Heroes of the Storm Balance Q&A - March 16

[Nerraw]

Probius and a ton of changes are about to make their way into the Nexus, so it seems like a great time to have our Balance Team out to answer some questions! We’ll be hosting a Q&A on Thursday, March 16, from 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. PDT right here in /r/HeroesoftheStorm, and the following game designers will be here tackle your questions about upholding balance in the Nexus:

• /u/Blizz_Daybringer – Brett Crawford (Balance Designer)
• /u/BlizzCooper – Matt Cooper (Lead Balance Designer)
• /u/BlizzNeyman – Alex Neyman (Balance Designer)
• /u/BlizzAZJackson – Adam Jackson (Balance Designer)
• /u/Blizz_AKlontzas - Alexander Klontzas (Producer)

The Q&A will last roughly 1.5 hours, so make sure to post your questions about game balance and live updates in the thread we’ll be creating on the morning of March 16. We look forward to seeing you there!

Please note: We’ll also be asking players from non-English speaking communities to partake in the Q&A by submitting their questions to the Community Managers representing their regions. As such, you might see a few Blizzard Community Managers posting questions (in English) on behalf of their communities during the Q&A. Feel free to upvote those questions if you’d like to see answers to them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe...e_qa_march_16/

12pm PDT is 3pm Eastern and 2000 CET.


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Hey everyone,

We wanted to give some insight into the recent armor changes to Warriors, what our design intentions are, and the direction we’re continuing to head.

First off, we want to assure everyone that our recent changes are not a shift in design direction, but an attempt to begin future-proofing the flexibility and diversity of our Hero pool. We have had soft-counters in the game for a while now, they have just been a bit more hidden – mainly in a Hero’s core kit and talent tree. For an example, Anub’arak’s diving potential coupled with multiple lockdown options has always made him a great pick against pesky backline Heroes. The addition of passive Spell Armor to Anub’arak is intended to further amplify this role and direct him towards Mages specifically.

Adding base Armor to a few Warriors is our initial push to both hone and broadcast the strengths of a few of our Heroes. While it is true that we are sharpening some of their roles, it is far from our intention to design the game into a spot that it becomes ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’. Games should not begin and end at the draft screen.

That said, the forums are ablaze with discussion and it’s obvious that everyone has a lot of questions about our underlying goals, so here goes:

• This philosophy can be applied to any archetype, but let’s look at Warriors specifically for this example. If every Warrior is always good in every situation, players will naturally gravitate towards the ones with the best win rates. Before long, we reach a point where a couple are deemed the best, and the others fall to the wayside until changes are made. This naturally leads to us rebalancing them in order to reach parity. After the dust settles, the power may shift to some new Heroes, or stay as it was – rinse and repeat. This is a very typical cycle of balance which is healthy for shaking up the meta, but never truly solves long-term diversity issues.
• By strengthening certain aspects of Heroes, or granting them bonus effectiveness vs. certain compositions, our end-goal is to allow for situations to arise where a Hero that is generally most effective is not always the most optimal choice. This allows for niche picks to shine, interesting team synergies to develop, and most importantly – a wider range of viable and competitive Hero choices.
• This train of thought has not been limited strictly to just our live game. Our entire design staff are actively working towards this goal. Whether we are developing a new Hero or looking to rework an older one, we discuss at great lengths the reasons why you’d want to pick them over similar Heroes. Our Hero roster is expanding very rapidly and we are doing our best to make sure that each of them have a place in the Nexus.

At the end of the day, we are all in agreeance that permanent hard-counters are not healthy for the game and prefer to lock the more egregious ones behind mechanically driven methods more so than passive ones. We never want a game’s outcome to be decided before it begins, but we also feel it’s okay for a team to gain certain advantages through a well-thought-out draft.

Regarding spell armor and physical armor it's come to my attention that many heroes ignore this due to how Heroes of the Storm abilities are set up via legacy decisions. IE all abilities do spell damage and all AA's do physical damage.

Have yall ever thought of changing damage types of abilities to physical damage for some abilities? For example Valla does magic damage with all abilities but honestly Hungering Arrow, Multi-shot, and Strafe should all do Physical damage. Under the same idea, perhaps Jaina's AA's should do magic damage.

Yes we have considered that. There are a massive amount of ramifications about going down that rabbit hole though. I am not saying we won't do it in the future, but it has a much larger range of impact than one would suspect.

--This allows for niche picks to shine--
--Games should not begin and end at the draft screen--

These seem to have conflicting goals though. If Hero 1 is normally a B against everything, but Hero 2 is an A against auto attackers and C against Mages. Against a mage comp you should take Hero A. How is this not having the game revolve around the draft?

As stated in the original post, we are okay with slight draft advantages if a team can leverage them. For example - if the enemy team picks up Gul'dan and Kael'thas early in the draft, we are happy conceding an advantageous position for an Anub'arak pick over a more general Warrior such as ETC or Muradin.

However, in this scenario (and in our data so far) the advantage of going Anub'arak should be small and does not mean that the double mage composition becomes an auto-loss. If the advantages in these scenarios ever swing into uncomfortable levels, we will react swiftly.

I could be wrong, but I thought it was stated in one of your dev comments that you wanted to lessen the double warrior meta. With tanks such as ETC and Muradin (maybe even Varian to an extent) on the table, are you worried those general tanks will be highly contested up top and then a second warrior just added later as a comp counter leading to even more of a 2 warrior meta? This is also currently a bit rough in anything but customs as there is no hero swapping in HL or TL and picking anything but a generic warrior early on (depending on what the player can play) could lead to a fair disadvantage.

We talk about this amongst ourselves constantly. In a perfect world you would not have to counter a heavy front-line with one of your own. We would prefer to give our player base the arsenal to counter certain meta line-ups on their own - They brought two tanks, lets counter with a poke + disengage team. While our Warriors are currently the hot topic, we are looking to make adjustments to all of our Hero archetypes in order to support this.

