Discussing the professional meta seems redundant — hopefully there is a minor, post-tournament patch to deal with some of the more problematic heroes. Instead, we would like to highlight a couple of our small grievances with the current balance of the game and start a discussion about what we would like to see changed.

Late game-focused facets are too weak

There are several facets in the game that feel too powerful in the early game and allow heroes to snowball out of control. The most egregious example of it is the Crash Landing Tiny, who can deal a tremendous amount of damage starting from level five onwards, arguably even earlier.

The problem with it is that not only does it make the hero feel overpowered, but it also makes his second facet close to unplayable in comparison. The “carry” Tiny facet that gives extra Status and Slow Resistance isn’t weak by any means, but it doesn’t get you free kills, hence free gold and XP from minute five.

This trend is noticeable with many other heroes: Hoodwink has to give up extra attack and cast range, because a double-hitting Acorn Shot is too good in lane. One can’t play Jakiro effectively with the Liquid Fire facet, since it is lane-losing by default. Clockwerk has to go for Expanded Armature and Phoenix has to use Dying Light.

In many cases the choice is between an early-game or even laning stage-oriented facet and maybe a stronger late-game effect. In higher skill lobbies, the early game facet will be universally preferred, even on heroes who are supposed to scale and go late.

Artificially prolonging the game with strong comeback mechanics, so that late-game oriented facets get to shine doesn’t seem like a good solution, so we would really love to see some balance work done on facets. Preferably with buffs to the late-game oriented ones, rather than nerfs to the early-game ones, with some obvious exceptions to the latter.

Survivability is slightly too high

This isn’t a new problem and perhaps it isn’t even a problem, but a design decision. Still, we feel like some heroes get too tanky, too early. It is especially noticeable on Strength heroes, but even Universal characters can quickly become too big to deal with.

It is usually counter-balanced by how these tanky characters who build survivability items are ignorable in terms of DPS output, but it doesn’t seem to be the case right now.

Centaur Warrunner gets to run around with high MS and be an actual damage threat with two powerful nukes, one of which can scale well into the late game, making the hero more survivable at the same time.

Beastmaster gets to siege towers or be a teamfight machine, and in both cases he enjoys quite a lot of extra stats as part of his natural build-up.

Doom gets to enjoy +3.8 Strength (+84 HP) per level and deals a lot of AoE damage-over-time, while also having access to scaling damage calculated from target’s Max HP values.

All these extra-tanky heroes feel like they come online in terms of their survivability and damage output simultaneously, and it usually happens quite early. With proper play, dealing with it can be problematic, as they can push their advantage relentlessly and with impunity.

Perhaps a game-wide decrease in HP per Strength could be a solution. New Frontiers raised this value from 20 to 22 slightly over a year ago and the “tanky” meta never left, at least it feels like it never did. A cautious 22 to 21 decrease (<5%) could be a good way to test the waters, in our opinion.

Closing thoughts

Balancing a patch that more or less doubled the amount of heroes in the game is going to be a long and tough process. Attaining perfect balance in a situation like this is probably impossible for a multitude of reasons and we do not expect this goal to be ever achieved. There have always been and will always be good and bad choices during the picking phase. This is how meta is formed.

That said, trying to make the games more varied is a worthwhile endeavour. Making the laning stage and the potential survivability and DPS snowball from it slightly less meaningful is also something we would like to see personally, but it is all very subjective. What is your opinion on the current overall state of the meta and how important the laning stage is in it? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.