HoN 2.0, Breakthrough or Bust?

http://worthplaying.com/article/2010/12/2/previews/78586/

Weigh in your opinion on comments, Summary at bottom of post!

When Heroes of Newerth launched in May of this year, it was referred to by some fans as DotA 2.0. Now Heroes of Newerth itself is scheduled to get the “2.0″ branding, as S2 prepares to release a major update to the game. We met up with some of the S2 developers last night to get a peek at what’s in store for players when Heroes of Newerth 2.0 goes live in just under two weeks.

Perhaps the biggest change to be found in Heroes of Newerth 2.0 is the introduction of casual mode. Based on feedback from players, the team at S2 found that while the standard mode was great for the hardcore, sometimes players just wanted to jump in and get right to the action. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case in Heroes of Newerth as you and your teammates have to spend time farming creeps and gaining strength, especially because the payoff for a risky move often isn’t worth taking the chance. It isn’t unusual for a mistake to hurt you much more than a good play would benefit you.

Casual mode aims to change that by changing a few core rules. The first casual mode rule change is the elimination of the gold penalty on death. If you die, you don’t lose any gold. The second has to do with creeps and experience. Currently, if an opposing player delivers the killing blow on a creep you’ve weakened, you miss out on all the experience. With casual mode, if you are denied a kill, you still get full experience. You only miss out on the loot from the creep.

Finally, there is the experience curve. In standard play, the experience curve is linear. In casual mode, it ramps up sharply in the early stages before returning to a linear graph. According to the developers, the impetus behind casual mode is simply to create games that are shorter and more action-packed. Think of it like a Tootsie Roll Pop; everyone always wants to get to the good stuff in the center, but no one wants to wait for it.

Along those same lines, the team is introducing a brand-new map called Grimms Crossing. It’s not such a big deal in and of itself, until you realize that the new map is only 3v3 as compared to the standard 5v5. It’s designed to be small and narrow, offering little space to turtle or grind. Instead, the size and structure of the map are all about encouraging players to get to fighting as quickly as possible. According to S2, the beta testing results appear to indicate that the new map is doing the job, as it has been averaging double the kill rate of a standard 5v5 map over the same period of time.

Before you can get to the killing, though, you need to have a team to play with, and one of the weak points of Heroes of Newerth is the matchmaking system. Well, that’s also gotten an overhaul in Heroes of Newerth 2.0. The update offers both solo matchmaking as well as team-based matchmaking. When performing matching in 2.0, the server aims to not only match the overall performance of the teams, but also the relative performance of the players within a single team.

For example, while a team of two newbies and three experienced players might have a stat average that is similar to a team of five mid-level players, it’s not going to be fun for two newbies to play alongside those experienced players. There won’t be a chance for the new players to learn, and the experienced players will likely get frustrated with their mistakes. The goal of the new matching system is to ensure skill balance within a team as well as between the two teams.

According to the developer demoing the update to us, the matchmaking system will even look to match small groups. If you have a group of three and it ends up pairing you with a group of two for your team, it will attempt to ensure that the other team is also made up of one group of two and one group of three instead of say, five random players. If the matchmaking system ends up working as promised, it should improve the overall quality of pickup games.

Visually, the UI has gotten a facelift, with a focus on streamlining the interface. All the functionality is still there, but the goal was to reduce the amount of clicks necessary to perform a given action. Of all the little changes, what is most likely to stand out are the minimap updates, which is now interactive. Hover over a unit’s dot to see its name as well as its health and mana. If it’s a hero, you’ll also see the inventory slots. There’s no need to pan the map just to collect basic data. You can even mark items for attack or defense by holding the Alt key and clicking on the minimap. This sends a ping that is visible to your teammates.

Customization fans will appreciate the in-game shop that is being rolled out in the 2.0 update. No, you can’t get the exclusive pre-order shield (yes, S2 gets requests for this every week from players who don’t understand the meaning of exclusive), but aside from that, there is a cornucopia of options to choose from. Some of the small items for sale are basic tags, such as country flag and hero icons, which can be displayed next to your account name. You can also change your name color.

More complex items include alternate hero skins, which aren’t just simple re-skins. Many of them include entirely new models, new animations and new voices. The alternate skin for one popular hero has even changed from male to female. Another alternate hero skin was a full-on pimp, complete with pimp cane. Whereas the original hero threw out his sword to attack, the pimp version threw out his pimp cane. All of the alternative skins can be previewed before purchasing to ensure that there are no surprises.

It’s important to note that all of the shop items are purely cosmetic. They don’t affect gameplay in any way. To use our pimp cane example above, although it looks like a pimp cane, when it hits, it does the exact same damage as the original sword.

Another shop item was a custom announcer pack. For the demo, we checked out the Flamboyant pack, which replaces all of the text and announcer voices for your actions and plays on everyone’s machine. If multiple players have different packs, you’ll be able to tell who got the action simply by listening to the voice that plays. For the record, the Flamboyant announcer certainly lives up to his name. If you make the first kill with the Flamboyant pack enabled, everyone in game will hear “CHERRY POPPER!!!” to mark the occasion as the text appears in rainbow lettering.

Paying for items in the store is done with coins, and coins can either be purchased with real money or earned in-game. You can earn coins by playing, by getting notable kills such as first kill or a kill streak, or even by leveling up. It is entirely possible to purchase every item in the store without laying out a single red cent of real money. It’ll just take you a little time to earn it all. Don’t spend too much time trying to decide what to buy while in the shop, though. If you wait too long, the shopkeeper will get bored and start beatboxing.

Last, but not least, is the map editor. The very same map editor that S2 uses to create the maps is going to be included with Heroes of Newerth 2.0. We’re told that players will be able to submit their best maps to S2 for review and possible inclusion in a community map selection.

