Cpl. Miles "Blaze" Lewis has always been drawn to the flame, but it wasn't until he joined up with Raynor's Raiders that he put his pyromania to good use. He's seen his fair share of battles since then, and has never failed to bring the heat.
Trait
Pyromania Gain 25 Armor and deal 40 damage to nearby enemies every 0.5 seconds for 4 seconds. Each Hero hit by Flame Stream reduces Pyromania's cooldown by 5 seconds.
Basic Abilities
Flame Stream (Q) Fire two streams of flame that deal 83 damage to enemies hit. Flame Stream sets fire to Oil Spills it comes in contact with. Oil Spill (W) Vector Targeting. Dispense a slick of oil that lasts for 5 seconds and Slows enemies that come in contact with it by 40%. Flame Stream can set Oil Spills on fire for 2.5 seconds, dealing 18 damage every 0.3 seconds to enemies inside. While on fire, Oil Spills no longer Slow enemies. Additionally, Blaze is Healed for 49 Health every 0.3 seconds while standing in flaming Oil Spills. Stores up to 2 charges. Jet Propulsion (E) After 0.5 seconds, charge forward, colliding with the first enemy Hero hit, dealing 52 damage to them and nearby enemy Heroes. Enemies hit are also Stunned for 1.25 seconds.
Heroic Abilities
Bunker Drop (R) After 0.5 seconds, deploy and enter a Bunker with 1300 Health. Blaze and his allies can enter and exit the Bunker at will. While in the Bunker, occupants gain access to Flamethrower, dealing 179 damage to enemies in a line. Exiting the Bunker grants 25 Armor for 2 seconds. Bunkers last 10 seconds, or until destroyed. Combustion (R) Channel up to 2.6 seconds. Once Channeling ends, nearby enemies are Slowed by 60% and take 48 damage every 0.5 seconds. Combustion's Slow and damage over time durations are extended the longer Blaze Channels, from 1 second up to 5 seconds. Blaze's Movement Speed is reduced by 50% while Channeling.
The Minimap will now indicate upcoming Immortal spawn locations 30 seconds after the game begins. Subsequent Immortal indicators will appear on the Minimap shortly after a previously summoned Immortal has been defeated. Swap locations will not appear on the Minimap when an Immortal has been reduced to 50% Health.
Dodge Brawl Chromie’s Health has been increased from 3 to 5 Ghost Chromies now display player names overhead The in-game camera will now lock to Ghost Chromie until a new round begins
Ranked Battleground Rotation
The Battleground rotation for Ranked Play has not been changed.
Regrowth (Q) Mana cost reduced from 45 to 35 No longer has an initial heal effect Heal amount per tick decreased from 27 to 20 Duration increased from 15 to 20 seconds Moonfire (W) Mana cost reduced from 15 to 10 Damage reduced from 100 to 90 Added functionality: For every enemy Hero hit with Moonfire, instantly heal all targets with an active Regrowth for 140 Entangling Roots (E) No longer effects non-Heroic targets Tranquility (R) Duration reduced from 10 to 8 seconds Cooldown reduced from 100 to 80 seconds Mana cost reduced from 100 to 80 Added functionality: All Heroes with an active Regrowth effect gain 10 Armor while in range of Tranquility
Talents
Level 1 Shan’do’s Clarity (D) Functionality changed: The cooldown of Innervate regenerates 25% faster for each active Regrowth Scouting Drone (Active) Removed New Talent – Nature’s Swiftness (Q) Malfurion passively gains 5% Movement Speed for each active Regrowth Level 4 Full Moonfire (W) Removed Strangling Vines (E) Moved from Level 7 New functionality: Enemy Heroes rooted by Entangling Roots receive 25% less healing for 2 seconds New Talent – Deep Roots (E) Entangling Roots grow 25% larger and last 25% longer Level 7 Tenacious Roots (E) Moved from Level 16 New functionality: Root duration is increased by 25%. If Malfurion becomes stunned, refresh the cooldown of Entangling Roots New Talent – Nature’s Cure (Active) Activate: Remove all stuns, roots and slows from allies with an active Regrowth. 45 second cooldown. New Talent – Wild Growth (W) Every time your Moonfire hits an enemy Hero, increase the duration of all active Regrowths by 1 second Level 13 Shrink Ray (Active) Removed Life Seed (Passive) Removed Revitalize (Q) Moved from Level 16 Hindering Moonfire (W) Moved from Level 7 Level 16 Ysera’s Gift (Q) Bonus heal amount increased from 40 to 60% New Talent – Moonlit Harmony (W) Increase the heal of your Moonfire by 15% for every active Regrowth New Talent – Nature's Balance (W) Increase the area of Moonfire by 25% and the duration of Regrowth by 5 seconds Level 20 Serenity (R) New functionality: Every Hero hit with Moonfire lowers the cooldown of Tranquility by 3 seconds. While active, Tranquility's healing is increased by 10% for each active Regrowth Storm Shield (Active) Removed Rewind (Active) Removed Lunar Shower (W) Moved from Level 7 New functionality: Hitting an enemy Hero reduces the cooldown of Moonfire by 1 second and ramps the damage of the next Moonfire by 20%, stacking up to 3 times New Talent – Lifebloom (Q) Casting Regrowth on a player instantly heals them for 10% of their missing Health
Items in the Collection have received updated UI colors to improve readability
New Bundle
Blaze Heroic Bundle – Available until January 22, 2017
New Announcer
Blaze
New Skins
Blaze Hazardous Blaze Veteran Blaze Fel Reaver Blaze Abominable Fel Reaver Blaze Coldfire Fel Reaver Blaze Infernal Fel Reaver Blaze Smoldering Fel Reaver Blaze Probius Ara Tribe Probius Nerazim Probius
Fixed a number of typo and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game.
