Upcoming Balance Update — July 27, 2016

[Nerraw]

We’re about to release a new patch for Heroes of the Storm in order to apply a few balance changes. Check out the detailed patch notes within.

ASSASSIN

CHROMIE


Abilities

• Slowing Sands (R)
  • Mana cost reduced from 4 to 2 per second
  • Slow increased from 50% after 5 seconds, to 60% after 3 seconds

Talents

• Level 7
  • Mobius Loop (W)
    • Cooldown and Mana cost reduction increased from 40% to 50%
  • Chrono Sickness (E)
    • Slow duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
    • Now also reduces the Mana cost of Time Trap by 50%
• Level 20
  • Pocket of Time (R)
    • Slow increased from 70% to 80%
  • Past and Future Me (Passive)
    • Slow increased from 70% to 80%

Developer Comments: We’ve seen Chromie trend upward steadily, and we’re happy to have the little gnome be a scary character in the right circumstances. We don’t really want to make any large overall balance adjustments to her right now, but we do want to make a few of her less picked Talents and Heroic more enticing. We’ll continue to work on more of these as time passes. Don’t worry, Chromie already told us she’s completely balanced a few patches from now.

FALSTAD


Abilities

• Mighty Gust (R)
  • Movement speed initial slow reduced from 60 to 40%
  • Movement speed decay time reduced from 5 to 4 seconds

Talents

• Level 1
  • Gathering Storm (Q)
    • Damage per Hero hit reduced from 2 to 1.5

Developer Comments: Falstad is performing really well and brings a lot to any team. He’s not too far out of bounds, however, so we decided to do a couple minor tweaks. We are closely watching him and will make additional changes if needed.

GREYMANE


Abilities

• Curse of the Worgen (Trait)
  • Worgen form Damage bonus decreased from 50 to 40%
• ​Go for the Throat (R)
  • Range reduced by roughly 20%
• Marked for the Kill (R)
  • Cooldown reduced from 50 to 40 seconds​

Developer Comments: We overdid it with the Worgen form buffs last patch. They were designed to encourage people to go into Worgen form more often, but realistically all it did was make Greymane have bigger burst potential and PvE damage. He should have slightly less bite than before. We’re also reducing the range of Go for the Throat, as it provided too much stickiness to an Assassin that already has a gap closer.

GUL'DAN


Stats

• Base Health increased from 1650 to 1700
• Health Regen increased from 3.44 to 3.54

Abilities

• Fel Flame (Q)
  • Damage increased from 181 to 200

Talents

• Level 1
  • Chaotic Energy (Passive)
    • Mana refund increased from 25 to 40
• Level 4
  • Health Funnel (W)
    • Cooldown reduction increased from 6 to 7 seconds
• Level 13
  • Healthstone (Active)
    • Heal amount reduced from 30 to 25% of maximum Health

Developer Comments: Guldan’s performance ended up being a bit lower than we expected, so we’re giving him some buffs to compete with other Heroes. His Fel Flame should be a little more threatening, which we’re also hoping will greater incentivize players to take talents related to the ability. As a side-effect of his Health buff, we’re slightly nerfing his Healthstone talent to keep it consistently powerful with its current version. We are also making some small tweaks to other talents help their pick and win rates.

KAEL'THAS


Abilities

• Living Bomb (W)
  • Damage over time reduced from 50 to 40

KERRIGAN


Stats

• Base Health decreased from 1848 to 1680

Talents

• Level 1
  • Sharpened Blades (W)
    • Damage reduced from 30 to 25%
• Level 4
  • Psionic Pulse (E)Damage reduced from 24 to 20 per pulse
• Level 7
  • Bladed Momentum (Passive)
    • Cooldown reduction per Basic Attack reduced from .75 to .6

Developer Comments: Our recent changes to the Queen of Blades had a much larger impact than we were expecting. Since her damage directly fuels her survivability, we feel like the additional Health increase pushed her a bit too far. We love that she feels more aggressive now and are happy to see her back in the mix of contested Heroes. By reverting her Health buffs and targeting a few over-performing talents we expect to see her come back in line.