Barring any last-minute issues, Heroes of Newerth 2.0 is scheduled to go live on or about December 13, 2010. It is a free update to all players, so if you own Heroes of Newerth, you’re getting the 2.0 update without any additional charge.

Tl:DR Summary
- New mode replacing EZ, No gold penalty on death, denies are full xp, Faster levelling early.
- Grimms Crossing Map (3v3)
- Team Matchmaking & (supposedly) better individual matchmaking
- Customizable UI
- Cheap name shit that cost $$$ (Real or earned in-game)
- Alternate hero skins that cost $$$$ (Real or earned in-game)
- Custom Announcer packs
- Map Editor

HoN 2.0 Questions can be asked here – http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=187783

[SK]CarDinaL at his finest

HoN Moraxus Hero Guide

Moraxus

Starting Attributes

Str – 23+2.8 per lvl (primary attribute)

Agi – 16 + 1.7 per lvl

Int – 16 + 1.7 per lvl

Range – Melee

Damage 47-53

Armor 3.25

Movement Speed – 300

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Spells

Quake

Mana Cost – 50

Cooldown – 30.0 / 25.0 / 20.0 / 15.0 Seconds

Vid to come

With the right timing this spell is essentially a linkens sphere that adds armor, damage and movespeed when you dodge a spell.

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More Axes!

Moraxus is armed with more axes, which he may throw at enemies as presents.

Axed! Effect
Movespeed Slow Per Charge: 0.15
Maximum of 3 charges
3 second duration

Type – Magic

Range – 1,000

Mana Cost – 30

Cooldown – 1.0 Seconds

Vid to come

Such an annoying spell currently, expecting nerfs to this spell but basically can be used to last-hit harass from a safe distance with a simple Chalice/Ring of the Teacher early game.

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Matraxe

Moraxus creates a defensive axe matrix which feeds off of the energies of nearby enemies. Moraxus may detonate the matrix to deal damage to nearby enemies.

Matraxe Effect
Absorbs incoming post-mitigation damage. The Matraxe gains 20 health per second for each enemy hero in a 800 radius. Explodes for Magic damage equal to the Matraxe’s current health in a 400 radius when detonated or when it expires.

Type – Magic

Radius – 400

Mana Cost – 100 / 150 / 200

Cooldown – 80.0 / 70.0 / 60.0 Seconds

Vid to come

This skill is very weird, basically the longer you’re in the middle of the fray the more damage your ultimate does in the sense that the longer you stay alive, the more health your shield gets, and the more damage your shield does when it explodes.

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Skill Build

1.  More Axes

2. Quake

3. Arcane Shield

4/5. More Axes

6. Martraxes

7. More Axes

8-10. Quake

11. Matraxes

12-14. Arcane Shield

15. Attribute Bonus

16. Martraxes

17-25. Attribute Bonus

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Item Recommendations

Just like Pestilence Portal Key is a key part of Moraxus, cast your ult, blink in and stun and its easily a shitload of damage pouring out.

Behemoth’s heart obviously, adding to his survivability which is necessary for his ult and overall adds to his damage output.

Why the hell not, 2 linkens sphere just in case you forget about your Arcane Shield or it’s on cooldown to be way more annoying.  It’s actually not that bad allowing your mana regen to spam Axes and all.

Frostfield plate adds some much needed INT to Moraxus low mana pool as well as armor and an AoE slow to his arsenal, pretty good.

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Early Game

Depending on your lane gauge how aggressive you should be, More Axes is great for harassing as well as last-hitting so grab an early Blood Chalice and/or Ring of the Teacher.  One level in Arcane Shield is really helpful to be honest, the extra movespeed can be used to escape or chase down heroes after all a spell was just negated.  Regardless you should focus on last-hitting because Moraxus is dependent on surviving to be useful and thus, needs items.

Middle Game

If you have a portal key then you should start ganking, remember to use your ultimate before you blink-stun in so that the shield gets more health from  the heroes around.  If you have PKey you should start moving around a lot more, the initiation is pretty much the same level as Pestilence minus the Sprint, however with Arcane Shield Moraxus has a bit more leniency to jump in.  If you don’t have your PKey you should farm for it but remember to always carry a homecoming stone to help defend towers and port for team fights.

Late Game

By now you should be a fat tank, get that ultimate off and stick in those team fights as long as you can.  Obviously you should be focusing those who are vital to teamfights, whether it’s picking off a huge initiation tool like Hellbringer or Behemoth or killing the other carry hero you should be on their ass, always remember Arcane Shield it is SUCH a useful tool at this part in the game where spells are just flying everywhere one is bound to hit you

New hero Moraxus heavily overshadowed

- Delay before the other team can unpause lowered from 60s to 30s

Cue the rage crying from disgusting publics worldwide

New Hero Moraxus Weigh-In

WARNING! VIDEO MAY CONTAIN HIGH LEVELS OF

UNWATCHABLE FAGGOTRY

In case you missed this extremely terrible “spotlight” by Nigma & MsPudding, just further proving women can’t do anything worth shit unless it’s in the kitchen.

So Moraxus is the new hero, speculation on him being Shitlord port from DoTA was easily put to rest on the first sight of him in Beta.  So a basic rundown of his skills are:

AoE Around self Disable (Centaur Warchief Stomp ??)

Basically a Nullstone that also increases your movespeed somehow

Throws axes in a line that damages and slows units hit.

His ult not too sure that video does shit all for showing exactly what it does….

So whats the prognosis? Once everyone realize hes useless as fuck he’s gonna sit in the pick screen?  Or another hidden gem, until someone comes along and destroys in a competitive game (see: eG) with the hero?

Or would you rather see a DoTA Import?