Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch notes - March 21, 2016

[ophion1990]

I leave for the weekend and this pops up, guess I should go on weekend more often!

Pretty awesome new stuff. Can't wait to try it out, though I'm still too lazy to get on the PTR. One of the things I sorta dislike is the Kerrigan stuff. They gave a lot of other heroes a banquet but threw her some chewed up bone. Though I'm guessing some talent rework/shuffle might come for her later.

[Nerraw]

Gazlowe needs some survivability, not having first aid is killing him. He has nothing now. No mobility, and nothing to keep him up.

I have picked First Aid as Gazlowe in 3 of the 74 games I've played him. 58% winrate overall anyway.

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tyrael is great, i main a tyrael, but it just feels like he's growing increasingly out of date with each new hero and their abilities.

He still sees a lot of play in Korea from what I've heard. The championship finals in a week and a half should be interesting.

[Nikkaszal]

Spent the evening watching PTR streams and vids

Sylvs new ult is a gamechanger, absolute monster, when there is a high priority target like Morales or Li-Ming. When upgraded at 20 you can pick a Morales from right in her own backline and have her sprint at speed right into yours. Its amazing.

[apepi]

If it was in the que, blizzard would have had to put more effort into it then they did. As it stands, certain heroes are near-useless (Abathur, TLV), with others being extremely powerful (Cho'Gall, Murky).

I actually played an abathur on thisnmap and won, hes actually fine. I agree with TLV though. I dont think Murky would ve that powerful. So far the best ive been able to play is Nazeboo with one death, going to make that into 0.

Added Butcher changes. Worth noting there appear to be many things missing from the official notes.

Well, they did change the patch notes about that.

[Nerraw]

Another undocumented change is that core health/shield ratio has been changed. The core now has less shielding but more health, with the total being higher than it is on live.

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Release next week confirmed!

https://twitter.com/BlizzHeroes/stat...23371447377920

[blankfaced]

PLUS he now has baseline Chain Bomb, which is just simply amazing.

But it only spreads to heroes and you can't force explode them with a bomb through his trait, so it's not as easy to get it spread as it was before.

He just feels a lot weaker now, everything he does is so easily avoided. Bomb on you get away from allies, flamestrike move out of it, stun coming side step it. And not being able to pop your bombs early just feels sucky.

[ttak82]

Liking most of the changes here. Gazlowe is going to be more fun now, with great options at level 20 and some better talents for his abilities. Even robo goblin got buffed (press are to manually target turrets). Best part is that his fun trait talents are still there.

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Spent the evening watching PTR streams and vids

Sylvs new ult is a gamechanger, absolute monster, when there is a high priority target like Morales or Li-Ming. When upgraded at 20 you can pick a Morales from right in her own backline and have her sprint at speed right into yours. Its amazing.

Oh yeah that sounds great lol.

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I mean with some of these changes, I am slightly confused as to what hero to buy next. I have 31K gold atm.

[Sentynel]

Kael and Gall right now is the only hero with only 21 talents to choose from, We can exclude Gall because he dish so much amount of dmg and literally unstoppable, most of heroes have between 24-27 talents. KT stays with less variety, very situational talents (if it hits hero something happen, if it hits 2 heroes together another something happen).

Biggest nerf to Kael right now is this Mana Addict/ Arcane Barrier combo, to reach 25 stacks takes time I usually hunt for globes on Live servers I even chase almost cleared merc camps to get the globe, usually I reach 25 stacks between lvl 13-15 depends on the difficulty of the opponents and as far I remember my highest record of stacks was 38. So according to these changes I can't shield myself only once per match...really ?!!!

Talents like Sun King's Fury makes me laugh, when did you ever see an auto attack KT? and even this talent is another situational one, usually lvl 16 for any hero is a turning point, KT had that at lvl 13 (chain bomb) but the new set of lvl 16 talents are crap except Twin Spheres and I think it's mandatory.

Removing teleport at 20 ? really ?!!

The whole changes is like Blizz saying Pls die in silence.

Any average player can dish out 30+ stacks by the time they hit Level 16. Getting 25 will be around at level ~14-15.

[ttak82]

Now waiting for season 1 and haunted mines revamp.

[Nerraw]

I mean with some of these changes, I am slightly confused as to what hero to buy next. I have 31K gold atm.

I'd wait with buying anyone until a week after the patch, just to allow the dust to settle and see who are actually the top dogs of the new meta.

[Hand Banana]

Sylvanas is pure trash now.

The new ult is useless af.

Sure you can CM someone but you can't move while doing so. It's only good for catching running foes etc... but even then you're better of with aoe silence + damage.

Well I'm not a fan of her talent changes, but they buffed her Q by quite a lot. Losing envenom hurts but 6 charges of Q that come out 33% faster and deal ~20% more dmg than it used too? Thats some burst.

Not seeing how shes trash now, maybe about the same.

The ult is sounding promising as well.

[Keile]

Well I'm not a fan of her talent changes, but they buffed her Q by quite a lot. Losing envenom hurts but 6 charges of Q that come out 33% faster and deal ~20% more dmg than it used too? Thats some burst.

Not seeing how shes trash now, maybe about the same.

The ult is sounding promising as well.

People are overreacting, nothing unusual.

Her new ult, personally, feels like it has potential to be a lot better than Wailing Arrow.

Sure you can silence the team (if you are lucky and they are all grouped up) but at the same time they are still mobile and if one is smart enough to hang back (usually the support) they can still keep healing.

Counter that with Mind Control...you take over that healer and run them straight at your front-line. 2.5 seconds is more than enough time to nuke someone down, and with the level 20 talent you can move that person pretty damn far in that amount of time.