I have no problems with you wanting to do the things you're doing to warriors I just think it should be done through talents or ability design instead of just tacked on numbers. I also am concerned about it making warriors more niche when we already have a low warrior pool, so ya know like release more warriors

We do not disagree with you about wanting most counters behind mechanics or talent choices. We look at the base Armor on these Warriors as 'bonuses' to bringing them in certain circumstances, not just tacked on numbers.

We have some more Warriors lined up and ready to enter the Nexus

This is moving the game into a draft focused approach and making the game less enjoyable since it forces you into certain heroes. Other team has lots of mages, we need to grab Anub. Other team picked Anub early? Grab auto attackers. This limits the warrior draft pool.

I never liked MOBAs until HotS. What drew me to the game was the variety, that heroes were flexible and were adapted through their talents for each game. Now those choices are being limited and forced in hero selection instead of talent selection. I've found myself playing less and less lately as these changes have been forced into the game.

These changes definitely affect the drafting of the game, but we disagree that it makes it less enjoyable nor forces you into any specific pick. The passive Armor changes are bonuses towards certain compositions and should be weighed in the draft screen - the advantages gained or lost, however, should not be significant enough to win the game without playing it.

While I appreciate your comment you did nothing to alleviate the rock-paper-scissors problem. At least not in the current patch nor in your comments. Will you introduce talents to somewhat mitigate the weakness of a given hero?

Example, if I open up picking Tyrael, they'll immediately pick a heavier AA composition. Then I'm basically screwed without choice. Furthemore (since armor is only on warriors so far) we will remain in a first-pick-always-chooses-assassin position since you don't want to show your weakness. And let's not get into QM where basically Tyrael and Anub will always shine since most people love their mages.

For the majority of games, the 15 Spell Armor Tyrael has will still net you fairly significant gains since we currently don't have any Heroes that utilize all one damage type.

We do not believe (nor does our preliminary data show) that Tyrael's team has lost the game if the other team goes into heavy Basic Attackers after he is picked.

To take your example even further, if the enemy counters your Tyrael pick with Zul'jin and Raynor, your team can respond with Johanna and allow Tyrael to talent much more aggressively while Johanna does the main tanking.

Is Johanna performing acceptably as "the wave clear tank" since it was made baseline with a nerfed version? Or has her niche been pushed more towards "the tank where the support doesn't need cleanse"?

I don't know if we see her as the premier "wave clear tank", as characters like Dehaka are more flexible at winning a solo lane and are played that way on Braxis for example. She does still bring great wave clear though in team rotations, especially on a map like TOTSQ.
For your Cleanse comment, thats interesting - I don't know if we've ever really thought of Johanna as the tank that doesn't need a support with Cleanse. I think it's certainly a fair point, but at the same time, having Cleanse couldn't hurt as Johanna can't pull herself out of a stun lock once it begins. Interesting point though!

What do you think about current probius situation? Many users are very disappointed and concerned about current Probius design and balance. It is said that Photon Canon(E) is useless and not powerful, and probius's viability is too weak. Especially, many users and some pro players agreed that Pylon(D) should be charged.

There are a lot of thoughts!
Builder heroes have traditionally been very difficult to balance, and Probius was no exception. These kinds of heroes tend to be extremely overwhelming when they are too strong, and can ruin the experience in less coordinated play even when they are balanced correctly. Because of this, it's not too surprising that feelings are strong about this hero, especially since he's so darn cute!
I think the design of Probius is correct for many reasons. I'll give a quick list of some of those here:
2a. While we all would love for him to just summon a million Photon Cannons all day, it would be way too similar to Gazlowe who does a similar thing. It would also be hard to differentiate any future Builder heroes in the future if we put too much of their power pie into their turrets.
2b. Summoning so many buildings creates a lot of clutter in our game that causes other problems (minion pathing for one). We're much more cognizant now of how many Health bars and structures a Hero can create, and honestly looking back we likely would not have created as many heroes as we have that summon a bunch of stuff if we could do it all over again.
2c. Playing a builder hero is fun, i'll agree with that. However, the mastery over time is very limiting. For the first ten or even fifty games it's new and interesting, but over time there is little room for real growth or mastery of the hero. We wanted Probius to be about more than his cannons, and we think that this design which relies more on zoning in areas around his Pylons is more strategic than going all-in on cannons.
Probius is meant to be a hero that's not great to pick all the time. Since he's new, he's obviously going to be played in nearly every situation out there, which is going to artificially lower his win rate. When chosen on the correct maps and with the correct team compositions, it's possible that his win rate will increase as people get better at learning when and how he should be used.
I'm a little sad that he's come out a bit low on the win-rate side, at least via initial data, but i'm confident that we can get him to a place where he's more fun to play while still having a healthy amount of counter-play. We already have a few ideas on how to buff Probius if he needs it once more data comes in.

Was it a conscious decision to have Probius' Photon Cannon not prioritise Heroes?

It was a conscious design. While I cannot completely speak for the Hero designers, I talked it over with them once we started to get this feedback and this was the main reasoning:
We did not want Probius to be a huge lane bully where he could place his Photon Cannon far up and zone out an enemy hero completely due to them not being able to effectively trade against the cannon. We actually had a few play tests awhile back where the cannon was much stronger, and there was lots of feedback that it just feels really bad to play against when it is so powerful and there are few ways for many heroes to deal with it.
Probius is meant to be a more defensive hero in nature. Having the cannon auto-target minions first forces Probius to make a decision - either place the cannon forward and have it help clear waves, or place it behind your wave and use it purely defensively for hero dives.
We aren't completely immovable on this, and will re-evaluate going forward once we get more data on how Probius is performing over time.

I want to strongly agree that even if the cannon is placed defensively, it's just not threatening enough. It feels like any hero can just dive probius and be fine. I think this could feel better with a buff to the non-damage parts of his w (increasing slow, or decreasing setup time) or just buffing the cannon's damage.

