Heroes of the Storm

Heroes of the Storm Balance Patch Notes – February 27, 2019

Heroes of the Storm Balance Patch Notes – February 27, 2019

Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with changes to a number of Heroes and some Bug Fixes. Read on for details!

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Heroes

Assassin Specialist Support Warrior
Alarak Azmodan Ana Cho
Gall Medivh Li Li Diablo
Orphea Probius Whitemane Leoric
Li-Ming Zagara Mal'ganis
Lunara Rexxar
Raynor Sonya
Samuro Tyrael
Tychus

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Assassin

Alarak

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Talents

  • Level 13
    • Blade of the Highlord (Trait)
      • Adjusted functionality:
        • Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes grant 2% Sadism, up to 30%.  Sadism gained from Blade of the Highlord is lost on death

Developer Comment: Since its inception, Blade of the Highlord has not performed well compared to the other talents on its tier. With this change, we’re hoping to bring it to a more competitive space by making its bonuses more permanent instead of only lasting for a small window of time.

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Gall

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Talents

  • Level 1
    • Keep Moving! (Z)
      • Movement Speed bonus duration increased from 1 to 2 seconds.  Basic Attacks against Heroes no longer increase the movement speed duration of an active Shove.
    • We See You! (Passive)
      • Cooldown reduction increased from 15 to 25 seconds
  • Level 4
    • Double Back (W)
      • Additional functionality:
        • The third bounce of Dread Orb now deals 50% bonus damage to Heroes
  • Level 7
    • Edge of Madness (Q)
      • Window before damage bonuses are lost increased from 4 to 7 seconds
    • Ogre Rampage (Trait)
      • Additional Functionality:
        • Increase the damage bonus of Ogre Rage by 5%
  • Level 16
    • Shadowsnare (Q)
      • Slow amount increased from 10% to 15%, stacking up to 2 times instead of 3
    • Leaden Orb (W)
      • Stun duration increased from .5 seconds to .75 seconds

Developer Comment: While looking at Cho, we saw an opportunity to make some of Gall’s lesser picked talents more powerful or interesting so that they are more competitive against other options.

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Li-Ming

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Talents

  • Level 1
    • Aether Walker (E)
      • Additional Functionality:
        • Casting Teleport causes Li-Ming's next cast of Magic Missiles to deal 10% increased damage
  • Level 4
    • Triumvirate (W)
      • Cooldown reduction increased from 50% to 5 seconds
  • Level 7
    • Zei's Vengeance (W)
      • Arcane Orb cooldown reduction reduced from 2 to 1 second
        • This should increase the total cooldown reduction of an Arcane Orb hitting with the Triumvirate proc from 5 seconds to 6 seconds when Trimvirate and Zei's Vengeance are both taken

Developer Comment: We’re going to get you to want to pick Aether Walker. Just you wait…

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Lunara

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Talents

  • Level 4
    • Blossom Swell (Q)
      • Additional functionality: 
        • Hitting an enemy Hero with Noxious Blossom increases Lunara's Movement Speed by 15% for 3 seconds

Developer Comment: Blossom Swell has been underperforming compared to other talents on its tier since Lunara’s last rework. While her talent diversity is fairly good compared to other heroes in the game, we want to give her Q build some love, and saw this as an opportunity to do so.

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Orphea

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Talents

  • Level 7
    • Mind Devourer (E)
      • Damage bonus reduced from 5 to 4 per stack

Developer Comment: Orphea has been performing very well as of late, with Mind Devourer in particular overshadowing other talents on its tier. We’re slightly reducing its power to reduce her overall effectiveness while hopefully motivating players to try out her other Level 7 talents more often.

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Raynor

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Abilities

  • Raynor's Raider (R)
    • Leash range increased from 12.5 to 14

Developer Comment: There are many cases where due to the leash range of Raynor’r Raider, it doesn’t quite do what Raynor wants it to. To make it more consistently do what the player wants and expects, we’re slightly increasing its leash range.

