Chromie

Hi, ChaosOS again. Today's article goes over the Chromie and Lt. Morales reworks in the Kel'thuzad patch. Notes can be found HERE . There was a lot going on in these reworks so I've split them up into two articles; Jaina and Leoric will be in tomorrow's analysis. For these reworks, because the patch notes were so lengthy, I will just go over the talents by tier rather than attempting to list out all the changes to each talent.Today's spreadsheet can be found here

Chromie saw the fewest changes in the patch, with the majority of her talents remaining untouched, so I will only go over the new talents rather than do a holistic anlaysis for each tier.

Sand Blast

Changes

Scaling reduced from 4% to 2% per level.

Damage reduced from 400 to 300.

!Quest added: Hit 80 Heroes with Sand Blast. Hitting with consecutive casts counts as 2 hits.

!Rewards: Increase Sand Blast damage by 5 for each Hero hit. After hitting 80 Heroes, Sand Blast leaves an Echo behind. The next time Sand Blast is cast, the Echo also casts an untalented Sand Blast that deals 40% damage.



Mounting Sand (And the value of the Hot Streak bonus)

Timely Surprise

Timely Surprise

Here and There

Here and There

Bye Bye

Here and There

Piercing Sands

Stuck in a Loop

Lt. Morales

Energy vs. Mana

Changes

AnalysisThe most important set of Chromie changes in today's PTR involve her base Q functionality. Sand blast took a 25% damage nerf at level 0 that scales up to a 49% damage nerf at level 20. In compensation for this damage reduction she gained an infinitely repeatable quest to hit sand blast, with a permanent +5 damage increase every time she hits an enemy hero with Sand Blast. Consecutive hits increase damage by +10 damage instead of by +5. Therefore Chromie needs 20 quest stacks at level 0 to equal the nerf and 87 stacks at level 20. If Chromie is keeping pace on stack accumulation to keep Sand Blast's damage similar to her pre-patch self, she will complete the quest somewhere between level 18 and 19, as level 18 requires 77 stacks to be equal on damage and level 19 requires 82 stacks to be equal on damage. Given that this is also the level where she could previously select Past and Future Me, the quest reward, it seems that Blizzard intends average Chromies to do similar damage, skilled Chromies to be better off, and new Chromies to do worse.Replacing the old Q damage quest, Mounting Sand now allows Chromie's to all in on the "hot streak" bonus by increasing the bonus for the 3+ consecutive hits to +15 damage rather than just +10 damage for 2+ consecutive hits. To start this analysis, I will assume the probability of hitting any given cast is independent, because it simplifies the math, though this is not strictly true, as chaining hits in a teamfight is significantly easier than in a max range poke war. Just remember that in real games you will likely be "streakier" than true independenceFrom those assumptions I was able to derive a simple way to weight the "hot streak bonus": Multiply the added value by the probability of two or three hits in a row. The probability of a hit is p, the probability of two hits in a row is p^2, and the probability of three hits in a row is p^3. Thus, for a Chromie player with 50% hit rate but not Mounting Sands, the hot streak bonus will add ~25 stacks on average over 100 shots. For a Chromie with a 70% hit rate, the value of the base hot streak bonus increases to ~48.5 extra stacks on average over 100 shots.Now, for the talent Mounting Sand. For a Chromie that averages 50% hit rate, Mounting Sand will add on average 12.25 stacks per 100 shots made, or a 16.4% increase in the stack count. This will reduce the average number of shots to hit 80 stacks for quest completion from 107 to 92, completing the quest 14% faster. For a Chromie with 70% hit rate these number increase to +33.6 stacks per 100 shots, or 28.4% more stacks. Furthermore, it will decrease the expected number of shots required to hit 80 stacks from 67.6 to 53, a 22% increase in quest completion speed.helps fix the classic Chromie issue of firing off QW then, while both are on cooldown, having some fool proc your time trap on not being able to combo them. This talent synergizes both with Dragon's Eye at 5, as the reset and time trap guarantee a center hit, and with Chrono Sickness, which reduces the cooldown on time trap and gives more opportunities to use the reset.gives the power to swap with your Chrono Echo, no matter where it is. The one notable thing is that the swap range is global, so Chromie can Q, B, then swap to return to the battlefield. However, this process is lengthy, as it is impossible to pick bothandOne of the main counters to Chromie in teamfights is for tanks to body block her Sand Blast shots, preventing them from getting value on the back line. Piercing sands nullifies that, letting her pierce through any number of enemies.Stuck in a Loop gives a second chance to combo, 6 seconds after casting Temporal Loop initially. Without some form of cooldown reset (such as from Timely Surprise), this only allows a second Sand Blast, as even with Mobius Loop the cooldown on Dragon's breath is too long to use on both returns.