This is completely valid feedback, and I want to make the point that "the cannon is too weak and it's not saving me when heroes dive me" and "the cannon should target heroes" are completely different things that are often lumped together.
Often, particularly when a hero comes out with a below average win rate, we get the feedback that their kit is clunky and doesn't work, and that we need to completely redesign most aspects of the kit in order for them to be viable. A large part of our jobs is finding out whether or not an issue with a hero is due to the kit itself not working or if it's due to tuning. We go through this a lot when iterating on new heroes, so obviously we believe that their kit works at a base level when they are released.
Sometimes a kit doesn't mesh together for the long term, and we make changes to make it flow better. However, before completely changing how our heroes play, we are much more inclined to test whether or not a hero is losing due to being tuned too low first.

There are still some Talents that don’t fit well with the lore and concept of the character; Malfurion – who is clearly not a Terran - using Scouting Drone, Tyrande and Abathur using Calldown: MULE, and Malfurion and Nazeebo using Ice Block at Level 13 while ‘Frost Mage’ Jaina using it at Level 20 feel a bit awkward. I think putting a thematic twist or hero-specific flavor to these generic Talents would help fine-tuning balance and increasing the quality of the game – for example, Nazeebo’s Ice Block could have a bit more personal flavor considering Witch Doctor in Diablo III has Spirit Walk that also grants invulnerability. How do you feel about this idea?

Don't forget that this is the Nexus where anything can happen so it's not crazy to think that Malfurion has been hanging around Raynor and borrowed a few Scouting Drones. In all seriousness though, it is a pretty cool idea to theme some of these abilities more closely with their respective lore or origin. No promises, but I'll shop the idea around and see if it's something we want to explore since we would have to change the functionality of these in the process to make them truly fit their intended theme.

To be honest wouldn't this aid in the plan of removing all generic/neutral talents? I know that's been a philosophy for a while now, so why not try to expedite it to further that design philosophy.

It's all a matter of prioritizing what work needs to come in first. These abilities are functionally working so it's hard to put them before more critical balance needs but there are other implications sometimes as well that we would need to figure out. Let's say we swap Malfurion's Scouting Drone with a Wisp, how do we differentiate it from Lunara's Wisp or if we gave Nazeebo Spirit Walk, how do we make it different from Tassadar's Dimensional Shift? We would need the Art to stand out in some cases to avoid overlap but also keep things as unique as possible to each hero wherever possible.

Regardless, we tend to look at these generic talents when we do a broader rework of a Hero to decide if they should keep or change them so we will get through them eventually, just a matter of finding the time.

I'm not sure this is exactly a balance question, but the recent updates to hero descriptions show a new system for classifying heroes: Tank, Bruiser, Mage, Assassin, Healer, Support, Summoner, and a few that don't fit any and are just called Hero.

Will the Warrior, Assassin, Support, Specialist system go away or be replaced anytime soon?

Its only function seems to be quests, now that QM rules don't even follow it anymore. The new descriptions show that even Blizzard knows the problem with the old system: Medivh and Tassadar being in different categories (after Tass rework); Sonya and Thrall being in different categories; Naz, Sylv, and Hammer not being in the same category as every other ranged damage dealer.

This is something we've discussed internally and externally for some time now. We do want to rework the Warrior/Assassin/Support/Specialist naming at some point. These categories serve a few purposes, for quests as you mention, but also to give players a really quick indication of what a hero can and cannot do. In this regard, I think these 4 categories are failing a bit since theres a huge difference between a Lt. Morales Support and a Tassadar Support.

Sorry, I don't have a concrete answer on when this will change or what the exact change will be.

When your team feels like a hero needs to be buffed to be in a good spot--not nerfs, because those situations tend to stand out, but when they're falling behind--what is the exact system of metrics you use to determine when to hit them? I know win rate and pick rate are common among us armchair enthusiasts, but is there anything more in depth you guys use when you look at a suffering champion to finally decide when to adjust them?

Win rate and pick rate are definitely metrics we look at. I'll give a little more details on those and then add a couple other things:

Win Rates: We look at win rate across the board, in ladder play, different MMR brackets, pro play, etc. Often times we will find conflicting data which makes our decision more challenging: Take Tassadar as an example - this is a character who for a long time could have used a buff in ladder, but a nerf in esports.

Pick Rates: For pick rate we're looking at overall play rate, draft rate, ban rate, when a character is picked in a draft (early vs. late), esports play rate, map specific pick rates, etc.
Some other things we consider:

Talent Health: Talent diversity, how many talent builds are viable, is there a single talent propping this character up, etc.

Incoming Reworks & Design Changes: As an example here, if Rehgar is weak, but we know Malfurion is getting a major rework, we might wait to see how the Malfurion stuff pans out before working on Rehgar.

Community Perception: Feedback from you guys!

Tyrael currently has to be one of the characters with the least impact/interesting talent choices at pretty much every tier. With the removal of imposing will, his 13 talent tier is now one of the weakest in the game and all 3 choices have minimal impact and very little in terms of changing Tyrael or his playstyle in anyway. Are there any plans for a complete talent overhaul as currently Tyrael has so many trap talents such as follow through, or can we expect nothing for an Angel yet again after another round of nerfs on him.

We felt removing Imposing Will was the correct design choice for Tyrael's future role in the Nexus. We currently aren't looking for a full rework on him, but we are constantly looking at how to make player talent choices more impactful, and Tyrael's Tier 5 is no exception.

With some of the recent changes to Warriors (and the knock-on effect of that change affecting damage dealers) and the way that Supports have been designed for a while now, it seems like you want to move away from 'standard' or 'general' picks that are good in every situation.

Are you scared of the impact that this might have on drafts? Specifically the kind of situation where both teams just want to not lose the draft in the first phase (by leaving themselves open to be countered too hard by a late Tank, Support or Damage pick) and it will end up becoming a much more boring opening to the draft. That kind of situation also might stifle innovation and off-meta picks and compositions.

