ITN - 68

#68 - Into the Nexus: “Title” w/ guest COG.Slime

• Garrett • Kyle

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Up 100 MMR points.

Waiting my turn to play Tyrande

COGnitive Gaming’s iVSlime

https://twitter.com/COG_Slime

Aaron "iVSlime" Prentice is an American carry player. Former team captain.

Vs. Relic

Illadin, Tassadar, Brightwing, Jaina, Abathur

Vs. Complexity

Arthas, Leoric, Butcher, Tassadar, Brightwing

Vs. Cloud9

Leoric, Johanna, Brightwing, Kerrigan, Jaina

Intro: Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!

News

Reminder, you can go to ITNcast.reddit.com to submit stories or upvote submissions for the next episode.

The Heroes Americas Championships

The Heroes Americas Championship took place in Las Vegas this past weekend and the level of Heroes play on display was phenomenal. Cloud9 took 1st place over Tempo Storm in an incredibly close finals. Both teams will be moving on to the World Championship.

Overall U.S. teams dominated. Tempo Storm & Cloud 9 were the top teams in Group A and COGnitive and compLexity were top in Group B.

323 Controversy

In Game 1 of Cognitive VS Cloud9 the game was paused twice. The first time the pause was only about 30 seconds. Referees explained that the pause was for a technical issue. But a couple minutes later there was a second pause that lasted a while. Cognitive player Slime posted his explanation of what went through Cognitive’s minds during this break.

“Going into the pause, we knew our next move. However, we started to discuss other possible plays. About 5 minutes into the pause, we started to lose a bit of focus. This is entirely our fault. I don't actually know how long the pause lasted, but I do know it was long enough for the adrenaline fueling our play to wear off, to some degree.

Slime went on to talk about how “not speaking for them (Cloud9)” that “When you are behind, a break in game play gives you time to regain composure, plan your next plays, and lose some of the emotional force that may be pressuring your play decisions. A break in play is disruptive to both teams, but is certainly more advantageous to those behind.

What happened after the pause was not a direct result of the pause. It was a chain of bad decisions on our part (with me leading the chain of throws with a poorly executed flank). Would it have happened without the pause? I don't know. I do know that losing that game took an emotional toll on my entire team, and it showed in our game 2.

To conclude, I don't think the pause was the reason we lost. But it was the reason we lost momentum and some of our composure.”

Including this in our rundown not because I think that the pause is to blame for anything, but because I think Slime’s comments are an incredibly interesting look into the mindset of a pro-gamer during a major tournament game.

Links

Americas Championship Interview Roundup

Shacknews/G-League/D-day film interviewed Heroes designers Matt Cooper and Hugh Shelton

Rexxar

Rexxar won’t be getting traps - if they want to add another Hunter or a similar character in the future, and use that type of skill, they want it to be available.
They are ok with player feedback that says Rexxar is too weak without Misha - players should care if she dies, and they are meant to protect one another.
Rexxar and Misha splitting up completely and being into different lanes is unintended - will be removed in the future.
Bugs soured Rexxar’s release and Blizzard will be more vigilant in the future. They like the current control scheme.

Artanis

In terms of design, Artanis is pretty much finished.
They gave a hint that Artanis is not only an aggressive Warrior, but one that thrives by being in the middle of a fight and staying there!

Next Patch

Next patch has quite a few Warrior changes - Stitches getting some buffs.
The Infernal Shrines will have minor changes. They still want players to bait the Punishers and the map mechanics are too new to change.

In Development

They're working on Tyrande and Tassadar's support talents, and on internal testing it feels like they have two new solid strong supports.
One of their senior engineers is focused mainly on improving matchmaking, since the community had a ton of feedback and requests on that.
Blizzard only interacts with pro-players indirectly. They do not ask for direct advise on making heroes or balance changes.
ETC and Diablo changes weren’t aimed at balance, they were to encourage build diversity.
Generic Talents will be phased out overtime.
Deckard Cain is designed on paper. He’s on the list, probably not in the next year. Might be like Abathur.

Current Meta

Leoric is one of the highest win ratio heroes, with a wave clear that might be too strong (along with Johanna). Does too many things too well. Probably just number adjusting.
In the past (5-6 months ago) they think wave clear was less valued by devs and the community - hence why talents needed to have a 300% bonus damage for anyone to consider it. Now it's a major priority.
Zeratul is another hero that has a near 100% pick/ban ratio, so they're looking at what can be nerfed on him.

Void Prison and Wormhole for instance are being monitored.

Bans in ranked play creates a sort of barrier since it increases the minimum number of heroes needed for players to try that. It may also create a situation where someone's favorite character is always banned. But they considering implementing that.

Ideally they would want to address character balance in order for a character to not have to be banned all the time.

They want to add more “Quest Mechanics”. Regen orbs and Taste for Blood allows for a higher skill cap.

Links

SC2 Medic Lt. Morales Skills Revealed

Trait

Caduceus Reactor: After going four seconds without taking damage, regenerate 3 percent of your max health every second.

