Blizzard Spells & Originality

So I'm just wondering, what's the deal with the Blizzard spell hate.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's dumb when a hero has Blizzard, Storm Bolt, Spirit Link, and Howl of Terror. Randomly smashing blizzard spells together is dumb, and not original.

But in my opinion, the point of having different Heroes (Especially in an AotS) is that they all have different playstyles. Individual Playstyles that contribute heavily to whether how skill affects the Hero's success. Now, I also think that having a bunch of random JASS spells is dumb. The spells can be extremely original, but if they don't match in a playstyle it just seems useless.

Example of Blizzard Spells done well: Hero with Spirit Link, a targetted non-self illusion (From the Item), a health regen aura, and mirror image. He spawns a bunch of extra units, they all take damage from spirit link, and are all healed. None of the spells are that original, but if played well, the Hero can be very powerful. If not played well, he kinda sucks.

I'm just wondering what other people feel about this. If I've said anything offensive or something, or just shouldn't be posting this, sorry. I'm just curious if other people feel the same as me.

I agree, some cool heroes can be made with Blizzard spells (they actually have some really interesting ones). However, everyone has seen those same spells so many times that it just gets old. While they might have some cool features that require intelligent use, pretty much everyone knows how to use them intelligently because they've been in so many other maps (and melee). So...I agree, but custom triggered spells also add a lot of originality to the game, and allow players to learn how to use new spells efficiently.

hmm.... Good point. :X

heh, they're all i use. u can do some pretty nice looking things with them and i hate triggering/cant script at all. i personally find storm bolt the most usable. its good for almost any homing missile.

I agree with the OP, diligently changing buff and effect art, as well as utilising things like negative and unused values allows you to do an awful lot of neat stuff with stock abilties: more than enough to make most maps.

Plus the whole "really familar" thing is a good thing, IMO, because it makes the map more accessible.

Of course there are exceptions. Triggered spells are good for doing stuff that should be simple, but isn't due to random ommisions in Blizzard's spell line-up. Maps where a single hero is the sole focus also benefits from nifty spells with complex effects, both visual and gameplay: it's pretty much all there is to care about. One reason IMO that DotA evoled to be item based was to get around this, at least originally. Finally some maps utilise flashy spells as effectively a bragging-right or tech demo. Look at a map like AoM by Vile., his process was clearly "Awesome Jass spell => Ability concept", which while not the best for gameplay certainly produced some OMGWTFCOOL effects.

Blizzard spells aren't bad. If you customize them, that is. If you do a good job mixing them up, then it's great. And very minor triggering never hurts.

Eg:
In my map, I have a wolf who uses Roar. (Based off of Battle Roar). This roar is global (change 1), increases by a static amount (change 2), gives a different buff (change 3), and has a very simple trigger attached that makes a dummy unit cast thunderclap to stun nearby enemies. It's that easy, and BAM! Brand new spell.

Except it stuns no matter what the duration. Which == fail.
Use Acid Bomb.

yeah thats the biggest problem but given what i use it for i just pretend the swirl never happened.

Go play DoE and find the Blizzard spells. Trust me, they're there. :p

I have to disagree with that. Just because someone overdoes everything in the map doesn't make any of it pretty or OMGWTFCOOL. There are hundreds upon hundreds of ways to make infinitely simple skills that wow you with how cool, how fun, how easy to understand, and how original they are. You just have to know the right maps to find them in.

I think it's unfair to say that none of Vile.'s spells have a certain wow factor. Yeah they're rubbish to actually play with but a lot of them certainly look awesome...

I guess you could say that if your definition of awesome is fifty thousand effects being created and destroyed in the span of three seconds to achieve an effect that could adequately and very aesthetically pleasingly be replaced by one or a few effects.

I must say though, that to make good, fun, personable, and replayable heroes, you have to be able to balance skill design, intrahero and interhero synergy, epicness, crazy effects, and so many others things together all at once. You cannot simply overwhelm the player's senses and pray to God that it'll all make sense in the end, that's no way to design a hero. There's just no excuse for it.

Blizzard spells are awesome for the most part. Some of the things that can be created purely from them boggle my mind. Like the replica of Frozen Orb from Diablo, or Gemini Attack (double attack every few seconds) from DotA.

I think you're overstating here, and i can understand the Vile. hate. But it undermines the legitimate problems people have with his map if you say that all his spells are aesthetically poor. Some of his less over the top ones are in fact quite neat.

I'll list some of the ones that stood out for me for the sake of completion, although i'm not sure you actually are fmailar enough with the map to place my refereces.

Fizban's Elemental Helix and his Rock Trap Ultimate Thingy
The Tiger Ranger Thingy's Suspension Circle
The Dark Ranger's Poison Nova
The Ninja's Skills

Ah, but I don't hate him. I just can't respect such contrived work. I think you're assuming far too much.
But... They really are!!
Every last one of them feels overdone, either in effect or application in description or something. It seriously detracts from the overall beauty of a map when each skill has something fundamentally wrong with it and you can't enjoy the map because no matter what hero you play, you say "What the hell."

The ult rock trap was stolen from an older map, which I can prove pretty easily. The elemental helix doesn't look cool for me, it's just some twirly line damage thing that people always whine about because sometimes when it hits they don't get frozen. Unreliability in effect even when successfully used makes it a terribly ugly skill. Both are fundamentally flawed in design for their own reasons.
Because arrows exploding in a circle after time elapsed make sense. About the only sensible part of it is how it, you know, deals damage. Past that it makes no sense on the hero because God knows it doesn't synergize with anything, it's just a random pewpew spell.
I'd long since given up on the map by the time this hero was released, but judging from the other heroes if I played it I'm 100% certain I'd find similar flaws in it.
Yes, because spinning about a unit, playing 200 mirror image effects and throwing shurikens at absolutely everything inside doesn't fit the description in my last post. Please.

Seriously, AoM is a case example of a hypercomplicated map for no good reason. I could take any of those heroes, design them for a more focused role, and make them more enjoyable as a whole in doing so. At the same time, the effects would make more sense too. The map could use some serious simplicity, just like the OP said.

Blizzard spells are good, effective and simple, so simple that sometimes it gets too boring, easier to work with since you wouldn't need to learn Jass or learn how to use WE triggering; While triggered spells, if well done, are complex and make the game more fun. Another thing to consider is the Hybrid spells, Blizz + Triggering make gameplay more enjoyable since it adds more complexity to the spell being used. I really hope blizzard updates warcraft3 modifyablity dramatically, currently it's powerful, but still is very limiting.

In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with making a ton of spells that are JASS enhanced, somewhat complex, or even something never before seen in wc3.

the error maps like AoM have inherent to the spell design is that it certainly isn't internally consistant. Every blizzard spell that launches a homing projectile, area effect, or stomp has similar properties, even if they do completely different things. It doesn't matter if your spells are drastically different from wc3, they should at least look like they came from the same game as each other.

In AoM I see spells that require a person to press strange combinations of buttons to use one spell (cosmos for an example), different projectiles and effects also have nearly nothing in common. For example, some AoM single target spells persist when the target blinks, and some do not. How am I supposed to know how to move around in an environment when it doesn't even obey it's own laws?

The only other problem I see with using a lot of complicated JASS based spells is that it allows mappers to make totally random effects. Spells like shadow strike, and frost armor have several effects, but they are effects that make sense together. With spells often designers will make spells that aren't necessarily too complicated, but just too "wtf?".

A good example would be the dark rangers ultimate in AoM. She creates a cloud, and if she kills a unit while under the cloud, the cloud grows and she gains a movement speed bonus. Have you ever seen a more self-contradicting and plain nonsense spell?