Thoughts on HGC patch delay

2.0 is out and HGC is still being played on Probius patch. The majority of viewers are not happy. In fact the majority of pro players would also prefer to play on 2.0.



I am not one of them. I find some things annoying, like not being able to play hero league on the same version or not having the newest skins. But I like that we play on the same patch for so long.



The longer we stay on the same patch, the better teams learn which hero combinations are good at the moment. The less they focus on figuring out the draft, the more they can improve their play. But right now drafting has too big of an impact in HGC.. This is due to how unique all the heroes are. In other MOBAs any item can be taken on any hero, which makes heroes more similar and lets any hero get tools to deal with the present situation. You can think of items as powerful generic talents - which have been aggressively removed from Heroes.



This doesn't mean that the meta will converge and become stale, for example years after Starcraft Broodwar stopped receiving balance changes new strategies were still being invented. In HotS new heroes and balance changes come out so often that the meta is never stable, even with the current HGC patch schedule.



In my opinion the best decision would be a compromise - less frequent balance patches (one every 4-5 weeks), tournament realm 1 week behind live.



Thanks you for reading,

Splendour

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