Playing as Auto-Select in Quick Match will now award 100% bonus XP when the matchmaking system detects lengthy queue times for one or more Heroes.
A new icon will display over the Auto-Select portrait during Hero Select when bonus XP is available.
New portrait rewards have been added!
Terran Front-Line Portrait – Awarded for reaching level 10 with Nova, Lt. Morales, and Sgt. Hammer.
Legacy of the Void Portrait – Awarded for owning a copy of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void.
New Hero: Gul'dan
Gul’dan, Darkness Incarnate, has been added to Heroes of the Storm and is now available for play! Read on for a brief overview of his Abilities. + Show Spoiler +
Trait
Life Tap (D)
Gul’dan does not regenerate Mana.
Activate to sacrifice a portion of your Health, restoring 25% of your maximum Mana.
Basic Abilities
Fel Flame (Q)
Release a wave of flame that damages each enemy it passes through.
Drain Life (W)
Drain the life from an enemy over 3 seconds, dealing damage to the target and healing Gul’dan each second while channeling.
Corruption (E)
Call forth three bursts of shadow energy in a line, which deal damage to each enemy they strike over 6 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.
Heroic Abilities
Horrify (R)
After a short delay, deal damage and Fear all enemy Heroes in the area for 2 seconds.
Rain of Destruction (R)
Summon a rain of meteors in a large area for 7 seconds. Each meteor deals a damage in a small area.
Various performance improvements have been made which should positively affect overall framerates.
Heroes of the Storm now supports DirectX 11
This should help to reduce memory usage, increase performance while the game is not the primary focus window, and allows for further optimization improvements in the future.
Battlegrounds
Cursed Hollow
Various environmental objects have been optimized to use less processor time. These changes will benefit processor constrained systems.
Towers of Doom
Fixed an issue in which environmental sounds could be over-created, causing drops in processor performance.
Processor Performance Notification
A new performance icon (pictured below) has been added that will display in the upper-left corner of the screen when Heroes of the Storm detects that the computer’s processor is not performing optimally.
Visual effects for Movement Speed buffs have received additional polish, and will better indicate whether a Movement Speed buff is greater or less than 25%.
Visual effects for Movement Speed Slows have received additional polish, and will better indicate whether a Slow is greater or less than 40%.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Murky has received a delicious new Hearthstone (B) animation!
New button art has been added for the Bribe Talent.
Many Basic Attacks and skillshot Abilities will now display impact effects on Shields when striking Shielded targets.
The indicator that displays at Falstad’s landing location while using Flight has received additional visual polish.
The following Hero Abilities and Talents have received additional visual polish
A Breaking News icon has been added to the top navigation bar in the game menus, and will activate whenever important announcements about Heroes of the Storm are posted, including details about scheduled maintenance, game updates, and more.
Hover the cursor over the Breaking News icon to display details about these announcements.
A notification will also be displayed on the Home Screen whenever a Breaking News post is active.
In-Game UI
General
Left-clicks can now be issued through all in-game UI elements while the cursor is in targeting mode.
Minimap
Healing Wells will now display on the minimap in the form of plus “+” icons, until they are destroyed.
Loading Screens
Gameplay tips will now display on loading screens when entering a match.
Rejoin
Rejoin is now optional for Training, Single Player Versus AI, and Custom Games. Simply hit the “Nope!” button when prompted to Rejoin.
Social
Thai language chat messages received from other players will now display appropriately in Heroes of the Storm.
The in-game AFK detection system has received adjustments that will help prevent cases in which Medivh in Raven Form, as well as Nova and Zeratul in Stealth, could receive AFK notifications despite actively participating in the game.
A.I. Improvements
Elite A.I. players will now attempt to seek out and take down lone enemy Heroes who venture too far from safety.
Core
Victory determination is now much more precise in situations where both Cores are destroyed within fractions of a second. As a result, Victory will no longer be decided at random in cases where it appears that both Cores are destroyed at the same moment.
Regeneration Globes
Health Regeneration
Previously: Restore 6.24% of maximum Health over 4 seconds
Now: Restore 12% of maximum Health over 5 seconds
Mana Regeneration
Previously: Restore 32 Mana over 4 seconds.
Now: Restore 8% of maximum Mana over 5 seconds
Developer Comments: Thank you for all your discussion and feedback on our recent Health sustain post! We are still heavily evaluating a lot of it but wanted to get the first round of changes in. Internally, we enjoyed the increased importance on Regeneration Globes and have cleaned up the system a bit. With a larger importance, denying enemies their Globes in lane has a much larger impact.
Healing Wells
Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds
Health Regeneration
Previously: Restore 41% of maximum Health over 20 seconds.
Now: Restore 40% of maximum Health over 20 seconds.
Mana Regeneration
Previously: Restore 20% of maximum Mana over 20 seconds.
Now: Restore 30% of maximum Mana over 20 seconds.
Developer Comments: Much like the changes to Regeneration Globes, we wanted to add a larger impact to the moment you click a Healing Well. Again, we cleaned up the system a fair bit (hence the ~41% to 40% Health change) and added a larger impact for heavy Mana users. The increased cooldown should make the decision of when to tap the Healing Well slightly more interesting.
Minions
Ranged, Melee, and Wizard Minions
Now deal double damage to Structures.
Developer Comments: Our goal with this change is to make escorting Minions to Towns to be more impactful, such that they can really start to do some damage if left unattended. Before this change, Minions were primarily XP carriers that absorbed some Ammo shots from Towers. Now the armies of the Nexus are a bit scarier when they march down a lane.
Catapult Minions
Attack range increased by 20%.
Sight range increased by 17%.
Will now fixate on Structures. Catapults will not acquire a new target after fixating until the target is destroyed or the Catapult is killed.
Developer Comments: Catapults would often reach the Core, but have a Minion wave spawn on them, distract them, and allow them to be killed off before doing any significant damage. With increased range and fixation on a Structure once they’ve started attacking, even one Catapult will more consistently punch through a Core’s Shield and do actual damage.
Increased Overgrowth's damage bonus against Structures from 100% to 200%.
Developer Comments: In an effort to reduce the game length on Garden of Terror, we’re increasing the bonus damage that Garden Terrors deal to Structures. We’re not quite happy with the way that Garden of Terror is playing at the moment, and will likely be making larger changes if the current tuning adjustments don’t make it more enjoyable.
Nearby Minion kills grant 1 stack of Bribe. Spend 20 charges to instantly defeat a non-Boss Mercenary. 100 Charges maximum.
Raynor’s Raiders' Recruitment Talent also increased to 100 maximum charges.
Viking Bribery Talent increased to 200 charges maximum, but each use costs 40 charges.
If a Mercenary Camp is completely captured using Bribe, the camp respawns 50% faster.
Executioner
The Executioner Talent effect will now only trigger after attacking disabled Heroes. The bonus damage gained through this talent will still apply to anything attacked after the effect is triggered.
Relentless
Relentless and similar Hero-specific Talents will now only reduce the duration of Slows, Stuns and Roots. Silence effects will no longer be reduced by this talent.
Developer Comments: With an increasing number of CC effects entering the Nexus we found ourselves constantly asking ourselves “Should Relentless work against this?” which quickly turned into a rabbit hole of ‘what-ifs’ and ‘how comes’. We agreed that the talent was going to continue to become stronger as we moved forward and decided to limit the number of effects that it can reduce.
Heroes Developer Comments: As part of our ongoing process to improve our talent system, we are doing a pass on all heroes in the game to increase the health of their talent trees. We know that there are a fair number of talents that feel like they are either mandatory or insignificant, and this is our first pass on putting in fixes. These fixes take many forms, and can range from simply buffing or nerfing numbers to changing functionality. We’re excited to keep our heroes feeling fresh, and you can look forward to additional changes to more of our heroes in upcoming patches.
Human form Basic Attack damage reduced from 145 to 140.
Abilities
Curse of the Worgen (Trait)
Increased Worgen form’s damage bonus from 40% to 50%
Gilnean Cocktail (Q)
Secondary explosion damage increased from 177 to 236
Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds
Go for the Throat (R)
Increased cooldown from 60 to 80 seconds
Increased damage from 125 to 140
Marked for the Kill (R)
New Functionality
When Greymane deals damage to the Marked target, the duration of the Vulnerable effect is refreshed. This can happen indefinitely
No longer allows you to reactivate to leap to the opponent
Reduced cooldown from 60 to 50 seconds
Range reduced by 40%
Talents
Level 4
Insatiable (W)
Mana return increased from 5 to 10 per Basic Attack
Level 7
Incendiary Elixir (Q)
Increased cooldown reduction from quest completion from 2 to 4 seconds
Removed the impact damage increase from the Talent
Increased the explosion damage gained per Hero hit from 6 to 10
Reduced the cap of Incendiary Elixir from 160 to 150
Level 16
Concentrated Blast (Q)
Removed
New Talent: Eager Wolf (W)
Increases the Attack Speed bonus of Inner Beast by an additional 40% after it has been active for 4 seconds.
Level 20
Unleashed (R)
In addition to its current effect, killing an enemy with Go for the Throat increases the damage of Go for the Throat by 25% for 10 seconds, up to 100%.
Gilnean Roulette (R)
New Functionality:
All allied Hero damage done to the target will refresh the Vulnerable effect duration.
Developer Comments: Greymane is doing really well right now at all levels of play. That said, we do feel that Gilnean Cocktail should be more satisfying when used correctly. We’re increasing the cooldown in order to justify also increasing the damage of the explosion so that it is very noticeable when you chunk enemies with the Ability. We’ve also tuned up Incendiary Elixir, while simplifying its design. We’ve increased the damage bonus of Worgen form so that closing into melee range is more often worth the risk as well.
Reduced the Mana returned from Abilities from 25 to 20
Envenom (Active)
Removed
Level 7
Ice Lance (Q)
Now also restores 10 Mana when a Chilled target is hit by Frostbolt in addition to its current functionality'
Frost Armor (Passive)
Moved to level 4
Reduced Block amount from 75% to 50%
Increased Block cooldown from 8 to 10 seconds
Ice Floes (E)
Increased cooldown reduction from .5 to 1 second, up to a maximum of 5 seconds per cast
Level 13
Ice Barrier (Trait)
Shield duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
Level 16
Snow Crash (W)
Removed
Developer Comments: A lot of these changes are designed to further emphasize what we see as Jaina’s unique role: battlefield control. We want to play up her ability to deny areas of the battlefield with Blizzard, and really punish enemies who get stuck inside it. The biggest change in that regard is that she now spawns 3 waves of Blizzard baseline. To go along with these core kit changes, we’ve also changed or moved around a few of her Talents. One of the biggest changes was Snowstorm, which increased the radius of Blizzard, as we found that it lowered the difficulty of landing consecutive Blizzard waves on enemies too much for a Talent in such an early tier.
Gravity Lapse (E) Cooldown increased from 12 to 14 seconds Mana cost increased from 80 to 90
Talents
Level 1 Convection (Q) Damage bonus on Quest completion increased from 75 to 100 Level 4 Energy Roil (E) Cooldown reduction increased from 7 to 9 seconds Level 7 Sunfire Enchantment (Trait) Damage reduced from 183 to 165 Gravity Crush (E) Bonus damage reduced from 30% to 25% Level 20 Rebirth (R) The Rebirth casting range will now center on the Phoenix itself instead of on Kael'thas This can now be re-positioned globally
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
Base Health increased from 1680 to 1848 Health Regen increased from 3.5 to 3.8 per second Base Attack damage increased from 109 to 120
Abilities
Ravage (Q) Mana cost reduced from 50 to 40
Talents
Level 1 Siphoning Impact (Q) Now only applies if the target is killed by Ravage Sharpened Blades (W) Damage increased from 20% to 30% Level 4 Clean Kill (Q) Mana refund reduced from 100% to 75% Damage bonus increased from 20% to 25% Fury of the Swarm (Passive) Splash damage increased from 50% to 60% Psionic Pulse (E) Damage increased from 17 to 24
Level 7 Impaling Swarm (W) Removed Adaptation (Q) Mana refund increased from 50% to 100% Assimilation Mastery (Trait) Now increases the duration of Assimilation Shields by 100% in addition to its current functionality Level 13 Queen’s Rush (Active) Movement Speed increased from 25% to 30% Cooldown reduced from 75 to 50 seconds Lingering Essence (Trait) Removed Level 16 Blade Torrent (W) Moved to Level 7
Developer Comments: Kerrigan definitely has her place as a niche pick on a few Battlegrounds. While her win-rate is fairly healthy, she has become a bit of a one-trick-pony. We feel this is okay for some Heroes and makes for interesting draft implications, but we knew we wanted to make some tweaks to help even her out. We increased her base stats in order to offset the added restrictions we applied to her Ravage, and overall did a large number of tweaks to help level out her whole Talent Tree.
Leaping Strike (R) Damage increased from 246 to 271
Talents
Level 1 Photosynthesis (W) Mana restoration increased from 8 to 10 Mana per target Level 4 Skybound Wisp (E) Revealed area size increased by 10% Timelost Wisp (E) Cooldown recharge increased from 100% to 125% Level 7 Splintered Spear (Q) Number of attack targets increased from 3 to 4 Nature’s Culling (Passive) Damage to non-Heroes decreased from 200% to 150% Level 13 Pestering Blossom (Q) Range increase increased from 40% to 50% Level 16 Choking Pollen (Q) Bonus damage increased from 100% to 125% Level 20 Abolish Magic (Active) Cooldown reduced from 45 from 35 seconds
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
Symbiote (Q) Symbiote will now be paused if the allied target enters a Stasis effect or if Tracer uses her Recall ability Symbiote can still be cancelled in these situations, but no Symbiote Abilities can be used
Talents
Level 1 Regenerative Microbes (E) Heal changed to “over 4 seconds” instead of the full duration of Carapace Heal amount changed from 31 to 68 Health per Second Level 4 Ballistospores (W) Toxic Nest duration increased from 20% to 25% Sustained Carapace (E) Now increases the Carapace Shield amount by 40% instead of increasing the duration by 50% Level 7 Networked Carapace (E) Now also applies an untalented Carapace Shield to all nearby allied Heroes Vile Nest (W) Decreased the slow duration from 3 to 2.5 seconds Level 13 Assault Strain (Trait) Increased explosion damage from 68 to 102 Spatial Efficiency (Q) Now also lowers the cooldown of Stab from 3 to 2.5 seconds in addition to its current functionality Level 16 Adrenaline Boost (E) Movement Speed boost duration increased from 3 to 3.5 seconds Volatile Mutation (R) Increased pulse damage from 114 to 137 Level 20 Evolution Complete (R) Monstrosity Deep Tunnel cooldown reduced to 25 seconds from 30 Evolutionary Link (R) Ultimate Evolution Shield increased from 20% of maximum Health to 25%
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
Demonic Invasion (R) No longer deals half damage to Heroes
Talents
Level 1 Sieging Wrath (Q) New Functionality: Quest: Gain 4 damage per enemy hero hit, up to a maximum of 100 damage Reward: Gain an additional 100 damage and increases maximum range by 33% Taste for Blood (Q) Time window where Minion deaths grant additional damage reduced from 1.5 second to 1 second Master of Destruction (E) New Functionality: No longer grants bonus damage to Structures Now grants 10% range after each level of damage ramp up Level 4 Gluttony (E) Healing increased from 15% to 20% Sin’s Grasp (Active) Damage increased from 224 to 248 Total duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds Level 7 Infernal Globe (Q) No longer applies a damage over time effect to enemies hit Infused Power (Q) Damage bonus increased from 25% to 40% Moved to level 13 Gluttonous Ward (Active) Restoration per tick increased from 2.457% to 3% Level 13 March of Sin (E) Moved to level 7 Level 16 Blood for Blood (Active) Talent renamed to Sin for Sin Sin for Sin works identically to Blood for Blood, but can be cast while channeling All Shall Burn
Developer Comments: Many of these changes focus on allowing Azmodan to use different Talent builds successfully. We have improved the All Shall Burn build quite a bit. The redesign of Sieging Wrath provides an alternate build for those situations where you want to focus on Globe of Annihilation but find yourself without an ideal team composition or battleground.