SUPPORT

BRIGHTWING


Abilities

• Soothing Mist (Trait)
  • Heal amount decreased from 120 to 115

Talents

• Level 1
  • Unfurling Spray (Trait)
    • Range increase on Soothing Mist reduced from 33 to 20%
• Level 7
  • Mistified (Trait)
    • Cooldown Reduction when casting abilities reduced from .75 to .5
• Level 13
  • Shield Dust (E)
    • Ability damage reduction decreased from 50 to 40%

Developer Comments: We had a feeling that Brightwing was going to get a bit stronger with our last round of buffs, but with the changes to her most popular build, we also wanted to make sure we adequately compensated her. These changes should lower her overall output slightly and keep her Soothing Mist talents competitive with others.

SPECIALIST

MEDIVH


Abilities

• Portal (E)
  • Portals are now easier to click
  • The cooldown on using a Portal has been significantly reduced

NAZEEBO


Abilities

• Gargantuan (R)
  • Basic Attack damage reduced from 151 to 130

XUL


Abilities

• Raise Skeleton (Trait)
  • Skeleton damage reduced from 30 to 23

Talents

• Level 1
  • Shade (Active)
    • Shade version of Bone Armor's cooldown increased from 40 to 50 seconds
  • Shackler (Active)
    • Slow amount increased from 30 to 35%
• Level 7
  • Rathma's Blessing (Trait)
    • Healing reduced from 66 to 55
• Level 16
  • Flowing Wounds (Q)
    • Cooldown reduction increased from 4 to 5 seconds​
• Level 20
  • Bone Spear (Active)
    • Damage reduced from 260 to 230

Developer Comments: Xul has been a strong pick for a while now, and gotten better with the increased power of Minions. We think that someone with the consistent effectiveness he has should also be a little bit weaker overall, since you don’t need to worry about what the team compositions look like. We’re aiming to nerf a few of his stronger Talents, and reduce his pushing potential by weakening Skeletons.

ZAGARA


Abilities

• Infested Drop (E)
  • Impact damage reduced from 166 to 155
• Nydus Network (R)
  • Creep radius reduced from 25 to 15%

Talents
Level 1

• Infest (Active)
  • Initial damage buff to Ranged minions reduced from 200 to 150%

Developer Comments: It has been a great couple of weeks for Zagara. We have been monitoring her new kit and overall, we're extremely happy with the changes. The new questing talent for Infested Drop was doing more damage than we like, but we believe our nerfs to it and a couple of her high win-rate talents should bring her win rate a bit closer to our goal of 50%.

WARRIOR

ARTANIS


Stats

• Health increased from 2245 to 2470
• Health Regen increased from 4.68 to 5.15

Talents

• Level 7
  • Warp Sickness (E)
    1. Slow amount increased from 30 to 35%

Developer Comments: Artanis asked us for some buffs and we thought he was a pretty chill guy so we gave them to him.

BUG FIXES

General

• Collision: Heroes can no longer be pushed by walking another Hero into them.
• Collision: Heroes who are channeling an Ability can no longer be pushed when another Hero walks into them during the channel.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Greymane: Fixed an issue that could cause opposing Greymanes to become stuck after simultaneously casting Darkflight on each other.
• Greymane: Will no longer become stuck if Darkflight is interrupted by Diablo’s Shadow Charge or Stitches’ Hook.
• Nazeebo: The Toads of Hugeness Talent no longer causes Plague of Toads to deal more damage than intended.
• Tyrael: It is no longer possible to deal damage with Basic Abilities while in Archangel's Wrath after choosing the Even in Death talent.

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20184555/

[ophion1990]

They really have no idea what to do with Artanis, huh? HP buff, HP nerf, now they're buffing it again... As for his E talents, either give us an all E tier, or just get rid of them all together, especially at level 7, there's no way people'll grab it over, say, Psionic synergy, which is pretty important for his shield build. You know, the build we got shoehorned into with his last "rework".

Only other thing that surprised me was the Nazeebo nerf, I expected it to be a bit harsher. Though they did mention they wanted a bigger rework for him.

[RH92]

Basically the whole Gul'dan buff is aimed at build resolving around his Fel Flame.

However I think his main problem is, he is basically a medium range poke Bruiser and nothing else. From testing all his builds, the most damaging one is based around Corruption and Corruption is effective only when used against escaping players untill you finish Level 1 Quest Talent.

