal a fair amount of damage to receive experience. You receive the most experience by damaging as much as possible.
Also, in battle.net we try to give you winning options with random heroes in the teams. New players don't know what they are doing and if their don't have anything to deal damage with, they might just quit the game and state that X is OP and never play that map again. Also, playing a game the first time with a hero that can't deal damage properly isn't fun.

@ Assault
His damage in the early game is high. Later on, I would say that it isn't high because it is terrible versus armor.

@ Armor
I agree that it is a niche requirement right now. It is great versus a few spells and minions, but versus most hero attacks it is worthless. Sadly, the SC2 engine doesn't natively support damage reductions that are non-linear. Adding that is more or less painful as it just adds to the overall performance costs or makes it hard to do additions to the game as you need to alter a billion of things to make everything work properly in the map.


I didn't play ts2 since the 2.0.4 patch because it broke the game and I've like 3 projects running right now. So I don't know how the things play out in the current state of the game.

Also, as a forum moderator I would advise you all to calm down and don't escalate the discussion.

Who said it was, did I imply it was? No. It is only natural to make comparisons to its predecessor, and no _I will not stop_ because that is where the source material came from .


@Volt
Because it is broken. In the original you were supposed to land your combos BEFORE using your ultimate because there was some risk and skill involved. Why would you go L4 you ask? Since volts base form is fragile, You went L4 for survival purposes or busting into the base, or from being oneshotted by Mech, Mutant, Sin, or DPS'd down by Summoner in 2 seconds. What you gave up in spells/mana-drain/utility was for Huge attack increase and survivalbility, especially after you pulled your combo off on the enemy team. Now you just L4, combo and kill him, no risk, 0 problems, 0 Skill attached, nigh invincibility. I think they have a term for it, yes, overpowered.

@Summoner
Okay fair enough. Someone posted earlier the reason was because "People are bad".

@Mech
Fair enough

@Assault
That still does not address the multitude of things this hero can do. He is still overpowered, no matter how you slice it. This hero has everything in the book. Armor in this game is near useless. He needs a nerf or a serious re-examination. Late game means nothing when a guy can smack you so fast early game.

@All heroes deal damage
This is just entirely untrue. You receive experience from killing the waves, and occasionally a hero, not STRICTLY from doing damage. Not every hero has to be a DPS'ing champion. There are maps on SC2 with MOBA inspirations and the support/utility heroes get a fair amount of shine. Let's not make sweeping conclusions here. In TS1, DPS spells were not the norm yet it still drew in many fans of many different stripes.

Intuitive game systems and controls pull players. Sleek design and cool presentation pulls players. Engaging, BALANCED, and cool hero game-play is what pulls players. What does NOT pull players is unbalanced game-play and out of control damage numbers. This actually has the opposite effect.

@Armor
This is interesting to know. You learn something new everyday. Thank you ^_^.

@Sin
This is an easy one, remove the blink.

@Medic
My inquiry to L3 was/is more a less why does she have to have a damage spell. I mean it is a cool spell, and it is powerful. That being said it still does not address why her L4 is absolute garbage.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2013, 6:18 pm by HighGuyInBankai.

I coded the damage -> experience system. You receive experience from range to slain unit, last hit and based on the percentage of damage dealt by you to the unit. If you damage and kill it alone, you will receive 100% of the xp.
So, to balance the experience gain, every hero requires a way to deal damage to the minions.

Damage on enemy heroes doesn't give you directly experience. But that can either kill the enemy hero or make him run back to base resulting in lost experience.

That's the trademark spell of Assassin in TS2. Also, that won't solve the L4 -> onehitkill problem as you can just stand with hold at the enemy lane, wait for an enemy, activate l4 and the enemy is dead.
Also, it's possible to activate it while you are cloaked at day because L1's duration is longer than the unfocussing debuff. So, altering L4 to something different is the approach that makes the most sense.

@Medic
I agree that her L4 is mostly garbage. You can rarely use it to randomly save teammates. It's nothing that is reliable or really worth the investment right now.