One of the main reasons we wanted to start making these kinds of changes is to encourage more strategic depth to drafting. We are still very happy with having 'general' picks in each archetype, but there should also be a penalty (statistically?) for being an all-around good choice (right now you could argue that that isn't the case, and we are working on that). Using the current situation of Warriors as an example:

• Both ETC and Muradin bring 'premier' tanking core kits. In order to reach parity amongst all 'tank-like' Warriors we need to either start homogenizing them to be more akin to ETC or Muradin (which we are trying to avoid), or start sharpening their current strengths in order to give them a time and place to be drafted over the current 'meta' choices.

While our goal is not to make the opening of drafts more boring, we do realize there will likely be some fallout (and we will be keeping an eye on it). However, I fully believe that there are deeper levels of mind-games that can now be played - If a team opens with a first pick Anub'arak, are they opening themselves up to lose the draft to a couple Basic Attackers? Or are they baiting you into something else?

As with all of our changes, we are excited to see them in action and will respond accordingly

With the recent clamping changes. Has there been a discussion about how the changes break shift-queuing of abilities? Is there a chance of this becoming a per-talent option, instead of an absolute?

Tyrael, for example, is no longer able to have a Q queued(see what I did there?) to fire as soon as he moves within range, as he was able to previously. In the current patch, he will move to his destination completely, then fire his Q in the direction of where Q was targeted.

Hmm, that does sound odd, maybe working as intended with the new system though. I'll bring it up with engineering and tech gurus to see if that is the expected behavior or if we can make this better.

Thanks for the callout.

How do you decide what hero should be reworked next? Is it based on the hero’s popularity among the players? Pro players? Something else?

I'm going to copy/paste an answer I gave to this question in a previous AMA, and elaborate a bit on the response:

Choosing which heroes we're going to rework isn't an exact science, however some of the things we look for are:

1. How healthy is their talent diversity? (Ex. Zagara pre-rework had really bad talent diversity)
2. Is there anything about their kit/talents that feels bad as the user to play with? (Ex. It felt bad as the Butcher losing all of his Meat stacks every time he dies)
3. Is there anything that feels too oppressive when playing against them? (Ex. Kael'thas with the original Ignite talent)
4. Is the hero too similar to others and we need to create a niche for them? (Ex. When to pick Tychus vs. Valla before his rework)

These are generally the things that we look for when decidin to rework a hero. In addition, I would say that if a hero just has an outdated talent tree or kit, we are more likely to take a look at them to see if they need a rework.

Also to answer your question about popularity, it's not really something that we take into consideration when reworking a hero, as they can often be unhealthily popular due to win/loss rates. For example, right now I could easily make a hero very popular for the wrong reasons by tripling their damage and health.

Our attitude is that we are much more concerned about fixing and improving the design of our game, and that the popularity of heroes gets better in a healthier way as their designs improve.

As far as questions go, this isn't really an important one, but I'm really curious as to why Arthas' Army of the Dead Heroic was buffed. It seemed to already be the go-to pick as well as being very strong, while Summon Sindragosa was also seeing play in certain situations.

I understand the confusion, as there are often a lot of smaller changes like this that can look out of place at first. I can promise you we always have a train of logic behind them, even if it ends up not being correct. I'm going to use data based on 1+ MMR players in Hero League who have Arthas above Level 8 as my example to give you the context that these players should know what they're doing, though the larger data pool supports the same conclusions. Here was the thinking:

1. Pre-rework, Army of the Dead was both the losing Heroic, as well as the lesser picked one. It was picked 38% of the time compared to 62% for Summon Sindragosa, and it was winning 49% of the time compared to 52% for Sindy. They're not incredibly far off here, so we could leave well enough alone.
2. In the rework we removed damage off of Arthas in favor of survivability. This could potentially mean that Army of the Dead is even less needed on Arthas, as now he can tank damage even better than before, making Summon Sindragosa possibly even stronger as it gives him tower shutoff capability as well as the ability to engage on the enemy team, which is something he's normally not very good at.
3. We also had feedback that Army of the Dead can just feel bad to use due to how easily the Ghouls die to incidental AoE damage. Arthas also often uses his Army purely to consume his Ghouls for Health. We wanted to buff up the Health and damage a little so that there's a little more of "I want to keep my Ghouls alive so they can kill my enemies" instead of "I don't care about these dumb things... gimme dat HEALTH!"
4. The buffs to Army of the Dead were fairly minor. We weren't looking to drastically upset the balance of these heroics, but more to "catch up" Army of the Dead compared to what we saw the future appeal of Summon Sindragosa to be post rework.

We could be wrong in this line of thinking, as it could just turn into "well i'm a tank and Army lets me tank better so i'll just pick that!", but here's to hoping that doesn't happen!

Are you guys able to give us an update or an ETA on when the Uther changes will be arriving? It's been waaaay too long since Justice got it's retribution fix...it demands it NOW!

Good news, Uther is actually being worked on as we speak so be on the lookout for an update coming sooner rather than later.

You guys said this with the 10 Armor change 2 months ago though...

Have faith! His changes have made it into our daily internal play testing so it won't be much longer.

I don’t quite understand the recent Tyrael changes on PTR; As I feel Tyrael was in a good state in terms of balance before the patch except Imposing Will, I’d like to know what was your reasoning for removing not only Imposing Will but also Amplified Healing and Hardened Shield. Even though Angelic Absorption heal amount has been increased, the Talent will not help Tyrael much as the healing amount still feel lackluster and it lost its synergy with Amplified Healing. I also was a bit disappointed that there were no changes on Judgment - which could use some buffs – while it has become much harder to effectively use Sanctification due to the nerfs on some tank Talents.

We often have to make difficult decisions when it comes to changing popular talents in the name of making the game healthier overall. This was one of those choices that we think will be better for the longer term health of the game, even if it's not the popular one to make. Here was our line of thought on Imposing Will:

1. Imposing Will is a hugely popular talent, particularly at Pro play. However, we do not feel that the talent is particularly well designed, as it was offering a large amount of power with very little counter-play for the enemy. It was fairly easy to proc as Tyrael got to choose when to activate Righteousness, and it would instantly and heavily punish anyone who happened to be hitting him at the time, even with abilities like DoT effects.
2. It was unclear when opposing players made the mistake of hitting Tyrael when Imposing Will was active. It felt like a very random, very severe slow effect that seemingly came from nowhere.
3. We tried some variations of Imposing Will that embraced a more of an anti-caster function, but did not find anything that was a big enough win to put into the game at the time.