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Samuro

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Talents

  • Level 1
    • Way of the Blade (W)
      • Additional Functionality:
        • Now also reduces the Physical Armor of enemy Heroes hit by Critical Strike by 10 for 2 seconds
    • Way of the Wind (E)
      • Additional functionality:
        • Samuro’s Critical Strikes reduce the cooldown of Windwalk by 1.5 seconds

Developer Comment: It’s not too surprising that Way of Illusion has dominated Samuro’s Level 1 tier since it adds the most direct teamfight power due to buffing his Basic Attack damage. Rather than nerf it further, we’re looking to instead buff up its competing options, which should also add some synergies to his later talent tiers, and hopefully create more diversity on other tiers.

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Tychus

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Talents

  • Level 20
    • Bob and Weave (E)
      • Additional Functionality:
        • Now also grants Tychus 1.5 Basic Attack range

Developer Comment: To make Bob and Weave feel more fun and powerful, we’re adding to the kiting theme of the talent by also providing Tychus with a Basic Attack range increase.

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Specialist

Azmodan

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Abilities

  • Globe of Annihilation (Q)
    • Damage scaling reduced from 3% to 2.5%

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Greed (Q)
      • New functionality:
        • Globe of Annihilation deals 20% bonus damage to non-Heroic targets.  Quest: After gaining 200 Annihilation, increase the range of All Shall Burn by 25%, and Demon Warriors gain 20% Movement Speed and Attack Speed
  • Level 16
    • Sin’s Grasp (E)
      • New functionality:
        • All Shall Burn Slows enemies by 15% during its channel.  If the channel finishes, increase this slow to 45% for 2 seconds, and reduce the cooldown of All Shall Burn by 50%
  • Level 20
    • Trample (Active)
      • Cooldown reduced from 60 to 20 seconds

Developer Comment: Azmodan is raining a bit too much destruction on the Nexus, so we’re bringing his late-game power down a notch by reducing Globe of Annihilation’s scaling damage. In addition, we saw an opportunity to help his talent pick rates by adjusting a couple existing talents, which will hopefully motivate more players to pursue builds that don’t involve powering up Globe of Annihilation.

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Medivh

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Talents

  • Level 16
    • Temporal Flux (Q)
      • Adjusted functionality:
        • Cooldown reduction changed from 1 second per Basic Attack and 3 seconds for Arcane Rift hits to 3% per Basic Attack and 9% per Arcane Rift hit

Developer Comment: We like talents that lower Heroic cooldowns, but unfortunately many of the heroes who have these talents also have Heroics with wildly different cooldowns, which makes these talents hard to tune and pick in many cases. Because of this, we’re standardizing these talents to reduce a percentage of each Heroic’s cooldown so that players feel free to pick the talent regardless of which Heroic they chose earlier in the game.

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Probius

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Abilities

  • Null Gate (R)
    • Range increased from 8.5 to 9.5

Developer Comment: While Null Gate is performing well in regards to win-rate compared to Pylon Overcharge, the Heroic is still not picked as much as we would like, and is much harder to use properly. Because of this, we’re buffing its range to make it a little more usable, so that Probius players can more consistently get value out of it.

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Zagara

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Talents

  • Level 7
    • Baneling Massacre (Q)
      • Additional Functionality:
        • Increase the damage of Banelings by 20%
    • Viscous Acid (Q)
      • Slow duration increased from 1.5 to 2.5 seconds
      • Slow amount increased from 20% to 25%
    • Bile Drop (E)
      • Quest completion requirement reduced from 15 to 12

Developer Comment: Zagara’s Level 7 talents have traditionally been very weak, and these changes are meant to make the tier feel more fun overall. If they blow her win-rate out of the water, we’ll look at base kit nerfs to compensate.

