Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes -- December 15, 2015

Winter Veil

Snuggle up to the warmth of your computer and get ready to fire up Heroes of the Storm, because Winter Veil has arrived to the Nexus! We’ve got a host of festive goodies that you can enjoy this holiday season, but the celebration won’t last forever. Be sure to check out the treats below before Winter Veil concludes on Tuesday, January 12.

New Special Event Quest: 30 Days of Winter Veil

• Play 15 Games – Earn a 4 day Stimpack
• Play 50 Games – Earn a 10 day Stimpack
• Please note: Each game played during Winter Veil will count toward progress for both Special Event Quests.

Festive Treasure Goblin Mount

• All players can ride the brand new Festive Treasure Goblin Mount for free during Winter Veil!
• This limited-time Mount cannot be purchased, and will only be available during Winter Veil, so be sure to pick it during Hero Select before readying up!

Winter Veil Items in the Shop

• Several new Winter Veil skins and bundles, including Sugar Plum Sylvanas and Greatfather Stitches, have arrived to the Shop for a limited time! Check out the Shop section below for details.
• As part of our Recruit a Friend celebration, all brand new Heroes, Mounts, Bundles, and Skins introduced with today’s patch will be available at 50% off their normal real-money prices through the end of the year!

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New Hero

Lunara, First Daughter of Cenarius, has been added to Heroes of the Storm and is now available for play! Read on for a brief overview of her Abilities.

Mount

• Dryad’s Swiftness
  • Lunara cannot use Mounts. Instead, you move 20% faster by leaping short distances.

Trait

• Nature’s Toxin
  • Your Basic Attacks and damaging Abilities poison the target, dealing damage each second for 3 seconds.

Basic Abilities

• Noxious Blossom (Q)
  • After 0.5 seconds, cause an area to explode with pollen, dealing damage.
• Crippling Spores (W)
  • Enemies currently afflicted by Nature’s Toxin have its duration increased by 3 seconds and are slowed by 40%, decaying over 3 seconds.
• Wisp (E)
  • Spawn a Wisp to scout an area. Can be redirected once active. Lasts 45 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

• Thornwood Vine (R)
  • Send forth vines that deal damage to all enemies in a line. Can hold 3 charges.
• Leaping Strike (R)
  • Leap over an enemy, attacking and slowing the target by 80% for 0.35 seconds. Can hold 2 charges.

Shop

As mentioned above, all brand new Heroes, Mounts, Bundles, and Skins introduced with today’s patch will be available at 50% off their normal real-money prices through the end of the year.

Bundles

• New Bundles have been added for a limited time!
  • Winter Veil 2015 Bundle
  • Winter Veil 2015 Ultimate Bundle
  • Sentinel Lunara Bundle

Heroes

• Lunara has been added to the in-game Shop

Mounts

• New Mount
  • Champion’s Nexagon
    • Celebrate Cloud9’s victory at BlizzCon 2015 by riding the Champion’s Nexagon, which features the Cloud9 logo and team colors!
    • This mount can only be purchased with Gold, and is available until February.
• Returning Mounts
  • Lunar Tiger
  • Magic Carpet
• Mount Removals
  • Cyber Wolf
  • Dire Wolf
  • Tyrael’s Charger

Price Changes

• Zagara’s prices have been reduced to 4,000 Gold and $6.49 USD.

Skins

• New Skins
  • Greatfather Winter Stitches – Exclusively available during Winter Veil
  • Sugar Plum Sylvanas – Exclusively available during Winter Veil
  • Master Lunara
  • Sentinel Lunara

User Interface

In-Game UI

• Score Screens
  • Kills, Deaths, and Assists have been reordered on in-game and end-of-game Score Screens to read as Kills, Assists, and Deaths.

Social Features

• The chat system has been redesigned.
  • Chat channels are now split into collapsible groupings on the right side of the chat panel.
  • All players who have joined a chat channel are now listed under that channel’s name on the right side of the chat panel, along with their portrait, Battletag, and current status.
  • Inactive players will now be automatically removed from public chat channels and will rejoin once they become active again.
• Chat navigation
  • The chat panel can be expanded in height using the arrow button found in the upper-right corner.
  • Players will be notified in the upper-left corner of the chat pane if they have missed any messages from conversations they are not actively viewing.
  • Players can now quickly view and switch among all chat channels that they are taking part in by clicking the new arrow button in the upper-left corner of the chat panel.
    • Additionally, players can cycle through the list of chat channels they have open by pressing Ctrl + Tab and Ctrl + Shift + Tab.
• Custom Game Lobby Links
  • Players in Custom Game lobbies can now create a clickable link and share it in chat channels to allow others to join the lobby.
    • Create a link to a Custom Game lobby by typing the following (without quotes) into any chat channel: “[lobby]”
    • Players may also send a message along with their lobby links by typing “/lobbylink” followed by their desired text

