Full disclosure: Tychus was the first Hero I purchased back in 2014, and I had him at Level 20 before Heroes 2.0 rolled around. It’s safe to say that I’m kind of a fan of the Big Blue Goon and that I’m probably a little biased. Now that I’ve told you that story, I’ll tell you this story: a history lesson on what Tychus used to be, because context is important.

Tychus was the first hero added to the HOTS roster after the initial wave, going live five days after the first group on March 18th, 2014. His original role was to be a tanky ranged assassin with some of the highest DPS in the game, but he was limited by his short-range, his Basic Attacks requiring a wind-up period, and his high Attack Speed making stutter-stepping a pipe dream. His abilities made things a little easier - Overkill gave him mobile offense, Frag Grenade gave Tychus a bit of burst damage, and Run and Gun gave Tychus minor mobility and the ability bypass Minigun’s wind-up time. Commandeer Odin in particular was a huge help, giving Tychus an extra health bar, a Basic Attack that could be stutter-stepped with, and a powerful ability set with plenty of AOE attacks.

In those days, HOTSLogs and ranked league play weren’t around yet, so Tychus’ statistical performances from those times are a mystery to all but Blizzard. However, taking from my first-hand experience of playing the heck out of him in his original state, Tychus wasn’t exactly high-effectiveness. While his waveclear was fantastic due to his AOE and his high potenital DPS made him a strong choice for destroying buildings, he often struggled against enemy heroes due to his short range and awkward mechanics. Odin’s extra health bar eventually got cut and, while it remained formidable, Tychus heavily relied on it to be able to trade and teamfight, so the loss hurt. Ultimately (and perhaps ironically, given his personality), Tychus was too easy to bully because of his limitations, and he was very difficult to play effectively as a result.



Thankfully, Blizzard eased up on Tychus’ drawbacks over time. In January of 2015, Minigun went from requiring a wind-up period before attacking to Tychus having a low Attack Speed that built up over a short period of time, helping him get a few hits in before the enemy could retreat out of his range. Then, in July of 2015, Tychus got something he desperately needed: his Basic Attack Range went from 4.5 to the standard 5.5, allowing him to trade against other ranged attackers and more effectively harass melee characters. While he remained an underdog who couldn't stutter-step, these changes (along with a handful of others) made Tychus usable, and in some cases he was even viable.

Despite his newfound effectiveness, Tychus faced a major design issue - Valla had firmly cemented her role as the “momentum assassin” with Hatred’s stacking damage bonus, and Tychus’ stacking attack speed from Minigun wasn’t too far off from the same concept. A solution came in the form of the March 29, 2016 patch: Tychus underwent an overhaul that drastically changed how he played. His talent tree was redone and Minigun became an activatable ability that applied health shred to Tychus’ Basic Attacks, molding him into the Tankbuster role he fulfills today.

This was roughly what I’d call Tychus’ Golden Age. Not only did this rework come into play during the Double Warrior meta where there was no shortage of high-health targets, but it also heralded a series of buffs to Tychus’ durability that saw him gain more Maximum Health than some Warriors at the time. He still couldn’t stutter-step, but he was a mean son of a gun with a variety of strong build paths such as heavy burst or extreme sustained damage. His flexibility and effectiveness meant he could find a comfortable spot on nearly any team, and his popularity steadily rose over time as people realized just how useful he’d become.

As great as these times were, Tychus’ performance was a problem. Because Minigun granted an effective damage bonus against all targets, he became an impressive lane bully that could easily force off other Assassins with Minigun in addition to being able to beat up Warriors and other durable targets. On top of that, he found unique tactical value against the Dragon Knight and the Garden Terror: Minigun worked against them just as well as it worked against enemy Heroes, providing defending teams with an enormous advantage as his health shred ripped them apart faster than any other character. Eventually his presence became felt in nearly every match, including the professional scene, and Blizzard decided to do something about it.

In early 2017, Blizzard began focusing more on making HOTS into a game focused on a “niche meta” by putting a great deal of emphasis on drafting, hard counters, and picking the right Hero for the right job. This mostly notably materialized in the form of Passive Armor Types being added to many Warriors, but it also affected a handful of other characters - like Tychus. On Feburary 27th of 2017, Tychus’s range was reduced to 4.5 again and his sustain talent harshly nerfed. The given justification was that Tychus was over-performing against Assassins and Blizzard wanted him to be much more focused on anti-Warrior gameplay, “limiting his options” to put emphasis on his status as a hard counter.