Salvage (Trait) Will no longer dismount Gazlowe if used while mounted Robo-Goblin (R) Damage increased from 150% to 200%
Talents
Level 7 Rock-It! Turret XL (Q) Damage increased from 50% to 60% Level 13 Xtra Large Bombs (E) Radius increased from 25% to 30% Level 20 Mecha-Lord (R) Damage increased from 150% to 200%
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
This Talent's effect will now only reduce Healing received by the target while the Mortal Wound effect is active. Healing effects that continue after the Mortal Wounds effect ends will no longer be reduced
Will no longer reduce Healing received by Healing Wells or reduce the duration of Heal over Time effects
Creep Tumor (Trait) New functionality Now grants Zagara 20% bonus attack range while on Creep Health increased from 111 to 150 No longer costs Mana Increased cast range from 0 to 2.5 No longer grants additional Health regeneration while on Creep Charge cooldown increased from 15 to 20 seconds Base Creep spread distance increased by 33% Baneling Barrage (Q) Now fires a single Baneling at a time (4 charges) at a cost of 10 Mana per Baneling. Banelings have a 3 second charge cooldown Damage per Baneling increased from 75 to 91 Banelings can no longer have Health, and can no longer be targeted Hunter Killer (W) Damage decreased from 89 to 68
Devouring Maw (R) No longer deals damage on impact Damage per second increased from 43 to 80 Nydus Network (R) New functionality: Passively increases your Creep spread by 25% Passively causes all Basic Attacks to lower cooldowns by 1 second while on Creep Nydus Canals can now only be placed on Creep Entering Nydus Canals is now cancelled by taking damage The channel time to enter Nydus Canal decreased from 2 to 1.5 seconds Health regeneration while in the Network increased from 8 to 10% Mana regeneration while in the Network increased from 8 to 10% Max amount of Nydus Canal’s on the map increased from 4 to 10
Talents
Level 1 Centrifugal Hooks (Q) Removed Corpse Feeders (E) Damage reduction from non-Heroes increased from 30% to 40% Now reduces the cooldown of Infested Drop by 3 seconds in addition to its current functionality Reconstitution (Trait) Removed Demolitionist (Passive) Removed
Level 4 Envenomed Spines (Active) No longer adds Basic Attack range Activate to have your next Basic Attack deal 230 damage over 5 seconds. 30 second cooldown Medusa Blades (Passive) Damage increased from 25 to 33% Tumor Clutch (Trait) Removed Envenom (Active) Removed Infest (Passive) Moved to Level 1 New functionality added: Nearby ranged minions passively deal 200% more damage. Quest: For every 1000 siege damage dealt, increase the damage bonus by 1% New Talent – Serrated Spines (Passive) Quest: Every Basic Attack against enemy Heroes increases Basic Attack damage by 0.3 Level 7 Swarm Momentum (Passive) Removed Volatile Acid (Q) Moved to Level 1 New functionality added: Also increases the range of Banelings by 50% Ventral Sacs (Q) Removed Endless Creep (Trait) Removed Rapid Incubation (Active) Removed New Talent – Viscous Acid (Q) Banelings also slow targets by 25% for 1.5 seconds
Level 13 Mutalisk (W) Moved to level 16 No longer has a timed life. Mutalisks will now last until killed Grooved Spines (W) Removed Bile Drop (E) Moved to Level 7 Bonus damage decreased from 100% to 50% Quest: Every Hero hit by Infested Drop increases this bonus by 10% Reward: Upon reaching 150% bonus damage, increase the impact radius of Infested Drop by 20% Giant Killer (Passive) Removed New Talent – Hydralisk Transfusion (W) Zagara is Healed for 75% of the primary damage dealt by Hunter Killers New Talent – Protective Coating (Passive) While on Creep, Zagara takes 20% reduced damage from all sources Level 16 Baneling Massacre (Q) Moved to Level 7 New functionality Zagara gains 2 more charges of Banelings Brood Expansion (W) New functionality Now reduces the cooldown of Hunter Killer by 6 seconds Metabolic Boost (Trait) Removed Stoneskin (Active) Removed New Talent – Corrosive Saliva (W) Attacks from Hunter Killers deal an additional 2% of the targets max Health Level 20 Broodling Nest (R) Removed New Talent– Endless Creep (Trait) Increases Creep Tumor cast range by 2000% Creep Tumor duration increased from 240 to 600 seconds While on Creep Zagara gains an additional 20% move speed
Developer Comments: We are excited to bring you a fresh take on our Brood Queen. She had, by far, the unhealthiest Talent Tree in Heroes and we spent months going through multiple iterations of her Design. We knew exactly what we wanted to keep in her play-style: Lane Bully, Summoner, and Scout, and we aimed all of our decisions at those three characteristics. We also decided to upgrade her talent tree to better embrace our new design philosophies. Overall, we hope you enjoy her new tools while continuing to feel like you’re playing the old Zagara that we know and love.
Soothing Mist (Trait) Heal amount increased from 96 to 120 Blink Heal (R) Range reduced by approximately 15%
Talents
Level 1 Hyper Shift (Trait) Will no longer reduce the cooldown of Phase Shift when Brightwing heals herself Level 7 Dream Shot (Q) Moved to Level 1 Phase Shield (Z) Reduced Shield duration from 20 to 10 seconds Reduced Shield amount from 548 to 400 Mistified (Passive) Cooldown Reduction reduced from 1 to .75 seconds Level 20 Continuous Winds (R) Also increases the bonus healing of Soothing Mist (granted by Emerald Wind) from 8 to 15% Rewind (Active) Removed
Developer Comments: Phase Shift builds have been a lot of fun and we enjoy the gameplay behind them but we really want to open up other potential playstyles for Brightwing. Her burst healing output is locked behind Blink Heal and although we realize that having a two-charge Blink is an incredible asset, we want to continue incentivize using disengage tools like Emerald Wind.
Level 1 Insight (Trait) New Functionality: Quest: Every 3rd Basic Attack restores 14 Mana. After this effect triggers 100 times, every 3rd attack will also reduce the cooldown of all Basic Abilities by 1 second
Developer Comments: Insight was seeing very little play, mainly because it wasn’t distinct enough. In order to both buff it and make it different, we’re making it a Quest Talent/Trait. We felt the cooldown reduction fits well with the increased Mana, as Insight is about using all your Abilities (both offensive and defensive) more frequently.
Divine Shield (R) Mana cost reduced from 100 to 80 Divine Storm (R) Mana cost reduced from 100 to 80
Talents
Level 1 Block (Passive) Removed Reach (Q) Removed Level 4 Hammer of the Lightbringer (Passive) Moved to Level 1 Amplified Healing (Passive) Removed New Talent: Beacon of Light (Passive) Uther Heals himself for 30% of all Healing done to allied Heroes Level 7 Wave of Light (W) Moved to Level 1 Mana returned reduced from 10 to 8 per target hit Maximum Mana returned reduced from 50 to 40 Holy Fire (Passive) New functionality: Deal 18 damage per second to nearby enemies. Auto-attacking an enemy Hero increases this damage by 20% for 3 seconds. This effect stacks up to 3 times Clairvoyance (Active) Removed Level 13 Holy Shock (Q) Cooldown reduction when using Holy Light against enemies increased from 4 to 6 seconds. New functionality: After hitting an enemy, the next Holy Light Heals for an additional 50% Blessed Champion (Q) New functionality: After casting Holy Light, all Basic Attacks for 5 seconds will Heal Uther and all nearby allies for 20% of the amount Healed by Holy Light. Level 16 Gathering Radiance (W) After casting Holy Light, all Basic Attacks for 5 seconds will Heal Uther and all nearby allies for 20% of the amount Healed by Holy Light Imposing Presence (Passive) Removed New Talent: Righteous Defense (Q) Heroes healed by Holy Light take 50% less damage for 2 seconds
Developer Comments: The famous “Piano Uther” build (Uther with all Activated talents) has dominated his talent choices for a long time. While we understand that many players love this kind of a Support, we also want to give him more viable options for people who don’t like so many activated abilities. We didn’t touch the old build, but we have given him more options to choose from on various talent tiers.
Level 4 Frozen Wastes (E) Mana cost reduction increased from 3 to 4 Mana Per Second Level 7 Rune Tap (Passive) Heal amount increased from 3% to 4% of Maximum Health Icebound Fortitude (Active) Cooldown reduced from 50 to 40 seconds
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
Adaptation (R) Time before Heal activates reduced from 5 to 4 seconds
Talents
Level 1 Enduring Swarm (W) Increased Spell Resistance from 25 to 50% Primal Aggression (W) Also increases the duration of Dark Swarm by 0.5 seconds Level 7 Essence Devourer (Trait) Added Quest: Quest: Every Regen Globe collected increases maximum Essence by 1 Reward: Upon collecting 10 Regen Globes, increase the amount of Essence gained from Regen Globes from 10 to 15 Level 16 Rapid Regeneration (E) Increased Heal amount from 76 to 90 Level 20 Change is Survival (R) Also lowers the cooldown of Adaptation by 30 seconds in addition to its current functionality Apex Predator (Z) Decreased cooldown reduction from 30 to 25 seconds
Developer Comments: It took a lot of pressure to get the balance team to make some adjustments to Dehaka. With absolutely no changes since launch, we finally have a few tweaks to help bring up some struggling talents.
Level 1 Mana Thirst (Q) Removed the cap to Mana earned from targets hit by Skeletal Swing Level 7 Lingering Apparition (E) Increases Wraith Walk duration from 60% to 80% Level 13 Drain Momentum (W) Now increases Leoric’s Movement Speed by 10% while Drain Hope is active Level 20 Buried Alive (R) Increased damage from 34 to 45
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
Second Wind (Trait) Base Heal effect increased from 1.5% to 2% maximum Health per second. Critical Health effect increased from 3% to 4% maximum Health per second. Dwarf Toss (E) No longer grants Unstoppable while leaping. Now grants Muradin Resistant (25% reduced damage taken) for 2 seconds. Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds. Mana cost reduced from 70 to 55.
Talents
Level 4 Third Wind (Trait) Base Heal effect increased from 2% to 3% maximum Health per second Critical Heal effect increased from 4% to 6% maximum Health per second
Developer Comments: The Dwarf Toss changes are very likely going to spur a lot of conversation, Uther knows it did in our bullpen! The logic behind this change is as follows – We want to buff Muradin for all ranges of play EXCEPT our pro-scene. Of course this is where the Unstoppable leap is abused the most, and even though there is some great skill-cap behind knowing when and how to use it, it gives him an incredible amount of power and definitely hurts the pick-rates of our other Warriors. By replacing this with a 2 second Resistant buff, it should help the vast majority of players feel more tanky when they use Dwarf Toss, which has always been the intention.
Level 1 Endless Fury (Passive) Removed. Shot of Fury (Trait) Now also passively increases maximum Fury from 100 to 150 in addition to its current functionality Level 4 Hurricane (E) Now also reduces the cooldown of Whirlwind by 1 seconds in addition to its current functionality Level 7 Composite Spear (Q) Now also increases the Fury gained from Ancient Spear from 40 to 60 in addition to its current functionality Poisoned Spear (Q) Damage increased from 75% to 100% of Ancient Spear’s damage Level 13 Mystical Spear (Q) Reduced the cooldown reduction from 4 to 3 seconds Life Funnel (E) Whirlwind Healing bonus increased from 5% to 10% The tooltip has been clarified to state that this bonus is also tripled against Heroes Level 16 Nerves of Steel (Active) Cooldown increased from 60 to 70 seconds Furious Blow (W) Seismic Slam damage bonus increased from 40% to 50% Fury cost increased from 35 to 40 Level 20 Arreat Crater (R) Now also reduces the cooldown of Leap by 20 seconds in addition to its current functionality Anger Management (R) The increase to Stun, Slow, Root, and Polymorph duration reduction has been removed Increased Fury gain bonus from 50% to 100%
Developer Comments: Please see the developer comment at the top of the Heroes section.
Vile Gas (Trait) New Functionality: When damaged, Stitches emits a gas cloud that poisons nearby enemies over 3 seconds (no longer leaves Vile Gas on the ground) Cooldown reduced from 4 to 3 seconds Hook (Q) Hook can now target allied Heroes by default. This functionality can be toggled on and off through a new “Helping Hand” button. (Default hotkey: 1)
Talents
Level 4 New Talent: Restorative Fumes (Trait) Each time an enemy Hero takes damage from Vile Gas, Stitches heals for 27 Health Vile Cleaver (W) Removed Mercenary Lord (Passive) Removed Level 7 Toxic Gas (Trait) Radius increase reduced from 50% to 25% No longer increases the duration of Vile Gas Now increases the damage of Vile Gas by 50% Level 13 Helping Hand (Q) Removed
Developer Comments: We decided to do a quick clean-up for Stitches. This consisted of getting rid of the lingering gas-cloud which hurt our visual playfield more than the enemy team. Oh, and we made Helping Hand baseline; nothing to see here, move along.
Increased the Shield duration from 5 to 10 seconds
Horadric Reforging (Q)
Moved to level 4
Purge Evil (E)
Damage increased from 25% to 30%
Level 4
Even in Death (Trait)
Now also increases the damage of Archangel’s Wrath by 25% in addition to its current functionality
Moved to level 1
Retribution (E)
New functionality
Increases the Movement Speed bonus of Smite from 25% to 35%, and increase the duration from 2 to 3 seconds
Name changed to: Swift Retribution
Level 7
Angelic Momentum (Passive)
Removed
Angel’s Grace (Q)
Increased Movement Speed bonus from 25% to 30%.
Reciprocate (W)
Increased damage from 151 to 200
Zealotry (W)
Also reduces Righteousness’ cooldown by 2 seconds in addition to its current functionality
Bonus duration reduced from 100% to 50%
Level 13
Angelic Might (E)
This bonus now only applies when hitting Heroes with Smite
Increased damage bonus from 25% to 75%
Angelic Absorption (W)
Increased heal amount from 46 to 52
Level 16
Blade of Justice (Q)
Instead of increasing Basic Attack damage, now increases Attack Speed by 50% for 5 seconds
Salvation (W)
Increased Shield value from 25% to 35% for each ally Hero shielded
Level 20
Angel of Justice (R)
Increased cooldown reduction from 30 to 40 seconds
Developer Comments: Tyrael’s Talents have been stagnant for some time, and we saw an opportunity to spruce them up. We’ve added some power to his lesser-used Talents, and given him some new ways to bring more utility to his team. While we understand that many players will miss Angelic Momentum, we felt that it was best to remove it from Tyrael in order to have more design space to add other Talents that manipulate the cooldowns and durations of his abilities.
