an item idea to balance low elo melee

[Aurum]

melee is a high risk high reward mechanic, and is probably a tiny bit overtuned with how easy it is to parry bait with crushing fist but its in an acceptable spot in the ranks where people know what their f key does

but in even like arcanist this is not the case at all where its genuinely game ruining. My noob friend has been solo queueing games and the way he plays abrams is literally just perma holding the Q button and they dont even attempt to parry and he can outright 1v4 while even in souls for zero risk or zero skill expression asked of him. Unhealthy for every party involved. Abrams isnt learning anything and the enemies arent having fun.


I feel like a lot of the reason people dont parry is they're too scared of having their health chunked for 40% in an instant and having them in the back of their mind know the next melee wont hurt that much might make it easier to focus and actually go for the parry. Maybe hearing the noise of it break will make them think they need to parry now; IDK!

This should item obviously would never be bought outside of shitter elo and thats fine. Melee is genuinely probably one of the games biggest problem right now with how much it controls low elo and it needs to be addressed one way or another. This was the best solution i could think of that doesnt gut melee for everyone else

 

[Aurum]

probably wont feel as good as chunking people for 70% of their hp with a single melee, but i'd imagine this would be mostly fixed by the really cool cracking noise it could make once you fully break the stone shell

 

[Rosgath]

Rebuttal solves the issue of the Abrams who falls asleep on their melee key.

It reduces Parry CD AND it both heals you for the damage you would have taken AND does a 100% damage reflect on the person doing the melee. If you can't beat an Abrams spamming melee with Rebuttal and some Anti-heal, you don't deserve to beat him.

 

[gibnewitems]

Parry is already ridiculously broken. Rebuttal makes melee playstyles practically non-viable. Why would you need yet another cheap item to play against an already dogshit playstyle? It's not hard. Learn to press one key.

 

[Aurum]

Parry is already ridiculously broken. Rebuttal makes melee playstyles practically non-viable. Why would you need yet another cheap item to play against an already dogshit playstyle? It's not hard. Learn to press one key.

go watch literally any alchemist game and then come back and tell me if you think rebuttal fixes the issue of them being too melee reliant

 

[Aurum]

you just simply cannot have a hero or mechanic in your game that in the bottom 1/5th of your playerbase its the holy mecca of playstyle. Especially one as low skill as melee. It doesnt matter if in the rest of the playerbase its completely fine if down there its bad.

 

[Rosgath]

you just simply cannot have a hero or mechanic in your game that in the bottom 1/5th of your playerbase its the holy mecca of playstyle. Especially one as low skill as melee. It doesnt matter if in the rest of the playerbase its completely fine if down there its bad.

You also cannot balance around the bottom 20% of your player base. Doing so results in a game that will inevitably end up bland and boring.

 

[Aurum]

You also cannot balance around the bottom 20% of your player base. Doing so results in a game that will inevitably end up bland and boring.

this isnt balancing around the bottom 20%. This is making an item that only effects the bottom 20%. This will never be bought outside of it.

 

[gibnewitems]

this isnt balancing around the bottom 20%. This is making an item that only effects the bottom 20%. This will never be bought outside of it.

That's not the point. The point is we shouldn't be adding content specifically designed because the bottom 20% refuse to play the game correctly.

 

[Fred_]

Yeah as the others have said, this item sorta just doesn't work and makes melee playstyles even worse. Balancing an item around the bottom 20% of the playerbase is not good and shouldn't be done.

An idea I had while reading this is making an item that benefits melee playstyles instead. (I'll put this in my Item ideas thread )

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Melee Shielding​

3200 Souls

+15% Melee Distance

Build up a stacking Weapon and Spirit Resist for every successful Melee Attack. Apply Resist to yourself for a short duration after being parried.
+ Effect of Rebuttal (Maybe slightly different)

Max Resist: 40%?
Resist Build Up on Heavy Melee: 15%
Resist Build Up on Light Melee: 5%
Resist Duration: 4s

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This would serve as a sort of insurance for melee players for whenever they get parried by enemies.

 

[Aurum]

> makes melee playstyles even worse.

does not in the slightest. This item will always be worse than just parrying and in elos where melee isnt amazing this item is entirely useless with zero impact and the game remains the exact same.


>Balancing an item around the bottom 20% of the playerbase is not good and shouldn't be done

in a vacuum i agree with this sentiment, but it doesnt apply in this case if you think about it for more than three seconds. there are zero adverse affects in this case other than item bloat which i dont think is a real concern

 

[Fred_]

> makes melee playstyles even worse.

does not in the slightest. This item will always be worse than just parrying and in elos where melee isnt amazing this item is entirely useless with zero impact and the game remains the exact same.


>Balancing an item around the bottom 20% of the playerbase is not good and shouldn't be done

in a vacuum i agree with this sentiment, but it doesnt apply in this case if you think about it for more than three seconds. there are zero adverse affects in this case other than item bloat which i dont think is a real concern

It definitely does make melee playstyles worse. 70% melee resist is incredibly punishing and having to get more than a heavy melee's worth of hits onto someone to lower it to zero is quite a bit, now pair this with someone who can also parry sometimes and this just makes you very melee resistant. Even with the cooldown and resist build up you still have have quite a lot of resist at all times.
1v1s become really really hard for melee players since people with the item already have quite a big advantage at the start of the fight (I'd say less in team fights since the chaos allows for easier melees to slip through).

If you really want to make this item more balanced and fair for all types of players I'd would suggest something like this maybe:

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"Passively build up melee resist over time, decrease it on the next instance of melee damage from an enemy hero. Getting parried instantly resets this item's melee resist and also reduces your melee resist by 20%."
The effect is basically the same with the added down-side of parries being more punishing, I think this is pretty fitting as this item is specifically for close range encounters.

Another downside instead of the parry one could also be: "The next instance of melee damage from an enemy hero after your shield breaks is increased by 25%."
This would make the down-side more fair towards every hero instead of ones that use melees more. This would make the item act kinda like a scale, which would start in your favor with high resist but could risk tilting in the enemy's favor instead if they land too many hits on you.

Also make the shield go down with a single heavy melee and maybe 2-3 light melees (Unless you're picking the second down-side instead of the parry one). Heavy Melees are pretty hard to pull off unless in a chaotic situation so having it destroy the entire shield should be good.

I would also say decrease the resist down from 70% to 50% but that would make this item a tad too weak, the issue with the 70% resist though is that from my knowledge all melee damage abilities in the game deal light melee damage so it would also be pretty punishing (Though it may also be fine since there's barely any abilities that deal that sort of damage so it would be very niche)

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And the point with balancing an item around lower rank players is that those types of players are still learning the game or don't have the biggest grip on it, so more niche or slightly harder to use items will seem really bad to them while these types of items that are good for less skilled people may end up being very very strong for players with higher ranks.
You may bring up the point of parrying and that would be a good point since higher ranks could spare a slot since they can parry well but melee hits will always slip through no matter how good you are at parrying and so an item like this still has quite some use especially with such a high melee resist. (Also don't forget some abilities deal melee damage so you're just turning those off too)