General DiscussionWhat is Icefrog's balancing based on?

i bet he's just trying random things and looking what happens

He is just a moron who knows nothing about balancing the game. I mean seriously, I don't think he has a brain.

Warlock OP in pubs? He can be strong in pubs but if you're playing with anyone who knows what they're doing he's pretty much a shit tier hero.

the same can be said about spirit breaker and huskar and abaddon

when i say op in pubs i mean pubs which means people who generally don't know what they're doing

the point is it's just so erratic. even if it was balancing based on both pubs and comp it would already be messed up, except he's not even consistent within that. the only thing is that the top picks in comp don't get buffs. everything else is uncertain. literally like

comp:
top picks buffed: none really
top picks left alone: mirana invoker puck nyx rubick dazzle aa
top picks nerfed: lycan ember naga centaur

pubs:
op buffed: warlock necro zeus venge
op left alone: dp riki tree wk
op nerfed: terrorblade lycan phoenix

and there're random heroes who aren't good in boths like anti mage getting useless things like mana void buff

i get the feeling his intention is to keep people interested rather than actually balance.

lolwat tree riki op
in the 2k mmr trench perhaps

Could it be that he's possibly striking a balance between both?

it's well known he sucks balls when it comes to balancing. we have plenty of patches as a testimony.

so I doubt he even tries anymore. he just shuffles things around and let people deal with it and play around with new op crap.

The most likely truth is that plenty of people in a meeting setting at Valve discuss the balance issues and then agree on changes.

6.78
Rip Tide Rip Tide cooldown rescaled from 19/16/13/10 to 10.
6.76
Rip Tide Rip Tide cooldown rescaled from 10 to 19/16/13/10.

Icefrog summarized...

Pub OP is basically low tier easy counter heroes
Comp OP is hard to counter mid game heroes

your picture disturbs me

noob

i said pub op can you stop with your sense of superiority that your highskilled game is an average pub. bara wouldn't have been op in pubs either if they knew how to play well but he still got nerfed horrendoulsy

luxon

it's things like that but also other things like,

6.79
Moon Glaive
Can now bounce back on the same units if it already hit all other units nearby.
Bounce damage reduced from -30% to -35%.
Eclipse (Aghanim's version) beam count limit per target removed.
6.76
Lunar Blessing bonus damage increased from 14/20/26/32 to 14/22/30/38.
6.75
Moon Glaive level 4 bounce count increased from 4 to 5.
6.74
Moon Glaive damage decrease per bounce decreased from 35% to 30%.
6.73
Base damage increased by 5.
6.72
Lunar Blessing rescaled from 8/16/24/32 to 14/20/26/32.
6.69
Eclipse (Aghanim's version) target limit increased from 5 to 6.
Strength growth increased from 1.75 to 1.9.
Movement speed increased from 320 to 330.
6.68
Eclipse now turns day into night for 10 seconds.
Lunar Blessing icon.png Lunar Blessing
Bonus damage increased from 6/12/18/24 to 8/16/24/32.
Now always provides full night vision.

so you've been buffing luna nonstop until she's op. good for you, that's a possible mistake. now to stop her from being op why don't we revert some of these buffs? nah lets minus her agility for something new that people will be interested about

Like if you are going to balance thing in such a ramdon way at least change EVERYTHING, do some crazy stuffs.

I love when something like the kotl aghs happens.

The point of patches is probably more to make the game fun and interesting than anything else.

Balance goes a long way towards making a game fun and interesting, but there are other things that make people excited to play the game. Landing the 5-man Finger of Death is *cool*, even if you'll never see it in a professional game. And when people are excited about something in the game, they play more, they watch more...and buy more keys and hats. The key/hat market is sort of essential to how this works.

Now, if people are bored with aspects of the game (Radiance Naga zzz), or think that certain features are bullshit (AD Meepo, fuck you), then they drift off, don't watch the game, don't play the game, and don't buy hats.

