Hello everyone. This will be the thread to discuss the 2017 Blizzcon Heroes of the Storm announcements. Our staff team is live on site where we will be covering the event. We will be posting frequent updates both here and on twitter @LiquidHeroes so make sure to follow us!
Will we see the rumoured Firebat? Alexstrasza the dragonqueen?. Based on current rumours from the people on site we're in for a surprise so lets get this hype train going. CHOO CHOO!
We're always looking for ways to improve Heroes of the Storm, and this year we've been hard at work on a number of changes designed to improve gameplay at all skill levels. We showed these changes to professional players and key community members earlier this year, and now we're opening them up to the public through an extended testing period on the PTR, beginning on November 20. Let us know what you think!
A NEW (CAMERA) PERSPECTIVE
We are slightly increasing the in-game field of view to help improve team fight clarity and overall visibility.
Stealth Rework
In order to properly balance Stealth for both casual and high-end play, we're making it easier to spot stealthed Heroes. This is accompanied by buffs to the Stealth Heroes.
Changes • Stealthed Heroes are much easier to spot • Keeps and Forts will reveal stealthed Heroes • To offset these changes to Stealth, we will be buffing Samuro, Nova, Valeera and Zeratul: ◦ Samuro: Improving Samuro's ability to fake out opponents; Image Transmission available at baseline on a 25s cooldown ◦ Nova: Increasing mobility during Stealth and overall damage with Snipe Master added at baseline ◦ Valeera: Openers will teleport Valeera a medium distance after being stealthed for 3 seconds; longer silence and blind duration ◦ Zeratul: Adding a new Heroic that rewards high mechanical skill; increasing mobility with Vorpal Blade at baseline
Refining the Early Game
To better showcase individual skill in lane matchups, we're exploring ways to make the laning phase more meaningful without increasing overall game length.
Changes • Removing Ammunition to encourage aggressive play and require more player agency for winning a lane • Removing standalone towers and adding True Sight to Forts • Regen Globes can be collected by either side for a brief period before expiring, allowing players to win lanes harder • Standardizing first objective timers to 1:30 or 3:00, both with a 30-second warning, depending on Battleground
Mercenary Updates
To create more impactful choices about how, when, and which Mercenary Camps to capture, we are making changes to various Mercenaries.
Changes • Siege Giant Camps - Heroes can now dodge Neutral Siege Giant attacks at all times • Knight Camps - The Caster Mercenary in a Knight Camp will now generate an aura that offers increased Armor for units inside its area of effect • Hellbats - Hellbats will debuff armor when they attack a Hero • All Other Mercenaries - Will receive balance tuning to ensure they are always meaningful.
New Features
Voice Chat
It's about to get easier than ever to coordinate plays with your allies, because we're integrating Blizzard Voice directly into the Heroes of the Storm client! Voice chat in Heroes will be available in the months to come.
Performance-Based Matchmaking
We're further increasing the accuracy of our matchmaking system by taking your individual performance and contributions into account after each match, rather than relying solely on victory or defeat.
The stealth rework is interesting. They are so visible now they might as well not be stealthed anymore. Like...what's they point now? They even get revealed by forts.
Sure, they will be buffing them to still be viable or even be better but...they just lost their identity, stealth is like..totally useless now.
Looks like if you stand still you are 100% invisible, and beyond that we shall see. Also keep in mind that forts lose their extra tower behind the walls so diving from a flank is easier in that respect for anyone.
This is the rumored new ult for Zeratul:
Might of the Nerazim
Mana: 30 Cooldown: 15 Seconds
Activate to cast an untalented version of Zeratul's most recently used Basic Ability.
Passive: After using an Ability, Zeratul's next Basic Attack within 6 seconds deals 40% more damage.
The Level 20 upgrade resets all of Zeratul's cooldowns when he activates it, replacing Rewind, but putting it on a 15 second cooldown.
I think thats fair with the stealth. Bit silly that i can see stealth easily, but newer players dont even know that you can. Especially if it means stealth heroes get buffed. Zoom out will also be amazing. Especially for Junkrat.
Alexstraza looks like a LoL hero to me in human form haha.
On November 04 2017 05:12 [Phantom] wrote: The stealth rework is interesting. They are so visible now they might as well not be stealthed anymore. Like...what's they point now? They even get revealed by forts.
Sure, they will be buffing them to still be viable or even be better but...they just lost their identity, stealth is like..totally useless now.
Can't be targetted by auto-attacks. I would personally have loved to see more skillshot-dodging potentiale while being stealthed so a skilled player can stay in stealth for a long time even as player try to unstealth him. A higher baseline movement speed while stealthed would accomplish that.
I don't understand why they added detect to towers/forts. That is a huge nerf to flanking. What is the purpose of that?
Another change I don't get it is the laning phase. Isn't that just a huge buff to lane bullies? And doesn't that heavily skew the incentivie towards staying in lane instead of going to objective?