Miscellaneous

Morales now uses Energy to fuel her Healing Beam. All other abilities are free to cast. Morales can hold up to 100 Energy.



Abilities

Caduceus Reactor (Trait) New Functionality: While channeling Healing Beam, Morales heals herself for 2% of her maximum life per second.

Healing Beam (Q) Channeling Healing Beam costs 6 Energy per second Morales generates 6 Energy per second after not channeling Healing Beam for 3 seconds.

Safeguard (W) Cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 12 seconds

Displacement Grenade (E) A visual indicator for the detonation area is now visible to Lt. Morales.



Caduceus Reaction

Level 1 Talents

Caduceus Feedback

Life Support

Clear!

Level 4 Talents

Cellular Reactor

Trauma Trigger

Blast Shield

Level 7 Talents

Physical Therapy

Vanadium Plating

Prolonged Safeguard

Level 10 Talents

Changes

Stim Drone (R) Cast time reduced from 1 second to .5 seconds

Medivac Dropship (R) Takeoff minimum delay reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds Health reduced from 1593 to 956



Medivac

Stim Drone

Medivac

Stim Drone

Level 13 Talents

EMP Grenade

System Shock

Second Opinion

Level 16 Talents

Extended Care

First Responder

Shield Sequencer

Level 20 Talents

AnalysisThe new Lt. Morales uses Energy, rather than Mana, to fuel her Healing Beam and all of her other skills have had their mana costs removed. In addition, there was a stealth nerf to Medic's healing output from 96 every tick to 90 per tick, a 6.25% nerf. On both PTR and Live healing beam ticks twice per second, each tick consuming 7.5 mana to heal for 96 health or consuming 3 energy for 90 health. Mana continues to regenerate even while Healing Beam is active, while energy only starts to regenerate (at 6 per second) after 3 seconds have passed since Lt. Morales stopped healing.The primary impact is max capacity. Accounting for mana regeneration, a level 0 Medic on live takes 40.5 seconds to run dry, while a level 20 Medic takes 68 seconds to run dry. To rejuvenate that mana it takes 169 seconds at level 0 and 142 seconds at level 20 (not accounting for mana globes or healing wells). By comparison, on PTR Medic takes 16.5 seconds to run dry (Stopping at 1 Energy left), while then taking a full 20 seconds to fully regenerate accounting for the 3 second delay (Regeneration happens 1/second in clumps of 6 energy).In terms of pure resource management, the new medic is significantly worse at "feathering" her healing. A common tactic with medic on live is to heal someone for 2 seconds to top them off and get them close to full, without totally filling their health bar to let natural HP regen finish them off. This usage of mana would quickly be regenerated and overall be an insignificant usage. However, for the new medic, due to the 3 second delay on regeneration, "feathering" constantly can be punished by aggressive enemies who are able to consistently threaten an engagement and prevent a medic from waiting the 3 seconds just to start regenerating energy.Despite the above description of the changes to Healing Beam as a nerf, it is made up elsewhere. Specifically, Safeguard is now worth the mana even if the target wouldn't die. Currently, casting Safeguard (untalented) is equivalent to 4 seconds of medic healing. That means the safeguard must either prevent the death of the target (Can't heal dead heroes), or prevent at least (96*8)=768 damage. Given that Safeguard gives 25 armor, that means the hero must expect to take at least 3072 damage in the 3 second duration. Now, with Safeguard being free, smart Safeguard usage can help differentiate good from bad morales by using Safeguard to reduce the amount of healing that needs to be done. Furthermore, the cooldown on Safeguard was reduced from 15 to 12 seconds, further shifting the power budget from bland healing to smart Safeguard usage.While Healing Beam's resource regeneration shifted from constant to out of combat, Caduceus Reactor shifted to the opposite. On Live, Caduceus Reactor regenerates 3% of Lt. Morales' HP every second when she hasn't been damaged for 4 seconds. The new Caduceus Reaction regenerates 2% of Lt. Morales HP while Healing Beam is active. Notably, Healing Beam still does not consume any energy if the target is at full HP, even if Lt. Morales is benefiting from the Caduceus Reactor healing. However, Lt. Morales will not start to regenerate energy until a full 3 seconds after Healing Beam has been fully deactivated.From this, each point of energy is worth ~5.1 healing back to Morales, and a full bar with 16.5 seconds of healing restores 504.24 HP, or 33% of Morales' max HP.provides a way to more quickly regenerate energy or prolong an active healing beam. Lt. Morales' attack speed is 1 attack per second, meaning that against heroes her energy consumption is reduced to 2 per second (allowing for 50 seconds of uptime), and if Lt. Morales needs to regenerate her energy in combat she will regenerate to full in 12 seconds. If Lt. Morales instead attacks non-heroes, her consumption is reduced to 5 per second (allowing for 20 seconds of uptime) and her time to fully regenerate is reduced to 17 seconds. In other words, each basic attack against heroes gives (180*4/6)=120 HP worth of healing, while each basic attack against non-heroes gives 30 HP worth of healing.allows Safeguard to generate up to 20 energy. Safeguard lasts for 3 seconds, so the full rebate requires 3.33 sources of damage per second. In comparison to Caduceus Feedback, and ignoring any other talent synergies, a full Life Support rebate is equal to 5 attacks against heroes. 