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Support

Ana

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Abilities

  • Eye of Horus (R)
    • Cooldown increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Slumber Shells (E)
      • Adjusted functionality:
        • Hitting an enemy Hero with Sleep dart grants Ana 25% Movement Speed for 3 seconds
  • Level 4
    • Debilitating Dart (Active)
      • Duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
  • Level 7
    • Night Terrors (E)
      • Cooldown of Sleep Dart when a Hero is not woken up early changed from 6 seconds to 5 seconds

Developer Comment: We’re buffing up some of Ana’s underperforming talents to make them more competitive with their counterparts. In addition, since we greatly increased its reliability, we’re slightly increasing the cooldown of Eye of Horus to get ahead of potential frustration issues with a globally damaging Heroic being on such a low cooldown.

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Li Li

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Stats

  • Health reduced from 1534 to 1500
  • Health Regeneration reduced from to 3.2 to 3.1

Abilities

  • Healing Brew (Q)
    • Healing reduced from 181 to 175

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Eager Adventurer (Trait)
      • Mana regeneration increased from 100% to 125%
  • Level 16
    • Blessings of Yu'lon (W)
      • Healing reduced from 1.25% max Health to 1% max Health

Developer Comment: For how easy Lili is to play, she is simply too powerful and popular, particularly at the lower and mid-levels of play. These changes are meant to reduce her dominance at those levels, which should free up more options for players wanting to pick other healers that they would like to master.

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Whitemane

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Stats

  • Basic Attack speed reduced by ~12%
  • Basic Attack damage increased from 45 to 60

Abilities

  • Searing Lash (W)
    • Damage increased from 78 to 82

Talents

  • Level 13
    • Self-Righteous (Q)
      • Healing increased from 125 to 135

Developer Comment: We’ve begun to take a look at some of Whitemane’s underlying issues with Mana management, particularly in regards to how her talents interact with her base mechanics. We don’t know how long this will take, and wanted to push out some small buffs to her to help her play and win rate in the meantime. When looking at her kit, we noticed that she had an abnormally high Basic Attack speed, combined with very low damage. We’re reducing her Attack Speed, as she is not the kind of character that can turret on enemy Heroes like Tychus can, and we’re buffing her damage to be much greater so that those attacks more meaningfully interact with Zeal. We’re hoping that these small buffs better reward aggressive Whitemane players with both increased damage and healing output.

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Warrior

Cho

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Stats

  • Health increased from 2750 to 2850
  • Health Regeneration increased from 5.7 to 5.9

Talents

  • Level 7
    • Power Surge (Q)
      • Cooldown reduction increased from 4 to 5 seconds
  • Level 13
    • Surging Dash (Q)
      • Moved from Level 16
    • Twilight Veil (Active)
      • Moved from Level 16
      • Duration increased from 2 to 4 seconds
    • Molten Block (Active)
      • Moved from Level 16
  • Level 16
    • Frenzied Fists (Q)
      • Moved from Level 13
    • Runic Feedback (E)
      • Moved from Level 13
    • Runed Gauntlet (Passive)
      • Moved from Level 13
      • Adjusted functionality:
        • Cooldown reduction changed from .75 seconds to 5% of Cho and Gall’s Heroic abilities

Developer Comment: Since our last round of nerfs, Cho’gall has fallen off a little more than we would like. In Cho’s particular case, we feel that his survivability takes a particularly hard hit once the enemy team has access to Heroic abilities which are reliably able to shut him down. To help with this, we’re moving his defensive talent tier from Level 16 to 13 in order to shorten the window of time that the enemy team has to take advantage of this particular weakness.

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Diablo

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Abilities

  • Shadow Charge (Q)
    • Cooldown increased from 12 to 13 seconds
  • Overpower (E)
    • Cooldown increased from 12 to 13 seconds

Developer Comment: Diablo, while not winning outside of our normally acceptable bounds, is banned a disproportionate amount compared to other heroes in the game. We’re slightly reducing how available his combo is so that enemy players have a larger window of time to take advantage of his threatening abilities being on cooldown.