General [list] [*] Corrected a number of typos and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game.
Art [list] [*] Artanis: Purifier Artanis’ blades have been slightly scaled down to better fit within his armor. [*] Cho’gall: Fixed an issue causing the Corruptor Cho’gall skin and variations to appear at a lower resolution than intended while using High graphic settings. [*] Chromie: Cancelling Chromie’s dance animation and then restarting it will no longer cause one of her clones to dissipate too early. [*] Nova: The Novazon skin will now properly throw a Javelin when casting Snipe. [*] Rexxar: Will now animate properly while riding Mounts that hover.
Battlegrounds
Battlefield of Eternity: AI Heroes can now halt their attacks on Immortals at the center of the Battleground in order to gank an enemy Sgt. Hammer that is attacking inner-Towers and Keeps.
Infernal Shrines: Punishers will no longer prefer to attack non-Heroic enemies that are affected by Abathur’s Symbiote over enemy Heroes.
Dragon Shire: The Dragon Knight’s Savage Charge can no longer be cast on neutral Siege and Bruiser Mercenaries.
Tomb of the Spider Queen: The Top-lane Keep on the left side of the Battleground can no longer attack enemies who are standing next to the Gate.
Tomb of the Spider Queen: The number of Spider Gems held by each team will now always display, even if zero Gems are currently being carried.
Try Mode: The Mana bonus applied by Arthas’ Eternal Hunger Talent will no longer persist after clicking Reset Talents.
Try Mode: The effects of Li’Ming’s Aether Walker Talent will now be properly reset after clicking Reset Talents.
Try Mode: Brightwing’s Phase Shift cooldown is now properly reset after clicking Toggle Cooldowns.
Heroes and Talents
Anub'arak: Bed of Barbs will now properly apply damage over time effects to enemy Immortals on Battlefield of Eternity.
Artanis: Fixed a rare issue in which an enemy who is killed in the same moment as they are struck by Phase Prism could cause Artanis to fly to the target’s death location.
Cho’gall: Runic Blast’s traveling and end-point area of effect indicators will now display appropriately for Gall, and will no longer display for Cho.
Dehaka: Drag will now properly interrupt Tychus if he is struck while attempting to cast Grenade.
Executioner: This Talent will no longer deal bonus damage to Structures affected by Sylvanas’ Black Arrow.
Falstad: Will no longer be struck by ground-level objects, such as Abathur’s Toxic Nests, while using Flight.
Illidan: Issuing an attack command on an enemy while using Sweeping Strike in the opposite direction will now always cause Illidan to travel the full Sweeping Strike distance, both before and after learning the Unbound Talent.
Jaina: Casting Blizzard while hidden within a Shrub will no longer prevent players who are outside that shrub from seeing its visual effects.
Kael’thas: Fixed an issue which prevented Phoenix from being self-cast using ALT + R.
Kael’thas: AI Kael'thas will now properly receive a reduced cooldown timer after cancelling Pyroblast.
Kharazim: Fixed a rare issue in which movement commands could persist after casting Radiant Dash.
Leoric: Fixed a visual issue in which the Reanimation Talent’s Quest could appear incomplete despite satisfying all requirements for completion.
Lunara: Leaping Strike can now properly damage enemy Structures after learning the Boundless Stride Talent.
Lunara: Landing against the terrain after casting Leaping Strike will no longer occasionally cause Lunara to run back to her original location.
Lunara: Forts and Keeps will now properly fire on a Wisp that it is just inside attack range.
Medivh: Fixed an issue which caused allies to see Portal’s range indicator after learning the Portal Mastery Talent.
Nova: The buff icon for the Snipe Master Talent will now properly display in the buff bar.
Nova: Holo Decoys can now use Basic Attacks against enemy Monsters and Mercenaries. After taking the Lethal Decoy Talent, Holo Decoys will also be able to use Basic Attacks against enemy Minions.
Nova: Will no longer receive an Invulnerability overlay on-screen if a Holo Decoy is affected by Tyrael’s Sanctification, but Nova herself is outside its area of effect.
Nova: Triple Tap’s visual effects will no longer persist during an enemy Hero’s post-death effect, such as Tyrael’s Archangel’s Wrath.
Rehgar: Ancestral Healing will now properly restore Health to Artanis and Johanna if the target takes lethal damage in the same moment that Shield Overload or Indestructible is triggered.
Sgt. Hammer: The targeting reticule for Blunt Force Gun will no longer highlight targets that are outside its area of effect.
Sgt. Hammer: Enemy AI players will no longer immediately dive Sgt. Hammer if she enters Siege Mode while hidden in a Shrub or Vent.
Stitches: Hook will now properly pull its target over unpathable areas of terrain, even if the enemy it strikes had been launched by another Ability.
Tracer: Fixed an issue that could cause Pulse Bomb to launch in an unintended direction when casting Blink while Pulse Bomb is firing.
Tracer: The Reload bar will now be properly displayed during Recall after learning the Locked and Loaded Talent.
Tracer: Will no longer continually face her Basic Attack target while Polymorphed.
Tracer: The Composition B Talent can no longer be triggered by sticking non-Heroic targets.
Tracer: The “Lock On” icon next to Tracer’s status bar will now appear to the left of icons for Battleground Mechanics that can be held, such as Spider Gems and Doubloons.
Tychus: After learning the Sizzlin’ Attacks Talent, Basic Attacks will now properly deal 3% of the target’s maximum Health as damage while Minigun is active.
Tyrael: Casting Judgement on an enemy just as the target is killed will no longer teleport Tyrael to the enemy safe zone.
Tyrael: The duration bar for El’Druin’s Might can no longer display during Archangel’s Wrath.
Tyrande: Picking the Celestial Wrath Talent will no longer prevent Starfall’s cooldown timer from displaying appropriately on the in-game Score Screen’s Talent pane.
Uther: Can no longer use Healing Wells while in Eternal Devotion form.
Valla: Using Rain of Vengeance to score a killing blow on Tyrael or Uther will no longer cause an extraordinarily long respawn timer to appear while in Eternal Devotion or Archangel’s Wrath form.
Zagara: Enemy Heroes who are not caught by Devouring Maw can no longer walk through the Maw while it is emerging from the terrain.
Zagara: Fixed an issue that could allow Creep Tumors to be placed in unintended areas with Quick Cast or On Release settings enabled.
Zeratul: Casting Blink and Rewind in rapid succession will no longer place Blink on a 2 second cooldown while Wormhole is active.
Zeratul: Void Prison will now properly interrupt Flying Kick if the target moves too far out of range while Chen is in Stasis.
Sound
Fixed an issue which prevented Heroes from playing their “Pissed” voiceover lines after being repeatedly clicked.
Anub’arak: Voiceover will now play properly while idling on Anub’arak’s Hero page in the Shop.
Azmodan/Kharazim: Fixed an issue that prevented Azmodan and Kharazim from playing certain voiceover lines after killing an enemy Hero.
Gazlowe: The music associated with Big Top Gazlowe’s dance animation will play appropriately while in Robo-Goblin form.
Tracer: The Blink recharge sound effect will now only play for the Tracer player.
User Interface
Selecting unowned Heroes, Skins, or Mounts during Hero Select will no longer disable the ready button for other players in the party, nor remove those players from the queue.
Rebinding a Hotkey to the Left Mouse Button will no longer cause a Primary Hotkey Unbound message to display.
The time displayed by the clock on the Home Screen will now properly match the operating system’s clock when using the RTZ 4 timezone.
Ranged, Melee, and Wizard Minions Now deal double damage to Structures.
Infesting Archers as Zagara is going to be insane now. Previously, if you got to Infest two Archer minions they'd bring down a tower very quickly, it'll be insanely fast now. EDIT: Infest got a rework. Its 200% now, which with above means it's the same damage as before.
Catapult Minions Attack range increased by 20%. Sight range increased by 17%. Will now fixate on Structures. Catapults will not acquire a new target after fixating until the target is destroyed or the Catapult is killed.
Does this also mean they won't target Heroes anymore? More attack range also mean they're more likely to benefit from anything that buffs their damage (like Infest).
Relentless
Relentless and similar Hero-specific Talents will now only reduce the duration of Slows, Stuns and Roots. Silence effects will no longer be reduced by this talent.
Sylvanas is going to be happy about this one.
Jaina
Abilities
Blizzard (W) Increased the number of waves from 2 to 3 Reduced damage from 167 to 142 Increased Mana cost from 75 to 90
Uhm...this is a nerf I think? No one will stand in all 3 waves? And it costs more mana? And the first two deal less damage? The only thing this hurts more is Structures and Mercs. Sure if you get a full on root it may hurt more but who is seriously going to get hit for that long? I guess it zones for longer now?
Kerrigan changes are interesting. For the most part being able to Q spam minions remains intact (though it costs 10 mana each now) and Lingering Essence got rolled into the shield talent on 7 (though it will last 12 seconds rather than 20). The larger W size on 7 is interesting. You'd never take it on 16 but on 7 it might have a use. Queen's Rush is still crap. Blizzard, it's 30% movement speed on a melee assassin. Mounts are still faster and it barely negates most slows. Kerrigan doesn't really need movement speed for engaging since she has Ravage and 30% is nowhere near enough for an escape unless it's combined with an actual escape ability. Getting it for free on a kill is pointless as getting a kill either means you've won the teamfight and you don't really need the speedboost or it's a random single kill and there's nothing to speedboost towards.
...she has become a bit of a one-trick-pony. We feel this is okay for some Heroes...
Blizzard. You make me sad. It is never OK for a Hero to be a one-trick pony. It removes all variety and options from a Hero and it also means the enemy team knows exactly what to expect from the start of the game. I love it when certain talent choices are delayed by waiting to see what the enemy picks. Is Valla going AA, Multishot or Arrow build? Will I need Block? Stuff like that.
Abathur changes are nice. He can support more now and even provide a bit of healing.
Omg, Zagara rework? Wut? Creep now gives attack range but no health regen? But...my sustain! Banelings are now singular with charges, but invulnerable. Hm. Makes it easier to decloak stuff. Hydra damage nerf, guess that figures. Maw no longer does starting damage but more duration damage.
Nydus Network (R)
New functionality: Passively increases your Creep spread by 25% Passively causes all Basic Attacks to lower cooldowns by 1 second while on Creep Nydus Canals can now only be placed on Creep Entering Nydus Canals is now cancelled by taking damage The channel time to enter Nydus Canal decreased from 2 to 1.5 seconds Health regeneration while in the Network increased from 8 to 10% Mana regeneration while in the Network increased from 8 to 10% Max amount of Nydus Canal’s on the map increased from 4 to 10
Wooooooooow....but...no more backdooring. Aw...and taking damage cancels going into it? What. That makes the entire thing 100% passive and only good for pushing. Hmmmzzz.... Max 10 worms though. Muhahahaa. I can already imagine blocking off a lane with a nydus wall.
Infest (Passive)
Moved to Level 1 New functionality added: Nearby ranged minions passively deal 200% more damage. Quest: For every 1000 siege damage dealt, increase the damage bonus by 1%
Infest is now like Mercenary Lord, BUT from what I've just tried in Try Mode, the damage buff also seems to work against Heroes. 1000 siege damage isn't that much actually, since a single Baneling hitting the gate, a wall and a tower already stacks up the siege damage quite quickly.
Envenomed Spines (Active) No longer adds Basic Attack range Activate to have your next Basic Attack deal 230 damage over 5 seconds. 30 second cooldown
New Talent – Serrated Spines (Passive) Quest: Every Basic Attack against enemy Heroes increases Basic Attack damage by 0.3
Envenom Spines is now a better Envenom I guess. About 500 damage on level 20.
Serrated Spines is interesting but...is Zagara really an AA hero? Still...0.3 for every attack against an enemy Hero. Hmmmm.
Level 13
Mutalisk (W) Moved to level 16 No longer has a timed life. Mutalisks will now last until killed
Hahahahahaha. Mutaballs in Heroes. Just spam them on mercs, minions or walls and stack them up. Combine that with the cooldown reduction from the Nydus Network and you've got silly times. You can even get a Morales to heal them and just stack them up till you got like 5+ murdering everything.
EDIT: Ok, did some testing in Try Mode. Usually the Mutalisk will die from damage before you can get any real number of them up, but it does add two very nice things. One, you can just send a Mutalisk to fly along a lane with a wave (by using it on an enemy minion wave) and just leave it there and go elsewhere. The Mutalisk will push that lane for you all by itself as long as it lives. The other very nice thing is that running from the Mutalisk only really works if you can run to a tower. Otherwise it will chase you forever. You pretty much have to kill it and suffer some damage.
New Talent – Hydralisk Transfusion (W)
Zagara is Healed for 75% of the primary damage dealt by Hunter Killers
New Talent – Protective Coating (Passive)
While on Creep, Zagara takes 20% reduced damage from all sources
Both very interesting. Well...20% isn't that much. Still, some survivability.
Brood Expansion (W)
New functionality Now reduces the cooldown of Hunter Killer by 6 seconds
Hmm... on the same tier as Mutalisk. Interesting, but I wonder if the reduced cooldown is fast enough for it to matter in a fight.
New Talent – Corrosive Saliva (W)
Attacks from Hunter Killers deal an additional 2% of the targets max Health
Also on 16. Hmmm.
New Talent– Endless Creep (Trait)
Increases Creep Tumor cast range by 2000% Creep Tumor duration increased from 240 to 600 seconds While on Creep Zagara gains an additional 20% move speed
God yes. Something else to pick at level 20. CREEP EVERYWHERE. JAEDONG LEVEL CREEP SPREAD. EDIT: BLINK IS REMOVED. Creep is now pretty much the only talent to pick at 20. EDIT 2: Creep talent at 20 is an upgrade of the Nydus Network, not a separate talent.
New Talent: Beacon of Light (Passive)
Uther Heals himself for 30% of all Healing done to allied Heroes
Well hello. This is interesting.
Holy Shock (Q)
Cooldown reduction when using Holy Light against enemies increased from 4 to 6 seconds. New functionality: After hitting an enemy, the next Holy Light Heals for an additional 50%
So...whack an enemy, then next heal does 50% more with 6 seconds less cooldown. Still costs a ton of mana to use but still, interesting. Shrink Ray and Spell Shield remain strong contenders for first pick on 13 though.
Level 16 Blessed Champion (Q)
New functionality: After casting Holy Light, all Basic Attacks for 5 seconds will Heal Uther and all nearby allies for 20% of the amount Healed by Holy Light.
Wait...what? So I heal an ally, whack the enemy tank three times and the entire team gets a free 60% Holy Light heal? Jeez. Focus Morales just got replaced by Focus Uther. Does come in the same tier as Benediction though.
Dwarf Toss (E)
No longer grants Unstoppable while leaping. Now grants Muradin Resistant (25% reduced damage taken) for 2 seconds. Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds. Mana cost reduced from 70 to 55.
Should be fine for the most part with the one exception of Bone Prison. You can't jump out of that anymore.
The logic behind this change is as follows – We want to buff Muradin for all ranges of play EXCEPT our pro-scene. Of course this is where the Unstoppable leap is abused the most...
Guys....the explanation after that silly bit stating that you wanted other Warriors to be picked more now that Muradin no longer has Unstoppable would've been fine on it's own.
