My thought on the current meta:



First of all I'd like to say that I really like the game and enjoy playing it even when I don't like the meta. I do tend to post a lot of negative tweets about it, but that's just because of how much I care and my personality - I am more likely to post about something that I dislike rather than something I like.



I have 2 major non-matchmaking issues with the game right now, one has to do with drafting and the other with hero design. Starting with the former, I feel like drafts have too much impact. In competitive the game is like chess boxing, you have a round of chess (draft), followed by a round of box (ingame). But it shouldn't be like that. We don't watch tournaments to see the drafts, that's just boring. And so much of the game depends on it, every pro gamer has been saying for a while that the game is 50% or more about draft. And drafting is hard, I'd argue that it is a lot harder than LoL or even DotA. Sure they have more heroes but they don't have 12 maps. I want to win because I have better mechanics or decision making, not because I have a better understanding of the meta right now.



As for hero design, I feel like Blizz is promoting unskilful ways to play the game. They are trying to improve things like talent diversity by increasing the stats of inferiorly designed talents. I think this is pointless and I personally don't mind picking the same talent in every situation. Having trap talents is not bad for the game, it makes people look up builds on the internet or ask better players. A lot of successful games have similar or even worse traps (dota, lol, even classic rpg games like diablo or baldur's gate). But some of the talents that I think are great and allow for a lot of playmaking have started fading out of the meta.



Let's look at Thrall's ults. Recently Sundering was nerfed at the same time Earthquake was buffed. Essentially their pick rates reversed - you don't see sundering anymore. That's fine, but Sundering is the much better spell. Earthquake... you just press, it is not a skillshot, the enemies can't just run out of it. It's very hard not to get value from earthquake. It is frustrating to play against it, you can't dodge it, you can't cleanse it (technically you can but eq is 3 pulses of slow), you can't run out of it with most heroes. And everyone can use earthquake. Doesn't matter if it's darkmok or a bronze player, there will not be a big difference between their earthquakes. Now back to sundering. The bronze players throw it out randomly. Do some aoe damage and a short stun. Not bad. But the great players use it to control positioning and throw the enemy carry into the wrong back line. Or save a teammate that is getting dived. At the same time there are opportunities for counter play. You can watch for the sundering animation and precleaanse it or press iceblock or meta or blink away. Needless to say, Sundering is the more skillful ult. I even think that the bronze player would get more out of his ult if he picked the unbuffed Earthquake.



The same thing happened to Rehgar. Heard of the term 'hero league ancestral'? It's when rehgar uses it on someone that has 5% hp and they die before getting the heal. There is no 'hero league bloodlust'. Why fail keg when you have the tripple pandas.



Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day by randomly shielding people with Khala's embrace.

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