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cakedotavi

Battlerite - You got your WoW arena in my Lords Management

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I've recently been playing a bit of Battlerite, which just came out of Early Access and is now free-to-play, and enjoying it quite a bit.

The game structure is very similar to WoW arenas, focused on short rounds of between teams of 2 or 3 players. Heroes are basically built on the MMO tank/DPS/support trinity, but control like a WASD-based Lords Management (with a bit of fighting game meter-management layered on top). The action is tight and fast, forgoing all of the farming and laneing found in most Lords Managements. Instead, each round is basically just a single teamfight so you really do get to the "meat" almost immediately. 

 

There are some neat wrinkles, such as leveling up to unlock stronger abilities being replaced by earning meter with basic attacks and spending it on stronger ones, or a PUBG style "circle of death" closing in after 2 minutes to force an end to the match. The tutorial and sandbox modes are very well done, making it easy to get to know all the characters quite quickly.

 

Monitization is pretty unobtrusive as well, with a rotating free hero system kind of like League's + unlockable cosmetics similar to how Overwatch handles it (earning crates of cosmetics as you level up your profile or specific heroes). 

As you can guess from the above, I'm enjoying this game quite a bit. Seems like a great way to get a few competitive rounds in when you only have half an hour on a weeknight, and don't want to commit to a longer game.

 

Anyone else playing? What are your thoughts?

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Same! I am still at the "forget half my abilities exist" stage, but having fun flailing around in the shallow end of the pool none the less :P

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This game is one of my favorites. I played Bloodline Champions a ton (the studio's previous game, and which shares a ton of mechanics and characters,) and I've played this a ton too. It's made me realize that I never really liked doing all the extraneous stuff in LOMAs like farming creeps and hitting buildings. Bought the thing back in early access and never regretted it. One of my favorite things about it is that it's perfectly feasible at most skill levels to 1v2 after you teammate/s died, which is always exhilarating. 

 

I'm down to play if anyone ever wants to.

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Kyir, my name on steam and in Battlerite is the same as here. If you're been playing since BLC you will likely be way, way better than me but if you don't mind that I'm absolutely game.

I continue to really enjoy this game. It reminds me of Rocket League, which I put over 600 hours into before I set it down, in that it is a very, very simple game on its face, has really fast matches, but underneath that veneer of "casualness" there is a pretty damn complex game with a high skill ceiling. I'm really digging it. Not many games let you get a competitive gaming fix in for a satisfying number of rounds when you've just got 30 minutes on a weeknight. 

Did my solo placement matches last night, got Bronze 1, and played a bit to get to silver today. My current MMR feels pretty soft as I am getting a handle on things now, and people at this rank often seem to have no idea how to manage cooldowns, when to back, etc. That said, I'm sure I will still get absolutely crushed by anyone decent for a long time to come - seems to be a very high skill cap game. 

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I got told multiple times today that I have no idea how to play, so I wouldn't worry about it. I'll add you next time I can.

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It only took me and njoos all our placement games before we won a single round. Then we went on a 4 game 3:0 winstreak in bronze division.

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All you need to know is that the orb in the middle is the thing that needs to die. That's the most important thing.

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I've switched from maining Ruh Kaan to Croak, as my friend that I got into this is maining Ashka and Croak seems like a much better 2s partner for him. I'm looking for some suggestions re: Croak's battlerites.

 

I currently run a snare & stun focused build to make it easier for Askha to land his combos, with the following battlerites:

  1.  Spits slow the enemy
  2. Two spit charges
  3. Dash roots enemies for 1sec
  4. Dash hits reduce invis cooldown by 1 sec
  5. Toxic blades gives me some fast attack charges and healing

I'm really enjoying this build, and have won a few 1v2s with it after my buddy got dropped in a few matches. However, I am running into two issues with it:.

 

First, in any 1v2 where the enemy has a support my damage output is too low to burst the support down - they can't catch and kill me, but I can't deal enough damage to get through a good support's healing.

 

Second, in any matchup where we are up against two melees with some gap close they inevitably just catch and kill Askha, while I don't have adequate control to keep them both off of him and once he's dead I often lack the damage to deal with their high HP.

 

Any suggestions on battlerite changes for when the enemy has two tanky melees that are going to rush Askha, or for matchups where I just straight need some more damage (i.e. Blossom + Ruh Kaan has impossible sustain for my current build)?

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Still really enjoying this game, and switched my main to Rook for the last little while. I really like his in-and-out brawler style, using berserk to be able to trade really well for short periods of time and then needing to GTFO for a few seconds. I'm scraping the bottom of the Gold League barrel these days, never dropping to silver but never quite getting to Gold 4 either.

I'm curious what people think of 2v2 vs 3v3 - I've been playing 2's because I almost always gravitate to that game mode in any game so that it's easier to have premades with friends, but I hear a lot of people saying this game is balanced around 3v3 - am I missing out? 

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I generally avoid 3v3 because it means wrangling additional teammates. Getting two other people to cooperate with each other is much harder than getting one person to cooperate with me. 2v2 does have some pretty gross matchup imbalances at higher ranks, but I think it's worth enduring that so far.

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Yeah that's the sense I get too - team composition at high MMR seems to be balanced for 3s, not 2s. I wonder how many "viable" 2s lineups there really are, and how much they rock-paper-scissors each other? 2s is my favorite game mode in most any game, but I don't want to invest too much time in practicing if it really is imbalanced compared to 3s. 

Unrelated, got over the Gold 5 hump - in Gold 3 now, pretty close to 2, and winning tons more than I'm losing right now. Cancel-casting really makes a huge difference to your win %! Faking Rook's charge to get preemptive defensive abilities used (counters, Bakko's bulwark, etc) and then actually using charge once their skill is on CD feels... well, pretty damn great.

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Cancelling abilities is one of those things that I keep trying to remember to do but always forget in the heat of the moment (same with some of the more esoteric EX abilities.) No denying that it's effective though.

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Yeah, and it seems to be *hugely* important in this game given that nearly every ability has a delay between when you hit the button and when the ability is actually used - you can cancel pretty well anything if you're fast enough.

I think some abilities can even be canceled part way through being used? Not totally sure how this works but have seen a few people talking about this. 

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The battle royale standalone version of Battlerite came out into early access this week. Battlerite Royale. BR? BRBR? Regardless, it's a pretty interesting experience. The rounds seem to be much shorter than most games of the genre, and there's a lot of quirky little things that add a surprising amount of variety between rounds (at least for now.) Fake chests you can place that explode when opened, potions that turn you into parts of the scenery, etc. The devs also seem willing to experiment with the content they've already released, and that's been for the better so far. Anyone else playing it?

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The Battlerite Royale variant is free now that it's out of early access! It's really good, and I find the experience of a top-down royale much more pleasant. There's still other kinds of stress, but it feels much less like a constant battle just to see everything around me. I highly recommend it.

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