Pls be assured that we will look at the potential problems you notice after the next update.

If there isn't lots of yelling and flaming happening, then it isn't TS. I'd take it as a compliment.

The most important time of the game to be able to multi-lane and take zerglings everywhere is early game. It really seems like the physical weaknesses outside leash range are significant overkill.

Making the benefit of the leash area completely based on movement speed still acts as an effective restriction, since it makes minions much more vulnerable to enemy heroes without reducing their ability to farm in a stationary location. If it was movement speed based, you could have minion movement speed upgrades only affect the leash buff, so the "outside leash range" speed will always remain the same. This would make maintaining leash range less necessary and more useful.

And letting the Summoner move while burrowed is basically guaranteed to make him come out of safety. With the previously mentioned speed reduction, he'd have a strong incentive to come out of his base if he's trying to farm near the other side of the map. As long as no heroes bother his minions, they can farm without penalty, but as soon as a hero shows up it'd be harder for them to escape without the additional speed boost. As the game progresses, the leash buff becomes more relevant as minion movement speed becomes more important.


That's an interesting idea. It could even give them the opposite effects that it gives other units, so both a heal/speed boost. The split upgrade could also increase summons attack speed within the AoE, so even part of the damage increase from that would also be summon-related.


That'd be cool, maybe some very short range PBAoE on them? If they could snare units it'd certainly increase their utility beyond damage.


I underlined the problem. Summoner has always been designed to avoid enemy heroes at all costs. That's his ultimate weakness. It seems this has been somehow forgotten, and the current mechanics are meant to force Summoner to expose himself to the other heroes, which is in sharp contrast to his design. That's why he dies, because he should die if he gets ganked by another hero, any hero. His only possible option should be trying to manage a desperate escape.

That's the issue, that the current mechanics are forcing him to stay outside safety when the hero only functions well when he can maintain his safety. He's supposed to be trying to keep as much distance between him and other heroes as possible, while making risk vs reward assessments about leaving safety in order to support his minions (like with Dark Swarm, which was the number one reason Summoner left safety in TS1, no forcing necessary).

Like in that example, all it would take is some good summon-related abilities and leash-based movement buffs to give Summoner an incentive to come out, but it'd be at his discretion, when he feels the reward for leaving is worth the risk of potentially being ganked.

I'm still wondering if this movement-while-burrowed is going to stay in, since it fits so well with the Summoner's need to avoid direct conflicts.

(Note: To prevent future misunderstanding, this previous part was referring to movement-while-burrowed remaining in the game, since it was stated that the ability was under consideration).


This would be great if the weapon attack/effects are only applied to the summons, and not to the summoner himself. Trying to make a summoner capable of melee would be a pretty absurd design goal. He's the one hero that's supposed to be avoiding other heroes, not engaging them. His only possible actions when a hero directly attacks him should be to escape or die (assuming he has no summons there to attack with).

If someone wants a melee hero then they need to not play Summoner. They have literally every other hero to choose from.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2013, 2:24 pm by Azrael.

I forgot to mention, what is up witht the delay for the DMs feedback? It feels so unnatural and when you're trying to hit someone with it from max range it resets it and you have to move up again to use it. I was thinking if you were gonna keep the delay at least make it like a yamato so when they get out of range you still hit them.

Ofc I think it would be better if you just removed it entirely and made it castable while moveing.

@Experience
That is pretty cool, I didn't know that. What made you come up with that experience system?

@Sin
His original L4 was designed for that purpose, a one hit kill spell. I am confused as to why you think it is a problem. Because he WAS slow but powerful this spell was relatively hard to land. This is what made him lethal, it was also what made him so satisfying to play. I guess in TS2 it might be his signature skill but I think many would want decap as his "Signature" spell. He was always viable, day or night, but the threat of him at night and decap is what really defined this guy. I also think he should not be another DPS hero.

The day and night system was pretty cool. Sin shined at night, but was relatively weak but still deadly during the day. I think giving him a blink is kind of meh. In fact if you wanted a DPS'er stealth class, make a "Ninja" hero instead, I think Assassin is perfectly fine from the source material.