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Leoric

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Talents

  • Level 13
    • Spectral Leech (Passive)
      • Moved from Level 20
  • Level 20
    • Hardened Bones (W)
      • Moved from Level 13

Developer Comment: Since his rework, Ominous Wraith at Level 13 has largely defined Leoric’s place on a team at more competitive levels of play. Rather than nerf something that we consider to be a fairly cool and unique playstyle, we’re instead looking to buff up the other ways that players can build Leoric. Now all of his key build-around talents will be at Level 13, which should make his Basic Attack playstyle come online much sooner, and give him more options if he wants to build into Drain Hope, as he can now combine Unyielding Despair with Hardened Bones.

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Mal'Ganis

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Stats

  • Health reduced from 2700 to 2600
  • Health Regeneration reduced from 5.625 to 5.414

Abilities

  • Necrotic Embrace (W)
    • Mana cost increased from 30 to 35

Developer Comment: Like Diablo, Mal’ganis has a huge ban rate, and players have had a tough time dealing with his high survivability. We’re bringing it down a bit, which should force Mal’ganis players to be a bit more mindful of how much they can get away with when diving into the enemy team.

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Rexxar

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Stats

  • Health increased from 1725 to 1810
  • Health Regen increased from 3.6 to 3.8
  • Rexxar Basic Attack damage increased from 99 to 125
  • Misha Basic Attack damage reduced from 62 to 50

Abilities

  • Misha, Charge! (W)
    • Damage increased from 59 to 150
  • Bestial Wrath (R)
    • Bonus damage increased from 150% to 200%

Talents

  • Level 7
    • Aspect of the Beast (W)
      • Cooldown reduction reduced from 1.25 to 1 second
  • Level 13
    • Dire Beast (W)
      • Damage reduced from 40% per stack to 15%

Developer Comment: Since his inception, Rexxar has been one of the highest win-rate heroes in our game, never going below 50% at high levels of play. Despite this, we’ve heard consistent feedback that he doesn’t feel as impactful as players would like. While we love that Rexxar depends heavily on his relationship with Misha to be effective, it also limits what we can do with him to make him feel powerful and fun to play. To help in this regard, we’re moving a lot of his power out of the more automatic things that Misha does (mostly Basic attacking enemies), and into things that Rexxar himself is actively doing, such as using his Basic Attacks and commanding Misha to Stun enemies. Since we’re buffing Misha, Charge so much, we’re nerfing some of its associated talents as they are already highly picked by Rexxar players, and this change would otherwise be a dramatic buff to them.

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Sonya

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Talents

  • Level 16
    • Giant Slammer (W)
      • Additional Functionality:
        • Now also Heals Sonya for the damage dealt

Developer Comment: It’s hard to create a competing talent to Nerves of Steel due to the incredible on-demand survivability that it gives her in a team fight. To help its viability, we’re adding survivability to Giant Slammer in hopes that it competes more directly with Nerves of Steel while being unique in that it also gives Sonya more damage in a teamfight.

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Tyrael

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Talents

  • Level 1
    • Ardent Restoration (Passive)
      • Healing amount increased from 15 to 17.5
  • Level 4
    • Divine Vigor (E)
      • Healing increased from 50% to 60%
  • Level 7
    • Purge Evil (E)
      • Bonus Damage increased from 45% to 55%

Developer Comment: We’re just making some simple buffs to Tyrael’s underperforming talents. Nothing to see here, move along.

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Bug Fixes

General

  • Fixed an issue allowing Boss mercenaries to be slowed.

Heroes

  • Ana: Eye of Horus can no longer hit and heal allied vehicles.
  • Ana: Fixed an issue with the Anti-Healer talent increasing the duration of the healing reduction by an incorrect amount.
  • Kerrigan: Sharpened Blades now grants the correct amount of stacks on Minion kills.

User Interface

  • Added an icon that indicates Limited-Time Offers in the collection menu.

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