The Queue: You are all wrong

There was a lot of talk yesterday about the best horror movie, but you are all wrong. What We Do in the Shadows is hands-down the best horror movie of all time.

What? You’re telling me it’s a comedy? Come on! It had vampires, it had werewolves, it had the terror of death everywhere. Absolutely a horror movie. I don’t see how anyone could disagree with its qualifications.

And now that I’ve started an exciting new horror movie conversation, let’s get to a new day of mostly on-topic questions.

Yep.

Uh. Though since you asked that 24 hours ago you may not really need to know the answer anymore.

Okay, let’s try this again! With a tough question! Yeah!

Everyone seems to be going nuts over Black Cat D.Va, but I have to say it’s all about the golden glory of Asp Pharah.

Only 5 more days until our cosmetics update arrives in Overwatch! Join us as we count down to their release with new item reveals every day.

Today's reveal: ASP PHARAH (Legendary Skin) pic.twitter.com/hDROJPh8WZ

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) January 18, 2018

With the crazy crossover skins Blizzard added in the Blizzard World map, I have to wonder where this one is. Just imagine how awesome Mercy would look hovering over the battlefield with Diablo-style angel wings? You can’t say that wouldn’t be amazing.

I really think the problem here is that heirlooms were tremendously overpowered. Beyond the XP buff, they offered better stats and DPS than anything you would find in the world. (Especially at low levels. I recall leveling a Priest a while back where I would just wander through zones, tapping things with Shadow Word Pain and running around collecting loot. That was it. SWP, run to the next mob, SWP, run to the next mob… repeat until you circle back to loot everything.)

Now, heirlooms are on par with good quest rewards or dungeon blues. That makes them less of a must-have, letting everyone level even if they don’t want to spend mountains of gold on heirlooms. It means people with heirlooms can be more engaged in gear choices instead of yawning and vendoring everything. Heirlooms are still a convenience (you don’t have to think about gear and can just vendor everything if you want to) and offer a good XP boost. But you don’t need them.

They aren’t crazy powerful anymore, and that changes how we’ve become accustomed to using them. But I don’t think they’re useless, even if there are fewer reasons to use them.

But I find it very interesting that while AssieEevee talked about heirlooms being useless, other comments in the Queue suggested that their XP boost was practically a requirement in the new system. Jay said he felt that scaling was based on “the assumption you are using all looms.” And Reasor noted that a Death Knight without heirlooms now finishes the DK starting experience at level 57… meaning they have to spend a while finding quests to do on Azeroth before they could head to Outland or Northrend at level 58.

I think the outcry on both sides suggests that Blizzard hasn’t gotten the balance exactly right. But the leveling experience was so broken before that I can only think what we have now is still an improvement… even though it’s certainly imperfect.

I think this is a tough one, because it seems like heroes in Overwatch and heroes in HotS both have a pretty long development lead time, which would require coordination. On top of that, the Heroes team has always been good about making heroes that feel like their version in the original game, so they would have to wait until the Overwatch design was relatively finalized before finishing their own version.

The closest we’ve come before was with Lucio, the first Overwatch hero added to HotS, who joined the Nexus nine months after Overwatch’s launch. That’s not very tight timing.

This would be fun (just imagine the hype overload!) but I think it’s pretty dang unlikely.

For question #1, I think this is a bit difficult because — with the exception of Nemsy — Hearthstone’s heroes are just Warcraft lore figures. And because Nemsy is just a Hearthstone Warlock with the same in-game abilities as Gul’dan, the Heroes team would basically be making a brand new hero. Nemsy in Heroes couldn’t just be a Gul’dan copycat. She would need unique skills and abilities so she could stand on her own.

Which segues into the next question of whether Blizzard might release a brand new hero to HotS. I certainly think they could. There are 78 heroes in the game right now, each with their own playstyle. It’s clear that the team is completely capable.

But will they turn their attention to heroes we haven’t seen anywhere else? I think it’s unlikely simply because there are so many characters in Blizzard lore to work with. And because that’s the theme of the game, I think they’re going to stick to going through Blizzard canon until they run out (which may be never). A hero like Nemsy, where they have to flesh them out to be unique members of the Nexus lineup, seems a lot more likely than new heroes entirely.

That’s all for today, everyone. Tomorrow Anne will be your host for another day of questions and answers, so make with those lore questions.