We largely removed Amplified Healing from Johanna and Tyrael due to its inherent synergy with their baseline Armor. They both now get more effective healing, and this was effectively adding stacks on stacks for them.

We replaced Hardened Shield with a spell-specific version to further embrace his anti-caster role.

We did buff Judgment!

Judgment (R) ​Damage increased from 100 to 150 Splash Damage increased from 50 to 75

As a final note, I wanted to make it clear that we have no intentions of causing Tyrael to fall off in our game, and that while we believe he will be OK with the changes we have made, we are prepared to make more changes to ensure that he remains viable.

Are we going to see some reworks/buffs to Lili?

She is not high on our list, but we are looking at some updates to some other supports, including: Tyrande, Uther, and Lt. Morales.

Is there any hope that we could get self-casting of Ancestral/cleanse back? I understand the fear of turning them into duelists, but aggressive Supports could really use some help being aggressive.

We like the limitation of those abilities and feel that it offers some counter-play to the enemy team (stun the guy with Cleanse). We aren't currently looking at changing those back. In terms of aggressiveness: Rehgar is definitely themed to be an aggressive support, so if that's not currently working out, I think we could target changes to other aspects of his kit (such as Lightning Shield, Totem, or Feral Lunge).

Are there any plans to look at Alarak? Since his launch he's lingered towards the bottom of the winrates which was first explained away as being high skill cap but lately it's clear he's just undertuned and outclassed in every niche. He doesn't have much talent diversity, and he has several mechanics that just don't feel good play. Mainly, his trait feels more like a "Deal half as much damage to minions" penalty rather than something unique and fun as almost all his talents reduce his damage for rewards that don't feel worthy compared to a lot of power spikes other assassins get for free. Deadly Charge being cancelled by minions and any random damage also feels terrible. I love the character and hope he becomes a viable pick soon.

Yes! We are working on an Alarak update that will be coming soon (tm). The main focus of this update is improving his talent diversity.

... Just to confirm soon (tm) is not actually in the next month

Is there any change we'll get to have a hero that is more trap based? Land mines, trip wires, and sneaky things like that? I always thought having someone pretrapping objective areas would be really neat!

Sounds like a fun hero idea - we do have some of these in isolate with Sgt. Hammer mines, Chromie Traps. I'll pass it along to the team.

Will tychus ever get any changes to his sustain. That's the stuff is not too​ viable and it was a huge part of tychus.

It's possible - level 13 on Tychus was designed to be a tier that offered some survivability for Tychus (or range in the case of his Q talent, which keeps you safer). That's the Stuff! was never intended to be a build-around talent that allowed Tychus to brawl toe to toe with other characters by out-healing their damage.

I think if we see Tychus fall off, while we could buff up this talent again, we'd probably prefer to address Tychus overall.

Any Comments regarding sylvanas's tier 1 and tier 7 talents?

These two tiers are intended to improve her PvE capabilities in the direction you choose. Looking at stats specifically, tier 1 looks pretty good pick & win rate wise, but we can make some tuning changes to help 7 out. Specifically, Possession and Unstable Poison could use some buffs. Will look into this.

Are you still going to change the balance of healing output(i hope so) or you reevaluated it? Are Supports, going to be less reliant on healing and more on, at the moment, secondary parts of their kits? Or supports are still going to be considered mainly healers?

For the most part, we like that healing feels incredibly powerful in Heroes of the Storm, and that these characters are a critical part of the team. We don't really have any sweeping plans to gut healing or anything along those lines. However, as we do updates to our healers/supports, we are looking for areas to enhance outside of purely healing, partially to keep all these characters unique from each other.

Do you have any plans to rework such heroes as Medivh, Abathur and the Lost Vikings? They are not very popular in Hero League and considered to be «situational» heroes.

We very recently made a few number changes to Abathur that we hope will bring him to a better place. For Medivh and The Lost Vikings, I think we're ok with them not showing up very often as they are meant to be hard to play and somewhat situational. Medivh has actually risen in popularity in the last couple of months in both competitive and Hero League and Vikings can still cause havoc on certain maps like Garden of Terror or Warhead Junction. I will say thought that we do have some quality of life changes for both in mind that may see the light of day somewhere down the line.

Any ETA of Leoric rework?

In the nearish future (next few months) we're looking at some tuning adjustments and will experiment with some of the suggestions we've seen from you guys!

In terms of a full rework - Leoric is not currently on our schedule for a major overhaul. We like his role in the game, but do acknowledge his talent tree could use some love.

Currently The Lost Vikings have a very niche role on only a few maps whereas other heroes tend to be picked on most maps or even all of them simply because the map doesnt effect their ability to achieve a certain level of effectiveness. What do you have in plan for heroes that are very map dependant, such as Vikings?

Will there be more ways for players enjoy unit micro? The Lost Vikings isnt the only hero with multiple units but other heroes who can usually dont pick the option as it feels quite inferior to the other (jaina, kerrigan)

We are okay with some heroes having very strong map dependencies, Lost Vikings is a great example of one of these characters. We would like to potentially rework TLV's talents at some point though - we've discussed maybe adding a talent build that encourages them to stick together and focus on hero micro in a single lane, as opposed to the more common lane soak/macro playstyle currently seen.

For pet abilities on characters like Jaina and Kerrigan, we've purposely kept these abilities pretty straightforward with little control. Overall, I think we're mostly happy with the design of these, but for the ones that are rarely picked we may look for ways to make them more powerful or offer more micro options for the hero.

