Abilities

• Level 1
  • Legion of Beetles [Trait]
    • Cooldown to spawn a Beetle increased from 8 seconds to 12 seconds
• Level 10
  • Cocoon [R2]
    • Health reduced from 32 to 28
    • This reduces the time that the Cocoon naturally decays from 8 to 7 seconds

Developer Comment: Anub’arak is still overperforming compared to other Warriors, so this time we are reducing the power of Legion of Beetles and Cocoon, which are still stand out talents for him.  We are hesitant to over-nerf him, so our strategy going forward is to combine these smaller nerfs with buffs to other Warriors to create a healthier meta for the role.

Base

• Jet Propulsion [E]
  • Cooldown reduced from 9 to 8 seconds
  • Mana cost reduced from 45 to 40
• Pyromania [Trait]
  • Armor bonus increased from 35 to 40

​Abilities

• Level 4
• Oil Dispersal [W]
  • Additional functionality: Each enemy Hero hit with Flame Stream reduces the cooldown of Oil Spill by 1 second and refunds 5 Mana
• Feeding the Flame [Q]
  •  Removed

• Level 10
  • Bunker Drop [R1]
    • Cooldown reduced from 80 to 70 seconds
    • Mana cost reduced from 80 to 70​

• Level 13
  • Suppressive Fire [Q]
    • Spell Power reduction increased from 20% to 25% per stack

• Level 16
  • Thermal Protection [E]
    • Cooldown reduction reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 seconds

Developer Comment: Blaze has been outperformed by other heroes in the last few months, and these changes are intended to bring him a bit more back into the meta.  Most of these buffs are intended to help his tanking capabilities, particularly when it comes to his initiation and survivability.

​Abilities

• Level 1
  • Guitar Hero [E]
    • Additional functionality: Basic Attacks now increase the duration of Guitar Solo by .25 seconds
    • Healing reduced from 50% to 40%
  • Block Party [Trait]
    • Physical Armor amount increased from 50 to 75
• ​Level 4
  • ​Speed Metal [Trait]
    • Bonus Movement Speed increased from 15% to 20%

• ​Level 7​
  • Hammer-On [Passive]
    • Bonus damage increased from 35% to 40%

Developer Comment: Some of ETC’s talents could use some beefing up, so we’re milking this opportunity to bring ETC more into the meta so he can better compete with the likes of Anub’arak, Diablo, and Garrosh.  Don’t worry, if these changes butcher his balance we’ll take stock of the situation and nerf him appropriately.

Base

• Wrecking Ball [E]
  • Cooldown increased from 14 to 16 seconds

Abilities

• Level 1
  • Unrivaled Strength [E]
    • Damage bonus increased from 75% to 125%
  • Body Check [Active]
    • Slow amount reduced from 30% to 35%
    • No longer deals bonus damage or Slow amount based on Armor Up’s bonus
    • Additional functionality: Now causes enemies to receive 40% reduced Healing for the next 3 seconds
• Level 7
  • Brute Force [Active]
    • ​Removed
• Level 10
  • Decimate [R1]
    • Slow amount increased from 30% to 40%

Stitches

Abilities

• Level 4
  • Chop Chop [W]
    • Duration increased from 5 to 6 seconds
• Level 13
  • Digestive Juices [E]
    • No longer increases the damage of Devour to enemy Heroes
    • Additional functionality: Hitting enemy Heroes with Devour reduces its cooldown by 5 seconds
  • Gas Flare [Passive]
    • Bonus damage duration after hitting enemy Heroes with Hook increased from 4 to 8 seconds
• Level 16
  • Meat Hook [Q]
    • Bonus Healing increased from 16% to 20%

Developer Comment: Stitches like buffs.  We like Stitches.  We give Stitches buffs.  When Stitches happy, you happy too!

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• Level 1
  • Consuming Flame [W]
    • Damage bonus changed from 125% to 100%
    • This slightly reduces the bonus damage at Level 1 from 281 to 260, but at Level 20 will change from 454 to 54
• Level 7
  • Flash of Anger [Q]
    • Adjusted functionality: Consuming a mark from Celestial Charge deals damage around the target and gives Imperius a Shield for 300 over 4 seconds
    • Damage reduced from 198 to 180

Developer Comment: To make it more consistent with other damage modifiers, we are changing Consuming Flame’s bonus from a flat amount to a percent bonus, which will make it scale with Imperius’s level.  This is a slight nerf to his Level 1 damage, but overall a fairly significant buff to the talent during the middle and later portions of the game.  To make Flash of Anger more reliable, we are changing its functionality to be about consuming marks of Celestial Charge instead of trying to hit enemy Heroes first with Solarion’s Fire.  To compensate for the power and reliability bonuses we’re giving, we are reverting the damage bonus that we gave to the talent last patch.  This functionality change should make the use case for the talent much more clear: Impale enemies, gain benefits.

