Nu Wa Patch 5th December 2013

I'm sad that they didn't balance most of the gods. And Chang'e did not need that healing nerf. Now she can be considered the worst healer in the game, while Hel becomes an even better support.

It's nice that Nu Wa looks so good, because everything else about this patch is just terrible. I thought HiRez was starting to put forth a serious effort to balance the game after the last patch (which was a step in the right direction,) and then this one comes out and just falls back into the same trap of trying to change the game around low level casual outcomes and adding OP stuff for flash.

I don't know why there's absolutely no effort to balance the game around competitive play. They won't even add extra bans to ranked to make up for the fact that there are almost ten gods that should be banned. The lack of nerfs to gods like Agni, He Bo and Mercury just shows either complete cluelessness, or a set of priorities that worries me about the future of the game. Who wants to play a game that's all about adding new stuff, and not about creating a balanced environment? It's a bad trap to fall into when you just care about the instant gratification. The new god looks great! it'll be loads of fun to have 'another' god that needs banned or played in every match.

So what I am hearing... is that it is very possible that Chang'e will be FUBAR (****ed Up Beyond All Repair) like Hel was pre-rework. Great...

The changes that Hi-Rez is making to her are very unnecessary, yes.

They FUBAR'd Chang'e last patch when they took her only weakness (early lane clear,) and made it into a strength. She's been banned/first pick in ranked since, and this lolnerf does nothing to change that. She's losing one shot from an archer minion worth of heal at max rank. .2 seconds on her 2 isn't much either. She can still use it to counter pretty much any big ability since it procs so fast, it just won't last forever on the back end.

She always had some of the best utility in the game, and she's possibly the most devastating god in the game when ahead. The fact that she has such a strong early game now means that a team needs to put an extra effort into keeping her down. Arachne is a similar concept; it's not that you can't beat them, it's that it requires more coordination and planning than normal. That creates an imbalanced environment when we're talking about solo queue.

Chang'e is just a problematic god. Her kit is so strong that she needs to lose some utility, otherwise she's just gonna bounce back and forth between OP and too weak to use.

Also, the Arachne buff in this patch is probably the most confusing one. I get it; Agni is Hirez' baby and he's never losing the ridiculous CC immunity on his dash, same with He Bo nerfs. Arachne has been consistently nerfed to hell, only now she's a solo queue plague that's been unleashed on both ranked and casual, and nothing.