Art
Abathur: Casting Ultimate Evolution will no longer cause visual effects to persist on the terrain at Abathur’s previous location. Valla: The color of Lavendar Deputy Valla’s scarf has been updated to match the rest of the skin.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
Abathur: Locusts will now correctly retain their selected skins during Ultimate Evolution. Chen: Fixed an issue that could cause Chen to become unresponsive if Wandering Keg’s duration expired while the barrel was too close to unpathable terrain. Garrosh: Talent descriptions for Inner Rage and Brute Force will no longer swap when selecting either Talent. Junkrat: Total Mayhem will no longer trigger twice if Junkrat is killed by the secondary Basic Attack damaged granted by the Giant Killer Talent. Junkrat: Casting Rocket Ride will no longer cause an empty Health Bar to appear. Junkrat: Fixed an issue in which Ripper Air could grant cooldown reduction to Concussion Mine if a Summon, such as a Creep Tumor, Healing Ward, etc., was also hit when the Mine was detonated. Nazeebo: Gargantuan Stomp can no longer be cast while the Gargantuan is stunned or polymorphed. Samuro: Illusion Master can no longer be cast while Samuro is airborne after being hit by an effects like Junkrat’s Concussion Mine detonation. Samuro: Issuing a Hold Position command to Samuro’s Mirror Images and then selecting one of them will no longer cause the others to cancel the Hold Position command. Zul’jin: Lacerate’s Talent icon is now correctly colored blue, rather than purple.
Blaze looks amazing. Been a while since I've seen a hero I actually really want right now. Cool.
On the flipside, Malfurion feels extremely unreliable now. You *have* to hit specifically an enemy Hero to trigger any burst heal. Outside of a direct teamfight, how is Malfurion going to be able to save someone? If an ally is running towards me with an enemy Hero (say Valla) behind them, the Q alone does effectively nothing until I manage to get in range to hit said enemy Hero. And then it's only a small amount. The heal over time itself is also not anything special. Baseline is 400 health over 20 seconds (20 ticks of 20 health). You can get more than that with Regeneration Master.
I can get that they want to push Malfurion more into healing over time and all his talents seem to strengthen that but I seriously wonder if he'll be able to actually save anyone. Currently that is already his weakness due to the limited instant heal you get but now...I don't know. And Roots no longer works on minions so he has zero waveclear. Great. I don't know if Blizzard is actively killing off what little waveclear the supports have but I don't like it. Having a support that can clear a wave atleast moderately well adds quite a bit of value them. Makes them less of a Morales that just has to stick with an ally 24/7.
There's also no way to currently keep good track of which Regrowth is about to expire. Blizzard obviously put talents in that benefit from having multiple Regrowths active but without an actual indicator on each Hero you won't know who needs priority on refreshing it. Good luck keeping track of it yourself throughout a game with 5 Heroes and 20+ durations on each Regrowth combined with your cooldowns.
Blaze seems like a combination of the WC3 Brewmaster and Probius, especially when you look at the synergy between Oil Spill and Flame Stream, plus his bunker ult that lets you and your allies fortify an objective.
On January 03 2018 03:48 Thezzy wrote: Blaze looks amazing. Been a while since I've seen a hero I actually really want right now. Cool.
On the flipside, Malfurion feels extremely unreliable now. You *have* to hit specifically an enemy Hero to trigger any burst heal. Outside of a direct teamfight, how is Malfurion going to be able to save someone? If an ally is running towards me with an enemy Hero (say Valla) behind them, the Q alone does effectively nothing until I manage to get in range to hit said enemy Hero. And then it's only a small amount. The heal over time itself is also not anything special. Baseline is 400 health over 20 seconds (20 ticks of 20 health). You can get more than that with Regeneration Master.