A simple change I would like to see is to make it a circle growing in size instead of 3 circles spawning in a line. This way it would be a more effective zoning tool and more reliable source of damage.

[Ryme]

Wrong revert on Kerrigan imo, she feels playable with health but OP with the damage. Now she's squishy again until 16, I don't hold much faith in her sticking around as a contested pick.

[ThatsOurEric]

I agree with most of the changes thus far, especially for Zag & Xul.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Fuck you Blizz, BW doesn't need a giant nerf to Unfurling Spray. The Mistified nerf is just bizarre, as it has been a shit talent for a very long time.

[Nikkaszal]

I agree with most of the changes thus far, especially for Zag & Xul.

It's amazing how a rework for Zag managed to make her MORE obnoxious =p

[ThatsOurEric]

It was totally unnecessary imo.

She was easily one of the top 10 heroes well before her re-working. Hell, even if she somehow wasn't,
she was universally considered a solid hero with an equally solid win-rate and tool kit.

Considering the other heroes in the game who are not in a good place at the moment, why they thought she
NEEDED to get reworked is downright asinine, and a fucking waste, considering that there were other heroes
who need it much more.

[Deleted]

'Portals are now easier to click' will certainly catapult Medivh's WR into orbit. Xul might be overnerfed. Never played Gul'dan. Otherwise solid, at least on paper. And Li-Li might see (more) play in pro games with the new BW and the 34th round of Rehgar nerfs earlier.

[apepi]

Fuck you Blizz, BW doesn't need a giant nerf to Unfurling Spray. The Mistified nerf is just bizarre, as it has been a shit talent for a very long time.

Yeah, I don't understand it. They nerf her shield build to make other builds viable, then they nerf the other builds they just buffed....I mean...what? I played BW and I really did not really like the changes they made to her. Mistified has been a shit talent since they nerf BW in Beta, now they just make it worse.

[DesoPL]

An little buff for Artanis, but huge step for tanking him!

Also. Pls stop buffing Chromie?

[Ballistic]

Patch can't be considered a patch without touching Kael. As for Guldan, they need to reduce the mana cost for his abilities he needs to rely less on his life tap because it puts him in awkward situations in team fights.

[Nerraw]

Patch can't be considered a patch without touching Kael. As for Guldan, they need to reduce the mana cost for his abilities he needs to rely less on his life tap because it puts him in awkward situations in team fights.

That's the point of him being a warlock. You have direct control over the risk and the reward when you're in a fight. You can dish out incredible amounts of damage if you're willing to take the risk.

[Fabray]

It was totally unnecessary imo.

She was easily one of the top 10 heroes well before her re-working. Hell, even if she somehow wasn't,
she was universally considered a solid hero with an equally solid win-rate and tool kit.

Considering the other heroes in the game who are not in a good place at the moment, why they thought she
NEEDED to get reworked is downright asinine, and a fucking waste, considering that there were other heroes
who need it much more.

She was reworked for talent diversity, not because she wasn't a great hero. She has always been a top tier hero, however her talents were 100% set in stone. You had a bit of a choice whether you needed endless creep or not, but other than that it was a set build that almost never changed unless you were trying out new things or wanted to be different.

There are two reasons to rework a hero, she was the other one.

[ErothTV]

So, in short:

• RIP Kerrigan, the HP nerf is too huge.
  I could accept the damage nerf as it was a bit OP, but now she's back being squishy as hell.
  
• I believe Xul is being overnerfed. He was really at good spot since a while now, but I believe they changed him too harsh.
  
• As Greymane's nerf is explicable, I can't understand another for Kael'thas..
  
• Falstad also ok, though I could see shorter CD on the Blast ultimate.

Hypeing for Guldan anyways!

[Amerrol]

Well, guess Lili will be top dog now (or top panda).

[Nerraw]

The patch is now live in the US, with one small change:

Tyrael: It is no longer possible to deal damage with Basic Abilities while in Archangel's Wrath after choosing the Even in Death talent.

[Ballistic]

When is the patch is going to hit EU server?

[Nerraw]

Probably some time during the night.

[ttak82]

Well, guess Lili will be top dog now (or top panda).

I still don't expect to see her much in tournament play. It's not like you see a lot of BW either compared to Rehgar, Khara and Uther.

Still love Li Li, though.