@Medic
Good to know you agree

@Volt
This is another hero who damn near has everything now that i think about it. Heal, stuns, aoe stuns, DPS stuns, Ranged stun/disable, Full heal transformation, splash damage, chain, Aoe damage, good DPS in base form, Insane DPS in supercharged form, supercharged has all of his spells as well. You really need to tone this guy down for sure, you might want to start with that heal, L1, and L2.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2013, 10:15 pm by HighGuyInBankai.

Yes, his l4 worked then.

Back when he was slow. Now he's quick. Very quick.

To be fair his L1+L3 combo is pretty insane damage. Not sure what to do with that though, perhaps we can discuss that in the group though.

Azrael I don't know what TS2 you've been playing but summoner can move while burrowed.

Also, HP upgrades for the summoner increase the hitpoints of the lings as well, so it's extremely beneficial to upgrade HP. With that in mind, going around the map as a summoner with 2k HP is suddenly less scary than running around the map with 900 HP, particularly when you have 180HP lings, an AoE slow, swarm, burrow at night, and so on. I'm entirely confident when I say that people who think summoner is bad don't know how to play him well. "Difficulty: Hard" should be taken into consideration; summoner is a seriously difficult, APM intensive hero which requires solid building and careful farming and a decent amount of game knowledge. Last I played it I felt it was in a nice spot where it wasn't ridiculous and wasn't too weak either (after warrior L3 stopped one shotting ultralisks at least xD).

Assassin in TS2 is pretty much way different than TS1 Assassin. And is also amazingly fun. Don't think we're going to remove the blink any time soon. The L4 is getting changed.

For someone who doesn't play the hero much, in the first TS or TS2, maybe it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong to you. For someone who's playing in the one playstyle that's trying to be forced, where you're playing Summoner more like a melee and using the summons like melee weapons, maybe it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong to you. For someone who's not playing against the best opponents in a full game, maybe it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong to you.

This doesn't apply to people who want to play Summoner as a summoner, what has always been the predominant playstyle, where the Summoner tries to keep his weak body as safe as possible, and tries to avoid situations where he might be ganked by anyone while farming on the opposite side of the map.

Anyone with enough APM, careful farming, and "game knowledge" can manage to be good at any hero. You could play Mutant well without Night Vision, that doesn't mean it should be removed and just called more difficult. The same could be said for a lot of spells and unit restrictions, just because you might be able to win a game without them, doesn't mean they should be removed. Similarly, just because you might win a game with the current Summoner doesn't mean that it doesn't need improvements.

It's also less about him being hard, and more about him not being fun or having the freedom he was always known for which players enjoyed immensely. Trying to force him out of safety, without letting him make a judgment call anymore, is arbitrarily reducing the player's freedom without any benefit to anyone. It's just forcing him to make bad decisions for no reason and expose himself to extreme danger to do anything at all, which is bad gameplay. No one playing, neither his team or the other team, enjoys the Summoner being forced to put himself into suicidally dangerous situations just for the sake of farming the other side of the map.

There's no reason he should be leaving cannons unless he decides that the reward outweighs the risk, not be forced to leave all the time because the game arbitrarily makes him farming-impaired. It completely goes against the design of the hero; his summoning ability is supposed to be his sole focus and should be expanded upon, not nerfed to hell just to force him into the melee range of other heroes. It makes no sense to punish him for playing well by managing to keep his distance, and to not let him make risk vs reward assessments to decide when he should come out himself.

This part has been explained pretty well in previous posts by multiple people, so I don't really feel I need to elaborate further.

@Summoner
Azrael: This is entirely true. But I think one thing you forgot to hit upon is, the hero is just simply NOT FUN. Which I think is important for any hero. Despite the others heroes being hilariously broken, they have some fun features, but this hero is just specifically not fun period.