I keep expecting something Abathur/The Lost Vikings/Cho'gall level of weird for Blizzcon, and not getting it . Speaking of, we had Ragnaros last year, isn't Alexstrasza's trait basically a Molten Core?
Releases have been big drops. i.e. new hero, reworks, events, all in one patch
All these changes in one patch causes some issues; doesn't allow all updates to shine
They will try to space things out
Most Crafted Items: DVa announcer Neon Genji Lionheart Varian, Arcanist Jaina Steel Dragon Genji; That's by count.
Now to upcoming stuff:
New Target Panel being added to the game
Gives a bunch of info when you click on something in game
Indicators for Heroes in Vehicles
Showing heroes inside of a Devouring Maw:
match making
Existing system tries to put players players together based on skill (MMR)
Currently MMR is just based on wins and loses
Over last year they have added individual hooks to the game to gauge individual performance
MVP system, personal stats, On fire system
Illidan is hard to master, so it's easy to differentiate between good and bad Illidans High-performing Illidans:
However, it's hard to differentiate between a good and bad Kerrigan based on the same stats High-performing Kerrigans:
Thus, the hooks are weighted differently
New Performance system would allow the MMR to calibrate at twice the speed
Graph of a Master-tier player taking control of a Bronze-level player around game 40. New is with performance-based matchmaking:
New system has been partly turned on, but matching still based on old mmr system
Already used the system to detect feeding
Coming to next Season in mid December!
Camera changes
Camera can get a bit busy in large fights
How much we pull up camera is a balance between performance and visibility
Option to zoom out further; Easier for Stitches hooks!
Voice Chat Voice chat controls:
Stealth Changes
Stealth is strong in QM
Weaker in competitive, not present in esports
Stealth visual can be really hard to see
Hard to spot stealth, kinda like an eye test
They want to update stealth visual to make it easier to see
New stealth visual. Not visible when standing still
Still invis on the minimap
Still can't be targeted
Reworks for Nova, Valeera, Zeratul, Samuro
New Nova ability puts her immediately in stealth, which gives more movement speed
Snipe Master is now baseline
Standing still for 1.5 seconds makes you 100% invisible
They are still testing new stealth in house
More info about Stealth at tomorrow's panel
Laning Phase
Right now the landing phase ends quickly
Laning phase doesn't have as much impact as Teamfight phase
Is there a change we can make to make players play more offensively?
Ammo updates; Infinite Ammo now
Minion waves more meaningful to damaging towers
Minions get more health to help with the changes
Tower behind fort walls removed
They have rolled a bunch of stats from stand alone towers onto other structures, like health
Some heroes relied on the towers more than others, like abathur and murky
Adding Truesight to forts and keeps: Just like the Core currently
Destroying the towers and gate automatically destroys the side walls of a fort/keep
Regen Globes
They like a lot of things that the regen globes do. But want to make changes to get even more out of them
Allied Globes for 4 seconds, then 4 seconds of neutral globes, before timing out
Map Mechanics
Dragonshire, braxis holdout and spider queen enhance laning
Sky Temple, Cursed Hollow, INfernal Shrines pull you out of lane
Want to evaluate how quickly they pull people out of lanes in these battlegrounds
Pushing back some of those map mechanics
With 14 different battlegrounds, the BG rules are being more standardized between BGs
Pushing back the timing of the objectives on these maps to give laning more time
1:30 for the first objective in laning maps, 3 mins in non laning ones
30 second warnings on all BG
They still want variation on bg
Goal is to not increase game length
As long as they can provide info to players earlier, they can better craft strategy
Mercs
Want to add more strategy to them
With unlimited ammo they want to revisit Mercs
Knight Wizard will add a Spell Armor aura
Hellbat camps decrease armor
Siege giants, they really like these for most part, but they want to look for updates to make them better. You can actually dodge their attacks in the lane. They will make it to where you can dodge in the jungle as well.
overview image:
Time line
PTR at end of November for 3 weeks
Goal is to launch in December at next rank season
Will fall between HGC season so they will have time to learn
Q&A session
Question about Duo League in HL: Not currently considering it. Their primary focus is on making TL a better experience, not duo queue.
Question about cigars in models: "We'll give Tychus McCree's cigar."
Question about Text scaling: They are working on it
Question about how to add positivity to the game: They agree there are more opportunities to give props to certain players, something they are looking at but nothing right now to say. Looking for more meaningful systems to do that, we're looking at it, no promises.
Question about interactive map mechanics, like the conveyer belts: Our Lead Battleground Designer has been looking for those opportunities for a while. He loves to do that. We're always trying out new, crazy ideas.
Question about repositioning Healing fountains: They may consider that.
Question about team comps in QM: QM is meant to be like the Wild West of Heroes. Players can play the hero they want and they can play quickly. We run models to see if we could make games all meta, and queue times explode in those cases.
Be sure to tune back in tomorrow Saturday, November 4 at 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET for the Hero Deep Dive!