The Queue: I told myself I’d write this earlier

Sometimes, you meet your goals. Other times, you start writing The Queue at 2 a.m. But hey, it’s certainly not the latest I’ve ever written one of these… just not necessarily the earliest. I give myself a 73% chance of also finishing this before morning.

Update: I went to bed. Now it’s morning.

Let’s do The Queue. Also, awesome header image via TamplierPainter.

Yes. Yes he is. I didn’t actually expect a lot of summoning, because that’s been done by Xul. I wasn’t entirely sure how they’d make his Frost-based spells works because Jaina sort of covers that area, but I absolutely expected Death and Decay, and I’m happy to see it made it in. I don’t think I ever expected him to be a bursty Assassin, so the slow/root angle works well. He’s going to make a fitting complement to Arthas with all the slows.

In short, he’s a unique enough approach to stand out from other heroes without feeling like his essence has been lost.

This is a fair question, and it’s one Alex has stated his confusion over (not just about me, about the community in general).

For me, I love his aesthetic — I’ve always been a fan of the Scourge stuff in WoW — but the bigger appeal is nostalgia. I didn’t exactly play DOTA (in Warcraft 3) a lot, but the few times I did, it was with my best friend, rocking out to Basshunter, just wingin’ it. And I played the Kel’Thuzad hero. Having him in HotS is sort of things coming full circle, and it reminds me of those first few times playing DOTA.

{PB}This works less now that Shadow is so defined by the Old Gods and Void, but I’ve always thought it would be cool if Blizzard implemented literal shadows into our kit. Like, imagine if we sent our own shadow through the ground toward our enemy until it reached them, popped up through the ground, and crashed down on them for damage. I guess that’s more along the lines of what a ghost might do but meh. I like the ideas of Shadow Priests actually having shadows in their offensive kit.

As was pointed out in the comments, this isn’t actually what’s happening. When you log on to a new character, a shorter cooldown is activated (something like 2 or 3 minutes) so you don’t abuse toon-switching to heal pets more easily when you’re out of bandages.

I think stealth isn’t so much an ability as it is a mechanic, and yeah, it’s totally fine to have it across multiple heroes. I don’t think primary abilities should be the exact same, but Blizzard’s approach to heroes that are too similar in theory seems to be redesigning them slightly. None of their heroes feel too far off the mark, but some of them — the Diablo heroes — are spot-on representations of their original counterparts, whereas others take a few artistic liberties.

I don’t know if that entirely answers your question, but I think it’s okay to have very similar abilities in and of themselves, as long as the overall kit interacts in a way that feels unique. The latter half is what Blizzard seems to be focusing on especially lately.

Honestly? I’m not sure there’s a price barrier that would prevent me from buying unless it reached obscene heights (maybe like $200+?). I’ve been playing (and enjoying) the game for far too long to just up and stop playing. But then again, it’s hard to say for certain, since Blizzard would never do that — in reality, I might have a lower limit. It’s hard to say.

What about the rest of you? I’m curious — not just the price that seems stupid to you, but the one that would actually make you stop from playing altogether.

….well balls. This one is tough. It depends if you consider Arthas strong enough to take control of Kel’Thuzad. Working on the assumption that he couldn’t just control him, I’d probably give it to either Malthael or Kel’Thuzad. KT’s roots and slows might give him the upper-hand, though, and he could probably at least do a little more burst.

But again, it’s a tough call.

Here’s the outro. Happy Tuesday, y’all.