throwawaynumber7
New member
Recently, the laning meta has evolved to taking advantage of the "soul sharing" system during the first 10 minutes in a way that appears to be an unintended "abuse" of the system... If done properly, this "double soaking" approach (aka "1.5x laning" in a recent popular video) is strictly optimal for net worth economy, and the best "counter" to proper usage of the exploit is to mirror it. (NB: some people will be bad at this and thus die/fail, this is about how easily you can actually abuse the system). Exploiting the system designed to enable all 6 players to have meaningful net worth feels like an unintended side effect of a positive development for the MOBA genre, thus, I believe it should be fixed...
The SYNERGY BUFF proposal aims to fix this issue, allowing flexibility in lane swapping and rotations, while penalizing attempts to merely "soak" farm from two lanes at once passively.
SYNERGY BUFF
Players with a synergy buff with other player(s) share soul income based on the same rules that currently exist (100/100 for two players, etc, and limited by range)
The intent in summary:
Although other fixes such as map geometry, accelerated methods to defensively rotate against the strategy, or creating better opportunities for a duo lane to punish a solo player without creeps present, I believe this fix is readily available and solves core issues without affecting the overall metagame in a meaningful way.
The SYNERGY BUFF proposal aims to fix this issue, allowing flexibility in lane swapping and rotations, while penalizing attempts to merely "soak" farm from two lanes at once passively.
SYNERGY BUFF
Players with a synergy buff with other player(s) share soul income based on the same rules that currently exist (100/100 for two players, etc, and limited by range)
- Unique Synergy buffs are generated by players that meet the qualifications:
- Players that start the game on the same zipline are automatically given a synergy buff with each other.
- To gain a synergy buff with a new player, you must be within current soul sharing range of the non-synergized player and:
- 3 soul orbs are confirmed
- one enemy player
- one objective death occurs
- Gaining a synergy buff with a new player immediately ends all other synergy buffs
- 3 (or more) players may gain the same synergy buff, in line with current soul sharing behavior.
- All synergy buffs are removed at 10 minutes (same behavior as current play)
The intent in summary:
- "static" non rotating lanes will behave exactly as before, with duo lanes sharing full souls.
- Lane swapping to counter hero match-ups or player skill is only marginally penalized, with 3 troopers worth of souls split 50/50 in the new duo (and no penalty to the new solo laner) before the synergy buff is gained.
- Roaming for ganks/kills works nearly the same in most cases, with player kills or rotations to kill guardians immediately awarding synergy to relevant players
- Post 10 minutes continues to work as before
- "Soaking" partial waves from a solo lane, and then returning to the duo lane, is harshly penalized, with the 3 players collectively losing up to 6 troopers worth of shared souls as the synergy buff is gained and then lost again.
Although other fixes such as map geometry, accelerated methods to defensively rotate against the strategy, or creating better opportunities for a duo lane to punish a solo player without creeps present, I believe this fix is readily available and solves core issues without affecting the overall metagame in a meaningful way.