Hook (Q)
Hook can now target allied Heroes by default. This functionality can be toggled on and off through a new “Helping Hand” button. (Default hotkey: 1)
I'm gonna screw this up for so long. The pro's are going to screw this up for so long. The potential plays though, that I do like.
Abilities
Archangel’s Wrath (Trait) Increased damage from 456 to 550
Level 4
Even in Death (Trait) Now also increases the damage of Archangel’s Wrath by 25% in addition to its current functionality Moved to level 1
Nuclear launch detected. No, it sadly still isn't Nova. I still say it's weird for a Hero to want to die intentionally that isn't Murky.
Overall, I'm going to be very interested in trying out the new Zagara.
Holy shit. So much PvE now... Can't they just give Jaina her escape back? I don't think they needed to fiddle with Muradin's escape. Uther's beacon of light looks pretty sick, as does Zagara's endless creep!
Abilities Pulse Bomb (R) The size of the “Stuck!” text that displays on-screen when Stuck by Pulse Bomb has been increased in order to decrease visibility during gameplay
Abilities Pulse Bomb (R) The size of the “Stuck!” text that displays on-screen when Stuck by Pulse Bomb has been increased in order to decrease visibility during gameplay
This is a huge patch, but I feel like the biggest change is the healing globe buff, the healing well nerf, and the buff to minions (and the huge buff to catapults)
Will see how this changes the meta, but straight off this is a huge buff to any champion with strong wave-clear, and especially those that are strong solo laners. It's much easier now for a team to gain an early advantage off of a strong laning phase (easier to bully people/snowball a lane, better payoff of pushing to tower), while making creep management even more important at all points in the game.
Have to get a feel for how much of a buff 2x minion damage is - but if it's significant, this could really shake up the strategic options available in the game.
Just tried the new Azmo E talents. If you stack them all, you get about 40-50% more range, 40% more damage and you can move around with it. Makes it very hard to dodge and deals about 500/600 damage a second at level 20. Imagine that might get a bit tricky for some heroes to deal with given the range.
freaking hell most of my favorite characters changed and nerfed in the process. Now I hate Gul'dan even more. Atleast he sucks against stuns or in short sucks in heroes.
On July 06 2016 06:17 FeyFey wrote: freaking hell most of my favorite characters changed and nerfed in the process. Now I hate Gul'dan even more. Atleast he sucks against stuns or in short sucks in heroes.
Gul'Dan will probably be really good, just from the look at numbers and abilities, let alone talents that are sick. He is ranged assassin, but he will probably be the tankiest ranged assassin there is, with a lot of ways to give his HP back or to increase it through talent. He will also be great laner. Disappointed in his Rain of Destruction heroic, it is quite useless, but on the other hand Horrify is freaking awesome.
There are a lot of other changes and the patch is way too big for us to chew on it quickly. At first it seems like that they have been buffing heroes randomly, but they've buffed/reworked/swapped a lot of talents with very low pick rate, so a lot of them became viable and some heroes now have quite a few builds.
I love the talent which makes uther's target take reduced damage for 2seconds. Also love the holy fire change. A purpose staying close to enemies now. Damn sounds like fun, especially with the synergy of some other new talents. I do not understand why they made greymane's burst even higher... Thats a BAD change.
Need to try a whirlwind build of sonya now, the healing sounds very nice.
On July 06 2016 09:53 NonY wrote: I like the intent of the minion changes but I already feel like lacking wave clear is a significant liability and this'll make it even more extreme.
I second this. The direction make sense(making wave management more important, buff to split-pushing), but people already super under-value wave clear in the current iteration of the game. And now it's more important early (denying / obtaining globes), mid (increased minion damage) and late (catapult buff).
My biggest surprise among all the changes was that there weren't any adjustments to xul/slyv/vikings.
I don't mind the catapault change, but I really want to see structure scaling buffs. They had Core buffs in a PTR a while back but removed them before they got into the game. It's kinda ridiculous how a single catapault can do 4-5% damage to the Core with each shot. It also would prevent the (imo) silly situations in late game where 2 heroes on one team die and the enemy team is able to immediately end the game despite the Core and 3 other heroes attacking them.
I like the idea that the Core has scaling shields affected by how many structures are alive. Have 2 forts and 2 keeps alive, but 1 fort and 1 keep dead in one lane? Your Core still has a good 75% of its shields remaining. Have all 3 keeps dead? Your Core has only 25% of its shields.
Hook can now target allied Heroes by default. This functionality can be toggled on and off through a new “Helping Hand” button. (Default hotkey: 1)
I'm gonna screw this up for so long. The pro's are going to screw this up for so long. The potential plays though, that I do like.
I don't think the pros will screw this up for more than half a game. It's pretty straight forward. Hell I don't think I will screw it up at all and I am pretty far from being a pro.
I do think it will be useful in HL when your retarded teammates dive for no reason though.
On July 06 2016 04:19 Thezzy wrote: Damn it. They just couldn't change Kerrigan without breaking Ravage. Close range Ravages on the Arthas bot completely whiff, dealing no damage.
Kerrigan has been the only hero to give me trouble on the PTR as guldan....just saying.
On July 06 2016 04:19 Thezzy wrote: Damn it. They just couldn't change Kerrigan without breaking Ravage. Close range Ravages on the Arthas bot completely whiff, dealing no damage.
Kerrigan has been the only hero to give me trouble on the PTR as guldan....just saying.
I tried it myself in a PTR game (the lag from EU...) and didn't notice it there. Maybe it's something with Arthas or a bot.
Hook can now target allied Heroes by default. This functionality can be toggled on and off through a new “Helping Hand” button. (Default hotkey: 1)
I'm gonna screw this up for so long. The pro's are going to screw this up for so long. The potential plays though, that I do like.
I don't think the pros will screw this up for more than half a game. It's pretty straight forward. Hell I don't think I will screw it up at all and I am pretty far from being a pro.
I do think it will be useful in HL when your retarded teammates dive for no reason though.
I have this picture in mind where your teammates dive heavily and you just hook them back everytime they go deep, too. The flaming though :D Should add a text like Tracer's "stuck" saying "NO!" when you hook them back.
Hook can now target allied Heroes by default. This functionality can be toggled on and off through a new “Helping Hand” button. (Default hotkey: 1)
I'm gonna screw this up for so long. The pro's are going to screw this up for so long. The potential plays though, that I do like.
I don't think the pros will screw this up for more than half a game. It's pretty straight forward. Hell I don't think I will screw it up at all and I am pretty far from being a pro.
I do think it will be useful in HL when your retarded teammates dive for no reason though.
I have this picture in mind where your teammates dive heavily and you just hook them back everytime they go deep, too. The flaming though :D Should add a text like Tracer's "stuck" saying "NO!" when you hook them back.
"OBJECTION !" would be fine, that's why I yell when I stun Lili/ETC out of their ultimates.
I like the changes they made, and the insane PVE of Zagara. Looks interesting
I really like what they did to BW too, increasing the heal but lowering the burst / shields. Now with a proper frontline she'll be on Morales levels of annoyance. Also, let's hope the change on Chen isn't too significant. I'm starting to play learn him now (god he's so OP), and being able to stop drinking when you want feels natural.
Hook can now target allied Heroes by default. This functionality can be toggled on and off through a new “Helping Hand” button. (Default hotkey: 1)
I'm gonna screw this up for so long. The pro's are going to screw this up for so long. The potential plays though, that I do like.
I don't think the pros will screw this up for more than half a game. It's pretty straight forward. Hell I don't think I will screw it up at all and I am pretty far from being a pro.
I do think it will be useful in HL when your retarded teammates dive for no reason though.
I have this picture in mind where your teammates dive heavily and you just hook them back everytime they go deep, too. The flaming though :D Should add a text like Tracer's "stuck" saying "NO!" when you hook them back.
Also, let's hope the change on Chen isn't too significant. I'm starting to play learn him now (god he's so OP), and being able to stop drinking when you want feels natural.
You still can; you just have to walk away. They just want to avoid someone accidentally clicking D twice when he wants to drink and therefore cancelling the entire drinking while putting it on CD. I think it's a good change. :-P
Ok thank you for explaining ! If it's just that, it's perfect. I'm the kind of idiot who spams R and insta cancel a 4 man Mosh Pit, so it'll actually help.
On July 06 2016 21:37 Thax wrote: They just made lane pushing specialists significantly more important, didn't they? Also protecting your keeps is even more important now.
Has anyone tested how this works out with Merc Lord?
On July 06 2016 06:17 FeyFey wrote: freaking hell most of my favorite characters changed and nerfed in the process. Now I hate Gul'dan even more. Atleast he sucks against stuns or in short sucks in heroes.
Gul'Dan will probably be really good, just from the look at numbers and abilities, let alone talents that are sick. He is ranged assassin, but he will probably be the tankiest ranged assassin there is, with a lot of ways to give his HP back or to increase it through talent. He will also be great laner.
his sustain talent forces him to stand still. He also needs to use his sustain talent because of his trait. Unless he as a ranged assassin gets healed. So yeah he needs strong talents to make him even work in the slightest, since you usually don't want to waste heals on a ranged assassin. Don't mind though he will be played alot when released and my Chromie training will pay off big time against him muahahaha,
Meh my zagara is now a noob pve push bot... also they nerfed blink heal and shield but gave nothing to brightwing in return ?
At least I like the catapult change, should make it more consistent how threatening they actually are (sometimes you have all 3 keeps and for some reason it puts 0 pressure on the core, only gives vision).
Although clearly waveclear is going to become sooooo important, they will probably have to balance how much damage heroes deal to minions. Heroes with poor waveclear will be punished heavily.
On July 07 2016 05:11 RouaF wrote: Meh my zagara is now a noob pve push bot... also they nerfed blink heal and shield but gave nothing to brightwing in return ?
At least I like the catapult change, should make it more consistent how threatening they actually are (sometimes you have all 3 keeps and for some reason it puts 0 pressure on the core, only gives vision).
Although clearly waveclear is going to become sooooo important, they will probably have to balance how much damage heroes deal to minions. Heroes with poor waveclear will be punished heavily.
Is the substantial boost to her passive heal not something in return?
I like the idea that the Core has scaling shields affected by how many structures are alive. Have 2 forts and 2 keeps alive, but 1 fort and 1 keep dead in one lane? Your Core still has a good 75% of its shields remaining. Have all 3 keeps dead? Your Core has only 25% of its shields.
It's a good idea, but how about a "simpler" effect ?:
The core gets 100% dmg reduction when 3 keeps are alive (as is right now), but 66% dmg reduction with 2 alive, 33% with 1 alive and 0% when all keeps are down.
That way it'd automatically scale (minions and heroes dmg is reduced by a flat percentage, thus scales with level).
And it should lead to more fighting to get the keeps as it's easier to end the game then - and less "no matter what we did before, when 2 opponents die at lvl 20+, we end". I mean the latter makes for good comeback effects, but I definitely would rather see such a "core gets less dmg the more keeps are alive" change instead of buffing catapults etc.
[edit] For 2-keep maps it would obviously mean 100% dmg reduction with both keeps alive (like it is now), and 50% with 1 alive
On July 06 2016 09:53 NonY wrote: I like the intent of the minion changes but I already feel like lacking wave clear is a significant liability and this'll make it even more extreme.
I second this. The direction make sense(making wave management more important, buff to split-pushing), but people already super under-value wave clear in the current iteration of the game. And now it's more important early (denying / obtaining globes), mid (increased minion damage) and late (catapult buff).
My biggest surprise among all the changes was that there weren't any adjustments to xul/slyv/vikings.
Yeah, this.
Like the intent of the changes, but there were ALOT of hereos with great waveclear in the last year (not only xul but Kaelthas or even warriors like leoric or Johanna got great waveclear comapred to "oldschool beta heroes" like say, ETC. Would be nice to see some "heack, lets just tack good laning onto this hero" revised then.
I wonder if there are any other hidden changes. What even causes this? Just forgetting? Odd that they would include some of Tyrael's changes in the notes but not others...
Wow the new Tyrael sounds pretty fun to play. He's super unpopular on NA HL, though I gather he's picked elsewhere. With these lower cooldowns and his lowered mana costs, he's pretty tempting. Also his talents seem pretty good, like there are legit multiple ways to build him. Of course, hard to judge if that's really true until you actually try the different builds.
Wow, Huge huge patch. Quick thoughts on interesting changes.
Kerrigan - Seems like they are trying to greatly encourage building into her trait. By nerfing the value of the Q build, but..the friendly Q is big.
Lunarna- I think Mage Lunarna could be a thing now. With the all the upgrades to her Q talents.
Zagara - Seems their trying to make her in to a sudo global, that's less reliant on hunter killers for dmg.
Sonya - Right now Sonya is still played like a Warrior, talking all sustain Talents. Wonder if we might see her played as an assasin. With the Level 1 talent merge, it'll be a lot easier to sustain Wrath indefinitely.
Hurray, finally finished my placement matches, Diamond 3. this should be the current general discussion place, so I'm putting it here, hope that's the right spot.
16 Muta will be weird fun and make people puke probably when they have to go to a lane to clear a Muta and Zagara just Nydus replaces the Muta asap. Or yeah you stack Muta healing on a Merc camp lol.
Wow the new Tyrael sounds pretty fun to play. He's super unpopular on NA HL, though I gather he's picked elsewhere. With these lower cooldowns and his lowered mana costs, he's pretty tempting. Also his talents seem pretty good, like there are legit multiple ways to build him. Of course, hard to judge if that's really true until you actually try the different builds.
Yeah, that's what Blizzard did in this patch, buffed/reworked/moved a lot of low pick rate talents which resulted in many heroes having new builds which is awesome.
Tyrael, Uther, Kerrigan, Azmodan, Abathur... all have quite a few different builds now but we will see how viable they really are.
I have my concerns about Gul'Dan. As much as I like him and will be instant 15k gold buy for me, he seems like the best laner in the game and I don't think that he will be balanced at all. Other heroes either have good wave clear(Sylvana, Xul, KT) or great sustain(Illidan, Chen, Thrall, Tassadar), there aren't many that have both, and he seems to be one of the best(if not the best) at both. He won't be leaving the lane at all, you won't be able to outpush him, he will never run out of HP or mana, he won't even need to get the globes while he will have quite good zoning tools. Especially in the new patch where laning matters a lot because of new minions, globes and moon well, it looks like that he won't have anyone outshining him in that regard. At least he will be weak against ganks as he has no mobility but I don't expect any hero to be able to beat him in the lane.
On July 08 2016 11:09 Valiver wrote: Blizzard said they are looking into that, I doubt it's going live how it is now.
Not sure how you can really stack mutas on anything for more than a few mutas. Merc camps will kill the mutas when this gets fixed. There is no target dummy to stack infinite mutas on. You might be able to stack a few with the help of Morales healing the mutas.
On July 08 2016 13:00 Larkin wrote: Not even Chen? :o
No, because Chen has pathetic wave clear, his strong side is staying in lane. However, with new patch Gul'Dan will simply destroy both of his towers with new minions since he can't outpush him, and I am pretty sure that he can't tank the damage of every minion + Gul'Dan spamming spells with infinite mana. Also Chen isn't nearly the best, there are quite a few heroes that do really well against him.