Any spessific reason why Varian's damage taken isn't being tracked when he picks a shield?I really like seeing how much I tanked for and comparing that to my deaths if I'm being too much in enemies' faces, not enough or if I don't have many deaths and a lot of damage taken, then I know I'm doing a good job at soaking damage for teammates.

This is actually on the list to get on the TAB screen. I can't remember off the top of my head when this is going to go out to you guys but it's definitely something we want there.

The lastest patch had many changes in some warriors. Will you do something like that with supports? Some of them don't have changes since de beta like Li li or Tyrande i don't say they are bad but i feel them old

Changes to Tyrande are currently being play tested internally so we hope to have her in your hands once we're confident with her shiny new toys. Li Li probably won't see changes until a bit later down the line.

One of my favorite heroes for the longest time was The Butcher. But he really only works in comps that support him (Tassadar), though even then he is a less than optimal pick. His entire combo of charging in and auto attacking an enemy down is too easily countered by stuns, polymorphs and blinds. Are there any plans to help his surviveability a bit?

In terms of win-rate, Butcher is actually sitting very high, so he doesn't currently warrant any buffs. Yes, Butcher is a little one-dimensional, but I think we're okay with that and like the way his rework feels and plays.

How designers feel about quests, that nullified on death if not completed (Kael lv 1 Convection and Medivh lv 7 master touch)? For last 8-10 months there was no single quest, that works that way (maybe only rexxar infinite health, dunno if it's counts), while the idea of quests in general persists, and almost every hero has at least 1-2 quest talents. Will we see more quests with death reset in the future?

We've discussed a lot internally about quests we like, quests we don't like, what we want to see more of, etc. The TLDR of those discussions was that everyone loves different types of quests - some or the designers want to see more quests like Convection and Master's Touch, others want uncapped quests, multi-part quests (High King's Quest), etc.

I can't say when the next one of these 'death reset' quests will be coming in, but we think they have a place in the game - although probably less common than other types of quests.

How do you feel about heroes that are poor in high level play, but can be incredibly powerful in low level, quickplay matches?

Ideally all characters would be viable across a wide range of skill levels and play modes, but this is a near balance impossibility. Take Gazlowe as an example - I think we'd love to see him in esports at some point, even rarely, but it's not something we're actively balancing or designing for. As long as Gazlowe has a place in the game, maybe its QM, then cool!

Are there any plans to address the implementation of Zarya's energy in hots? Currently the counterplay of not hitting any of Zarya's shielding is mitigated by the moba nature of hots: towers. 3 tower shots can put zarya to half energy off of a single shield (on self or on ally), and on maps like Braxis Holdout, she can easily convert on her early energy count by providing massive damage with very little reprisal. Once she has gained full energy, the objective on the side of the map that she is on has been lost.

Reminiscent of the original haunted mines with tech-alpha Diablo/Kerrigan, this translates to a snowballed game caused by a full-energy Zarya leading the doompush of guardians and ultralisks that make games end in around 9 minutes.

Zarya does well on maps with pro-longed fighting around objectives, like Dragon Shire and Braxis. While I believe heroes can and should have favored maps or map styles (Kerrigan on Infernal Shrines, Dehaka on Warhead Junction), this particular interaction seems to require an extremely specific answer with the amount of self-sustain and crowd-control from the opposing team as the means for counterplay.

Should non-heroic damage give as much energy to Zarya as it does now? Is this something worth considering? Or does the issue lie with the fast-paced tempo of the objective on Braxis Holdout, specifically?

Working as intended - if she is using her shield to specifically soak unneeded damage (tower shots), then you should be able to punish her while its on CD.

If he saw that it was too powerful or she needed nerfs, it's something we could consider.

My question has to do with a hero that has not gotten any balance changes in a good while - Dehaka. Do you have any plans to give him a little bit of a revamp? He can be fairly strong in some team compositions but never really feels like a hero that makes a gigantic impact. in 1v1 fights with nearly every other warrior hero he normally just flat out loses.

We did update Dehaka after BlizzCon, so it hasn't been that long since he's received changed. In terms of 1v1 potential, Dehaka is a huge lane bully. However, a little bird whispered to me that there may be some tiny updates coming.

Any chance of an update to lucio's talent's? there's really only 1 good option per level. So it's every game I always pick the same talents because the rest are just ehh. Example lv1 20% movement speed is clearly the best likewise 8 min heals for more AoE is clearly the best.

Yes and No.

Yes - we will update Lucio's talents at some point. No - it won't be any time soon as he just came out and we still want to give players time to play with him, learn how to use him, etc.

As Cleanse is considered as must-pick Talent for Supports, I think there are not only notable gap between Supports with Cleanse and without Cleanse, but also lack of Talent diversity at Level 7 for many Supports. Could you tell us about what is your current thoughts on Cleanse and share some of Support changes you are considering, if any?

Hey! A day late, but I figured I'd get one more response in.

Cleanse is an extremely powerful tool, that can create some really awesome reactive playmaking and does a good job keeping certain disable heavy compositions from running rampant.

From a balance perspective, we like what it's doing for the game, but we don't want Cleanse to be mandatory to make a Support viable. We're tackling this from a few angles.

• Different ways to counter-act CC via a Talent, potentially at a different power level and tier. Kharazim's Cleansing Dash is an example of this. We're beginning to experiment with other ways of augmenting Basic Abilities when they interact with disabled targets.
• Compensating supports that don't have Cleanse in other ways. Uther is our anti-burst Support, so he'll probably always have that. But he doesn't have the raw healing over time that Lucio does, and from a balance perspective we think there's a tuning amount that will make him worthwhile when he doesn't have Cleanse.

In regards to incoming Support changes, I can share a little info about Uther. He's going to have more frequent self-healing without sacrificing his ability to save others, have the ability to provide short bursts of Armor to allies, and will have an entire tier at level 7 that is built around countering disables in different ways. He'll be a nice pick if your team is a little fragile or the opposing team is burst heavy. He won't have the raw healing output that other Supports can have, unless he's taking a lot of damage himself.