Jack: The problem with you being confident that this hero is fine and you think "people are bad" is what the problem is then you should not ask for opinions of the community. This is counter-intuitive to what a game maker should be doing. This also comes off as condescending and generally dismissive of true fans and people who care about this game. If the general public (and Fans) does not feel the same way you do, then there might have to be some re-examination of the hero or problem in question.

Simply put, the public will be playing the game, and making it popular, not you. The summoner in it's current incarnation is just bad, forced, counter-intuitive to the hero theme and feel (I love that word "COUNTER-INTUITIVE") giving this hero a basic auto-attack just ruins his theme.

I did not know you could raise the HP of the lings, which is cool to know. However suggesting you go a 2k HP summoner is bad strategy because then he will be severely gimped in other areas of his build are ESSENTIAL to this type of hero. What is worse is that he has no autoattack so what is the point of the "Tank-summoner" if he cannot do ANY Damage?

@Assault
Glad you agree, at least to some extent. There is no way this hero is a "Support" Hero. His L1 and L3, coupled along with L2 just make him over the top. Steroids, AOE DPS, Area of Denial, MS Boost, Escape mechs e.t.c just make him over the top. It appears to me Jack that you might have some disconnect concerning hero roles and how they play, again and self-centered view of how a hero works is counter-productive to what a mapmaker/balancer/game-designer should be working. This is another hero who needs a hard look.

@Volt
Nerf please. Big time.

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Mar 21 2013, 4:53 pm by HighGuyInBankai.

I've played summoner extensively in both TS1 and TS2, including multiple playstyles in both. Summoner doesn't stop being a summoner just because of the leash I don't see how that logically follows. Summoner is a very fun hero to me and a lot of other people.

Having lings attack fast and heal and move fast is generally considered a good enough reward to be worth the risk of taking the summoner outside cannons. If you don't think that's a good enough reward for the risk, you can still leave the summoner inside the cannons and send lings around the map.
"Completely against the design of the hero" the design of the hero is not the same as the design of the hero in TS1. Summoner's L1 is not its only ability, is not its sole focus, and is not weak just because it's a little weaker than the original TS. I find it hard to believe you're playing the same TS2 that I am.

I'm happy to take opinions from the community but there is a vast amount of comments given ranging from "go play LoL" to "x is broken nerf plz" to "x is weak buff plz" to "amazing game it's perfect don't change anything". We do consider comments given but if we feel that the person giving that comment is incorrect then we don't have to change anything. If we just did everything everyone ever said we should then we would end up with a mishmash of conflicting ideas and a really strange, imbalanced map. I've yet to see anyone who's very skilled with summoner, so I'm happy to continue saying "people are bad", when it comes to playing summoner, until I see people who ARE skilled with summoner. It's a very fun, very strong hero when played properly, but it isn't fun for everyone and not everyone knows how to play it well.

2K HP summoner is excellent because then he can survive out in the field, and his lings are buff too. "severely gimped in other areas of his build" I make building HP PART of the build I generally use, because it solves the problem of "summoner dies easily on the field and has to go on the field because of the leash". It synergizes very nicely.

Tank heroes aren't supposed to be doing much damage; they're supposed to be tanking damage. While summoner isn't a particularly tanky hero I just thought I'd let you know that DPS are the ones doing damage, tanks tank the damage. Gotta be careful with the terminology

There is nothing to consider, this game is broken. The fact of the matter is this, many mistakes and imbalances are abound in this version. To think that summoner is not a symptom of the rampant imbalance in this game is pretty short-sighted and comes of as willful ignorance. Here is the reality of the situation: This is amalgam of mismatched ideas and strange concepts, and imbalances with heroes only barely resembling their TS1 concepts. (Blink with decap, come on man? Absurdly broken assault? Volt can cast spells in L4, and when he dies in L4, he is back to normal, insanely broken. His l4 is an I win button. Garbage summoner? Again, TELEPORTING LMS!).

People have given detailed accounts and analysis why he isn't good, Azrael in particular has repeatedly made good, thought-filled posts and the most you have replied with is "people are bad". To reduce his opinions to "X is op nerf plz" is a tad condescending", including my opinion.