This patch seems to lean towards specialists and heroes with good wave clear, while heroes that have amazing lane sustain will fall behind at least in laning stage. Having Chen/Thrall/Illidan on lane isn't really an option anymore since they will get outpushed hard by Sylvanas/Xul/Gul'Dan/Zagara/whatever with good wave clear and their towers will start to fall apart pretty soon after that which will give a big exp advantage to the enemy team. Objective popping out and your team being level 3 while enemy is level 4 because of those towers is kind of a big deal.
We will see what happens, it isn't ruled out that people will start to gank solo laners a lot more often, giving their team advantage and a room to breath at the same time.
On July 08 2016 11:09 Valiver wrote: Blizzard said they are looking into that, I doubt it's going live how it is now.
Not sure how you can really stack mutas on anything for more than a few mutas. Merc camps will kill the mutas when this gets fixed. There is no target dummy to stack infinite mutas on. You might be able to stack a few with the help of Morales healing the mutas.
Let's say you have Chen who just drinks in the middle of the bruiser camp, taking all aggro, not attacking at all. Zag doesn't attack either but spams hydras/mutas on CD. I think you can farm 3 or 4 early game on the camp only, more later with double charge (if it still exists). So you can easily abuse it for 4 or 5 following you into your next unsuspecting victim.
I'm not worried because most AOE spells would erase the summons, but it can work on rare cases, like all cheeses. But now Zag can early solo (or duo with tank) bosses very efficiently. I can feel PVE Zag being a monster on Cursed Hollow.
Double charge no longer exists. There is a cooldown reduction talent on 16 but that's the same talent tier as the Mutalisk talent.
Not sure how Zagara is now better at solo-ing bosses. Roaches remain the same, the creep no longer heals you and the hydra does less damage. Maybe with all the Drop Pod talents and the Nydus Network creep giving you CD reduction per AA you could cycle through Drop Pod roaches quickly enough but other than that, Zagara won't have anything to tank the boss for her.
oh wow with Nydus the cooldown reduction is 1 second per hit, read that wrong. So as long as the boss doesn't kill the creep you can solo him with ease. Not even talents other then Nydus needed. But because you do a ton less damage, it will take an eternity to solo the boss. So you probably need some assassin aid to merc camp as Zagara now. But takes 0 skill with Nydus now to do any camp lol. Well Boss still needs some Roach drop timing.
On July 13 2016 01:35 ThomasjServo wrote: I get the sense Gul'Dan will enter the nexus with not a bang but a whimper. What do you guys think?
I'll have to get a sense of what it's like to play against him, but he doesn't seem that interesting of a hero. If he does a lot of damage he'll be good. If not, he won't be. Not much to it other than that, though.
Gul'dan has incredible sustain, Fear is one of the best initiators in the game, and he has great wave clear, with solid team fight damage, and it seems like there are several viable builds. Of course PTR is hard to judge accurately, but most of the streamers and pros I watched on the PTR seemed to put him between tier 1 and tier 2 on first impressions. Patch is live in NA now.
I'm so glad that they are listing changes by talent level and not corresponding ability anymore. Makes it so much easier to read through lots of changes.
On July 13 2016 02:27 karazax wrote: Gul'dan has incredible sustain, Fear is one of the best initiators in the game, and he has great wave clear, with solid team fight damage, and it seems like there are several viable builds. Of course PTR is hard to judge accurately, but most of the streamers and pros I watched on the PTR seemed to put him between tier 1 and tier 2 on first impressions. Patch is live in NA now.
Grubby just said on his stream that he's a tier 3, fwiw.
I'm gonna guess gul'dan will be tier1. I think the combination of sustain and wave clear he has is just superb for pubs, never having to hearth is a big quality. Plus after 20 you can safely solo with the instant TP talent. And the fear ultimate is just insane set's up picks so well.
For the rest i think the minion, well and globe changes will have less impact than people think. Pure Splitpushing won't improve all that much imo, i do think global heroes get a good boost.
For some other heroes i think zagara and azmodan actually got worse after the shakeups. Kerrigan and jaina got better a fair bit better I'd say. Lots of other heroes didn't change all too much. Bw, kharazim and uther all slightly better shaking up supports nicely.
Most wtf changes go to greymane, don't really fix his builds plus he got a unneeded buff.
Best changes overall to zag, tyrael, jaina and kael.
On July 13 2016 06:30 Foxxan wrote: Gul'dan feels like such a "boring" hero. Blizzard also had the opportunity to make something cooler with how fear works in this game.
*Fears an opponent, closest allied hero when cast takes 50% less damage from that opponent for 2sec. Could be from his basic kit with a low cooldown.
*Or how about a skillshot with fear. If you hit the enemy on the right side, he runs to the left. Hit him above and he runs south and so on.
Dunno. Anyway, his life drain is cool actually. But feels like they should have tried and do "more" with him than he is now.
Well it seems that he's really strong. And he's the first hero who can sacrifice life for mana and vice versa. But I personally am glad to see a more 'standard' hero coming out. I feel like it's been a while since we've had just a normal hero added - the previous have all had a very unique gimmick. Adding in cool unique heroes like Medivh, Tracer and Chromie is one thing, but they will only ever be niche picks - which is fine - but to freshen up the hero pool as a whole adding a bunch of standard, solid heroes should be their priority. I hope Auriel is capable of matching Rehgar, Uther and Kharazim for supports.
Zagara is so blarg now. Worst rework ever, worse then the Raynor ones. Got to experiment with the banelings more though, maybe I am wrong. But less choices on all talent levels, while the talents are more impactful on her playstyle, but removed the ability to react to the opponent. Which helps in Ranked (well makes her more niche there), but for QM ... its a curse.
She was a bit too much an all around pick previously. Got a big map ? She can wreck in lane. Got a small map ? She has amazing teamfight potential. Now she's PVE, but her PVP is far from bad. You still have that game changing ultimate, and very dangerous mutalisks.
For me Gul'Dan is really fun, and definitely tier 1 hero. I don't think that he will have one build at all, even in competitive, his talents all seem good in right circumstances, depending on your and enemy picks, map being played, will you solo or roam etc.
Played a few games now. TLV are stronger than ever with the bribe changes. Gul'dan is strong, but not broken. Horrify is really good if you hit it right. New Zagara is annoying to play against but more like a Zerg Gazlowe than what she used to be. The 50% minion buff is a lot better than the 100% one. Globe and well changes are pretty nice I think.
The aoe damage of fury of the swarm + double strike is so good. Any 2+ man combo you land is just utter destrucion. And the sustain from assimilation mastery is really good, building up shields before key fights is still insane on some maps but only costs you 1 talent now basically.
On July 13 2016 23:03 Leolio wrote: She was a bit too much an all around pick previously. Got a big map ? She can wreck in lane. Got a small map ? She has amazing teamfight potential. Now she's PVE, but her PVP is far from bad. You still have that game changing ultimate, and very dangerous mutalisks.
But she was never the best at any of it, which made her a good allrounder and nothing was wrong with her ;_; . And now you even have to decide if you want to bring some sustain damage to a teamfight or a good ult. Oh well her numbers will be buffed to insane levels if Blizzard wants to see her again.
Like the Muradin changes No more get out of Prison card, but if you do you are back at full in no time. But i feel more talent restricted.
So far Zaraga's win rate has gone up slightly since the patch and she is being picked or banned in 53.3% of all games, and the win rate is slightly higher at diamond and master with a 65% pick/ban rate so I don't think she is going anywhere. Also Maw is currently bugged and doesn't drag targets to the middle.
It's still early in the patch, but current highest win rate build is: Corpse Feeders - Serrated Spines - Bile Drop - Nydus Network - Hydralisk Transfusion - Mutalisk - Endless Creep
played split push Zagara before, so I understand why people are failing against super PvE build Zagara. But since the style is enforced now and the best option, people will get used to cleaning up creep and Mutas. Which is easier now and also more important to do.
Slow banelings are killers though if one hits a hero without a reposition skill they are goners. The Banelings in general are a huge buff. Zagara is now the check bushes specialist, so preventing people from facechecking is probably worth 10% winrate, enforcing creepspread helps too probably. Zagara vs Zagara is a true nightmare though. Because Banelings are the ultimate creep counter.
Had a Shrines game earlier where we had a drawn out fight on top lane which turned into a shrine contest. Because they were occupied with that, they didn't clear bot lane, which had lost the keep earlier (it was around level 18-19 at this point). Cue 4 catapults getting the core to 30%, so we just went all in and killed it with ease. Stupid. Forcing such emphasis on wave clear isn't promoting the more fun teamfight gameplay - and in their team's situation, they either had to clear it and lose top shrine which would probably amount to level 20, another keep, and likely the game, or not clear it and lose so much core HP they lose the game anyway.
On July 15 2016 00:25 MotherFox wrote: I tried zag in QM a few games, but I didn't find myself enjoying myself as much as old zag. I really hate nydus style play, I guess.
Just go devouring maw. The auto attack lvl 4 is good and bane drop can actually do damage if you stack (read, if you have a stun/root comp). I managed to do 100k+ hero damage but the enemy Chen helped a lot with those attack and bane drop stacks. I had that 150% extra damage in no time. Infest is also great. She lost double hydra, but gained useful banes. What i do miss is the creep spread and bolt of the storm.
I really like gul'dan so far. his fear heroic is really powerful. Hell, its always full duration even vs those with that "reduce cc" talent. And at 20 its 3sec. His damage seems to be a bit lower than other mages. Like that he has good heals with talents.
Am I the only one for whom this patch seems really buggy? Had a chen/chen tornado earlier (they kicked each other at the same time and never landed until we killed one), visual bugs with Kerrigan skins not showing her mounting up, my screen resolution has gone fubar and I now have to play in a windowed mode to avoid the zoomed in experience.
On July 15 2016 08:04 Ghostcom wrote: Am I the only one for whom this patch seems really buggy? Had a chen/chen tornado earlier (they kicked each other at the same time and never landed until we killed one), visual bugs with Kerrigan skins not showing her mounting up, my screen resolution has gone fubar and I now have to play in a windowed mode to avoid the zoomed in experience.
Of course not, lol. Every single of their big patches contained a ton of bugs, performances issues, now in this one I don't see the hero that is banned, my FPS actually drops heavily and so on...
On July 15 2016 08:04 Ghostcom wrote: Am I the only one for whom this patch seems really buggy? Had a chen/chen tornado earlier (they kicked each other at the same time and never landed until we killed one), visual bugs with Kerrigan skins not showing her mounting up, my screen resolution has gone fubar and I now have to play in a windowed mode to avoid the zoomed in experience.
Of course not, lol. Every single of their big patches contained a ton of bugs, performances issues, now in this one I don't see the hero that is banned, my FPS actually drops heavily and so on...
Well it's actually the first time the bugs have been this extensive for me. But thanks for enlightening me.
Sonya is banned from Dreamhack as she has some weird double attack bug that breaks the game with Focused Attack and Follow Through as she one-shots something. Zagara's maw isn't working well, and many other things.
On July 15 2016 10:16 Ramiz1989 wrote: Sonya is banned from Dreamhack as she has some weird double attack bug that breaks the game with Focused Attack and Follow Through as she one-shots something. Zagara's maw isn't working well, and many other things.
Dreamhack is being played on a previous build of the game from my understanding.
I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
On July 15 2016 10:16 Ramiz1989 wrote: Sonya is banned from Dreamhack as she has some weird double attack bug that breaks the game with Focused Attack and Follow Through as she one-shots something. Zagara's maw isn't working well, and many other things.
Dreamhack is being played on a previous build of the game from my understanding.
Yeah which is strange, but I know that she is globally banned.
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
On July 15 2016 10:16 Ramiz1989 wrote: Sonya is banned from Dreamhack as she has some weird double attack bug that breaks the game with Focused Attack and Follow Through as she one-shots something. Zagara's maw isn't working well, and many other things.
Dreamhack is being played on a previous build of the game from my understanding.
Yeah which is strange, but I know that she is globally banned.
It's not strange. They have done that everytime when a major patch was released a short time before the tournament. Even with smaller patches they often ban newly released characters when they're releases to short before the tournament or when they have obvious balance issues that Blizzard hasn't had time to adress yet.
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
On July 15 2016 10:16 Ramiz1989 wrote: Sonya is banned from Dreamhack as she has some weird double attack bug that breaks the game with Focused Attack and Follow Through as she one-shots something. Zagara's maw isn't working well, and many other things.
Dreamhack is being played on a previous build of the game from my understanding.
Yeah which is strange, but I know that she is globally banned.
It's not strange. They have done that everytime when a major patch was released a short time before the tournament. Even with smaller patches they often ban newly released characters when they're releases to short before the tournament or when they have obvious balance issues that Blizzard hasn't had time to adress yet.
Sonya has the problem in new patch. The tournament is being played in previous patch. She is still banned. You don't think that's strange?
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
??? Its HOW many heroes there are in the game...
Try again, math isn't really that hard.
Another angry useless comment by you. No wonder you are low mmr in hots.
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
Another angry useless comment by you. No wonder you are low mmr in hots.
Nice attack on my MMR lol, it is quite obvious who is angry here. It was ~3200 in HL before the patch with all mighty 150 games in HL I've played. Not really that low, if you want to piss me off you have to try harder. Try typing more "????????" in the comment, maybe it will help your argument.
I am not angry, I'm sarcastic and cynical. I am not sure if you realize that there are more than 30 heroes in the game.
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
??? Its HOW many heroes there are in the game...
Try again, math isn't really that hard.
Another angry useless comment by you. No wonder you are low mmr in hots.
Nice attack on my MMR lol, it is quite obvious who is angry here. It was ~3200 in HL before the patch with all mighty 150 games in HL I've played. Not really that low, if you want to piss me off you have to try harder. Try typing more "????????" in the comment, maybe it will help your argument.
I am not angry, I'm sarcastic and cynical. I am not sure if you realize that there are more than 30 heroes in the game.
its HOW many heroes there are in the game.... THAT MATTERS! Finally you get it?????
On July 15 2016 10:20 ThomasjServo wrote: I'm so happy Sonya is banned. I mentioned in the live thread, I would love if the teams got to do set bans too, and just take out heroes from the whole set. Would make banning more interesting to me at least.
waiting for when there are more than 30 competitive heroes in the game so you could actually have more than 2 bans per side...
Purely off the cuff kind of thing, I have to wait for Meta Madness streams to see anything like it. Things just get so stale when it is Alright who gets Sonya, Tass, Muradin, ETC, the the other usual suspects.
Hero pool is likely too shallow to want to do something like this in a real tournament, agreed.
On July 15 2016 10:16 Ramiz1989 wrote: Sonya is banned from Dreamhack as she has some weird double attack bug that breaks the game with Focused Attack and Follow Through as she one-shots something. Zagara's maw isn't working well, and many other things.
Dreamhack is being played on a previous build of the game from my understanding.
Yeah which is strange, but I know that she is globally banned.
It's not strange. They have done that everytime when a major patch was released a short time before the tournament. Even with smaller patches they often ban newly released characters when they're releases to short before the tournament or when they have obvious balance issues that Blizzard hasn't had time to adress yet.
Sonya has the problem in new patch. The tournament is being played in previous patch. She is still banned. You don't think that's strange?
The bug is in the patch currently being used in the tournament. Obviously they don't ban Sonya for no reason.
Is the sonya bug that you can slam, autoattack(with followthrough), then use your Q, and she will instantly autoattack(again with followthrough) again? (similar to arthas/artanis and their autoattack abilities?)