I can get that they want to push Malfurion more into healing over time and all his talents seem to strengthen that but I seriously wonder if he'll be able to actually save anyone. Currently that is already his weakness due to the limited instant heal you get but now...I don't know. And Roots no longer works on minions so he has zero waveclear. Great. I don't know if Blizzard is actively killing off what little waveclear the supports have but I don't like it. Having a support that can clear a wave atleast moderately well adds quite a bit of value them. Makes them less of a Morales that just has to stick with an ally 24/7.
There's also no way to currently keep good track of which Regrowth is about to expire. Blizzard obviously put talents in that benefit from having multiple Regrowths active but without an actual indicator on each Hero you won't know who needs priority on refreshing it. Good luck keeping track of it yourself throughout a game with 5 Heroes and 20+ durations on each Regrowth combined with your cooldowns.
Guess we'll have to wait and see.
But in team fights now, any Malfurion that's decently played should get a multi-target burst heal every 3 seconds. IMO that more than makes up for the lost upfront heal which was underwhelming to begin with.
Blaze is everything what I wanted Butcher to be if he was a Warrior and not an Assassin. At first I didn't care about Firebat hero, even though it is from Starcraft, but his kit seems really fun. Can't wait to play him.
On January 04 2018 11:14 Ramiz1989 wrote: Blaze is everything what I wanted Butcher to be if he was a Warrior and not an Assassin. At first I didn't care about Firebat hero, even though it is from Starcraft, but his kit seems really fun. Can't wait to play him.
His kit is awesome. I thought the same thing initially. I've played with firebats in the SC2 campaign...I know how clunky and dumb they are. For Blizzard to create a hero that is as fluid and cool as Blaze from that model is a miracle. Can't wait to play him on live.
One of the issues with the current strenghts of merc and the general easiness of taking them (you can dodge the shots on siege) is that the game honestly has become more reliant on teamplay.
The logic behind the above statement is that the ability to take camps- if you are playing the "jungle"-role - is actually dependant on whether your teammates can prevent an invade or better: initiate an invade.
Whenever I was on a team with solid teammates, decent laners and a tank that took initiative and everyone would follow him: Invading enemy camps is the easiest thing in the world and can secure you significant early game leads that can be almost impossibly to countersnowball.
And yet when you are on the opposite end and plays as the jungler, being invaded is the most frustrating thing in the world. Too some extent, you can learn to identify when there is a risk of being invaded, but in many cases your laners can all be alive but be pushed towards their towers/or just "sleeping", and due to the strenght of mercs "you have to start them". If you don't start them and the enemy team takes their camps, you get soo far behind anyway.
This issue may not exists at lower levels because people there can't identify when to invade and usually it's only 1-2 guys invading. But against a good enemy team invading as 4 can be very strong.
The solution here might be too buff structures so they can better defend against mercs in the early game. Late game heroes are just way underpowere
Another problem with the current jungling-role is that it honestly doens't have that much depth. There are very unflexible routes you have to do given the strenght of the mercs and the objective timers. And in my opinion that is just a complete fail from a game that wants to reward pvp because afk jungling is the opposite.
Instead jungling should be a strategic decision you make that isn't super neccasary but doing it well can add you +10-20%.
And on some maps like Cursed jungling is safe, on other maps it's just gambling that your teammates know how to cover for you.
Invades and ganks wouldn't be so bad if warding were an actual thing in Heroes. Part of what makes the game so volatile and snowbally right now is the lack of scouting info you have on your minimap.
On January 08 2018 09:38 Clbull wrote: Invades and ganks wouldn't be so bad if warding were an actual thing in Heroes. Part of what makes the game so volatile and snowbally right now is the lack of scouting info you have on your minimap.
Your teammates (especially the tank) should be the ward. They should be in position to help you asap.
The issue is that they don't understand where to be on the lane to cover an invade properly. It's honestly one of the most frustrating things in the world. Too often they rather wanna go for some pointless 4v3 or 3v2 on the other side of the map where they at best will get 1 kill. However, securing camps should have first priority.
Generally speaking there are two win conditions in the current meta:
1. Get a ton of picksc with high bust/cc comp (tytpically involves a nova/valeera + maybe a diablo etc as tanks). With this comp you can avoid getting camps and instead just punish opponent for overextending.
2. A composition with good laners/waweclear and then you just spam camps and win by map control.
Too often drafts will invovler either, or perhaps some mix between the two and playing a mixed style is just the worst way too win. Like if you have one jungler + a nova on the team --> you probably lose.