The results were immediate and drastic, with several professional players claiming that Tychus had been effectively removed from the game. While Tychus’ damage output remained substantial, his reinstated clunkiness made him vulnerable to being bullied into submission once again. Even Warriors, who Tychus is supposed to be a hard counter to, gained a significantly easier time of fighting him. Thanks to the forced increased proximity, Tychus became more susceptible to Crowd Control abilities and therefore much more vulnerable to being picked off, chased down, or just plain interrupted.

Almost to add insult to injury, the patch also introduced one of the few Anti-Synergies in HOTS. That’s The Stuff’s original functionality was that it healed for Minigun’s bonus damage on hit, but the patch changed That’s The Stuff to heal for the damage dealt on Minigun’s expiration. This made In The Rhythm (a quest that increased Minigun’s duration) counter-productive, as the healing that Tychus so desperately needed to keep him alive during heavy combat would be out of reach until Minigun ended. What's worse is that it doesn’t stop there - Drakken Laser Drill used to be the go-to Heroic for players who wanted to focus on Tychus’s Minigun because Commandeer Odin’s transformation restricted access to the ability. Since the only way to get the healing from That’s The Stuff is for Minigun to end, the only way to access the healing reliably if you’ve taken In The Rhythm is by using Commandeer Odin to force-cancel Minigun, making Drakken Laser Drill no longer the go-to Sustained Minigun Heroic.

With the increased vulnerability to Warriors and the state of the resulting talent interactions, I genuinely feel that these changes were mistakes. The Feburary 27 patch effectively ended an entire playstyle and drastically altered what remained, cutting down Tychus’ versatility and resurrecting old weaknesses. While it’s true that Tychus has received a handful of updates that have increased both his base damage and Minigun’s damage, he still suffers from severe ability/talent interaction issues and remains a counter-pick at best.

However, there is yet hope. Lately, Blizzard has been making an effort to cut back on the “niche meta” designs by reverting many of the changes made in that spirit. This is a good thing, because having too many niche and counter-niche roles leads to predictable drafts where the same characters are chosen in every match. Since Blizzard’s efforts to improve population variety has included moving towards gameplay gimmicks instead of hard niches in addition to slowing down hero releases to rework/update older ones, I felt that now was a good time to introduce my own concept for changing Tychus into something that isn’t quite so narrow in application:



[Kith's Tychus Rework]



The goal of the rework is to mold Tychus into a generalist Assassin with an anti-tank slant instead of a specialized Assassin that has most of his power allowance focused on tankbusting. The full rework is linked above, but I’d like to go into greater detail about some of the concepts and the justifications behind them.

First up is the new trait. Minigun’s problem is that it gives Tychus bonus damage against all Hero types - even though Assassins and Supports traditionally have less health than Warriors, they still have health, so Minigun’s shred is going to be an effective DPS increase. However, what Warriors have in abundance that others don’t is Armor, and so Armor Piercing Rounds does exactly what the name suggests: Tychus’s Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes completely bypass all forms of Armor. This includes Physical Armor, Block stacks (although in bypassing Block stacks he doesn’t trigger them either, leaving them to be activated by other characters’ attacks), and D.Va’s Ablative Armor talent. What it does not include are statuses such as Parry or Protected (as these are not Armor effects). The important part about Armor Piercing Rounds is that it gives Tychus a contextual advantage rather than a universal advantage like Minigun, therefore preventing him from becoming too effective against targets he’s not intended to be a counter to.



Since Tychus is losing the universal bonus damage and burst potential behind Minigun, he can safely return to the standard Basic Attack Range of 5.5. Additionally, to push Tychus’ unique handling (see: can’t stutter-step) and character fantasy (see: has a minigun that’s almost as big as he is), I doubled his Attack Speed and halved his Basic Attack Damage to give Tychus the highest sustained Attack Speed in HOTS while maintaining his current DPS profile.