I kind of like this mechanic in general, since it (along with followthrough) gives some guidance to specific ordering of commands which is ideal. [thus serving to separate people who have played the hero before and those who haven't]
Huh, I think I got reported. Had a game in QM on cursed hollow as new zag. Decided to do a split-push nydus build (which I still hate). All three times I died one of the other players said "omg zag stop feeding", which I was confused at since those were my only deaths and everyone else had died 7-8 times. The one thing I said at that time was "It's hunt Illidan, what would you like me to do?", and they just said they wanted me to stay with the group. Sure, with nydus network I'm going to stay with group. whatever.
I showed up to curses, I just didn't necessarily group at all times in the late game since I had a nydus network down. At the end of the game as we were losing someone said "gg I guess zag did zag things". Checking after the game, I noticed that the person who said it was in a 3-man group including our xul who somehow did only 10k of hero damage, died 8 times, and did less siege damage than me. I went to msg the person who griefed me to ask what he thought I did wrong, but got the "this player is ignoring you" message in return.
Wouldn't be surprised if all three on the team got salty and reported me. I've never run into this experience before, but I wonder if it's what solo-queue'rs were complaining about back when heroleague could have 3 and 4-man parties. I'm 99% certain that the people in that group were overlooking how little xul was doing during the game and just blamed me because they happened to see the three times I overextended. [and specifically, all three deaths were due to hunt illidan, so I guess he spent an ult to kill me?]
On July 16 2016 04:15 MotherFox wrote: Huh, I think I got reported. Had a game in QM on cursed hollow as new zag. Decided to do a split-push nydus build (which I still hate). All three times I died one of the other players said "omg zag stop feeding", which I was confused at since those were my only deaths and everyone else had died 7-8 times.
I showed up to curses, I just didn't necessarily group at all times in the late game since I had a nydus network down. At the end of the game as we were losing someone said "gg I guess zag did zag things". Checking after the game, I noticed that the person who said it was in a 3-man group including our xul who somehow did only 10k of hero damage, died 8 times, and did less siege damage than me. I went to msg the person who griefed me to ask what he thought I did wrong, but got the "this player is ignoring you" message in return.
Wouldn't be surprised if all three on the team got salty and reported me. I've never run into this experience before, but I wonder if it's what solo-queue'rs were complaining about back when heroleague could have 3 and 4-man parties. I'm 99% certain that the people in that group were overlooking how little xul was doing during the game and just blamed me because they happened to see the three times I overextended.
The important question then, is feeding a function of how you die, purely quantity of deaths, or somewhere in between?
On July 16 2016 04:15 MotherFox wrote: Huh, I think I got reported. Had a game in QM on cursed hollow as new zag. Decided to do a split-push nydus build (which I still hate). All three times I died one of the other players said "omg zag stop feeding", which I was confused at since those were my only deaths and everyone else had died 7-8 times.
I showed up to curses, I just didn't necessarily group at all times in the late game since I had a nydus network down. At the end of the game as we were losing someone said "gg I guess zag did zag things". Checking after the game, I noticed that the person who said it was in a 3-man group including our xul who somehow did only 10k of hero damage, died 8 times, and did less siege damage than me. I went to msg the person who griefed me to ask what he thought I did wrong, but got the "this player is ignoring you" message in return.
Wouldn't be surprised if all three on the team got salty and reported me. I've never run into this experience before, but I wonder if it's what solo-queue'rs were complaining about back when heroleague could have 3 and 4-man parties. I'm 99% certain that the people in that group were overlooking how little xul was doing during the game and just blamed me because they happened to see the three times I overextended.
The important question then, is feeding a function of how you die, purely quantity of deaths, or somewhere in between?
I interpret the "report for feeding" function as being someone who is intentionally trying to let the enemy team win by walking into turrets. I personally don't report for feeding for bad gameplay, but I'm not even sure that my gameplay was bad. I mean, I kind of feel like every death you get when in-lane is a mistake/ "feeding" of some kind, just not the kind that you are supposed to report on.
edit-> BUT...I know a lot of people who want a "report for being the worst player ever" option. I almost wish blizzard had the category & that it did nothing, just so people would have an outlet.
On July 16 2016 04:15 MotherFox wrote: Huh, I think I got reported. Had a game in QM on cursed hollow as new zag. Decided to do a split-push nydus build (which I still hate). All three times I died one of the other players said "omg zag stop feeding", which I was confused at since those were my only deaths and everyone else had died 7-8 times.
I showed up to curses, I just didn't necessarily group at all times in the late game since I had a nydus network down. At the end of the game as we were losing someone said "gg I guess zag did zag things". Checking after the game, I noticed that the person who said it was in a 3-man group including our xul who somehow did only 10k of hero damage, died 8 times, and did less siege damage than me. I went to msg the person who griefed me to ask what he thought I did wrong, but got the "this player is ignoring you" message in return.
Wouldn't be surprised if all three on the team got salty and reported me. I've never run into this experience before, but I wonder if it's what solo-queue'rs were complaining about back when heroleague could have 3 and 4-man parties. I'm 99% certain that the people in that group were overlooking how little xul was doing during the game and just blamed me because they happened to see the three times I overextended.
The important question then, is feeding a function of how you die, purely quantity of deaths, or somewhere in between?
I interpret the "report for feeding" function as being someone who is intentionally trying to let the enemy team win by walking into turrets. I personally don't report for feeding for bad gameplay, but I'm not even sure that my gameplay was bad. I mean, I kind of feel like every death you get when in-lane is a mistake/ "feeding" of some kind, just not the kind that you are supposed to report on.
edit-> BUT...I know a lot of people who want a "report for being the worst player ever" option. I almost wish blizzard had the category & that it did nothing, just so people would have an outlet.
An option for catharsis. I agree with your appraisal, to qualify to report for feeding intent has to be factored.
For feeding to be something Blizzard is going to take action on it has to be clearly intentional. For example multiple deaths from running directly into the enemy towers/team without even trying to attack. Split pushing, even in a situation where it might be a bad idea, that gets the player picked off is not feeding. At least not feeding that is likely to get any consequences from Blizzard for being reported.
Yeah, feeding has to be incredibly obvious, or the guy has to basically state it in chat that he's feeding. In any case, they won't take action for a single game. I feel like tons of people are very liberal with their reports, so anyone who can tilt-feed likely already has many reports against him.
On July 16 2016 08:53 Pwere wrote: Yeah, feeding has to be incredibly obvious, or the guy has to basically state it in chat that he's feeding. In any case, they won't take action for a single game. I feel like tons of people are very liberal with their reports, so anyone who can tilt-feed likely already has many reports against him.
I ran into a couple guys that died because they actively tried to lose while not being afk or making it too obvious. Stuff like wave clearing and doing nothing else in the late game, and then die overextended. On these cases i do report since i think its intentional bad play. Not sure if blizz could do anything about it.
Being unintentionally bad is not a reason to report, but i saw people saying "report this guy" a few times on these cases. Reporting to vent will only make the system worse
Just got done with a run on HL. My partner and I noticed that we fought against the same guy 5 games in a row. (and beat him 4 times, because god he was really awful)
How few people have to be queuing on a Friday late night for this to happen?!?!
On July 17 2016 00:51 karazax wrote: It's unexpected but the (admittedly very low sample size) highest win rate Kerrigan build on hotslogs.com is:
Sharpened Blades
Psionic Pulse
Assimilation Mastery
Maelstrom
Double Strike
Aggressive Defense
Omegastorm
My only surprise is psionic pulse, otherwise its the first thing that came to me when i saw the patch.
this is for the mega aoe potential, this build has insane teamfighting, insane 1v1 and insane waveclear, Kerrigan is basically tier S melee assassin now any 2 man combo becomes a slaughterhouse, regardless of who you trap
On July 17 2016 00:51 karazax wrote: It's unexpected but the (admittedly very low sample size) highest win rate Kerrigan build on hotslogs.com is:
Sharpened Blades
Psionic Pulse
Assimilation Mastery
Maelstrom
Double Strike
Aggressive Defense
Omegastorm
My only surprise is psionic pulse, otherwise its the first thing that came to me when i saw the patch.
this is for the mega aoe potential, this build has insane teamfighting, insane 1v1 and insane waveclear, Kerrigan is basically tier S melee assassin now any 2 man combo becomes a slaughterhouse, regardless of who you trap
Never tried this, i was going with Siphon, Aoe Attacks, at 1 and 4, and same from there on out. Idea being, Let me farm these minions before a big fight breaks out so i can hop in with 40 percent my heath in shielding.
Feels quite weak early, but very strong late. Sharpened blades probably has a good argument for its use, able to secure kills better ganking early. Though Psionic pulse, 24 dmg? that doesn't seem great.
Though feel like mutually exclusivity of Battle momentum, and Assimilation Mastery is a bit of a nerf in her talent tree. Moving AM to 13 would make her a monster.
On July 17 2016 00:51 karazax wrote: It's unexpected but the (admittedly very low sample size) highest win rate Kerrigan build on hotslogs.com is:
Sharpened Blades
Psionic Pulse
Assimilation Mastery
Maelstrom
Double Strike
Aggressive Defense
Omegastorm
My only surprise is psionic pulse, otherwise its the first thing that came to me when i saw the patch.
this is for the mega aoe potential, this build has insane teamfighting, insane 1v1 and insane waveclear, Kerrigan is basically tier S melee assassin now any 2 man combo becomes a slaughterhouse, regardless of who you trap
Never tried this, i was going with Siphon, Aoe Attacks, at 1 and 4, and same from there on out. Idea being, Let me farm these minions before a big fight breaks out so i can hop in with 40 percent my heath in shielding.
Feels quite weak early, but very strong late. Sharpened blades probably has a good argument for its use, able to secure kills better ganking early. Though Psionic pulse, 24 dmg? that doesn't seem great.
Though feel like mutually exclusivity of Battle momentum, and Assimilation Mastery is a bit of a nerf in her talent tree. Moving AM to 13 would make her a monster.
try it, I was doing 1v3 vs lili chen and chen clone with this build
Today's discovery: insight monk is amazing if you can complete the quest relatively fast. If you can't, the lack of healing early is too much of a liability. So I think that whenever you get to punch as monk, just take insight, gr8 talent I rate 8/8 infinite sustain and more healing
On July 17 2016 00:51 karazax wrote: It's unexpected but the (admittedly very low sample size) highest win rate Kerrigan build on hotslogs.com is:
Sharpened Blades
Psionic Pulse
Assimilation Mastery
Maelstrom
Double Strike
Aggressive Defense
Omegastorm
My only surprise is psionic pulse, otherwise its the first thing that came to me when i saw the patch.
this is for the mega aoe potential, this build has insane teamfighting, insane 1v1 and insane waveclear, Kerrigan is basically tier S melee assassin now any 2 man combo becomes a slaughterhouse, regardless of who you trap
Never tried this, i was going with Siphon, Aoe Attacks, at 1 and 4, and same from there on out. Idea being, Let me farm these minions before a big fight breaks out so i can hop in with 40 percent my heath in shielding.
Feels quite weak early, but very strong late. Sharpened blades probably has a good argument for its use, able to secure kills better ganking early. Though Psionic pulse, 24 dmg? that doesn't seem great.
Though feel like mutually exclusivity of Battle momentum, and Assimilation Mastery is a bit of a nerf in her talent tree. Moving AM to 13 would make her a monster.
Sharpened blades gives extra burst, W actually does a lot of damage on top of the stun. I don't think it loses value late game. Psionic pulse is 48 per second, lasting 5 secs, so im guessing its 2 ticks per second? To put in perspective, immolation is 22/s lasting 4 seconds. Just checked values on shop, playing i figured it helps a lot with mercs so i believe its considerable damage.
Level 20 Kerrigan here. Basically, they gave her too much damage. Kerrigan is difficult to balance because her trait means that she gets shields proportional to the amount of damage she deals. So damage buffs for her are worth more than damage buffs to other characters. After a certain threshold of damage output, her trait creates a positive feedback loop where she inflicts enough damage to kill her opponents while keeping enough sustain to survive on shields. It was really hard and took a lot of skill to get to that threshold point in her last version; usually needed a maelstrom hitting 3 or more people and often aggressive defense as well. You had to know when you could do that without getting killed. A lot of people got distracted by the nerf to siphoning impact because it removed her health sustain on her Q, but she doesn't need it anymore. She deals enough damage to get sustain on shields now. They didn't need to buff psionic pulse. It's damage output is too much right now; especially since it is part of her combo so she'll be using it all the time. Expect a nerf to psionic pulse and perhaps also her basic stats. I don't know why they buffed so many things with her at once, instead of making more gradual changes. I'm actually disappointed in the changes. They lowered her skill floor and possibly her skill cap by making her tankier, and when the inevitable nerfs come, I'm concerned she will be less fun to play than she was before.
On July 17 2016 14:34 ThomasjServo wrote: Has anyone noted an uptick in Jaina play besides me? Seems like there is always someone trying to make her work in Unranked
She is working quite well against teams that don't have diving potential honestly. Ring of Frost + Blizzard on 2+ heroes has ended many games so far, and in my team pretty much all 5 of us played here before so I see her a lot on my team now.
Her win rates improved quite a bit since the patch.
Level 20 Kerrigan here. Basically, they gave her too much damage. Kerrigan is difficult to balance because her trait means that she gets shields proportional to the amount of damage she deals. So damage buffs for her are worth more than damage buffs to other characters. After a certain threshold of damage output, her trait creates a positive feedback loop where she inflicts enough damage to kill her opponents while keeping enough sustain to survive on shields. It was really hard and took a lot of skill to get to that threshold point in her last version; usually needed a maelstrom hitting 3 or more people and often aggressive defense as well. You had to know when you could do that without getting killed. A lot of people got distracted by the nerf to siphoning impact because it removed her health sustain on her Q, but she doesn't need it anymore. She deals enough damage to get sustain on shields now. They didn't need to buff psionic pulse. It's damage output is too much right now; especially since it is part of her combo so she'll be using it all the time. Expect a nerf to psionic pulse and perhaps also her basic stats. I don't know why they buffed so many things with her at once, instead of making more gradual changes. I'm actually disappointed in the changes. They lowered her skill floor and possibly her skill cap by making her tankier, and when the inevitable nerfs come, I'm concerned she will be less fun to play than she was before.
She still needs some support though. Stuns and interrupts still work well on her since they prevent her from generating shields. I still need to get into a game where I have a good Uther supporting me to really notice the new changes.
Psionic Pulse does about 500 damage over 5 seconds at level 20. That's effectively a 125% Ravage worth of damage. With the drag and stun duration you can expect most of it to land on the target so the damage boost is significant. With the 30% damage boost the stun does about 750 damage at level 20. All put together with Double Strike you can do about 3000 damage in a fully landed combo with buffed AA's calculated in over the full duration.
On July 17 2016 07:06 Ej_ wrote: Today's discovery: insight monk is amazing if you can complete the quest relatively fast. If you can't, the lack of healing early is too much of a liability. So I think that whenever you get to punch as monk, just take insight, gr8 talent I rate 8/8 infinite sustain and more healing
Yea, I completed the quest around level 7-8 and the healing potential if you take Echo of Heaven at 7 aka don't need Cleanse is insane, you can pretty much hit W all the time as long as you're attacking and you'll be constantly healing, even better with Circle of Life at 16.