So Icefrog has to walk this delicate line where there's stupid cool fun things in the game that can be in neat YouTube clips and where it's also balanced enough that watching competitive games is fun and has variety.

You know, what I can say? There's full explanation for every single change in the official LoL changelog. Kinda nice.

^ I have some friends who play LoL. They bitch a lot about OP stuff and nonsense buffs/nerfs as well.

^ RIOT fix it, I know.
But having your favorite character nerfed silently and being given like 20 lines of explanations is two different things.

Complaining about Aghs buffs are ridiculous. Basically it goes like this:

Lich farms aghs. Does he have other items?
Yes. -> You deserve to lose.
No. -> He won't be of much use if you can just get away from your teammates (heck, he probably isn't even being a support)

Abaddon is more complicated as he's a pretty strong hero, but there's gotta be some way to simply avoid all this. You could probably try to escape after the ult has been procced and then come back to engage? People will end up learning a way eventually.

Kotl will simply start being picked more often in pro matches, probably.

Aghs is an expensive item. Basically you should just try to punish the player for trying to go for an aghs, specially if he's rushing. He won't have that many items if he's getting an aghs at an early point of the game.

Also, I "like" Necro's buff. He will also probably start being picked more often by everyone, including pros. The 30% extra respawn time will probably very crucial. I don't really play him anyway, but it's pretty interesting to say the less.

Guys, did you play Diablo 3? In terms of DOTA, would be like this: "ah, only 10% of players play Lion? He is clearly too weak! Let's double the damage of his ulti! Now everyone plays Lion? Let's make his hex useless!" That's what I call bad design.

I think Icefrog is quite good at balancing. Really!!!

it makes the game fun, even if somehow we got perfect 50% balance he would still change stuff because nobody would play this shit anymore

Even though he changes the heroes all the time, I really do think he has no clue how to really make a hero stable. I do wish he would just have some heroes stay the way they are for good like rubick (because he is perfectly fine) and only change heroes that need a new mechanic.

What if they did end up making a hero completely balanced? Never touch the hero again? Game would get stale and boring. I like the way he changes things; it keeps the game fresh. And anyway, if people want a completely balanced no-room-for-innovation game they should play LoL; that's really the biggest distinction between the two games I think.

EDIT: I do see OP's point however, I just don't agree with the idea that every hero should be going towards a balanced 'point'.

@Hardcore Heathen

Yeah, I understand that Radiance Naga is boring to watch. I guess I'm still mad because I just started to play Naga Siren well lol. And I guess I'm also mad that these "balance changelogs" are really for the ulterior motive of hats… but who am I to speak? I'm playing this game for free.

@Lord Helix

Please don't pick a single point in my OP and use it as a basis for me being ridiculous. Aghs Lich in pubs from a Lich mid in pub or from a lane where he is last hitting (probably with the carry) is common. Aghs AA is extremely prioritised in competitive, so it's not like it's impossible for it to happen in pro games. Regardless, even if you still disagree with Aghs Lich being viable, my point isn't that the Aghs upgrades is OP, or that Necro buff is not "interesting", it's that the balance changelogs are really inconsistent with regards to who to nerf and who to buff, even if some heroes have about the same pick rate in pro games/OP-ness in pubs.

@6_din_49

I do agree that Dota fares a lot better than many other games with regards to balance, but at the risk of being arrogant, I feel that even I could balance it even better. I'm pretty sure the Lycan nerf isn't going to stop him from being a Dire top pick, and the Invoker nerf isn't going to stop the Exort Invokers that are predominantly used.

@Well I wasn't trying

The thing is, I doubt even if he tried to make it completely balanced he would. Hero strategies at the top level are extremely flexible and prone to change. Dazzle and AA didn't even get buffed that much and suddenly went from niche pick to top pick. Invoker's Wex got buffed like hell and Exort got nerfed… but we're still seeing mainly Exort Invokers in pro games yet when his exort was better he wasn't really picked?

