Should Ragnaros be a Warrior?

[milo0o 0]

I feel if he could get a revamp, he should definitely be more warrior focused. For some reason his kit is just awkward to play, and I feel he'd either be better suited as a bulkier warrior or specialist rather than assassin, given that he doesn't really excel at killing heroes, and he is more on the frontline getting shot down quickly.

From my experience, if I'm getting focused too much playing as him, I have to talent almost entirely into survival and after that I don't feel as effective to my team. I usually like to do the meteor build, but any form of support almost counters it entirely and getting kited is a big deal.

[XeaKon 23]

Well ... Ragnaros is more of a jack-of-all-trades master of none. He can do burst, sustain or poke but not at the same time. The trick seems to be catching enemies near Molten Core or using Sulfuras Smash.

[Peaches9 15]

I've always regarded Ragnaros as a specialist. He lacks the CC and mobility of traditional melee assassins, but he's got great lane presence with solid AOE damage, good sustain, and high bulkiness for an assassin, similar to Xul or Nazeebo. The times I see Rag being truly effective are when he's picked for his laning and the unique way he influences map objectives. Picking him solely for teamfight damage is usually a mistake, since there's better options with a superior combination of sustain, damage, and utility (Sonya and Thrall come to mind). However, proper use of Molten Core and Lava Wave can have a huge impact on the game, while making Rag hands-down the hardest hero to siege into.

[Valhalen 1,484]

On 5/17/2018 at 2:35 AM, milo0o said:

I feel if he could get a revamp, he should definitely be more warrior focused. For some reason his kit is just awkward to play, and I feel he'd either be better suited as a bulkier warrior or specialist rather than assassin, given that he doesn't really excel at killing heroes, and he is more on the frontline getting shot down quickly.

From my experience, if I'm getting focused too much playing as him, I have to talent almost entirely into survival and after that I don't feel as effective to my team. I usually like to do the meteor build, but any form of support almost counters it entirely and getting kited is a big deal.

I agree with you that his talents could be revisited to make him sturdier, but that would probably at the cost of damage. After the massive rework (and in a sense, nerf) to Diablo, that favors survivability over damage, doing that to Ragnaros would kinda ruin him, because he already has a lot of sustain.

Ragnaros is an opportunist kind of character. He is in a similar ground to The Butcher. He must wait for the frontline Heroes to engage and keep the enemy team in tight situation so he can unleash his cooldowns. Yes, he is very squishy, but he can dish out damage really really fast. What he lacks in utility is compensated by pure raw damage. Because of that he usually works well in Double Warrior compositions, or when his team has a lot of crowd control to compensate his lack.

What is interesting about Ragnaros is his flexibility. As @XeaKon pointed, he is the jack-of-all-trades, but master of none. His talent tree is one of the most balanced in the game, but also very straightforward. You can't mess with different talents otherwise you won't do anything. So you either make the Empower Sulfuras build, Living Meteor build or Blast Wave build, and mixing talents will result in a poor performance.

You should judge the best situation to use the Living Meteor build, as while it has the highest damage potential of all his three builds, it also sufferes from being extremely situational. Any team with high mobility will render it useless.

His survival talents lies in his Tier 4, Tier 13 and Tier 20. He can become very sturdy with Catching Fire (3) and Resilient Flame (13), which can work pretty good in any build. At level 20 he has access to Submerge, which is a better Ice Block as it also heals him.

[Morcalivan 86]

I think I saw this guy in a Thor movie once. He was pretty badass then.