Kael’thas Reddit Q&A Highlights

by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

While there has been a lot of discussion about the latest patch and the introduction of Kael’thas to the Nexus, a recent Reddit Q&A featuring BlizzJohnzee and Centaurik has garnered less attention.

These two developers took time out of their busy schedules to answer a variety of user submitted questions.  Don’t be misled by the title of the Q&A, this was not simply a discussion about the latest Hero.

Here are some of the topics they covered:

Kael’thas

• The design process started with Verdant Spheres and the trait went thru many iterations.
• Early versions included automatic activation, tying spell power increase to the number of Spheres, and spell power increasing the longer a player waited between spells.
• The final version is based on wanting players to be able to make strategic decisions for how to best use this trait based on the situation.
• They discussed ways to counter Pyroblast such as Hardened Shield, Divine Shield, and Tassadar’s Dimensional Shift ability.
• Pyroblast could originally be used on minions, but they changed that after accidentally casting it on one too many minions.
• Phoenix was originally a basic ability and involved spawning an egg that would need to be ‘cooked’ with Flamestrike in order to spawn another Phoenix.

Diablo/E.T.C

• The changes to these Heroes were not based on the current Meta.  They began working on changes to these Heroes roughly five months ago and completed them about a month later.
• The changes were design driven, not balance driven.
• They want to remove the unstoppable behavior from some quick dive abilities and they recently developed the technology to do so.  The Diablo changes are a part of this and there may be similar changes coming fo Falstad, Kerrigan, and Illidan.

Sylvanas

• They are working on changes to Possession that will retain the conversion mechanic, but make it feel more epic.

Gazlowe

• They felt Lazer was underused and neglected so they made changes to make it a more deadly ability that can be used mid combat.
• The change to turret targeting was intended to make it more reliable and to remove the prior “dead-zone” for melee Heroes.
• They wanted to fix some of the lesser chosen talents and provide an overall buff to Gazlowe.
• They acknowledge the changes will require a new approach to playing Gazlowe, but they feel it will make him a better overall Hero.

Abathur

• Since the patch, Abathur’s cooldowns are not resetting when switching Symbiote targets.  This is not intentional and was the result of a related bug fix, and it will be corrected in a future patch.

Hero Design and Development

• The developers gave some very interesting insight into the creation process for new Heroes and how they determine what Heroes will be introduced next.
• Throughout the design process, there have been several examples of Heroic abilities that were originally intended for one Hero, but were later moved to another Hero when it was a better fit.
• Rehgar’s kit was originally designed for Thrall but didn’t fit their vision for him.
• Zagara used to have Ultralisk and Kerrigan used to have Devouring Maw.
• Azmodan used to have a different Z ability, which later became Zagara’s Nydus Worm.
• Their goal is to make sure that all Heroes are viable at many levels of play.
• They do not want to get overly involved in changing the Meta.  They prefer to let the players decide what is fun and effective.
• They prefer to focus making changes when something is not fun to play with or against, or when it is hurting the core design values of the game.
• There are more talent and ability changes coming for some Heroes, but at this point they are primarily focused on launching the game.

The full Reddit Q&A can be found here.

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