[Ryme]

https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe...t_in_our_live/

Happening now!

BE sure to bug @Nerraw to blue-ify every single response after

[Deleted]

Great that the devs take time to offer this, but what a mess in its current form. There should be different indicators for foreign questions translated by Blizzard community guys and Blizzard answers. I'm not too keen on reading lore question from eager Uzbek video game players cluttering up a balance AMA...

But will certainly read once streamlined. And @Nerraw, as a highly paid specialist, do as you're told and blueify. Pronto










*ducks and runs for cover*

[Nerraw]

You guys.... >.>

Also, the A of the Q&A doesn't happen for another 45 minutes. They've made a statement about their recent changes to warriors that I'm in a process of processing. Process for the Process God!

- - - Updated - - -

I won't be able to summarize it tonight, I have an assignment to finish for tomorrow that's proving to be more pesky than anticipated. Will get to it tomorrow afternoon!

[Ryme]

Uther rework incoming: https://twitter.com/BlizzHeroes/stat...60808676163585

[RH92]

Uther rework incoming: https://twitter.com/BlizzHeroes/stat...60808676163585

When I was running through the posts, they also mentioned some Malfurion changes. Not a full scale rework though.

They also said they have some changes planned for Alarak to increase his talent diversity. Which I don't think is really going to help him as I think he has identity crisis, he does everything good, but not good enough to be picked before other melee Assassins.

[Nerraw]

I've got an hour's worth of train time ahead of me with nothing better to do, so I'll start going through answers and adding them to the OP now.

- - - Updated - - -

(I better not crash now, I have 40 tabs open...!)

[ophion1990]

Some good stuff in there. I'm curious to see what direction they're gonna go for LiLi/Tyrande/Morales and Uther. Also really happy that they're starting to plan to step away from the 4 class system more, though the hero descriptions were already a nice start. I'm surprised nothing was mentioned about the progression system (dunno if someone asked, not gonna read all posts), which means it might still be quite a while before we see it.

Oh, also loooking forward to the Alarak changes.

GL consolidating it all into a readable format Nerraw.

[Raugnaut]

So, more niche-fication of current warriors, and other heroes to open up hero diversity (Reasoning behind Tyrael, Johanna, Arthas, and Anub'arak Armor/HP changes. So expect an AA-dive warrior hero, and a warrior that just wades in thats anti-mage in the far future). Also expect a further HP buff to Stitches, since it seems that Blizzard decided to move away from Stitches being the "anti-mage tank", and the relatively recent Stitches HP buff may mean that Stitches will just be a super meaty meatshield instead - And, hey, Tank Varian, who had a shit-ton of HP, lost a good chunk of that HP in exchange for Armor.

This really should be called a design change. Trade HP for armor. Extremely high-HP tanks are weaker to %based health damage, but stronger against all other forms of damage. I think its more likely that tanks, going forward, will have some form of armor or another, with lowish overall health.

Not sure its a good change either. Blizz said that they don't want drafts to have TOO much affect on winrates. But, if as mentioned, the enemy team picks, say, Butcher and Illidan first with the intent to get Tassadar, Zarya, and Morales in for the next 3 picks, picking Arthas would completely decimate their damage output - 40% less damage output, with a large snare on behalf of Butcher and Illidan. Of course, the easiest solution is to just ban Arthas if you plan to pick such a comp, or pick Zarya/Tassadar first.

Also, they aren't straight-up counters. Arthas is mainly only good against melee AA heroes - Ranged AA heroes can keep Arthas away, just making him more tanky against them. Arthas thus doesn't counter the most mobile AA assassin, Tracer, at all. Johanna, on the other hand, isn't as strong against melee AA heroes as Arthas, but is better against ranged AA heroes with her long-ranged blind. And a melee mage in the future, something like Murky in which they are a hero that engages in melee, but has atrocious melee damage in exchange for very high ability damage, would completley smash through Johanna and Arthas.

It DOES open up more hero diversity, but it sucks for players of the current heroes. Also, its a bit worrisome - The three main things that sets Heroes apart from other MOBAS are the shared lvling, large map pool, and incredibly different hero ideas, like TLV, Murky, Cho'Gall, Abathur, and a few others. Making "standard" heroes slightly more niche just indicates that future hero releases will be leaning towards the standard rather then the outlandish side. Personally, I would like to see a hero such as a Multi-headed Hydra, a co-op hero that could potentially be an entire 5 heroes, leading to extremely high teamfight potential in exchange for reduced laning presence, or Overmind, who would basically play like an RTS against your standard heroes - No personal presence on the battlefield ever, but rather waves upon waves of zerg fodder. Or the WC3 Goblin Sapper squad, a duo control hero like TLV that intentionally suicides to deal absolutely massive damage.

[Nerraw]

There we go, that should be everything! I haven't included individual links to the answers because that would take up even more space.

[Deleted]

Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few. Thank you, that's some supreme blueifying.


I'm a bit scared by this: "For the most part, we like that healing feels incredibly powerful in Heroes of the Storm, and that these characters are a critical part of the team."

I feel Lucio - a hero from oh-so-meh Overwatch of all things - actually is the first healer able to carry games. Recently won a game were the enemy team had clearly the better damage dealers, but we won with a good tank and me outhealing the enemy Malf almost 3:1. As long as grandmasterts use only assassins for their "bronze to GM" challenges, healing is quite likely rather too weak than 'incredibly powerful'

[RH92]

Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few. Thank you, that's some supreme blueifying.


I'm a bit scared by this: "For the most part, we like that healing feels incredibly powerful in Heroes of the Storm, and that these characters are a critical part of the team."

I feel Lucio - a hero from oh-so-meh Overwatch of all things - actually is the first healer able to carry games. Recently won a game were the enemy team had clearly the better damage dealers, but we won with a good tank and me outhealing the enemy Malf almost 3:1. As long as grandmasterts use only assassins for their "bronze to GM" challenges, healing is quite likely rather too weak than 'incredibly powerful'

The usual problem with supports is they are mostly reactive, therefore unable to carry games.