Run and Gun has been renamed into Dash and, other than the new name and a 50% reduction in cost, it’s unchanged. Run and Gun has suffered from some of the heaviest technical/design debt in HOTS’s history, having an unchanged Mana Cost despite losing functionality twice (the instant wind-up on Minigun, both from the original design and the updated version). The loss of functionality is especially frustrating when you compare Run and Gun to Valla’s Vault, which not only got cheaper but also gained functionality in the same patch. Run and Gun has been overdue for a buff and a new name ever since it lost any kind of interaction with Tychus’ gun.



Overkill has been overhauled into Run and Gun (and I’m sorry if that’s confusing, but it makes way better sense for something that allows you to move (run) and attack (gun) at the same time to actually be called that). Instead of dealing sustained spell damage in a cone, Run and Gun grants Tychus the ability to perform Basic Attacks while moving for 3 seconds and can be canceled early by activating Armor Piercing Rounds. This is not entirely a buff or a nerf - on one hand, Run and Gun allows Tychus to deal more single-target damage than Overkill (600 vs 574) and has a shorter cooldown (8 vs 12). On the other, Run and Gun has no splash damage, can be countered via Blind, and does not have an extended range. The addition of the ability to cancel was added to start the ability’s cooldown slightly earlier in the event of being Blinded or the target moving out of range, somewhat similarly to how Overkill can currently be canceled early by tapping Mount or Hearthstone.



Frag Grenade’s name hasn’t changed, but its mechanics have. Because Run and Gun is more counterable than Overkill, Frag Grenade it sports a higher base damage (300 vs 256). Additionally, because Run and Gun are just Basic Attacks instead of a channeled ability, Frag Grenade is now completely transient (meaning that it doesn’t interrupt other commands or actions such as Basic Attacks or moving, so you’ll lose no DPS if you throw it mid-Basic Attack).



Commandeer Odin lost its 25 Armor and gained a Shield equal to 30% of Tychus’s Maximum Health, inspired by Commandeer Odin’s original bonus health bar and by the strange interactions between In The Rhythm, That’s The Stuff, and Commandeer Odin. The Shields replaced the Armor to give Commandeer Odin a bit of functionality as a panic button, allowing players to potentially use the Odin’s bulk to keep themselves alive. Big Red Button, the Level 20 Talent for Commandeer Odin, has also changed: rather than adding a Nuclear Missile to Ragnarok Missiles, the Nuclear Missile is once again its own ability, allowing players to drop the nuke wherever they choose instead of being forced to combo the two.



Drakken Laser Drill has been replaced by Heartbreaker, a retooled Minigun that comes with an adjusted In The Rhythm. I chose to do this for a handful of reasons:

Minigun’s health shred effect is what Tychus has come to be known for, so keeping it around feels appropriate and moving it to later in the game makes Tychus’ early game less overwhelming

In The Rhythm was extremely popular before the anti-synergy, and baking it in resulted in the opportunity to make a unique and effective Level 20 upgrade that rewards extended durations

Heartbreaker is focused on single-target damage, contrasting Odin’s multiple AOE attacks

Heartbreaker’s Health Shred bullies tanky frontliners, contrasting Odin’s burst and range bullying squishy backliners

Heartbreaker synergizes with ability talent choices instead of Odin overriding them with a completely different skillset

This is not to say that I think that the Drakken Laser Drill is a bad Heroic, I just feel that Tychus snarling “Don't MESS with the DEVIL” and riddling someone with bullets is a better portrayal of his character than calling in a giant laser turret. This is also not to say that the Drakken Laser Drill ability should be removed from HOTS entirely, either - after all, someone else from the Starcraft universe is pretty well-known for making use of 174 gigawatts:





[Kith's Rory Swann Concept]



To conclude, I feel that this rework would provide the right kind of help to get Tychus back into the swing of things. By maintaining the spirit of the original “anti-tank Assassin” overhaul while also increasing his general viability by cutting back handicaps and modernizing his abilities, these changes would reduce the potential for frustrating interactions both for and against Tychus. This would in turn make his overall experience more balanced, allowing him to return to the general populace as a viable pick instead of remaining buried in his niche cave. While his gameplay would change, it wouldn’t be so much of a difference that current players would be unable to adapt, and it would bring unique mechanics to the table, expanding rather than reducing the amount of opportunities that Tychus could be useful in.

And, real talk, all rationalizing and design justification aside? I just wanna be able to play Tychus regularly again.