OAA reoccuring issues

[DarkoniusXNG]

I will list some general issues OAA has and I see nobody actively talks about. I will also propose some solutions and share ideas I have.

1) Infinite mana on INT heroes and heroes that make support items.
Possible solution: Making every ability mana cost higher at OAA levels and lowering INT gain on non-INT heroes.
2) BKB makes ~50% of all heroes useless.
Because duration doesn't decay with usage, some heroes don't gain a new power spike like in normal dota where in super late game when everyone used bkb a lot of times, casters become powerful again because bkb duration is only 5 seconds.
Possible solution: Make every hero not able to permastun (I am looking at you Shadow Shaman). And make bkb duration constant (7 seconds) or duration decay with usage like in normal dota. Upgrading bkb will upgrade only its stats.
3) One team almost always snowballs out of control.
I think this is primarily because comeback mechanics like bounty runes, capture points and wanderer serve better as snowball mechanics. Possible solutions:

• Rework bounty runes so they give XP only to non-farming heroes (for example they could give XP only to Midas carriers - Midas spark and/or Hand of Midas.
• Remove normal CAPTURE POINTS that spawn at minutes 5, 15, 25, 35 etc.
  If you dont like removing them, then change the reward they give (a new buff, vision or something else.)
• When a winning team kills a wanderer, they should get only a buff and not cores.
• Make a better formula for XP gain on hero kills - add a better comeback factor.

4) Everyone has too much armor and hp / my carry doesn't deal damage.
Possible solutions: We nerf armor again or we buff damage items. But it will always be a problem, I tried fixing it once and at least people now are not getting oneshot anymore. But I know for sure that Ward Stack needs nerfing, Heart may need another hp nerf as well.
5) You cannot sell high tier items for cores.
Primary reason for this is because we don't have custom shop and cores are still items and not a resource like wood in some custom games. Also one of the reasons why everyone wanted standalone and why custom shop had 30 euroes bounty.
6) Winning Final Duel is the only win condition.
But you will say that Angel Arena is like that and thats a flaw in its genre. I am just pointing out a problem. If you think this is not a problem, I will just say that having secondary win conditions will make the game better.
7) Bosses don't feel like bosses anymore.
Especially tier 1 bosses are too weak, they need buffing, I will work on this for now.
8) Wanderer issues
I already discussed this with Chris, but I will write here for documentation:

• He needs abilities and he needs to be stronger.
• He needs to spawn randomly (not in the middle every time) but at the side of the map that is losing.
• Cooldown reduction that wanderer gives makes some heroes impossible to balance. Probably one of the reasons why teams banned Dazzle at the tournament. Also Nyx is insane.
• Wanderer needs to drop a normal capture point when killed, so teams can actually have time to contest it.
• Not a good comeback mechanic

[POCKETMONEY99]

1. I dont think infinite mana is an issue on 99% of heroes. Heroes that have mana issues will have mana issues throughout the game if they dont buy mana items. This is fine.

2. I think BKB is fine. Bear in mind heroes like Skywrath and Zeus have dominated the meta at times and I dont think BKB has been touched. Item powerlevels also increase as the game proggresses so I think BKB should be left unchanged. As for heroes permanstunning you I think talents combined with octarine core is an issue with some of these heroes. Shaker, Shaman and disruptor all have problematic talents for example. Octarine Core should be flat 25% CDR at all levels. (Buff stats instead.)

3. The level to which people snowball is kind of hard to gauge. In a 5v5 where people are of simillar skill and tryharding games often dont get as snowbally. An issue is that early game is a mess with most farming heroes being feast or famine. Either they are virtually unstoppable and 1v9 or the enemy supports shut you down and you are useless. Currently with all the extra cores on the map and core fission being behind doesnt feel as bad. (However comebacks usually take 20 + Minutes to even out the score which isn't great).

A better formula on kill exp may help. Gold isn't very relevant.

I think reworking midas spark so every 100 charges you kill a creep for bonus gold AND EXP will help supports keep up in exp. Additionally remove hand of midas because having to juggle that item in your backpack every minute is annoying af.

4. The armour changes you made were good. Armour doesn't need nerfing again. The issue is that going a stat/armour heavy build on a support (Usually a key target due to high utility) makes you nearby unkillable while still granting you great utility. The main items which cause this issue are the extremely slot effective items like ward stack, far sight and spirit vessel. Ward stack should just be an item you can straight up buy for 700 Gold (Item is ridiculously valuable stat wise. Then remove the armour. I think carries need their spells buffing at OAA levels rather then Damage of Items being increased. Carries with good right click steroids deal pretty good damage. However a few damage items could use minor buffs (Mainly aimed at improving levels 3 to 5).

5. While this is an issue I think its not that bad. You only need 2 tier 4 cores to build a new level 5 item. You can easily get 2 tier 4 cores in a 2-3 minutes. I think the issue lies in gold generation. Your usually on tier 4 bosses before you have enough gold to start using them. Meaning you dont get enoguh time to reitemize. Personally I would make Tier 4/5 bosses give a huge gold bounty upon dying. This way you can quickly get enough gold to reitemize if necesarry.

6. This is definetly a fundamental issue with angel arenas. I think this combined with a few other things is why there isn't a single standalone angel arena game. This is a very complicated issue.

7. The problem with bosses is that the amount of armour they get doesnt scale with boss tiers, whereas all minus armour reduction does. By the time you get to tier 3+ Bosses you have so much minus armour bosses die in seconds.

Increasing boss difficulty outside of stat buffs I think boss difficulty should be increased by "if you fail to do X you get punished with Y Debuff etc" rather then "if you fail to go X you get OHKO". Bosses should still do damage but you should be allowed to make more then one mistake before dying. OAA is a PVP game not a PVE game. Even in tornament's the Russian teams would get teamwiped by certain bosses, which is bad design for a PVP game. If a boss can slow down the rate which you kill him this is almost as bad as you dying to the boss, without all the OHKO nonsense attached.

For example on Sven Boss. Instead of him doing 3K + Pure Damage on all his skills, reduce the damage (make it physical). If you get hit by his melee attack reduces your damage output by 50%. for 4 seconds. You dont want to just tank the boss because it will slow down the speed at which you take it so you will kite the bosses attacks. You still play the boss fight exactly the same as if it will oneshot you but the OHKO nonsense is removed. You shouldn't be able to afk tank bosses but they shouldnt oneshot you.

8. Wanderer buff should be removed. The cores/10 Points is a large enough reward. Wanderer should definetly drop a normal capture point aswell. I think wanderer should be weaker initially but become stronger as you fight it (Bezerkers blood or something). Basically this means if you accidently aggro wanderer you not going to get 2 shot but he is still hard to do. If you add abilties to wanderer be careful. He has no boss pit so certain spells may be hard to dodge depending on where you are on the map.