Abilities

• Level 4​
  • Throwing Shade [E]
    • Quest requirement reduced from 15 to 12

• Level 10
  • Tormented Souls [R1]
    • Mana cost reduced from 100 to 20
• Level 16​
  • Mortality [W]
    • Damage increased from 6% to 8% maximum Health

Developer Comment: We read the feedback that it is difficult to capitalize on the cooldown resets on Wraith Strike due to the high Mana cost of casting the ability multiple times.  To compensate for this, we are drastically reducing the Mana cost of Tormented Souls, which should make it much easier to get value. 

Rexxar

Base

• Misha’s Health reduced from 1762 to 1620
• Misha’s Health Regeneration reduced from 3.671 to 3.375
• Misha’s Health scaling increased from 4% to 4.75%
• Misha’s Health Regeneration scaling increased from 4% to 4.75%

Developer Comment: These changes are to make Rexxar’s laning phase a little less overwhelming for the majority of opponents, particularly on maps with control points.  We're slightly lowering Misha's power in the early game, but increasing her scaling so that she is less powerful in early-game trades, but is still a threat in the mid to late portions of the game.

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Base

• Biotic Grenade [W]
  • Allied Healing amount reduced from 166 to 152

Developer Comment: While Ana is currently not greatly outperforming other Healers, even at the highest level of play, she is being seen much more often compared to her peers.  We’re reducing the healing power of Biotic Grenade, which should bring her down a notch as well as reduce the power of its associated talents.

Developer Comment: Anduin’s Light is bringing victory! Just about 48% of the time, which is great for a new Hero release. What we’re aiming to do though is buff up a lot of the lesser chosen Talents on him so that he feels like he has a greater variety of options. We’re also looking to make Bold Strategy a little more bold, and a little less automatic. We’re aiming to do this by reducing his higher than typical Mana tension baseline (which Bold Strategy helped alleviated by increasing Flash Heal’s cooldown and making his healing more efficient), while also increasing the cooldown penalty for Bold Strategy. This is in addition to buffing up the other two Talents on the tier, which also buffs Bold Strategy. Net result is that Pursued by Grace and Renew will give Anduin a little more consistent healing, and potentially open up synergy with the significantly buffed Binding Heal at level 7.

Abilities

• Level 20
  • Perfect Gems [W]
    • Horadric Cube cooldown reduction increased from 5 to 6 seconds
  • Respect the Elderly [R1]
    • Silence and Blind duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds
  • Morenados! [R2]
    • Cooldown reduction increased from 6 to 10 seconds

Developer Comment: Deckard has been performing well since his last round of buffs.  These changes are to increase the competitiveness of his Level 20 talents, which are all currently being outshone by Bottomless Flask.

Developer Comment: To better round out Kharazim’s Level 7 talents, we are baking in some of the functionality of talents that normally come online for him later on.  This should make this tier more competitive while also opening up other options for players to take as a replacement for the talents that have been removed.  For example, players who want to get in and punch a lot with Blazing Fists will now have a defensive option to take at Level 13 since they no longer have to take Fists of Fury to complete the build.

Abilities

• Level 1
  • Fetid Touch [W]
    • Additional functionality: After hitting 15 enemy Heroes with Weghted Pustule, remove half of its Mana cost
• Level 7
  • Targeted Excision [Trait]
    • Additional functionality: Also reduces the cooldowns of Stukov’s Basic Abilities by 1.5 seconds
• Level 13
  • It Hungers [E]
    • Enemy Heroes hit required reduced from 12 to 10
  • Poppin’ Pustules [Trait]
    • Additional functionality: Enemies hit by the explosion also have a Weighted Pustule applied to them
• Level 16
  • Universal Carrier [Q]
    • Healing reduction on Healing Pathogen reduced from 50% to 40%

Developer Comment: We’re making some quality of life changes to some of Stukov’s talents to make them better.  Targeted Excision in particular suffered from some awkwardness where when used properly, the cooldown of Bio-Kill Switch would often be lower than the cooldowns of his Healing Pathogen and Weighted Pustule, which made part of its benefit meaningless.  This change should make its 5-second cooldown more important, as he can use his other abilities sooner after his initial cast of Bio-Kill Switch.