5 basic attacks is theoretically pretty easy to get every 12 seconds, but in practice against certain compositions could be much more difficult. Another factor is later talents that synergize; I'll go over those talents when we get there.Finally, the new questimproves Lt. Morales' Grenade. While a solid talent by itself, cutting the CD of grenade by 33% and increasing the radius by 25%, the added utility alone does not make up for the significant amounts of added healing from the energy gain of the other two talents. Clear! is not alone however, and has strong synergies with later grenade talents.consumes 5 seconds of healing (30 energy) to heal Morales' for 611.2 HP over 4 seconds, or 152.8 HP per second. 5 seconds of healing is worth 450 HP on the target and 152.8 HP for Morales (From her passive). This has a 45 second cooldown.gives 30 armor for 3 seconds whenever Lt. Morales takes damage while below 40% of her maximum HP. This increases her EHP from (1528*.4)=611.2 to (611.2/.7)=873.15 while the armor is active, a 43% boost. This has a 60 second cooldown.is the next talent in the "grenade build", providing Morales with a 122.24 shield and restoring 2 energy per enemy hit with Displacement Grenade. The shield is permanent (until removed by damage), and stacks up to 611.2 HP. The energy is worth 60 HP to the healing beam target and 10.2 HP to Lt. Morales. The actual defensive effect, when compared to the other talents on this tier, is minimal for hitting a single target every 12 seconds, but with the proper synergizing talents can provide a lot of survivability.provides a unique function of only cleansing slows on the safeguarded target. This is best used against slows that do not constantly reapply themselves, such as Stukov's Weighted Pustule or Jaina's Chill. Furthermore, the reduced cooldown synergizes with the other safeguard talents at 1 and 16, increasing the energy generation rate from 20 energy every 12 seconds to 20 energy every 8 seconds, a 50% increase in energy gain.gives a significant survivability boost to stunned targets, doubling the armor and pausing the duration. First, the additional armor changes the EHP boost from 33% to 100%, a major improvement in the target's durability. Second, the usage of "pausing the duration" is a much healthier way to create an anti-stun talent than what else currently exists. Talents such as Uther's Armor of Faith, can feel overly punishing to characters like Johanna who utilize micro stuns. Vanadium Plating, by contrast, artfully distinguish between shorter and longer stuns.does a simple job well: It increases the duration of Safeguard from 3 seconds to 4.5 seconds. This makes it easier to get the full energy rebate with Life Support and provides additional durability with Shield Sequencer at level 16.AnalysisBothandsaw improvements with this patch. First, whilesaw a 40% cut to its HP and only a 25% cut to its take-off time, making it much harder to use as an escape or as a safe holding place for a Medic, it does speed up the regular use for cross-map transit by a full second.also saw a speed upgrade, as the 1 second casting time could often be too unwieldy to use during a teamfight. Thew new half second cast time should see far fewer interrupts than the current ultimate.is the second or third talent in the game to specifically counter shields, depending on how you count Kel'thuzads Strip Shields talent, as both are being added to the game at the same time. The 40 added base damage is a minor upgrade, even though it does increase the damage of grenade by 19%. The shield stripping effect is 84% of an equal-level Tassadar Shield by itself, not even accounting for the non-shield damage the grenade deals.is yet another talent that experiments with invisible damage reductions, this time reducing the damage of enemies hit by grenade by 30% for 4 seconds. My biggest beef with this kind of talent is that there are effectively no visual indicators for these kinds of "Damage output reduction" talents. We've only recently gotten an acceptable UI for armor, and I'm concerned by the continued addition of significant quantities of invisible power.is a potentially powerful talent that heavily synergizes with the other grenade talents. The added area from Clear! makes achieving the double hit easier, while Blast Shield increases the reward for casting multiple grenades in a teamfight.increases the range of Healing Beam from 5.5 to 7.7, giving significantly more flexibility to Medic's positioning during a teamfightincreases Lt. Morales' healing at the start of a fight, and synergizes with the other energy generating talents that can keep her above the 70 energy threshold for longer. The enhanced Healing Beam heals for 112.5 per second rather than 90 per second. As a side note, First Responder checks for energy to be greater than or equal to 70 to give the bonus healing. For a full "100 to 1" usage of energy (which takes 16.5 seconds), the first 5 seconds will benefit from First Responder, working out to a 7.5% boost in total healing done. This is equal to 112.5 bonus total healingallows Lt. Morales to double up on the amount of armor she grants to a single individual, or split it between two team members. Double casting on a single target to increase the armor from 25 to 50 raises the EHP bonus from 33% to 100%, a major benefit. Furthermore, in combination with Vanadium Plating at 7, Lt. Morales can boost a target ally's armor to the cap of 75 armor.

