every time she is bad the general agreement on why is because her skills are ass to use unreliable so instead o QOLL her features like acually making her skulls target shit, they give her massive damage increases
every time she is busted because of her absurd stats everyone agrees she just needs to have the QOLL and them have the stats nerfed, instead valve just removes random bulshit from her quit
well, they finally listened and made skulls work like they should. They're Waaaay better now. she needs nerfs but she'll always feel better to play from here on out because her skulls actually function.
that is kinda of the thing for her entire history graves's balancing has been gatekept by lack of bugfixing now they can actually work around not having her deal trillions of damage
Her kit can't be balanced because it is inherently poorly designed. As long as her kit continues to basically play itself it will always swing between being mind-numbingly overpowered or useless.
nah, graves as design is completely fine the real issue behind her is the mentality the balancing teams and the community has over her
the issue with graves is that she larps as a summoner (all her damage is "summon based, but none of what she does actually behaves as minions or is consistent enough to be usable), behaves as a spellcaster (everything she does is spirit, but none of her spirit scalling stuff is good), but in reality is a melee hero that scales with her gun (her gun is only dangerous at melee range, and is functionally undodgeable if you are close nough, just lime melee), and valve up to this point has balanced her as such
what they had to do is actually make her summons BEHAVE AS SUMMONS and actually do stuff instead of getting stuck at each and every most minor element in the map and them start working on balancing her which is what they have done
Nah her kit is fine, standard moba character, the hero shooter players are just up in their feels about auto aim.
Her winrate this patch is probably a combination of urn meta (she has amazing urn fights with wall and tombstone on the bridge) and her skulls finally working.
When they touch up the urn, I think she just needs some damage nerfs on skulls. They're performing way better than people expected now that they actually stick to people and reliably latch on when spawned. Throwing 12 skulls at people is A fuck ton of consistent dps that's overwhelming, and you can't really kill them when there's that many and you're being pressured by the grave's team.
I think it's a combination of the urn changes and people generally not respecting her skulls. Although, I do agree that numbers might need a little tweaking.
On the urn front she excels at area denial/control. The new mechanic encourages big fights in a crazy small area (mid bridge). It's only natural she's going to excel where she should. She's still ass if you catch her in a lane, farming camps, or doing sinners.
On the skull front people are disrespecting their damage like crazy. Folks are used to them not tracking properly or being useless from gun being most played. This is literally her only "aggressive" skill to make proactive plays. A case can be made for wall but it's really better at area denial/control not 1v1. Most heroes just kill you from the other side of it without needing to cross over.
Her major weakness still exists, survivability. She has no movement abilities, base 2 stamina, and inconsistent sustain. This makes her even more susceptible to carries running her down or support heroes locking her in place for an easy kill.
But yeah, if you fight her and her team in a spot they've got locked down you're playing into her strength. It's like stacking 6 mid boss with Dynamo up and screaming "Dynamo OP" when you're serving up his best use case on a silver platter.
her gun being countered by just walking backwards is one of the few still working weaknesses she has the issue most people complaining about it have, is that is one of the few weakenses that requires brain power to take advantage of
They need to change skulls to more of a skillshot if they are going to have that power. Otherwise they are overbearing or crap depending on the scenario. There are times when they are in sync and easy to deal with and others when they are out of sync ankle biters that follow you the whole map... all of it for just pressing a button and aiming in the general direction.
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u/Hot-Will3083 8d ago
Graves is good again, time to nerf her so she loses to lane minions again