TLDR:





Hard Cleanses

Soft Cleanses

No Cleanse

Cleanse in Competitive Gaming

The Representation of Cleanse in HOTS

Discussion

Over time Cleanse has become less prevalent with support heroes. Nevertheless, Cleanse Supports still make up almost 60% of the heroes in competitive play, despite making up just over 30% of the roster. Blizzard has favored 'soft-cleanse' effects as of recently. How do you feel about this :-)?Hello everybody!Today I'd like to talk about Cleanse, the forever problematic talent for the support line-up in Heroes of the storm. Currently, there are basically three versions of Cleanse to discuss. Firstly, there is the "hard cleanse", the good old fashioned 1 second of Unstoppable. Secondly, there are the plethora of "soft cleanses" that don't prevent a status condition, but will remove it. Lastly, some heroes actually don't have any access to status-clearing abilities. This is very relevant to their position in the meta and how they can be drafted and out-drafted. I'll discuss each in order and then proceed with a general discussion about the talent.Nowadays we are down to only 5 heroes with an actual Unstoppable cleanse. Their latest respective reworks removed the talent from Lt. Morales and Malfurion. For two of these heroes, being Rehgar and Uther, Cleanse is the standard talent and a decent part of why the heroes are picked. For Brightwing and Li Li goes that they lose out on some healing, but it's a very fair trade-of and the decision can be made on a case by case basis. Lastly, there is Kharazim. For the Monk, Cleanse comes in at level 16, which is rather late given that most high-CC compositions tend to favor snowballing (though Palm also prevents CC-chains to some extend), but even for Kharazim it is always a viable talent on the tier, and if picked your opposition will have to deal with the strongest cleanser in the game.Their access to Cleanse is a big part of what makes these heroes strong and desirable picks. In a meta that is very high on CC, with teams drafting up to three frontline heroes rather frequently and even most backline heroes having AOE CC in their kits.These heroes have access to a soft-cleanse. This is not a full-power Cleanse effect, but instead 'removes' a current status condition (e.g. Stunned). Two very important distinctions to make are that it cannot be used to 'pre-cleanse', which means that these heroes do not have tools against strong displacement like Garrosh, Junkrat or Stitches. Secondly, it means that these heroes do not prevent CC-chains as much: you can remove one stun, but the second one will lock the target down regardless.These two weaknesses combined make the soft-cleanse effect much weaker than the hard cleanse. To make up for it, most of these have stronger application effects in the form of much lower cooldowns in the case of Morales (Safeguard), Ana (Healing Dark) and Tyrande (Light of Elune), or a slightly lower cooldown but a multi-target effect for Malfurion (and Lucio).Especially for Morales, whose single-target healing and burst prevention is the main purpose of her kit, it's weird for Cleanse to not be a part of her toolbox anymore. One would say that Cleanse perfectly fits on a hero whose main strength is in keeping a single target alive.As a sidenote, Lucio's soft-cleanse is at level 20 on a very weak talent and for all intends and purposes he could be considered a non-cleanse hero.What is immediately noticeable about these three healers is that they excel in sustained healing. Therefor, it makes sense to some extend that burst and CC are their weaknesses. All three of these heroes have the tools to "reset" a teamfight or stop a temporary dive, and Tassadar has access to burst protection as his support tool.For these heroes it makes sense for Cleanse to not be in their kits, but this also hurts their viability in drafts. To protect against burst, Alexstrasza needs to be in either her Dragon Form or casting Cleansing Flame, both of which have cast-times. Auriel can only save a target with Crystal Aegis and Stukov relies on a very low and important healing cooldown in his Bio-Kill Switch, or on his heroic to stop a teammate from being focussed.Note: Looking at Heroes Played in HGC data for KR, EU, NA, CH in Phase 1 of 2018. For this circle diagram, Lucio (representing 12.3%) is considered a "No Cleanse" hero.It becomes immediately apparent that Cleanse is very important at higher levels of play. This 56% is represented by Uther, Rehgar and Kharazim mostly, with both Brightwing and Li Li lacking behind. The other highly popular support heroes are Lucio (who has solid anti-burst tools) and Malfurion (Ice Block, anti-dive). All 5 of these heroes can stop the enemy team from sledge-hammering through their own with burst protection, and in many cases Cleanse is of paramount importance in those situations.Naturally there are many more variables, and in professional play burst-protection is more important than at the pub level, but nonetheless this is a rather interesting and polarizing pie chart. Cleanse Matters!This graph represent the distribution of the various types of cleanses. As one can see, compared to when Heroes of the Storm released, almost 3 years ago, only one cleanse was gained in the process. In the middle stages, Cleanse gained in how accessible it was. It was around august 2015 that Blizzard started the discussion around Cleanse as a talent and changed it to relentless. This was part of what caused the Tyrande Meta to be enabled and consequently in January 2016 Cleanse regained the Unstoppable effect we all know and love.Cleanse has always been a controversial talent for Blizzard. The talent is obscenely powerful and has always hovered at the 'must pick' stage in hero design, to the point where it can only be considered a competitive tier if there are insane talents standing next to it. This is something Blizzard dislikes, so in the past they occasionally messed with Cleanse. In recent days this really hasn't been happening anymore, because Cleanse is an established staple in the meta and helps keep a lot of threats in check. Besides that, it's also an extremely powerful tool for support players to differentiate themselves from one another, because correct usage of the long cooldown can mean the difference between a huge victory and a very awkward defeat. In essence, it has some of the same tension and value as a heroic for some other heroes would have.However, it is interesting that Cleanse is actually being phased out of the game as a very accessible talent. Some (including the writer) would have considered the removal of Cleanse unthinkable on a hero like Lt. Morales, but it happened anyways. Talk to any avid Support player (especially the professionals) and they will agree with how powerful and fun the talent is to use.I don't think the soft cleanses are a bad alternative, but as previously mentioned, they have some rather nasty side-effects that makes a full Cleanse really stand out in comparison (the effect on displacement, the effect on CC-chains).What do you guys think about this? Cleanse is dominating the professional scene, but it has always been a somewhat problematic talent in the talent tree system due to its great importance. Should it be baselined for all supports, or for just a few supports. Is the trend of Cleanse phasing out worrysome or is it for the better given the previously mentioned considerations. What is your take on it :-)?Have a great weekend!Toastie