[2019] Deathwing: Bad Game Design?

While it’s true that Deathwing doesn’t benefit from allied abilities, I think you’ll find that he still relies on his team to be effective. We made a lot of design decisions to ensure that he doesn’t go too far in the direction of being completely self-reliant.

As one example, while he can’t be healed by allies, he very much designed around excelling during big teamfight engagements.

Because his abilities have such long wind-ups, he combos very well with his allies when it comes to receiving help in setting up a good Molten Flame, which can simply win engagements when done correctly. He also helps allied CC chains happen due to having fairly good follow-up CC, particularly when in Worldbreaker form.

When played optimally, I think Deathwing is absolutely at his best when fighting alongside his team. In 1v1 settings he isn’t nearly as potent due to his abilities being easily dodged due to their long wind-ups.

However, like many have said in this thread, you never know what’s going to happen until the hero’s released into the wild. What I will say though is that this was definitely considered during his design, and we’ve made a lot of changes over his development to ensure that he is still very much a team player.

Counters are generally what you would expect. Percent based damage is great against him, so things like Malthael and Tychus give him a hard time.

A more surprising one in my experience are fast-moving, auto-attack based heroes like Valla and Lunara. Because Deathwing has long wind-ups, when he’s fighting out in the open against these kinds of heroes they run circles around him and have an easy time dodging his stuff while killing him. His best bet in those scenarios is to run away a bit then suddenly turn around and catch them with an Onslaught > Auto Attack combination.

He’s also a little weak to poke, things like Hanzo and Chromie can whittle him down.

He’s great against teams with lots of Melee, since his abilities all pierce and generally do damage in wide areas. He’s also uniquely good against heroes like Garrosh and ETC since he doesn’t have to respect their normal areas of threat that they control.

More than excelling against certain heroes I feel he excels on certain maps. Maps with lots of choke points like Infernal Shrines are great for him because of how much area he can deny with his various abilities.