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Abilities

• Level 4
  • Chaos Reigns [Q]
    • Damage bonus after hitting 15 Heroes increased from 50 to 60
    • Damage bonus after hitting 2 Heroes with a single Discord Strike increased from 50 to 60
    • Damage bonus for hitting 3 enemy Heroes in a single Discord Strike increased from 80 to 100
  • Negatively Charged [E]
    • Damage bonus per stack reduced from 5% to 4%
  • Show of Force [Trait]
    • Damage reduced from 80 to 68
  • Additional Functionality: Hitting an enemy Hero with 3 of Alarak’s abilities within 2 seconds also grants Alarak 2% Sadism, up to 20% maximum.  This bonus Sadism is lost on death

Developer Comment: These changes are meant to create better competition between Alarak’s Level 4 talents.  We are buffing Chaos Reigns and giving Show of Force an exciting new scaling bonus, while also reducing the power of Negatively Charged.  While we realize that Negatively Charged is an extremely attractive talent that can sometimes get out of control when Alarak gets a lot of stacks, and an obvious way to nerf it would be to cap its stacks, a large part of the enjoyment of playing Alarak and of taking talents like Negatively Charged is about living the dream when playing well.  We are instead going to try simply reducing the bonus and making the other talents on the tier more attractive, which should hopefully help talent picks on other tiers as well.

Maiev

Base

• Spirit of Vengeance [E]
  • Damage reduced from 180 to 150

Abilities

• Level 4
  • Sudden Vengeance [E]
    • No longer requires Maiev to Blink within .35 seconds of the Spirit of Vengeance hitting an enemy Hero for its effect to proc
• Level 7
  • Ruthless Spirit [E]
    • New functionality: Hitting an enemy Hero with Spirit of Vengeance causes Maiev to deal 15% increased damage for 4 seconds.  This can stack up to 2 times.

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Developer Comment: eratul has been a considerable threat, particularly at the higher levels of play.  This change is meant to simply reduce his power.  We chose to nerf Cleave because it is his least interactive way of dealing damage, particularly when combined with Wormhole. 

Developer Comment: Rain of Destruction has not been the predominant Heroic since Gul’dan’s release.  We believe there are two reasons for this: the first being that it has some randomness to its output in regards to where the meteors land, and the second being that it requires Gul’dan to channel for 7 seconds, which gives his opponents an incredibly long time to interrupt him while also not allowing him to use his other abilities or provide any other output during that time.  We’re targeting the second issue with this change, which will allow Gul’dan to gain the ability to move and use his abilities while the Rain of Destruction is happening.  We may in the future look at the randomness of the Heoric’s meteors, but at this time we want to try this change as it retains most of the original fantasy of Gul’dan raining Hellfire upon his enemies.  We’re also improving some of Gul’dan’s lesser picked talents.  We realize that he has some fundamental issues with Corruption focused talents dominating his talent tree, and are looking at exploring ways in the future to make alternative ways to play more meaningfully competitive.

Developer Comment: Ice Lance has been outperforming the other talents on its tier for a long time.  While we enjoy the playstyle that it enables, it is slightly too powerful compared to the other options.  We are reducing its cooldown reduction while also giving Jaina other build paths to consider.

Abilities

• Level 1
  • Hippity Hop [Z]
    • Out of combat requirement for the Movement Speed bonus reduced from 5 to 4 seconds

Developer Comment: Lunara is in the middle of the pack in regards to her performance against other ranged assassins.  We’re buffing a slew of her talents to make her stand out more, and to make playstyles more attractive that currently aren’t as popular on her.

Abilities

• Level 7​
  • Fuel the Rush [Passive]
    • Additional functionality: Reduce the Mana cost of Adrenaline Rush from 75 to 50

Developer Comment: Now that Raynor has fairly meaningful Mana costs on his abilities, we are adding some reductions in his talents so that he isn’t punished in regards to his Mana consumption when taking them.

Abilities

• Shadow Dagger [W]
  • Damage reduced from 32 > 30