It'll depend on the enemy comp...but if they have, say Morales, as their support I'd take MC nearly 100% of the time.

[Sir Andy]

Are we fucking 5 now ? grow up idiot.

Says the guy who thinks Kael is bad.

Gazlowe needs some survivability, not having first aid is killing him. He has nothing now. No mobility, and nothing to keep him up.

Here's the thing though. Removing retarded, unfun talents like First Aid and Stoneskin means they can increase his base stats instead.

Which means the hero as a whole is improved. Which doesn't pigeon hole you into cookie cutter specs like Tychus or (Especially) Illidan used to have.

[Arachnophobia]

I just leveled Illidan to 10, and now a patch is coming out with a fantastic new re-work for him. It's almost poetic that after I've "mastered" him, I have to learn him all over again, and I can hardly wait.

I've never liked playing against Tychus and now he looks even more terrifying...

Sylvanas' rework looks fun, but I wish they hadn't removed Shade Form. I know it was hardly used, but I blame that mostly on it being in the same talent tier as Unstable Poison (which is has now been nerfed). I thought it was very appropriate for a character like Sylvanas to have access to stealth...

[Deleted]

People are overreacting, nothing unusual.

Her new ult, personally, feels like it has potential to be a lot better than Wailing Arrow.

Sure you can silence the team (if you are lucky and they are all grouped up) but at the same time they are still mobile and if one is smart enough to hang back (usually the support) they can still keep healing.

Counter that with Mind Control...you take over that healer and run them straight at your front-line. 2.5 seconds is more than enough time to nuke someone down, and with the level 20 talent you can move that person pretty damn far in that amount of time. The Range on it is fairly generous so you normally you can cast it from a safe range too.

It'll depend on the enemy comp...but if they have, say Morales, as their support I'd take MC nearly 100% of the time.

If people actually logged on to the PTR and tested instead of being retards QQing they'd realize just how frustrating it is to play against her new ult, it's not bad. It's niche, and in the situations it IS a good pick it can flat out win fights just from forcing a tank to go to Africa (hello etc mosh pit) or put a squishy support in the fray, it just makes Mocusing Forales that much easier.

I also think the loss of Envenom is pretty much whatever, all her damage is in her kit now instead of a dumb generic talent with a long CD, the burst damage she can put out is probably higher than a Valla landing a point blank Q with no one else around.

The only thing I don't like is her lvl 1 talents, they all feel like terrible picks imo, but Paralysis is probably the least awful of them for almost every map.

[Keile]

If people actually logged on to the PTR and tested instead of being retards QQing they'd realize just how frustrating it is to play against her new ult, it's not bad. It's niche, and in the situations it IS a good pick it can flat out win fights just from forcing a tank to go to Africa (hello etc mosh pit) or put a squishy support in the fray, it just makes Mocusing Forales that much easier.

I also think the loss of Envenom is pretty much whatever, all her damage is in her kit now instead of a dumb generic talent with a long CD, the burst damage she can put out is probably higher than a Valla landing a point blank Q with no one else around.

This is true...I never actually thought about combining it with ETC.

Have ETC use mosh, MC a target and walk them into it...now they STAY where you want them

[Deleted]

This is true...I never actually thought about combining it with ETC.

Have ETC use mosh, MC a target and walk them into it...now they STAY where you want them

I actually meant that you can MC an enemy ETC during his Mosh Pit and move him away a safe distance, would easily allow you to jump his back line since once he's done his Q+ult combo he has no way of reliably getting back in to the fight. But yea, I suppose you could do that and prevent someone from interrupting your team mates Mosh Pit too.

I'm also gonna wait and see all the WTF moments where people Mind Control enemies away after they take a Merc Camp and steal it right in front of them. Managed to do this in a few QMs on the ptr and it was hilarious.

But my final thoughts on her are that she is a good pick, better than before but still niche. I don't think she particularly excels on any map, but she is certainly not bad on any of them. She honestly really need Haunted Mines back to be a contestable pick again.

I think the closest thing I could compare her to on the ptr is probably Valla on live, she does good consistent damage, can chase but she has better and more reliable burst & better wave clear + she is able to do Mercs very effectively still.

[Keile]

I actually meant that you can MC an enemy ETC during his Mosh Pit and move him away a safe distance, would easily allow you to jump his back line since once he's done his Q+ult combo he has no way of reliably getting back in to the fight. But yea, I suppose you could do that and prevent someone from interrupting your team mates Mosh Pit too.

I'm also gonna wait and see all the WTF moments where people Mind Control enemies away after they take a Merc Camp and steal it right in front of them. Managed to do this in a few QMs on the ptr and it was hilarious.

But my final thoughts on her are that she is a good pick, better than before but still niche. I don't think she particularly excels on any map, but she is certainly not bad on any of them. She honestly really need Haunted Mines back to be a contestable pick again.

I think the closest thing I could compare her to on the ptr is probably Valla on live, she does good consistent damage, can chase but she has better and more reliable burst & better wave clear + she is able to do Mercs very effectively still.

Depends....not sure if it will cancel out his Mosh Pit or not. He may continue casting it during the MC...should probably test this.

[Raugnaut]

Depends....not sure if it will cancel out his Mosh Pit or not. He may continue casting it during the MC...should probably test this.

Even if he does continue to cast it during the MC, your team will be unstunned (Unless they, like a group of lemmings, continually run into it), and ETC will just sit there useless for 4 seconds. (To be precise, having him able to continue casting it would be perfect)

[NoiseTank13]

From what I heard, MC disrupts anything channeled, ult or otherwise. I don't know if it interrupts Tranquility (doubt it) or if Uther shielding the MC'ed target breaks it.