Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Wrath of Heroes Open Beta Lineup

The 5 heroes for Open Beta have been decided. Aessa, Ilanya, Volrik, Ikkrik, and Glowgob will be the starting lineup. I'm surprised how balanced this ended up given the community voted on two of the slots. The lineup includes a tank/initiator(Aessa), a hard carry(Ilanya), an assassin(Ikkrik) and 2 support(Volrik and Glowgob). Aessa and Volrik provide the required crowd control.

The match-ups are also balanced.

Volrik loses to everyone solo, but he hard counters Glowgob due to his pull, 100% heal debuff, and root and snare to keep him from running away. Conrad would have just silenced Volrik with his 3 after the pull and run away.

Aessa counters a team composition focused on single target damage due to her Elite Bodyguard skill 5. Aessa also hard counters Ikkrik due to her CC, preventing the Smoke Screen skill 5 escape, and dodge chance.

Ilanya counters Aessa with her high magical burst damage, which Aessa has nothing in her base kit to counter. Ilanya's knock up on her 4 can help create a little distance after the pounce.

Ikkrik counters Ilanya since he can Smoke Screen the DoTs upon which she relies. Not to mention his damage is ridiculous against soft targets.

Glowgob won't kill anyone solo, but no one will kill him solo either. Glowgob's healing counters single target damage team compositions. For example, his 1 heals a single target for 63, and his 2 heals a single target for 213. The heals are split among all nearby damaged allies, including him, so AoE damage lowers Glowgob's single target healing significantly. None of the heroes in the lineup use AoE damage.

I'm kinda sad Conrad didn't make it, but given there's no AoE damage, his healing is kinda gimped. That's probably a good thing though. He would beat Ilanya and laugh at Volrik due to his silence though. Even if Durrig had made it instead of Ikkrik, Conrad would have countered 3 of the other 4 heroes in the lineup and would be unbalanced.

I had a match where a premade team used Ilanya, Durrig, and Korith for their damage output and I picked Conrad. I already counter Ilanya and Durrig, and I slotted an armor tactic to deal with Korith. Here's what happened. Note, this is in 1080p, so it looks a lot better on YouTube.



See you in Open Beta.

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