I think even if he does go for balancing every hero to have an equal opportunity things won't be stale because some of the top teams will have innovative strategies, and it will still make some heroes picked more than others. The problem is, it's pretty clear he's not going for balancing every hero right now. I mean, why did you give that massive nerf to spirit breaker? He was dominating pubs? Okay, fine, but why are you leaving the other pub lords alone? It doesn't make much sense.

^ Well, in the case of Spirit Breaker, he was dominating pubs from close to the bottom of the playerbase up to the highest rated ones.

@yiran

The whole "balance for hats" thing is how every game works. MMOs patch things to keep the players happy. Card games ban cards in competitive play to keep players happy. Balance tends to go a long way towards making people happy, but if everything was perfectly balanced and purely a contest of skill with no random factors involved? Well...it would be kind of boring, honestly. There's a reason that people don't really care about chess.

For example, Magic: the Gathering bans cards from competitive play when those cards start to affect tournament attendance (which is where they make a lot of their money). Yes, being imbalanced contributes to that, but losing decks that aren't fun to play against (*cough* Affinity *cough*) still get banned even though they're not overpowered.

^ Former Jund player. Whatever he says is null.

Winrate references
Winrate references #2
Warning

You're making my point for me, actually. Jund dominated. It was imbalanced.

It didn't affect tournament attendance. It was still fun to play against.

Nothing got banned.

Edit: Though yes, I was a Jund player. BBE my waifu, why you banned in Modern D:

Almost as fun to play against as Char belcher/Storm/Eggs/Sieve.

1 thing is clear, now Icefrog/Valve has data from the activity of all players worldwide. Every single click any user does can be stored now (and analyzed afterwards on grand scale). Thats a big change compared to wcdota times.

Now we can talk on how they make use of that. Knowing that usually a profit making company primary goal is money/power the 3 guiding forces for any changes must be these:

number and activity of users/
dota2 sales and market activity/
keep the game fair for comp and pub alike/

Fun notes from a player perspective:
-A lot of cosmetic Lances where made at the time pl got that agi buff
-Once Am got out of the popular pick pool, no more new am sets where released
-The drop/not drop immortal hook drama
-Heros that are not a threat in comp still get nerfed if they give hard times in pub
-Huge drops in price of sets (some of them from 12€ to 3€, potm f.e.)
-Apparently, u dont need a key for new incoming chests, you directly buy the chest (as if it were a key) at store.

Better than LoLs balancing..

Overbuff this 50%
Overnerf the other 50%

You're sure don't know a thing 'bout LoL.

Wasn't Icefrog's theory about buffs/nerfs to never directly nerf/buff anything considered underpowered/overpowered(unless it was horrendously so)? In fact I believe he said he'd even buff overpowered abilities. I don't remember the interview that well as it was years ago.

Basically let's say someone's nuke is underpowered, rather than buffing the damage on it, he'd rather: lower manacost, lower cooldown, buff a core item this character gets, buff another skill the character has, raise base stats, raise stat growth, or increase armor/bat/movespeed before buffing the damage.

He's also for making the meta change patch to patch, rather than converting every hero to conform to the meta of the current game.

I think weed or maybe a little bit of crack? I hope he doesn't do meth or something, that is not healthy.

It's impossible to balance a game as complex as dota perfectly and tbh it's your own fault for not picking ideal heroes and matchups. The thing about balance is all kinds of different skills levels, team makeups and counters all affect it. Plus heroes are strong or weak at certain points of the game. It's ridiculous to say they should be doing better, it's not realistic. It's good when they notice one thing is a little over the top like TB's lvl 1 reflection and fix it but as a whole is TB op? Not especially, not like he needs a full redesign just a tweak.

i watched merlini's analysis and i agree with it for the most part

6.80 was one of the best pro dota patches ever.