One thing that the BOARD and FANS should consider is the fact you think Assault is a support hero with his whole kit, the fact you think 2k HP summoner is a viable option especially considering you put 5v5 in this game. Honestly this should raise some eyebrows all around the room. Then again, i just feel you have some type of disconnect or bad intuition when it comes to hero balance. However this is not to say you are a bad mapmaker, but maybe your balancing instincts are way off.

At this point, I am just going to say good luck to this game, I was a diehard fan but I do not think this map will survive the next generation at this rate.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2013, 5:27 am by HighGuyInBankai.

No you can't. I don't know who you're playing against that allows your debuffed lings to do anything, but that's not how the game is actually played. At this point it seems like you're just making excuses to purposely overlook anything the community says for the sake of adhering to flawed design mechanics that don't work in practice and which no one enjoys.

I always see everyone saying the same thing, even in this thread, and you're clearly not in a position to consider the game objectively. Of course you won't view the design choices of the map you're working on the same way that the actual map's community is. Some of the things you've said are completely out of touch with how people actually play this game. I find it hard to believe you're playing the same TS2 that everyone else is, and can only assume it's a result of your bias as a member of the dev team.


No one suggested it was his only ability or his only focus. I'm not sure if you're actually familiar with the TS1 hero which everyone loved, or what the term "summoner" actually means, but it should be his primary ability and his primary focus. That's what people like. That's how the hero works, in both theory and practice. Trying to take the focus off his summoning to make him more like every other hero, to make him more melee-oriented, is incredibly absurd and significantly detracts from the hero. I can only hope the rest of the dev team doesn't agree with such an incredibly counterproductive sentiment.


No one is going to take the time to master a hero that isn't fun. It's inconvenient to play. The people who loved the original Summoner have been disillusioned, because for some reason someone decided the hero should be forced to play more like every other hero. A hero that reveled in having complete freedom and being completely unique was arbitrarily restricted in an attempt to destroy that uniqueness. There's literally nothing good about trying to force him to stay outside the cannons so he's just as vulnerable as his summons. That defeats the purpose of even having summons, and it should have gone without saying that people wouldn't enjoy that.

I'm not sure why you keep implying that I've suggested removing the leash. I even said it was a great idea, and it's just poor implementation that makes people dislike it so much. I even supplied constructive feedback regarding suggestions for restoring the hero's freedom while maintaining the current mechanics, including a leash effect.

I've never seen someone show so much hostility towards people for simply providing feedback. You don't provide anything constructive yourself, you just blindly argue against everything everyone says. It's like you're trying to get people to stop offering constructive criticism and thoughtful suggestions. Lashing out at your own community like this for actually caring about the game is pretty bad form, in my opinion, especially when you're trying to undermine everything that everyone says even when it's completely accurate.

You should be trying to open a dialogue with the community, not patronize, condescend to, and insult them. You should be listening to what people say, instead of refusing to acknowledge anyone else and flatly disagreeing with everything they say. This is a really unprofessional and unhelpful attitude. Without feedback from the community, all you can do is make a map that you alone think is fun. That seems to be all you care about anyways.


Yeah, ignore pages of detailed information with paragraphs of reasoning for every suggestion, and reduce it to that. This really goes to show you don't actually care about anything the community has to say. I'd have thought you might have a modicum of respect for the people actually taking the time to offer meaningful contributions, and maybe show a little class, since your name is on the map credits. This flippant, condescending, argumentative attitude is pretty disappointing.


Thank you, and you've brought up some really good points yourself, although it doesn't seem that he cares. The only opinion he's willing to acknowledge is his own, and he's decided to argue against any constructive suggestions before he's even read them.


I don't think he cares about this either. As long as he can gather up enough people to play with, he couldn't care less how successful the map is. That's pretty obvious by how he's talking down to the community and being completely dismissive, as if his opinion is all that matters. He just wants the game tailored specifically to him and his preferences, and isn't willing to make even the slightest compromise. His viewpoint is rigid and inflexible, which is exactly what causes projects like this to crash and burn.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2013, 3:26 am by Azrael.