Patch Notes - September 27, 2016 :: Heroes of the Storm discussion on HeroesFire

While we expected Alarak’s win rate to be a bit on the lower side due to how difficult his kit can be to fully execute, we felt that he could use some buffs to make him feel better to play. Across the board Lightning Surge is slightly under-performing, so we’re upping the power of the base ability and its related talents. We hope that this will properly reward Alarak players who take Lightning Surge related talents, particularly those who master the gameplay of clotheslining enemies with the Lightning. When we first designed Counter-Strike, we felt that crowd control was an appropriate counter to the ability since it was so powerful on paper and on a reasonably low cooldown. Since his release, we have seen that Counter-Strike is simply not as reliable as we had predicted since Alarak has 3 potential ways to fail to get value (enemies can fail to damage him, they can dodge the returning skill shot, or they can crowd control him out of his channel). We’ve decided to grant him Unstoppable for its duration to make it more reliable, and we are increasing its damage to further separate it from Deadly Charge.

Counter-Strike(R)

Discord Strike(Q)

- Energy decreased from 60 to 55

Telekinesis(W)

Lightning Surge(E)

- Energy decreased from 40 to 30
- Damage changed from 93.6 (+4%) to 104 (+4%)

Wide Lightning

Power Conduit

- Mana cost reduction changed from 15 to 10

Reckless Strike

Cycle of Discord

Thunderstruck

Hindered Motion

Pure Malice

Negatively Charged

Counter-Strike

General.display_name(General.keybind)

- Health increased from 2003.04 to 2204.8
- Health Regeneration increased from 4.172168 to 4.59472

Bestow Hope(Combat Trait)

Reservoir of Hope

We know how much passion our players have for Chen and spent months upgrading his Talent Tree to our newest philosophies. To give you an idea of what we were looking to improve, here were a couple of our goals with this update: Chen should be able to be a solo-tank for your team and not be afraid to constantly soak enemy skill-shots. Chen should be a constant threat to the enemy’s backline damage dealers. Chen should deal low amounts of burst damage while continually applying sustained damage at pointed targets. Chen should be extremely resilient in the absence of enemy stuns. As always, we are listening to your feedback and appreciate everyone taking the time to send it to us. Enjoy the new Talent Tree, and as Chen has said many times before- “It is important to master the Brew and not let it master you!”

General.display_name(General.keybind)

- Basic Attack damage decreased from 87.36 to 84
- Damage per level decreased from 0.04 to 0

Storm(Q)

Earth(W)

Fire(E)

Elusive Brawler(Talent)

Triple Attack(Q)

Split Up(W)

Storm, Earth, Fire(R)

Wandering Keg(R)

Flying Kick(Q)

Keg Smash(W)

- Count increased from 0 to 1
- Cooldown increased from 0 to 1 seconds

Breath of Fire(W)

Accumulating Flame

Freshest Ingredients

Elusive Brawler

Refreshing Elixir

Withering Flames

Flying Leap

Another Round

Purifying Brew

Stormstout Secret Recipe

Regeneration Master

Consuming Flame

Swift Reflexes

Amplified Healing

Deep Breath

Full Keg

Combat Stance

Brew Strike

Relentless

Bottomless Mug

Combination Attack

Hardened Shield(Talent)

Bolt of the Storm

Grounding Brew

Deadly Strike

Keg Toss

Ring of Fire

Bolder Flavor

Pressure Point

Enough to Share

- Tier increased from 5 to 6

Untapped Potential

Elemental Conduit

Reaching Through Time had a dominating pick rate, for good reason. We’re taking a little bit of that range from the Talent and adding it baseline. While we’re at it, we’re reducing the range on Temporal Loop slightly to require Chromie to put herself more at risk. Temporal Loop isn’t overpowered per se, but the majority of the counterplay required specific Heroes (Medivh, Auriel, Uther) or Cleanse. We’re also buffing her Health so that the sum total of all these changes will result in an improvement to her winrate, since she is slightly less powerful than what we’d like to see.

General.display_name(General.keybind)

- Health increased from 1310.4 to 1375.92
- Health Regeneration increased from 2.73 to 2.868112

Reaching through Time

We like E.T.C.’s core gameplay, but wanted to improve his talent diversity. Many E.T.C. players end up picking the same talents in most games, especially at Levels 1 and 4, due to the importance of buffing Powerslide. We’ve streamlined that power, and have given him more options to play up the bard aspect of his kit, which should make him more of a team player.

Rockstar(Combat Trait)

Block Party

Crowd Surfer

Aggressive Shredding

Rolling Like a Stone

Block

Pwn Shop Guitar

Double-Necked Guitar

Follow Through

Groupies

Spell Shield

Guitar Hero

Prog Rock

Loud Speakers

- Tier decreased from 3 to 2

Speed Metal

- Tier decreased from 6 to 2
- Movement Speed changed from 20 to 10

Pinball Wizard

Echo Pedal

Hammer-on

Mic Check

- Tier increased from 2 to 5
- Number of targets hit required to reduce Face Melt’s cooldown changed from 3 to 2

Encore

- Tier decreased from 6 to 5

Face Smelt

Show Stopper

- Tier increased from 5 to 6

Crowd Pleaser

- Cooldown changed from 15 seconds to 10 seconds

Gilnean Roulette

Gul’dan’s slightly underperforming compared to other assassins, so we’re giving him some throughput buffs as well as buffing his Fel Flame ability. We know that the Echoed Corruption change may not be positively received as it is a slight nerf, but we believe it is better for the health of his talent tier and for him overall. The intent of this talent was for it to be a relatively large power spike but for it to come very late into the game. Currently it’s still being unlocked earlier than we would like, and it has a slightly higher win rate compared to other talents on the tier. We wanted to buff Corruption by lowering its cooldown, so we felt that it was appropriate to slightly increase its quest completion time to help balance it out.