6.81 has some qwerky stuff, but it also seems like a fantastic patch.

Why OP is annoyed about it is beyond me. Just sounds like typical disgruntled and ragey dota player. And you Sam... I hope you were being sarcastic.
@Hael - you literally have no idea what you are talking about.

i miss old carry alchemist :(

Seeing changes like "anti-mage: mana void AOE increased by 50" or the new buffed VS' passive makes me think that icetoad doesn't even play dota at all. AM is shit in both competitive and pubs? Right, let's give him a small buff to the most unreliable aspect of him(not to mention it was already buffed in the previous version. What did it change? Nothing.). Venge is strong in pubs and decent in competitive? Let's buff her so people win even more games than they should. Meanwhile we still have these cancerous heroes like invoker, potm and batrider in EVERY game. I play matchmaking, i see potm. I turn on some random tournament stream, i see potm. Just wow.

@Dipshit

No one ever says a nuke is overpowered or underpowered. No one was complaining about, say, CM's frostbite but CM got nerfed throught intelligence decrease (which was way overboard). Changing those aspects is still in fact buffing/nerfing the hero, or even skill if it's manacost or cooldown.

@Mark

It's impossible to balance it perfectly but it's definitely possible and even extremely easy to balance it better than this mess. It's not difficult to see who is overpowered and who is underpowered.

@Concede

Congratulations for making zero points. Never mind valid, you didn't even make a point other than say "You're wrong, the patch is good, deal with it." Because obviously Alchemist and Wisp were nerfed this patch. Also, even your ad hominem point is invalid, because I've been muted exactly zero times.

@SmallStepsCorrupt

Yes, exactly.

u guys are all like literally retarded, for whoever said icefrog is bad at balancing

icefrog does not hold authority to the balancing notes whatsoever, its been conducted by a group of professionals who design the game mechanics as well as professional feedbacks from the top/pub/complains in the world

u guys think icefrog just changes something as he likes it, r u all fkin retarded

jesus

and the balancing in every patch is extremely well done for those who remotely understands dota to the slightest

suggesting you should watch merlini's analysis

a lot more in depth and gives more insight, from minor to significant changes

Thank you for your extremely valuable and content-full input, M_K_1001. I hope your mute runs out soon.

ßΣτᕆĦ©•ßuττΣR, could you give some examples of typical analyses from him? I'm in youtubeless China.

never been muted in my life in dota fyi, just hurts my eyes to see such dumb comments from literally 75% of the posts in this thread

jesus christ no wonder most ppl r noobs in this world, i guess u need noobs to sustain this world anyways trololol

ok

^commended for sick response, can no longer continue to troll

No I wasn't being sarcastic. Even Gabe could balance out this game better. I mean just look at the patch. Lycan is rumbling everywhere and what did he do? "His ultimate doesn't give any HP anymore." YES DUDE THAT WAS WHAT MADE THE HERO SO GOOD. WOW. MUCH SQUISHY. SO HP LOSS. Mirana nerf is a joke, Ember nerf is a joke, Batrider nerf is a joke. Invoker and Naga nerfs are semi-good, but that's it. And I'm not even talking about how he still didn't put Brood into CM mode so he can see the true power/terribleness of the hero but no. Let me watch pubs to find out.

i watched dotacinemas patchs review and i have to agree with them. there main statement made in that video is that is there is a OP hero, you dont want to take away its signature. Lycan is OP cause he can take towers quick and than escape, if you take that away he will become a average hero, if you do that with every hero they will in the end all be exactly the same hero, the game is only true balanced when every player plays with the exact same hero. they nerfed lycan with his HP cause if you whould take away the haste from his ult he would no longer be lycan but just a pusher. same with ember, he is strong of his mobility, but you dont nerf away his mobility cause than he will be a normal hero, so you nerf other things. if you give all low damage spells more damage and all high damage spells less damage you end up with 1 spell with average damage, which is not fun.