Preheads Suck

You know this, your mom knows this, we all know this. They're a complete farce whose only purpose is to pad the runtime with an initial trite and meaningless, soul-sucking exercise, as if already spending at least two and a half hours in the cave wasn't long enough. If we wanted to do Krex, we'd be at Krex instead.

Now I'm not gonna suggest outright removing preheads since that suggestion has not only already been done and seemed almost equally unpopular but is also highly unlikely to ever bear fruit given that it would be such a radical departure from the original HT we're used to. What I will suggest however is roughly halving the HP of each prehead, a total reduction of ~330m HP (or alternatively removing cancels from preheads, which would probably have a similar effect), and then adding a similar amount of HP to the arms and wings of body. I base this latter part of the suggestion on a previous suggestion I made for making cleavers shine again at HT here.

The TL;DR from that thread is that despite HT appearing to be of a cleave-friendly nature, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of cleave damage dealt to wings and arms is moot and even when cleaving just heads cleavers struggle to compete with the likes of NLs and sairs, all the while introducing undesirables in the form of an active debuffing right arm and added risk of early mass.

Thus I thought it fit for a two-birds-with-one-stone type of approach here for addressing both the banality that is preheads as well as the state of cleavers, and it just so happens that the minimum amount of HP that would need to be added to wings/arms as referenced in the aforementioned HT cleaver thread is roughly the same as the HP that would be subtracted from the preheads, i.e. we get to enjoy shorter preheads while not significantly impacting overall runtime (the shortening of which could be construed as an undesirable outcome to some).

By reducing the duration of preheads and padding more HP onto wings and arms, cleavers get a double win in that preheads are one of their weakest areas (and so reducing the time spent on them mitigates some of that weakness) and because damage to arms and wings would then actually be significant, making them not just a lessened liability but also a trump card (at least as a one-of). And of course we all win by virtue of having to spend less time in the preheads hellhole.

Pros:

• Cleavers great (read: heroes and DKs are great, not shads), maybe even mages welcome
• Less time spent dying (on the inside) at preheads

Cons:

• Wing hitters rejoice
• Less time to eat during preheads

 

Definitely, and that was actually the first part of the suggestion I made in the previous HT thread and which I probably should have fleshed out here as well.

 

Partly tongue in cheek. It would benefit shads to a degree, but why bring mediocre cleaver when you can bring chad cleaver and sed mules are a thing? Also, if both arms are made active most of the fight to invalidate the active right arm con associated with bringing cleavers, a shad will just be enjoying long walks at the cave.

 

As long as sed mules are an option (and I don't see any viable way to make them not), I don't think any change to HT would make them a justifiable include. Granted, not every squad has a sed mule at their disposal so shads will still find their way into those runs just fine.

Ironically, the best way for a shad to justify their existence on a "meta team" in current HT is if they bring their own sed mule and ideally join a squad that has like two sairs. They can actually do okay single target damage when they're not sed target (I did 7m before in a previous test with minimal cleaving, which would probably be close to 7.5 now with recent nate change) and from there the smoke benefit could push them into "justified" territory.

If this suggestion were to actually go through and bstep got a damage buff, they'd probably be solid cleavers too if not sed target.

 

burgunt