Thought he was feeding at first. After a few min i finally realised that what he is doing might be viable. Tomb of the spider Queen. Leoric rushes one of our keeps and suicides regularly.
Note, the ammo gets drained eventually so if no one is there to defend he will kill it quite "fast". In my game, our li ming was camping our keep doing extra damage and picking the 3 blue things that drops of off him.
So we fought in lanes 4v4. What he did after which was a huge mistake imo, went for another keep suiciding. If he went back to team instead they might be in a lead.
Might be viable? I dont know. Maybe. Was kinda hard to play 100% when you thought leroic was throwing at first.
On July 17 2016 23:50 Foxxan wrote: Thought he was feeding at first. After a few min i finally realised that what he is doing might be viable. Tomb of the spider Queen. Leoric rushes one of our keeps and suicides regularly.
Note, the ammo gets drained eventually so if no one is there to defend he will kill it quite "fast". In my game, our li ming was camping our keep doing extra damage and picking the 3 blue things that drops of off him.
So we fought in lanes 4v4. What he did after which was a huge mistake imo, went for another keep suiciding. If he went back to team instead they might be in a lead.
Might be viable? I dont know. Maybe. Was kinda hard to play 100% when you thought leroic was throwing at first.
You mean fort, right?
It's kinda viable but less so since the Reanimation nerf. Gotta have a team for it.
Well that exactly how Leoric was played when he first came out. Suicide and revive a few seconds later, deal a bunch of damage (with his Q doing double damage against buildings, and maybe minions, can't remember) and force the other team to deal with it.
well the issue at that time was that you couldn't stop the Leoric from killing your core lol. I guess he wanted to see if it can work now. Happens every Leoric patch, nerf or buff.
On July 17 2016 00:51 karazax wrote: It's unexpected but the (admittedly very low sample size) highest win rate Kerrigan build on hotslogs.com is:
Sharpened Blades
Psionic Pulse
Assimilation Mastery
Maelstrom
Double Strike
Aggressive Defense
Omegastorm
My only surprise is psionic pulse, otherwise its the first thing that came to me when i saw the patch.
this is for the mega aoe potential, this build has insane teamfighting, insane 1v1 and insane waveclear, Kerrigan is basically tier S melee assassin now any 2 man combo becomes a slaughterhouse, regardless of who you trap
Never tried this, i was going with Siphon, Aoe Attacks, at 1 and 4, and same from there on out. Idea being, Let me farm these minions before a big fight breaks out so i can hop in with 40 percent my heath in shielding.
Feels quite weak early, but very strong late. Sharpened blades probably has a good argument for its use, able to secure kills better ganking early. Though Psionic pulse, 24 dmg? that doesn't seem great.
Though feel like mutually exclusivity of Battle momentum, and Assimilation Mastery is a bit of a nerf in her talent tree. Moving AM to 13 would make her a monster.
Sharpened blades gives extra burst, W actually does a lot of damage on top of the stun. I don't think it loses value late game. Psionic pulse is 48 per second, lasting 5 secs, so im guessing its 2 ticks per second? To put in perspective, immolation is 22/s lasting 4 seconds. Just checked values on shop, playing i figured it helps a lot with mercs so i believe its considerable damage.
I honestly had no idea that it clicked dmg in to targets grasped over the duration they were affected by the grasp. Almost like a burning rage in a way.
Thats far better. I thought it was a flat one time 24 dmg applied to anyone caught in the grasp. which seems entirely not worth while.
On July 18 2016 02:33 Valiver wrote: Well that exactly how Leoric was played when he first came out. Suicide and revive a few seconds later, deal a bunch of damage (with his Q doing double damage against buildings, and maybe minions, can't remember) and force the other team to deal with it.
Ok didnt know. Did tomb of the spider queens exist back then? That was the map i saw this on and it looked to have potential actually. Get one keep, then stop suicide.
On July 18 2016 02:33 Valiver wrote: Well that exactly how Leoric was played when he first came out. Suicide and revive a few seconds later, deal a bunch of damage (with his Q doing double damage against buildings, and maybe minions, can't remember) and force the other team to deal with it.
Ok didnt know. Did tomb of the spider queens exist back then? That was the map i saw this on and it looked to have potential actually. Get one keep, then stop suicide.
Yeah, it existed. Diablo maps and towers of doom came later.
On July 18 2016 02:33 Valiver wrote: Well that exactly how Leoric was played when he first came out. Suicide and revive a few seconds later, deal a bunch of damage (with his Q doing double damage against buildings, and maybe minions, can't remember) and force the other team to deal with it.
Ok didnt know. Did tomb of the spider queens exist back then? That was the map i saw this on and it looked to have potential actually. Get one keep, then stop suicide.
Yeah, it existed. Diablo maps and towers of doom came later.
Battlefield of Eternity existed back then as well, since it was released together with Butcher, and Leoric was released after the Butcher.
Played against Leoric like that like a week ago as well, except it was BoE and he needed less buildings to take down. We won every single Immortal but Catapults started applying pressure and if we didn't kill the Core with that last Immortal(and it was quite close) we would have lost because Leoric took down both of our lanes.
they nerfed Leorics damage vs buildings. So you could just rush down a keep with any hero comp before he got anything done. Seems to me like nothing changed there except the damage increase of buildings, so it should be worse even. But I am playing Sylvie a ton right now, changes to minions just made her too good. And doubt a Leoric could win a race vs a Sylvanas. Muradin is awesome too though, no more Mana issues !
On July 19 2016 08:10 karazax wrote: Kerrigan feels like the new KT this patch, 58.3% win rate overall so far, and the top 6 most successful builds have win rates from 71.6%-81.7%
it's just the ravage build idiots keeping her from being the brokenest thing in the game
Yes, that and not everyone can do Kerrigan's combo with any sort of consistency while KT is significantly easier to play, so Kerrigan still has a fairly low popularity at only 29% so far.
For supports, Brightwing sitting at 55.6% win rate over all. Current top win rate Brightwing build with 70.6% win rate:
I've yet to lose to a Kael'thas since the last patch in Master level HL, he gets through drafts fairly regularly now with Kerrigan bans becoming more common.
On July 20 2016 01:18 Larkin wrote: I've yet to lose to a Kael'thas since the last patch in Master level HL, he gets through drafts fairly regularly now with Kerrigan bans becoming more common.
I kind of suspect that all the good KT's stopped playing KT. I haven't seen a KT land a stun since the patch.
On July 20 2016 01:18 Larkin wrote: I've yet to lose to a Kael'thas since the last patch in Master level HL, he gets through drafts fairly regularly now with Kerrigan bans becoming more common.
I kind of suspect that all the good KT's stopped playing KT. I haven't seen a KT land a stun since the patch.
Mm, and also that a lot of people don't have much practice with KT but pick him when they can because they feel they are supposed to - then make mistakes etc they perhaps wouldn't make with other heroes.
I just got told no vikings without Abathur in Silver 3. I fucked around a lot drunk in my early HL days with HOTS. Is this a thingnow? Or was this just a bit of spesh.
On July 20 2016 11:07 ThomasjServo wrote: I just got told no vikings without Abathur in Silver 3. I fucked around a lot drunk in my early HL days with HOTS. Is this a thingnow? Or was this just a bit of spesh.
Actually I've heard "let's go vikings+abathur" story from my friend who was around silver MMR long time ago. It was strongly influenced by the old Liquid cheese with vikings/abathur/illidan You probably ran into someone who watched the new Liquid cheese of vikings/abathur/greymane
Fixed an issue that could cause the game client to crash on startup for players using DirectX9-class video cards on Vista or later versions of Windows.
DirectX11: Fixed an issue in which incorrect refresh rates could be applied when using monitors that support multiple refresh rates.
Note: Monitor refresh rates that are set too low can cause poor perceived framerates.
Heroes and Talents
Heroes who have unique Mounts, such as Zagara and Anub’arak, will no longer occasionally receive Horse Mounts in-game.
Fixed an issue in which players who choose the Auto-Select Hero could receive an unowned or incorrect Mount in-game.
Note: Players may still receive Mount Variations that they have not yet unlocked after choosing Auto-Select.
Abathur: The Sustained Carapace Talent’s simple tooltip now properly indicates that the Talent increases the Shield amount.
Azmodan: Bonus Globe of Annihilation damage earned via Taste for Blood can now properly stack up to a maximum of 500 damage, rather than 250.
Greymane: Fixed an issue that could cause Go for the Throat’s cooldown to be permanently reduced to 60 seconds.
Leoric: The Healing and damage done by a Drain Hope effect that is applied by the Death March Talent is now consistent with a standard Drain Hope cast.
Lt. Morales: The Inoculation Talent now properly increases Safeguard’s Damage Reduction to 50% for the first 1.5 seconds of the Ability’s duration.
Raynor: Heroic Ability cooldowns will now be properly reduced when a Hero is killed after learning the A Card to Play Talent.
Rehgar: Learning the Blood and Thunder and Hunger of the Wolf Talents will no longer cause Basic Ability cooldowns to be reduced by 4 seconds, rather than 2 seconds, when attacking in Ghost Wolf form.
Zagara: Enemies caught within Devouring Maw’s area of effect will now be properly pulled inside of the Maw.
Zagara: Nydus Network’s detailed tooltip now properly lists the maximum number of Nydus Worms that can be active at any given time.
User Interface
Abilities with global range can now be properly cast using the minimap when Quick Cast is set to “On”.
Heroes who are banned during Draft Mode will now properly display their models on the draft screen.
An “Unmet Requirements” notification will no longer display after finding a match while queued as a party for Unranked or Ranked matchmaking.
The Healing Fountain Cooldown tooltip will now display its intended description text in non-English game clients.
Fixed a rare issue that could prevent the player from clicking any buttons on the post-game Summary screen.
If you find a bug while playing Heroes of the Storm, be sure to check out our Known Issues List on the forums to see if we're already aware. If you don't find your bug listed there, please create a new thread on the Bug Report Forums, or add your experience to an existing conversation
Blizzard did a balance team Q&A session on reddit today. Lots of changes planned for different heroes (Kerrigan, Greymane, Falstad, Butcher, Johanna, Valla, Kael'thas, Artanis, Chen are ones I saw mentioned for sure) but not much in the way of specifics on what those changes might be.
On July 21 2016 08:59 karazax wrote: Blizzard did a balance team Q&A session on reddit today. Lots of changes planned for different heroes (Kerrigan, Greymane, Falstad, Butcher, Johanna, Valla, Kael'thas, Artanis, Chen are ones I saw mentioned for sure) but not much in the way of specifics on what those changes might be.
Here's hoping they nerf the first two and buff the last one marked. All sorely needed.
just hope they don't specialize all the allround heroes like they did with Zagara. Who was already special because she only had summon spells. Oh and hopefully not to many more freaking quest talents.
Sigh I was so hoping for Arena, but its time to give up on it.
On July 22 2016 04:13 FeyFey wrote: just hope they don't specialize all the allround heroes like they did with Zagara. Who was already special because she only had summon spells. Oh and hopefully not to many more freaking quest talents.
Sigh I was so hoping for Arena, but its time to give up on it.
My guess is they are holding onto arena to announce and give a date with at Blizzcon. Something to pep up the player base at year end and pad out the money makers that are Overwatch, and HS.
I mean, it would kind of suck if BlizCon came around and they didn't have much content to release at that time. They definitely have set it up now to where BlizCon is the point at which "wild and crazy enter the nexus", so that would be a good time to release arena (and maybe reveal the two starcraft maps in development.)
On July 21 2016 08:59 karazax wrote: Blizzard did a balance team Q&A session on reddit today. Lots of changes planned for different heroes (Kerrigan, Greymane, Falstad, Butcher, Johanna, Valla, Kael'thas, Artanis, Chen are ones I saw mentioned for sure) but not much in the way of specifics on what those changes might be.
Here's hoping they nerf the first two and buff the last one marked. All sorely needed.
Yeah they have already said that. Kerrigan and Greymane are over the top, they would like to stay on top, but not this strong. They are also saying that Butcher will become more specialized and have unique role and that they had fun with him in their internal testing, so I am looking forward to him to see what they have done, as Butcher is my most playable hero.
Nazeebo is also getting a rework as it seems, Falstad getting nerfs, Valla probably buffs or tweaks, I doubt that they will change her talents much as she already is one of the most diverse heroes when it comes to talent choices. Artanis will be tweaked a bit. No words on what they are planning with Johanna, Kael'Thas or Chen.
Playing sieging wrath azmodan. You don't need a coordinated team with good wave clear to stack and its not hard to get max stacks. At this specific timing you get some nice burst on Q. Of course since the max is 200 bonus its a bit weaker late game, but stacking while poking is nice and i find that at the timing i get the complete quest my Q does more that it usually would with taste for blood (playing mostly soloQ)
I think people need to remember that there are real people on the other end of the internet. All the nerdrage in this game is super over the top imo.
I had a moment with a Jaina last night, not ragey, just got rather snarky when he was critiquing everyone and had the highest deaths on the team. Definitely not proud of myself today .
Yeah sarcasm and being salty is acceptable, but its still a bad thing. Attacking people verbally is much worse. Cannot blame, i had my loads of salt, and even when im trying to be constructive, i should know better that in game advice is not really helpful and will most likely be taken the wrong way. Even then, i cross the salt line with snarkiness and sarcasm :/
I just hope they don't nerf Kerrigan into oblivion and leaving her worse off than where she was before the buff. You so rarely ever saw her before (especially outside of Infernal Shrines) and I still find her tons of fun to play.
On July 24 2016 11:37 Fanatic-Templar wrote: I just mute everybody if it looks like we might lose.
I'm not a big fan of people like this. Have had multiple instances where our team was just lacking that 'something' from a player who had muted everyone else - a Zagara who didn't group, a Johanna who didn't peel for the backline, a Falstad who wasn't getting the Gusts we needed, and so on. The other four players in the team were all typing - not rage or salt, just genuine tactical discussion (Master league) - but being ignored, which of course only breeds saltiness.
On July 24 2016 20:30 Thezzy wrote: I just hope they don't nerf Kerrigan into oblivion and leaving her worse off than where she was before the buff. You so rarely ever saw her before (especially outside of Infernal Shrines) and I still find her tons of fun to play.
She is definitely one of the more interesting melee assassins in the game, as far as I know they have said that they have plans for her to be on top but not as strong as she is now, so I think that they won't do that.
On July 24 2016 11:37 Fanatic-Templar wrote: I just mute everybody if it looks like we might lose.
I'm not a big fan of people like this. Have had multiple instances where our team was just lacking that 'something' from a player who had muted everyone else - a Zagara who didn't group, a Johanna who didn't peel for the backline, a Falstad who wasn't getting the Gusts we needed, and so on. The other four players in the team were all typing - not rage or salt, just genuine tactical discussion (Master league) - but being ignored, which of course only breeds saltiness.
Yeah, that's unfortunate, but for every one game where the team tries to pull itself together, there's fifty of needless bitching. I went a long time never muting anybody, but I find that I enjoy the game far more now.
Yep, agree fully with that. A Much more enjoyable game if you can either ignore people or mute them. What works best for you. Sometimes i can ignore, sometimes i need to mute.
Just had a person picking zeratul exactly after i picked nova and said something arrogant. In game he and other says "your pick ruined it" which wasnt even true.
However, funny story. This guy gets into another game with me, i pre-select nova and he says "that you never learn". Now if you ignore you ignore, dont respond or even care about it. I ended up doing most hero dmg, with most kills and only 1 death.