Basic Abilities

Healing Beam (Q): Heal a single ally every half second for as long as they remain near you. Pressing Q allows you to reselect your target, or you can cancel the channeling by activating your trait. There is no cooldown on this ability.
Safeguard (W): Reduce the damage the targeted ally takes for three seconds.
Displacement Grenade (E): Throw out a grenade that explodes as soon as it comes into contact with an enemy, dealing damage and knocking nearby enemies back.

Heroics

Medivac Dropship (R): Select a spot to travel to, causing you to enter a dropship. Teammates can then join you, and after four seconds, you'll travel to the chosen area.
Stim Drone (R): Select an ally to receive a 75 percent increase in attack speed and 25 percent additional movement speed for ten seconds.

Gamespot says the PTR goes up today.

Blizzard says: “We intended to release PTR today, but we'll be delaying the release for now. Keep an eye out for details in the coming days.”

Links

New Skins, Mounts and Hero Preview

Blizzard put out a new Hero, Skin and Mount preview showcasing a lot of new shiny things I must own that will soon be coming to the Nexus we’re assuming with the Medic patch. We now know that the StarCraft Medic hero is named Lt. Morales.

Lt. Morales

She has a blue Warcraft Alliance and gold Diablo Heaven themed color variants.
Her master skin has a blue, yellow and green Samus Aran color variant.
According to Gamespot, shes avialable on the PTR starting today.

Artanis was also shown in the video. His master skin looks very regal. There will also be a purchasable Purifier skin for Artanis and Evangelion fans will probably recognize his third color variant as looking quite similar to EVA Unit 01.

Looks like we’re finally getting the Marshal Raynor skin as well. This looks like an alternate universe Raynor where he became a Mengsk-like leader.

Buccaneer Falstad is another new real-money skin that makes Falstad look exactly like the Legendary Hearthstone TGT card Skycap’n Kragg. Except he’s still a dwarf and not an orc. It’s literally a pirate riding a giant parrot. It’s amazing.

There were more mounts and skins shown, but the big kicker is we’re finally getting a Vulture mount from StarCraft!

Links

http://www.heroesnexus.com/news/1489-blizzcon-2015-heroes-mount-unveiled-medic-artanis

Dustin Tweets

Same player/heroes played hit rank 1 on 2 smurf acc(below 300 games played) but not on my main (1300+games). Something wrong?

@DustinBrowder: Too many variables to be able to debug this through twitter. Will discuss with engineers. I have also seen a lot of feedback on this.

With the increasing number of 10k heroes, any chance we'll see more heroes go down in cost?

@DustinBrowder: Yes. People are looking at that now.

Diablo's winrate fell to 39.5% according to Hotslogs. His popularity also fell from 20-30% to 7%. What do you think about it?

@DustinBrowder: Will fix.

Are you seeing a drop off in play once a player reaches rank 1? Game could SOON use ranked incentives rather than rank no'.

@DustinBrowder: No, no drop off. But want Grand Master for sure.

Why do you answer all the complaints? Seriously, some of them are pretty irrelevant and seem to waste your time.

@DustinBrowder: Because people need to know they have been heard. And because 99% of the people who complain really love the game.

When are we going to hear more about Medic & Artanis? Who's in line to follow them? (I can't get enough of HotS)

@DustinBrowder: We won't talk about heroes beyond Artanis and Medic until Blizzcon.

It is boring not being able to ban zeratul in hero league.

@DustinBrowder: Yeah. Understood.

Check hotslogs/profiles, after a ~5 game winstreak you will get 1-2 teammates with MUCH lower MMR and games played.

@DustinBrowder: The game does not do that. That is not a rule.

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

Patron Thanks

Ryan S
MassiveNorgs
Alex J
Tyler W
Shane F

Strategy

Gazlowe

Tell me about your love for Gazlowe

Mr Banks

My question is concerning Hero League, when do I NOT use Gazlowe in Hero League? For example, what maps or comps should I stay away from with Gazlowe? Of course I understand that if I am last pick and we don't have a support or tank I should go that route, but say all the main roles are filled, when is Gazlowe a bad idea?

For additional info, the other heroes I'm pretty comfortable with are Li Li, Malfurion, Tassadar, Muradin, Johanna, Falstad & Raynor.

http://www.heroesnexus.com/talent-calculator/5-gazlowe#FAA

Outro

Patreon Shout Out

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iTunes Thanks

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Jestorm: “Been listening since alpha”

Into the Nexus is produced by Amove.tv and our Patreon producers Declan H. You can see more about this and all the other A-move shows at Amove.tv. You can also email the show at ITNcast@gmail.com.

Catch the live show Thursday nights at 8pm Eastern on Twitch.tv/Amovetv. Mobile live stream provided by Alpha Geek Radio. Go to mobile.alphageekradio.com.

Follow the show on Twitter @ITNcast, Facebook.com/Amovetv, And ITNpodcast.reddit.com.

Thanks to Brian Griffith, the musician responsible for our intro music. He can be found at briangriffithmusic.com or @briangriffith on twitter..

Personal Stuff

Garrett

Follow Garrett @GarrettArt

NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.

The Angry Chicken: A Hearthstone Podcast

The Angry Nerd

Kyle

A-move Radio

Kylefergusson.com

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