heroes Hanamura Rework Spotlight

[Stan 5,249]

Hanamura will return to the battleground pool soon and Creative Content Lead Kevin Johnson guides us through all the changes in the latest update.

Hanamura was pulled from the battleground roster in order to address some gameplay issues back in August. Blizzard tweaked the battleground and shared some details about the rework today.

Hanamura Rework Highlights

Payload

• The objective has shifted from two competing payloads to a single contested one.
• The original version had payloads on the top and bottom of the map that both teams controlled separately, dividing player attention and action across the field of battle.
• If a payload is left unattended by your team, it will no longer drift backwards, removing forward progress, but will instead remain in its current position, until either escorted again by your team, or picked up by your enemy.
• Winning the objective no longer deals straight damage to the core without attacking forts and keeps first.
• The team that was successful in the initial payload push will find that the path for their second attempt will shift, becoming a greater challenge than the first. The path will update a final time upon a second successful push making the third attempt even more difficult. The pattern resets to the first path for the fourth objective.

Core

• The core has been opened up for direct attacks from your team.

Mercenary Camps

• Turret camps remain unchanged.
• Healing & Mega Enforcer camps have been replaced with new Sentinel siege camps.
• Sentinels push down lanes and have a strong cleave attack.
• The standard vision watchtowers have been replaced with a new set of mercs that provide the same vision functionality, but instead of merely standing uncontested in the area to counter-capture them, you must take out the mercenaries positioned there instead.

[Morcalivan 86]

Neat. I've only ever played it in Brawl.

[mada7 29]

This looks a lot more fun than the original. The two payloads made the map super boring

[lChronosl 182]

I liked the original, but I agree that this versions seems more focused and competitive. I would have liked if they had kept the old one for custom games.

[Valhalen 1,485]

Can't wait for this rework.

[ArusVicious 156]

I think I might actually love this rework. Serious props to the dev team for making it look this awesome!

[Morcalivan 86]

Robot Samurai for the win. ?

[SteveFrost 97]

I like how the objective becomes harder for the team that gets it. Booty Bay next? (hope they don't change much, I like the map personally, Blackheart is funny and the objective's strong as it should be imho)

P.S. Can I get as ripped as Kevin pls?

[Plergoth 277]

5 hours ago, SteveFrost said:

Booty Bay next? (hope they don't change much, I like the map personally, Blackheart is funny and the objective's strong as it should be imho)

I think changing Blackheart Bay so it doesn't eliminate the middle fort or leave it on it's last legs in the first salvo would be a fair change. Ideally it should just stay off ranked rotations and even normal until it gets its own redesign or changes. 

[Alkasar 55]

1 hour ago, Plergoth said:

I think changing Blackheart Bay so it doesn't eliminate the middle fort or leave it on it's last legs in the first salvo would be a fair change. Ideally it should just stay off ranked rotations and even normal until it gets its own redesign or changes. 

Blizzard once said that they would like to change or rework Blackhearts Bay. But I cannot tell you when this was. It was just one little mention in an interview or FAQ.

Looking at what they mentioned earlyer this year, Blackhearts Bay and Lost Viking's second rework may be the next big updates.

[mada7 29]

Legit question, what's so bad about Blackheart's Bay? It's not my favorite map but I never thought of it as particularly bad. Why do so many people have issues with it

[Morcalivan 86]

Probably because you don't need to actually fight other people to win.

[Warper 12]

4 hours ago, Alkasar said:

Blizzard once said that they would like to change or rework Blackhearts Bay. But I cannot tell you when this was. It was just one little mention in an interview or FAQ.

Looking at what they mentioned earlyer this year, Blackhearts Bay and Lost Viking's second rework may be the next big updates.

My recollection of their mention of TLV was that they recognize a need to rework them, but don’t know what to do with them. Which makes me doubt they will a rework any time soon.

[Valhalen 1,485]

1 hour ago, Warper said:

My recollection of their mention of TLV was that they recognize a need to rework them, but don’t know what to do with them. Which makes me doubt they will a rework any time soon.

If I recall correctly, in one of Reddit AMAs that happened this year, Blizzard said they wanted to make options for builds where the Vikings are stronger when fighting together, because they deemed the split push builds "not fun for everyone" (which I completely agree).

[Plergoth 277]

7 hours ago, Morcalivan said:

Probably because you don't need to actually fight other people to win.

Correct. It's also the size and travel huge gaps between the top middle lanes and the bottom lane, making players feel isolated and alone in a game that's supposed to emphasise frequent team fighting, skirmishes and contested objectives. On Blackheart Bay you can literally have games were both teams rotate around the map collecting coins and clearing camps and waves but otherwise avoiding each other with the side that got the first salvo got an xp lead that basically snowballs the rest of the game and makes it very difficult for a team of equal skill to really catch up or create opportunities unless the other team makes mistakes which grows more unlikely the further up the ladder you go, hence why it's seldom seen in pro play if at all. 

[VegaPl 88]

9 hours ago, Plergoth said:

Correct. It's also the size and travel huge gaps between the top middle lanes and the bottom lane, making players feel isolated and alone in a game that's supposed to emphasise frequent team fighting, skirmishes and contested objectives. On Blackheart Bay you can literally have games were both teams rotate around the map collecting coins and clearing camps and waves but otherwise avoiding each other with the side that got the first salvo got an xp lead that basically snowballs the rest of the game and makes it very difficult for a team of equal skill to really catch up or create opportunities unless the other team makes mistakes which grows more unlikely the further up the ladder you go, hence why it's seldom seen in pro play if at all. 

Precisely what is considered the biggest flaw of the map - you can ignore the other team as long as you pile up the coins. It gives you low emphasis on team fights and it is not how the devs want to it be, for obvious reasons. As for the pro play, I have been watching some HGC for around 6 months now and never have I seen being played. I don't think it's in the rotation in the first place.

But let's get back to the topic - Hanamura. I am quite happy it's back to the game (finally), though I have to admit I didn't consider it that bad. Saying that, I do realize that double payload (double objective in general) is something that makes people confused on what they should be doing at a given moment. You had to chose whether you want to escort yours and challenge theirs, which is also something that the devs try to avoid in general. People need clear objectives, otherwise they will be whining and generally feel uncomfortable. I would personally like to some something even more straightforward; if you played SCII, there was the rite of Rak'Shir when Alarak and Ma'lash would "duel". To put simply, the more units you had with 'your' side around the duelist, the faster it would push the objective towards the enemy base. So kinda like Hanamura now, but more like one-lane. I would imagine they could add Rak'Shir as a brawl perhaps.

[SteveFrost 97]

On 8/21/2018 at 3:36 PM, Plergoth said:

I think changing Blackheart Bay so it doesn't eliminate the middle fort or leave it on it's last legs in the first salvo would be a fair change. Ideally it should just stay off ranked rotations and even normal until it gets its own redesign or changes. 

They nerfed the amount of exp you get from first towers going down, so it's not as bad as it used to be imho. Sure, it needs changes but I don't think too much, same scope as Hanamura would do imho (there's a reason why this is one of the few maps where heroes like Nova, Valeera etc are considered "viable"- for Nova, it may be the only one).

23 hours ago, Morcalivan said:

Probably because you don't need to actually fight other people to win.

You (normally?) fight for the dubloon chests (unless you want to give enemy team free cash-literally). Also, the pay-in gets bigger and biggrer progressively and it rotates between lanes; a team definitely can't just "farm" their half of the map all game and win without crossing over to the other side; unless the other team never contests (and you should always contest).

I really don't get why the map that is the glaring example of "pay2win" gets so much hate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ kappa

[Androski 5]

Rip Stitches Boss.