We won pretty easy. I wanted to say something at the end or atleast i thought about it but why? If u ignore you should ignore. Learn how to fully ignore. Its a good advice for irl to.
Yeah I don't auto ignore, but you can tell pretty early if the chat is focused on useful info or just garbage. It's always better to ignore than to start arguing with someone even if you are right.
I kind of expect a balance patch this week to buff Gul'dan and who knows what else.
Bestow an allied Hero with Hope. While they remain near you, damage they deal causes you to gain energy. You can only have Bestow Hope on 1 ally at a time. 40% of damage dealt to Heroes and 8% dealt to non-Heroes is stored as energy.
[Q] Sacred Sweep
Sweep the area with sacred power, dealing 80 damage to enemies and an additional 160 damage to enemies caught in the center.
[W] Ray of Heaven
Consume your stored energy and heal allied Heroes in the area for the amount of energy consumed.
[E] Detainment Strike
Deal 100 damage to the first enemy Hero hit and knock them back. If they collide with terrain, they are also stunned for 1.25 seconds and take an additional 100 damage.
[R] Resurrect
Channel on the spirit of a dead ally for 3 seconds, bringing them back to life with 50% of their maximum health at the location where they died.
[R] Crystal Aegis
Place an allied Hero into Stasis for 2 seconds. Upon expiration, Crystal Aegis deals 270 damage to all nearby enemies.
The Chromie tweaks are funny, but I don't think super impactful. With mobius loop she still doesn't have mana issues and I like the buff to slowing sands which imo is better on certain maps. I want the andorhal anamoly buff though. Make the best talent in her tree better.
The other changes I can take or leave, they keep trying to tune gust and maybe they should just make the cast more narrow instead of a blanket gtfo.
Also looks like a lot of Blizzcon may have been partially spoiled for hots.
Boring patch but not to say its a bad one. Iam a bit salty to since they nerf zagara, xul, KT and maybe some more. I actively play all those ^^ EDIT: almost forgot, the buffs to gul'dan seems.. very uninteresting. Damn. I really like the hero. But please something more interseting than that?
The nerf on kerri is deserved, but isn't she worse than pre-Guldan patch? Maybe there is a way to build her properly, but im not to sure about the way they executed it.
Brightwing seens to be about right though, unlike Rhegar.
Nitpick, but while Artanis buff is nice, i don't get the buff on warp sickness, it was good already right?
Medivh is saved, Greymane is fixed and bodyblock should work as intended!
On July 26 2016 06:03 KenseiTV wrote: People complain when I ban Kerrigan or pick Brightwing, despite both being top 3 win rate heroes. Good thing both are getting (rightfully) nerfed.
People are still flaming in draft when you ban Kerrigan at low diamond. I mean, if they didn't notice how OP she is, they deserve to play in gold... The nerf to Kerrigan is very interesting, makes her less OP but still very strong. The build will definitely change as the level 1 & 4 talents were clearly too strong. Probably back to a jumpy Kerrigan. Level 7 talent will probably be shields.
I'm happy with all the changes to be honest. Just a bit salty they took so long to nerf Kerrigan, but that's what bans are for.
I'm kind of surprised they didn't fix the Tyrael bug after Astral Authority's disqualification over it in the last NA regional Qualifier.
Fixing Nazeebo's toad bug will knock his win rate down along with the additional Gargantuan nerf. Interesting to see how the Xul and Greymane nerfs change things. Another nerf for KT. Falstad nerfs seem reasonable. Chromie's Slowing Sands could be insane going to 60% slow after 3 seconds (or up to 80% at 20).
There almost always is something that is completely unexpected from what most people predict after reading patch notes.
I think if Curse of Exhaustion applied the slow as soon as corruption hit that would drastically improve his viability. His biggest weakness is having to channel drain life fairly regularly at a relatively short range that makes him a sitting duck for skill shots and places him in a dangerous position to be dived on.
Surprisingly Rain of Destruction currently has a slightly higher win rate than Horrify, though it's only 1.2% difference. Also the level 20 upgrade to Rain of destruction is the highest win rate level 20. All 3 are over 56% win rate, which just goes to show that most Gul'dan's lose before they get to level 20.
they always manage to mess up Kerrigan lol. They don't realize all she needs is a better get out of prison card, because she is so reliant on the enemies reaction towards her.
Muahaha was right about Guldan, there is no salvation for him until a rework.
On July 13 2016 01:35 ThomasjServo wrote: I get the sense Gul'Dan will enter the nexus with not a bang but a whimper. What do you guys think?
I'll have to get a sense of what it's like to play against him, but he doesn't seem that interesting of a hero. If he does a lot of damage he'll be good. If not, he won't be. Not much to it other than that, though.
Pretty sure my initial assessment is still on the nose for gul'dan.
Je ferai pas l'effort de traduire mon message qui ne sera probablement pas lu, mais je m'en tape. Ce qui motive mon petit message est l'un de vos joueurs croisé sur Heroes durant la nuit de mardi à mercredi. Je vous file son battletag WarSong#1978 Charmant joueur a 5k game qui joue disons le, comme une grosse merde. MAIS comme il est de la team Liquid mon profil, moi petit joueur pas dans la team liquid, ne me permet pas de critiquer ou de répondre. Je resitue le contexte. sur une game en Draft, ce joueur a simplement joué comme une grosse merde en ayant 5 mort sur une game de 10 min quand moi petit joueur ayant feed après le 10 ème kill de l'equipe ennemi après seulement 4min de jeu j'ai cumulé 7 mort en 6 min. Après quoi j'ai eu affaire a ce charmant jeune homme en wisp qui m'a présenté votre team de façon très élégante.
Voilà, mon post vous vous en batterez surement les couilles, ceci dis j'en ai autant pour votre team qui abrite des toxic comme votre charmant WarSong. Signalez a ce ptit mec, qu'être le meilleur parmi les plus mauvais sur le moba du casual n'a rien de glorieux, mais même cela il en est loin.....
No idea, must be someone who claimed they were affiliated with Team Liquid in some way? The highest rated MMR WarSong is at 2565 according to Hotslogs, so maybe it's the alias of someone who posts here, but I can't see it being an actual Team Liquid player smurfing. I only sort of understand what he wrote based on google translate.
Dubbed the “Panda Pro Ladder,” the new pick-up league will invite every player that competed offline during both the Summer and Fall circuit as well as all 500 players currently ranked Grandmaster.
At the end of six weeks, the top point earners based on the client side matchmaking rating will win peripherals and gear from PG sponsors.
PPL games will be featured weekly on PG’s twitch channel and will act as an open opportunity for amateur casters to step up and hone their craft.
“We’ve been planning this project for a while and it’s finally shaping up,” said David Wu, founder of Panda Global. “We hope this will bridge the gap between amateur players and the professional scene, helping new teams and players find a place, and pushing the NA meta further.”
PG is looking for volunteers to help moderate the PPL forums. You can find more information about the open staff positions and how to apply on Panda Global’s website.
They're not. I've lost to / won with Kerrigans with random builds. They nerfed 3 talents on the OP OP OP build, but the rest is still OP. She'll be ban fodder until next patch probably.
On July 27 2016 20:39 Leolio wrote: They're not. I've lost to / won with Kerrigans with random builds. They nerfed 3 talents on the OP OP OP build, but the rest is still OP. She'll be ban fodder until next patch probably.
Well, guess the hope now will be that people will think she's more nerfed than she really is and won't play her because of it.
I don't think that Kerrigan will be OP at all, she got some big buffs in the previous patch and some nerfs to her Q build, and this patch she is only getting nerfs. I think that she will be tier 1 - tier 2 material but definitely won't be on the same level as before.
Greymane got some nerfs but players that know how to position with him well, and when to engage and how to move when engaging will still dominate with him, and in my eyes he is stronger than Kerrigan(even though roles aren't exactly the same).
Blizz producer Claudio Gentillini on stream now discussing how Auriel works. Biggest new info so far, no mana, no cleanse, 4 second blind talent. Ressurect has no timer on how long after someone dies, has 90 second cooldown. Bestow hope can be switched between targets quickly (about a second), designed to be solo support. PTR next week, release the following week. Has talent that can let her fly at level 20 like Falstad.
Bring an allied hero back to life. (90 second cooldown)
Interview said that there is no time limit on how long after death you can res some one, though with a 90 second cooldown you have to weigh that vs how long until they would revive on their own if you wait for more than 20 seconds. Still it allows you to go revive a hero who was caught out or ganked away from the team where the 3 second channel isn't as problematic.
Crystal Aegis
Put an allied Hero into a Stasis that explodes. (60 second cooldown)
Quest: Increase the maximum of Ray of Heaven energy
Blizz interview said this increases the amount of Bestow Hope you can gather, once the previous cap is filled. Has no cap how many times you can do this. He said it's theoretically possible to do 5k heals on a 4s cooldown (but practically this won't happen).
Try and say swift sweep ten times fast. Depending on how the Level 13 pull enemies to the center talent works, and its range. I fail to see how this doesn't create an Esse of Johan scenario.
First thing I want to try:
1. Swift Sweep 4. Increase Sweep Radius 7. Team dependent. 10. Rez. 13. Ctr+2(Q): Sacred sweep will pull enemies to the center. 16: Reservoir of Hope 20. Situational
Interesting she gets a global at twenty or near global though.
The main difference is it's potentially an Ess of johan that she presumably can't solo burst a target down with. Setting up a team mate to do it isn't as bad. Also depends on how hard it is to land the center and how long the range is as to what type of risky positioning it might put you in to try it. Ess of Johan could be landed from insanely safe positioning and was a level 4 talent if I remember correctly.
On July 28 2016 23:14 karazax wrote: The main difference is it's potentially an Ess of johan that she presumably can't solo burst a target down with. Setting up a team mate to do it isn't as bad. Also depends on how hard it is to land the center and how long the range is as to what type of risky positioning it might put you in to try it. Ess of Johan could be landed from insanely safe positioning and was a level 4 talent if I remember correctly.
You're right about where it was and that Li Ming had insane follow up for that on her own. I just picture it with ETC and KT in a choke where she lays down the clap, etc Powerslides. KT does an empowered gravity lapse, I think that has insane potential to just chain.
So Auriel is a hero that relies on others to get her healing powers and then needs them to be in a certain distance of her to heal them. I just read disaster ! covering retreats sound especially hard.
On July 28 2016 23:48 FeyFey wrote: So Auriel is a hero that relies on others to get her healing powers and then needs them to be in a certain distance of her to heal them. I just read disaster ! covering retreats sound especially hard.
I wanna play her !
Not completely, she also gains charge from her own damage, and can take the talent that gives charge for damage her team takes.
I know. Won't change that though. Unless she is completely broken. Which I doubt she will be since Guldan wasn't either. And he had skills that needed him to be overpowered to actually work.
As a Brazilian, i am ashamed to realize its the Brazilian National Women's Volleyball uniform looking from the back.
Now why would you be ashamed about that? The Brazillian National Women's Volleyball team is something to be proud of. Much volleyball passion. Yes... passion...
As a Brazilian, i am ashamed to realize its the Brazilian National Women's Volleyball uniform looking from the back.
Now why would you be ashamed about that? The Brazillian National Women's Volleyball team is something to be proud of. Much volleyball passion. Yes... passion...
Because i needed the butt to realize, falling into the stereotype
On July 31 2016 15:22 Larkin wrote: Show nested quote +
Now why would you be ashamed about that? The Brazillian National Women's Volleyball team is something to be proud of. Much volleyball passion. Yes... passion...
Because i needed the butt to realize, falling into the stereotype
As a Brazilian, i am ashamed to realize its the Brazilian National Women's Volleyball uniform looking from the back.
Now why would you be ashamed about that? The Brazillian National Women's Volleyball team is something to be proud of. Much volleyball passion. Yes... passion...
Ok the texture of the pants is a bit sexy for the sake of it, but I see nothing wrong with this skin. I like it a lot, especially that brazilian version. This is the kind of skin that makes me switch to a hero TBH, although I almost never played Li Ming.
As a Brazilian, i am ashamed to realize its the Brazilian National Women's Volleyball uniform looking from the back.
Now why would you be ashamed about that? The Brazillian National Women's Volleyball team is something to be proud of. Much volleyball passion. Yes... passion...
Ok the texture of the pants is a bit sexy for the sake of it, but I see nothing wrong with this skin. I like it a lot, especially that brazilian version. This is the kind of skin that makes me switch to a hero TBH, although I almost never played Li Ming.
I think its awesome! Nothing wrong at all, as for my previous posts, i was just messing around, as it may not be clear.
Seriously, he's pretty solidly back in the meta with the latest patch. Doesn't do great against lots of sustained damage, but he's pretty spectacular at countering stun trains and a good alternative to Tychus if you need a tank burner for double warrior comps. Super excited to be playing him again .
EDIT: Yes, the Li-Ming skin is very attractive. I will not say more .
On August 01 2016 21:18 SC2John wrote: Leoric roolz.
Seriously, he's pretty solidly back in the meta with the latest patch. Doesn't do great against lots of sustained damage, but he's pretty spectacular at countering stun trains and a good alternative to Tychus if you need a tank burner for double warrior comps. Super excited to be playing him again .
EDIT: Yes, the Li-Ming skin is very attractive. I will not say more .
Yeah Leoric is definitely a great pick right now. Love playing him against 2 Warriors.
I expect the PTR patch notes to be posted in 1-2 hours from now. The Butcher, Johanna, Valla, Nazeebo, and Chen were all mentioned as heroes that they were working on, so maybe one or more will see changes in this patch.
On August 02 2016 00:04 karazax wrote: I expect the PTR patch notes to be posted in 1-2 hours from now. The Butcher, Johanna, Valla, Nazeebo, and Chen were all mentioned as heroes that they were working on, so maybe one or more will see changes in this patch.
I am really hoping for that but seriously doubt it since we had a solid patch less than a week ago.
I'd be kind of surprised if nothing is added but Auriel. Medivh came to the PTR with no balance changes except for mana reductions for Tyrael, but it also included the new ranked system and unranked draft which was a big addition that just didn't add anything to inspire people to play on the PTR. But it's probably small changes to one or two heroes then a bigger patch 2 weeks from now.
I think she is going to be pretty strong tbh. I think the whip into walls will be amazing for maps like Cursed hollow where objectives are always in those little hollows can cut outs.
On August 02 2016 04:34 ThomasjServo wrote: I think she is going to be pretty strong tbh. I think the whip into walls will be amazing for maps like Cursed hollow where objectives are always in those little hollows can cut outs.
Hard to tell from spotlight videos, since all the examples show abilities killing people. Thank goodness spotlight videos are always misleading and every ability in the game doesn't one-shot kill heroes.
On August 02 2016 04:34 ThomasjServo wrote: I think she is going to be pretty strong tbh. I think the whip into walls will be amazing for maps like Cursed hollow where objectives are always in those little hollows can cut outs.
Hard to tell from spotlight videos, since all the examples show abilities killing people. Thank goodness spotlight videos are always misleading and every ability in the game doesn't one-shot kill heroes.
That is until they make a hero that just is death, who literally just one shots everyone.
I'm picturing like the quarter eater that popped out of the chest in Guantlet Legends. You spend the most of the game literally playing as a minion and you have to burn a 300 second cool down to become useful.