Improving Ultimate Scaling

[POCKETMONEY99]

Improving Ultimate Scaling.

A big issue which affects most ultimate’s is that their effectiveness in the midgame falls off massively. This is because barely any ultimate’s have been scaled to suit OAA. Once everyone is 6 slotted most ultimate’s become extremely weak. I have devised a way to improve a lot of ultimates. I will do this myself. I made this issue as I mainly need peoples opinions my ideas. The alternative to this is to just make it is ridiculously easy to reach level 37 (Level 4 OAA ultimate) by ~20 minutes.

New Ultimate Scaling

-level 1 OAA ultimate unchanged
-Level 2 OAA ultimate is the level 3 dota ultimate damage. Then scale the ultimate linearly to the level 5 ultimate. (Some level 5 ultimate’s need adjusting.)
-The new level 3 ultimate should be no lower then the level 3 Dota ultimate + The difference between the level 1 and level 3 ultimate. Some Ultimate’s have tight scaling’s meaning if you do this for all spells, some spells would feel lacking damage wise in comparison to others.

This Formula isn’t perfect, but as a baseline making the level 2 OAA ultimate have the same damage as the level 3 dota ultimate then having most level 3 OAA ultimate deal much higher damage will increase the viability of a lot of heroes in the midgame.

For determining what the value of the level 5 ultimate should be. I have made a table showing a guild line values of how spell damage should scale. (This is based on what is already in OAA, but it is wonky for certain heroes. I will list what values I think work best.)

Value at Max DOTA level	Value at Max OAA level
100	400
200	700
300	1000
400	1300
500	1600
600	1900
700+	2100+

This new ultimate scaling shouldn’t be used for all spells. There are always exceptions but as a guild line if a hero ultimate falls off mid game until they reach OAA level, they should receive a buff. Also, bad ultimate’s and bad heroes should get their ultimate buffs.
This scaling should generally avoid secondary effects such as stuns and slows. There are exceptions to this rule too.
Example
Punga Life Drain
Old Damage: 150 225 300 500 750
New Damage (Baseline): 150 300 450 600 750
Pugna’s Ultimate Damage needs scaling using the table. So his maximum Damage ultimate would be increased from 750 to around 1000. 450 Damage as a baseline is too low for a high damage glass cannon hero like pugna, So I will scale his ultimate more linearly from levels 2 to 5. If you can’t scale a number linearly from 2 to 5, round to a suitable number.
New Damage: 150 300 550 800 1050

ULTIMATE ISSUES WHICH AREN'T DAMAGE RELATED

Stat Ultimate’s
Some stats such as Alchemists Chemical Rage Health and Mana Regeneration and Sven’s God strength bonus strength could use buffing to make them more relevant in a game where there is much more damage flying around.

Unique
Some ultimate’s such Legion Commander and KOTL’s need buffs but shouldn’t follow the rules I laid out.

Cooldowns.
Some heroes such as Tidehunter and Enigma will always be bad unless they aren’t crippled by their insane cooldowns. (200 second black hole cooldown level 1. Lol?). Tidehunter and Enigma are special cases however, as both these heroes have CDR talents. I think adjusting the cooldowns talents along with a cooldown reduction on the normal spell should help improve these heroes. I think no ultimate’s cooldown in OAA should be longer then ~120 seconds. This is still an insanely long cooldown and you will still need to commit a slot for an octarine core in a lot of cases.

This also applies to other heroes in a different way. Snowball heroes such as Lina, Lycan and Legion Commander need lower cooldown spells to help them keep up their snowball momentum.

Some Ultimate’s such as Death Prophets, Warlocks and Dooms should be lower cooldown and lower duration. The issue with these ultimate’s is that they need lower cooldowns, but their durations are extremely hard to deal with in OAA, because you can’t really disengage from a bad fight in environments like duels. Terrorblade’s metamorphosis (I know this isn’t an ultimate but it’s a pseudo ultimate.) is a great example of how a long duration and cooldown spell should be rescaled to suit OAA. Low enough duration that you can bait/wait it out, but a high enough downtime where it is noticeable.

Weird Scaling’s
Some heroes such as Beastmaster, Huskar and Grimstroke have strange scaling on their spells in OAA levels. I would linearize these. Grimstroke is by far the worse with his ultimate at maximum level being a 12 second leash and 90% move speed slow. Luckily this hero isn’t good otherwise this would destroy games.

Who’s Should Get Buffed?
I think most hero ultimate’s need adjusting to suit OAA’s fast paced gameplay. I will leave some of the SS tier heroes out if their ultimate’s feel strong, but I think most heroes need adjusting.

What I Hopefully Achieve

• Ultimate damage feels good in the midgame once everyone is 6 slotted without you requiring level 37. This will allow alot of spell damage heroes to be able to deal good damage while also having slots for utility/defensive items.
• Heroes with long cooldown spells don't feel completely crippled by their long cooldowns. Hopefully I can find the perfect sweet spot where heroes don't have to buy octarine core to not be a complete liability but they aren't to low to the point where lower cooldown 'lower impact' ultimates feel redundant in comparsion.