Loading Screens

• Portrait Border Display
  • Loading Screens will now only display portrait borders that are relevant to each play mode. Each loading screen will display portrait borders as follows:
    • Quick Match, Custom Games, and Versus A.I. - Basic border and account level.
    • Hero League - Hero League rank.
    • Team League - Team League rank.
• Party Indicator Icons
  • New Loading Screen icons have been added to indicate which players queued together as a party.
    • Players in the same party will appear next to each other on loading screens.
    • Parties will be separated by icon color so that it is easier to see how many parties there are, and how many players are in each.

Looking for Party Changes

• The Looking for Party feature on the Home screen has been renamed to Party Finder.
  • The Party Finder will now display any friends who are online in addition to players who are looking to join a party.
  • Friends who are online but not yet looking for a party will be listed as “online” or “in a party”. When they are looking for a party or looking for more, the text will update appropriately.
• Hovering the cursor over player portraits in the looking for party list will now display a tooltip that indicates which chat channel you have in common.
• Looking for Party has been added to the Friends list.

Design and Gameplay

Matchmaking

• A new Warrior rule has been added to Quick Match that now prevents teams that do not have a Warrior hero from being matched with teams that do have a Warrior.

A.I. Improvements

• General
  • AI players will now move more efficiently on offense and retreat.
  • Slight improvements have been made to the way that AI players will perform several map objectives.
• Difficulty-Specific Improvements
  • Adept AI will now choose Talents from pre-defined Talent builds, much like Veteran and Elite AI do already.
  • Elite AI will now focus their attacks on low Health enemies and chase more often.

Heroes

Tassadar

• Plasma Shield (Q)
  • Can now be cast on allies located in the Hall of Storms

Artanis

• Basic Attack range increased by 25%
• Phase Prism (E)
  • Range and speed have each been increased by 15%

Developer Comments: Artanis was having a harder time sticking to opponents than we’d like.  This was hurting his ability to disrupt the enemy team and his ability to survive.  We feel that a slight increase to his base kit will help alleviate this issue, while maintaining a lot of the playstyle (and counterplay) that we currently enjoy.  The increased range on Phase Prism and his Basic Attacks should help him feel better to play, and help him more successfully fulfill his aggressive Warrior role.

These changes are intentionally slight, as we feel Artanis is very close to being extremely powerful in today’s game.

Cho

• Basic Attack damage increased from 110 to 120
• Base Health increased from 3360 to 3528
• Base Health Regeneration increased from 7 to 7.35 per second

Developer Comments: Cho’gall’s win rate has been trending up since his release, but it is still a bit lower than we’d like. We have plans to improve Cho’gall with Talent changes in the future, but we wanted to give him a small buff before then.

Bug Fixes

Heroes and Talents

• Azmodan’s Globe of Annihilation will now deal the correct amount of damage while under the effects of Black Pool and the Taste for Blood Talent.
  • This fix will also resolve incorrect damage amounts for similar Talent interactions, such as Muradin’s Storm Bolt with the Sledgehammer and Perfect Storm Talents, as well as Falstad’s Gathering Storm and Overdrive Talents.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Leoric’s Drain Hope to end prematurely.
• Fixed several situations in which summoned units could return directly to lane rather than continuing to attack nearby enemies while capturing a Mercenary Camp.
• Tychus’ Hero model will no longer disappear after capturing a Fort on the Towers of Doom Battleground.
• Artanis’ Purifier Beam will no longer track Murky back to his Egg if Murky was killed just as the Ability was cast.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Brightwing’s Phase Shield to be applied to Cho’gall inconsistently.
• Diagonally placed Shrubs will no longer sometimes fail to properly hide a Hero within.
• Fixed an issue which could allow Cho’gall to regenerate Health after using Consuming Blaze on certain destructible objects.
• Punishers on the Infernal Shrines Battleground will no longer fly outside the playable area after leaping into Zeratul’s Void Prison.

User Interface

• Allied Minion status bars will no longer appear green when they are missing Health.
• Resolved some cases in which Hero League games could incorrectly flag players to receive leaver penalties.
• Pressing the Enter key while casting certain Abilities will no longer cause the key to behave as though it is stuck.