1754046:

2086719:

hey steelwing.. i'm pretty sure you can also mute people on ventrilo can't you?

so the players would be able to mute everyone but the opponent and the judge of the match and the spectators could still chat

Admins can globally mute people.  Generally, you would rather avoid it in case people want to chat in other channels then/later (and there are way to bind keys to talk to specific people so no one else hears you but that person). Globally muting everyone but three people also requires some micromanagement that could otherwise be avoided if people just don't push their talk button.

Individuals can choose to mute other individuals (such as the players muting everyone), but every time a new person logs on, they will have to alt-tab over to the window, right click, mute (after they figure out who isn't muted) and slow down the game. After the game, they would then have to go unmute all of the people (and miss the people who logged immediately).  If you all really want to chat, you can just go to another channel or set up the specific binds to the people you want to chat with.

1207521:

I will say the odds of me playing Ice Block are so low that it isn't even a possibility. Polymorph is too necessary.

Lacking Cleanse might be kind of awkward, it's true, but I've seen a lot of people like Sulf against Zoo with Flash backup.

Also, if I see a Sulfuras flipped, I Polymorph the Savin, if no Sulf, Poly the Graccus, because Cleanse destroys me.

-Ben

The thing with Wall is that it's a very effective defensive team, but it's not very aggressive. If it gets the hill early it will definitly be hard to take it back from them. But I can't see it beat dedicated KOTH teams. I think trip Amalars would just roll them over, if built properly. Velen would be the only damage output available to the Wall team, and Amalar's crit would really hurt (enough that you'd need to play Cleanse over a better card in the match). Plus Amalar would take the hill first and move you off it easily (it seems like all the best cards for this scenario are Warrior cards, not to mention Sunder Armor/Disarm to really stick it hard to the equipment teams if you find it necessary for some matchups).

The Zoo match seems IMO to be in favor of Wall in general (thanks to Savin + Bulwark + Blessing of Sacrifice combo, if you get to Cleanse the only answer Zoo has) but it seems to be much less so in KOTH, because they can kite you forever as you can't be as mobile as on a regular map. On a regular map you can dedicate one tick per 5 to score 2 to 3 points (you can always move back after doing your last move for the 5 ticks period). In order to roughly break even on KOTH you need a character to stick on the center (not even just adjacent to it) for 3 ticks, and all your characters want to be adjacent to each other as much as possible. Seems like there are few ranged VS Wall matches where you'll score more on KOTH than on a regular map, and a whole lot where you'll be forced to score less on KOTH in order to be able to chase them.

Even if you find a way to survive, say, 20 ticks on the center, you're still 7 to 11 points away. 2 to 3 kills. That's sort of huge.

1207521:

(Also, Zoo can't get lucky. All Zoo does is force the law of averages to appear)

1207521:

Quite.

I was also making the point that, unlike, say, Vashj, Zoo is less dependent on luck than most teams. The solution with Zoo is "throw a lot of dice"; with Vashj, "throw a few dice that have a high chance of being ridiculous".

Zoo tries to make more dice, Vashj tries to improve the value of its dice.

-Ben

1207521:

Quite.

I was also making the point that, unlike, say, Vashj, Zoo is less dependent on luck than most teams. The solution with Zoo is "throw a lot of dice"; with Vashj, "throw a few dice that have a high chance of being ridiculous".

Zoo tries to make more dice, Vashj tries to improve the value of its dice.

Heh. I remember in December when I was IMing Pozsgay. He showed me his Warlock team. I liked the Ogres team. I told him "well basically we're both solving the same issue going in a different direction... the way to reduce randomness is to either throw no dice, or throw a whole boat load of them". :)

(Incidently, the ogres way of doing this is a few really slow but large attacks with rerolls, whereas Zoo goes with lots of quick smallish attacks. What you really don't want is a big attack that's slow and has loads of variance due to no rerolls whatsoever.)