Drain Life(W)

- Base healing changed from 178.88 (+4%) to 195.52 (+4%)

Corruption(E)

- Energy decreased from 90 to 80
- Cooldown decreased from 16 to 14 seconds

Life Tap(Combat Trait)

- Energy decreased from 234 to 222

Pursuit of Flame

Echoed Corruption

- Quest completion requirement changed from 35 to 40

Health Funnel

Unending Hatred

Sixth Sense

Shake It Off

Arcane Orb and the Talents affecting it have been slightly underperforming over the past couple months. We are also unhappy with the unpredictably large explosion radius that occurs at close range detonations. To address these concerns, we have made some base size adjustments to the Orb missile while also buffing Zei’s Vengeance to help round out the full build. While the size changes definitely look like a nerf on paper, in actual testing we felt like they gave players tighter control with a lot less early-detonations on unintended targets.

Triumvirate

Zei's Vengeance

While we realize that Malfurion’s talent tree could use some work, and we want to do a deeper dive in the future, we wanted to give him a better niche among our other Support heroes in the meantime. His throughput healing should be higher, and a bigger part of his gameplay should now be rolling his heal-over-time effects among multiple allies to keep them alive. He now also has the unique ability to give allies cooldown reduction in addition to Mana, which should give him a new reason to be considered being added to a team. We’ve also buffed the initial root search for his Entangling Roots, which will enable him to more reliably root enemy Heroes instead of relying on his teammates to secure crowd control.

Regrowth(Q)

- Energy decreased from 60 to 35
- Cooldown decreased from 7 to 5 seconds
- RegrowthHealRechargeVitalRate changed from 390 (+4%) to 522.6 (+4%)
- Duration changed from 10 seconds to 15 seconds

Innervate(Combat Trait)

Harmony

Enduring Growth

Rampant Growth

Nazeebo is one of the oldest Heroes in the game, and his Talent tree was in dire need of an upgrade. The goal of the revamp was to increase the reward of mastering the Hero’s Abilities, maintain his identity as a zone control and damage over time character, embrace the fun mini-game that was Death Ritual, and provide interesting synergies between Abilities and Talents. We wanted to be sure to reinforce the designed weaknesses of the Hero that are lack of burst and lack of mobility, while still making him viable in the current metagame of Heroes of the Storm. Overall, a lot of his old Talents had to be revamped or replaced, but we find that he still feels a lot like the old Nazeebo, just more interesting!

General.display_name(General.keybind)

- Basic Attack damage decreased from 91.52 to 88
- WeaponAmountGain decreased from 0.04 to 0

Zombie Wall(W)

Plague of Toads(E)

Soul Harvest(Talent)

Zombie Wall(W)

Plague of Toads(E)

Gargantuan(R)

Ravenous Spirit(R)

Corpse Spiders(Q)

Zombie Wall(W)

Plague of Toads(E)

Voodoo Ritual(Combat Trait)

Widowmakers

Pandemic

Hexed Crawlers

Big Voodoo

Spirit of Arachyr

Guardian Toads

Superstition

Spider Colony

Ring of Poison

Soul Harvest

Vile Infection

Death Ritual

Demolitionist

Spider Cluster

Gathering Power

Mercenary Lord

Envenom

Promote

Gidbinn

Fresh Corpses

Toad Affinity

Specialized Toxin

Leaping Spiders

Infested Toads

Hardened Focus

Bolt of the Storm

Thing of the Deep

Blood Ritual

Dead Rush

Toads of Hugeness

Humongoid

Hyper-Cooling Engines

Furnace Blast(R)

- Cooldown decreased from 80 to 60 seconds

Hamstring(Q)

After the change to Relentless Soldier in a previous patch, Tychus had 2 different ways to gain Resistant before level 10. While we like that Tychus is a “tanky Assassin”, we felt that him having more ways to mitigate damage than some melee Assassins to be too much. We decided to remove Shrug It Off because it felt misplaced on a tier that was primarily about Utility and Mobility. To compensate for the loss of Shrug It Off, we’ve decided to buff his baseline Health and Regeneration and the other Talent options at level 1. For players that really want to embrace the “tanky Assassin” role of Tychus, we’ve added Resistant to Odin so that you can truly feel like a scary mech of destruction while it is up.

General.display_name(General.keybind)

- Health increased from 1909.44 to 2002
- Health Regeneration increased from 3.996289 to 4.1922265

Commandeer Odin(R)

Shrug It Off

Press the Advantage

Combat Tactician

- Cooldown reduction changed from 0.75 to 0.8 per basic attack

We’re seeing a lot of success with Multi-Shot Valla’s builds, but the Basic Attack and Hungering Arrow focused Valla’s aren’t keeping pace. We really want to reward players for keeping their Hatred at high stacks and landing those Puncturing Arrows on their intended targets.

Rain of Vengeance(R)

- Cooldown decreased from 60 to 50 seconds

Hungering Arrow(Q)

- Damage changed from 145.6 (+4%) to 157.04 (+4%)
- Damage changed from 83.2 (+4%) to 89.44 (+4%)

Vault(E)

Death Siphon

Vengeance

Monster Hunter

Puncturing Arrow

Death Dealer

Aleksandra Zaryanova is one of the world's strongest women and was a promising athlete, but all that changed when the Siberian omnium reawakened. As a soldier in the Russian Defense Force, she now proudly uses her strength to protect the ones she loves.