Heroes like Lucio, Kharazim and Malfurion are able to carry games because they can be proactive with their aggression or simply having better utility than remaining Healers. Rehgar was able to do that too before they nerfed him (Self-casted Ancestral), but he is still highly prioritized because he has a Cleanse. He just does everything good, but never best at anything.

[Nerraw]

An extra question was answered late.

As Cleanse is considered as must-pick Talent for Supports, I think there are not only notable gap between Supports with Cleanse and without Cleanse, but also lack of Talent diversity at Level 7 for many Supports. Could you tell us about what is your current thoughts on Cleanse and share some of Support changes you are considering, if any?

Hey! A day late, but I figured I'd get one more response in.

Cleanse is an extremely powerful tool, that can create some really awesome reactive playmaking and does a good job keeping certain disable heavy compositions from running rampant.

From a balance perspective, we like what it's doing for the game, but we don't want Cleanse to be mandatory to make a Support viable. We're tackling this from a few angles.

• Different ways to counter-act CC via a Talent, potentially at a different power level and tier. Kharazim's Cleansing Dash is an example of this. We're beginning to experiment with other ways of augmenting Basic Abilities when they interact with disabled targets.
• Compensating supports that don't have Cleanse in other ways. Uther is our anti-burst Support, so he'll probably always have that. But he doesn't have the raw healing over time that Lucio does, and from a balance perspective we think there's a tuning amount that will make him worthwhile when he doesn't have Cleanse.

In regards to incoming Support changes, I can share a little info about Uther. He's going to have more frequent self-healing without sacrificing his ability to save others, have the ability to provide short bursts of Armor to allies, and will have an entire tier at level 7 that is built around countering disables in different ways. He'll be a nice pick if your team is a little fragile or the opposing team is burst heavy. He won't have the raw healing output that other Supports can have, unless he's taking a lot of damage himself.

[RH92]

I think the best way to deal with the Cleanse and Supports issue is to provide Cleanse as a talent for other roles too.

Warriors are already a more supportive role and for example Tyrael could easily have a Cleanse since he already has a more pronounced supportive nature. Or they can introduce a Retribution Paladin from WoW and give him Blessing of Freedom at level 7.

I think it would only be healthy for the game. Having others roles with Cleanse opens options for Supports without Cleanse just as it leaves options open for the non-Support Heroes with Cleanse when a Support with Cleanse is picked.

[apepi]

I think the best way to deal with the Cleanse and Supports issue is to provide Cleanse as a talent for other roles too.

Warriors are already a more supportive role and for example Tyrael could easily have a Cleanse since he already has a more pronounced supportive nature. Or they can introduce a Retribution Paladin from WoW and give him Blessing of Freedom at level 7.

I think it would only be healthy for the game. Having others roles with Cleanse opens options for Supports without Cleanse just as it leaves options open for the non-Support Heroes with Cleanse when a Support with Cleanse is picked.

Zarya has one I think?

And they did not answer the Li Li question that I asked about. :/

[RH92]

Zarya has one I think?

Doesn't remove stuns and saving a shield just to remove some CC is not optimal.

Ideally you want it as a separate ability or as a talent for ability you can use frequently like Dash on Kharazim.

[apepi]

Doesn't remove stuns and saving a shield just to remove some CC is not optimal.

Ideally you want it as a separate ability or as a talent for ability you can use frequently like Dash on Kharazim.

Thanks for reminding me about Herbal Cleanse.

[RH92]

Thanks for reminding me about Herbal Cleanse.

The reason why Herbal Cleanse was bad is actually Li Li mechanics. Specifically being unable to prioritize targets with Healing Brew, therefore a massive lack of prevention. You always want to use Cleanse to prevent incoming CC chain accompanied with a damage.

Herbal Cleanse worked like this in only one situation, where nobody on your team took damage and the focus fire on one of your team mates already begun. Although the frequency of CC immunity was great, it was far worse at damage prevention considering you can use level 7 Cleanse properly. On the other hand Herbal Cleanse grew weaker the longer fight went as enemy team could abuse lack of Li Li's ability to prioritize her heals to blow up different targets other than the one that took the most damage.

I don't think it was a bad talent, but it was weird to use. I think Li Li with damage build is generally better option and as a second utility support with all the blinds, off-healing, Water Dragon and second Cleanse.

I personally would love if they kept her Healing build sufficient enough to warrant a noob friendly solo Support role in lower rankings and make her 'Utility' build stronger for higher rankings.

[apepi]

The reason why Herbal Cleanse was bad is actually Li Li mechanics. Specifically being unable to prioritize targets with Healing Brew, therefore a massive lack of prevention. You always want to use Cleanse to prevent incoming CC chain accompanied with a damage.

Herbal Cleanse worked like this in only one situation, where nobody on your team took damage and the focus fire on one of your team mates already begun. Although the frequency of CC immunity was great, it was far worse at damage prevention considering you can use level 7 Cleanse properly. On the other hand Herbal Cleanse grew weaker the longer fight went as enemy team could abuse lack of Li Li's ability to prioritize her heals to blow up different targets other than the one that took the most damage.

I don't think it was a bad talent, but it was weird to use. I think Li Li with damage build is generally better option and as a second utility support with all the blinds, off-healing, Water Dragon and second Cleanse.

I personally would love if they kept her Healing build sufficient enough to warrant a noob friendly solo Support role in lower rankings and make her 'Utility' build stronger for higher rankings.

I honestly had a very strong damage build with it using an E build. I could just pull insane numbers and not die from anything, I had like a like 70-80 win ratio with it at one point, it is not hard to try to get heals where you want it if done right. I actually think the good thing about Herbal Cleanse wasn't the clear cc....it gave you 20% speed boost which was a god send, the cleansing part was just a bonus.

[Joeygiggles]

Whats the current state of the game anyways? Still going on pretty healthy? Ive only hopped on the grab the mount so I am trying to just get some insight thanks guys