So the new meta changes have just introduced a new element to the game that isn't particilarly skillbased but instead is soooo dependant on your teammates. You can in theory do everything correct as a player but still lose... That obviously also happened before, but now there is just another way it can happen.
So understanding drafts and making pick suggestions during draft is very important. Babysitting teammates throughout the game is also important but ofc bad players tend to react 10-15 seconds too late too everything.
And then there are maps like braxis holdout. I argue that over 50% of games played on this map at diamond/master/gm are determined by drafts. By that i mean that over 50% of the games can be predicted before it begins with 90%'ish accuracy because all that matters is whether you have better laners. An absolute horribe map in my opinion.
I come to long after a map like Summoners Rift that is big, has 3 lanes and generally offer different types of options for players throughout the game. And ofc add some type of objective to make it HOTS. Cursed hollow is probably the closest we get to that.
As mentioned previously, the problem with current map pool is that it almost always is so easy to predict where the jungler is going to be on the map at any given point in time - unlike LOL - where there usually are multiple viable places you can be. It doesn't require skill to succesfully invade and fuck up the jungler.
As an example I recently had a game where we got a kill and i immediatelly told my team to go for the invade and pinged the location. Eveyrone except nazeebo who for whatever reason thought he should go top went for the invade.
As a consequence we lost the 4v4 and the camp and we were in a 25-75 situation. Had nazeebo followed we would likely have won the teamfight + taken the camp --> 75-25 situation.
I have always be frustrated in LOL where one misplay from a teammate could mess up your ability to do anything (aka have fun) for the rest of the game. HOTS is just starting to feel more and more like that.
Anyway, for the jungle-role to actually work in HOTS, blizzard need to completely rework the entire map system because it doesn't work well atm imo. With a larger map plus more different merc options, invading becomes a skill and it could also become viable to soloinvade.
They also need to rework camps where you can take 0% damage in the proces (like siege camps), because in those situations you can never solo invade a stronger 1v1 jungler. As a compensation some jungle camps could provide you with 2 or 3 regen globes instead.
I don't think the merc system will ever be changed to force one player to concentrate on it on every map. It would make laneplay stale. And well there is Sylv and Zagara who can clean up faster then one can spam mercs. That siege camps are doable by assassins now is just to lessen the early game effect of those heroes that cleaned camps before like nothing. Because now you can do yours if they do theirs, without having to tp back.
Of course that makes heroes more about picking the right hero. But thats already a given with the talent system instead of an item system. And Drafts are predictable, because you can see which side has more ego picks instead of picks aimed at winning. That cannot be fixed by the game.
I don't think the merc system will ever be changed to force one player to concentrate on it on every map. It would make laneplay stale.
That's what the meta is now om most maps - unless you draft a pick comp. You only stop taking mercs when the objective is up (and then mercs will be pushing enemy lane). And as I argued, it's really dumb because the ability to take camps has nothing to do with your own skill.
And if you don't take early game camps and the opponent does --> You lose the map control.
In my opinion, it's the wrong direction for the game whenever it moves towards being more dependant on your teammates.
And well there is Sylv and Zagara who can clean up faster then one can spam mercs.
Sylvaanas is primarily an early game pusher along with the team. Her primary early game role is definitely not to take camps. Zagara is more about late game camp taking and an early game solo lane bully. She is definitely not the early game camp taker.
Instead the jungler can often just be anyone with good damage against camps where shots can be dodged. Against camps where shots cannot be dodged it can be various bruisers/heroes with life steal etc.
FeyFey Profile PM Joined September 2010 Germany10072 Posts 6 hours ago #16 I don't think the merc system will ever be changed to force one player to concentrate on it on every map. It would make laneplay stale. And well there is Sylv and Zagara who can clean up faster then one can spam mercs. That siege camps are doable by assassins now is just to lessen the early game effect of those heroes that cleaned camps before like nothing. Because now you can do yours if they do theirs, without having to tp back.
Of course that makes heroes more about picking the right hero. But thats already a given with the talent system instead of an item system. And Drafts are predictable, because you can see which side has more ego picks instead of picks aimed at winning. That cannot be fixed by the game.
hey, would you mind to elaborate? i have been looking for a detailed draft guide for quite a while but havent really found anything that doesn´t over generalize
And Drafts are predictable, because you can see which side has more ego picks instead of picks aimed at winning. That cannot be fixed by the game.
I don't even think that's as much the issue on braxxis. Often time teams are trying to draft as well as they can (maybe 1-3 picks are ego picks, but 4-5 tries to fill). And when you just have to pick either the strongest laners or the ones with strongest waweclear, it leads to a very boring map.