The new Hyperactivity talent makes using Stim Drone significantly easier. A 45 second cooldown rather than 90 solves the usual issue of disengage ultimates being on a shorter cooldown than Stim Drone, while the movespeed boost is one of the highest in the game and makes the target ally essentially uncatchable and capable of catching any foe, whichever way they run.



Safe Zone simply tries to answer the numerous clips of Medivac's unloading into a waiting ETC's Mosh Pit.



Reinforcements acts as a way for Lt. Morales to catch a respawned teammate up with the rest of the group without needing to back to the Hall of Storms herself. Like ETC's Death Metal, Lt. Morales does not need to take the ultimate it is modeled after. Unlike Death Mosh, Reinforcements shares a cooldown with the original ultimate, but in compensation for this also reduces the cooldown of the original ultimate.



The new Caduceus Reactor 2.0 heals Lt. Morales for 91.68 HP per second while her Healing Beam is active, rather than provide an up to 480 point shield out of combat and functionally eliminate all mana consumption concerns from Morales. While Caduceus Reactor 2.0 remains a strong talent, it is no longer a must-pick level 20 talent.

Closing Thoughts

The reworks this patch should improve overall talent diversity by cleaning up some older talent trees. Chromie's changes should fix the complaint pros and streamers (Most vocally Dunktrain) had that she's a frustratingly low skillcap hero due to a lack of mana constraints on her safe, long range spam. Lt. Morales' changes also increase her skillcap significantly, making Safeguard usage an important part of her healing rather than a trap while encouraging a high skill, high power grenade build.