Heroes Of The Storm Balance Update - Week of April 27th, 2016

[Nerraw]

FIRST LOOK: BALANCE UPDATE COMING THIS WEEK

We’re planning to release a new Balance Update for Heroes of the Storm on Wednesday, April 27 in order to apply a few balance changes and fix a few bug fixes. Read on for the complete list of changes we’ll be making with this week’s Balance Update.

ASSASSIN

KAEL'THAS

• Verdant Spheres (Trait) (D)
  • Mana Addict (Talent)
    • Regeneration Globes required to complete the Quest have been reduced from 25 to 20.
  • Fel Infusion (Talent)
    • Bonus Ability Power decreased from 5% to 4%.
• Flame Strike (Q)
  • Convection (Talent)
    • Bonus damage on Quest completion increased from 150 to 175.
• Living Bomb (W)
  • Sun King’s Fury (Talent)
    • Bonus damage decreased from 190 (+4% per level) to 171 (+4% per level).

Developer Comments: Fel Infusion is doing a little bit too much, too well compared to other Talents on its tier for how low-risk it is, so we’re giving it a slight nerf and buffing the others. Mana Addict should feel more consistently achievable in an average game, and Convection’s reward is now more worth the risk of taking the talent.

We’re a little uncomfortable with how much single-target burst damage Kael’thas is able to put out with Sun King’s Fury, so we’re toning it down. He threw a fit about it, but we’re sure he’ll manage to find some other way to be a little too powerful. He always does.

THE BUTCHER

• Enraged (Talent)
  • Cooldown reduced from 30 to 25 seconds.
• Hamstring (Q)
  • Chop Meat (Talent)
    • Bonus damage to Minions and Mercenaries increased from 50% to 100%.
• Butcher’s Brand (W)
  • Insatiable Blade (Talent)
    • Bonus Healing from Basic Attacks increased from 25% to 50%.
• Ruthless Onslaught (E)
  • Cooldown reduced from 20 to 15 seconds.
  • Mana cost from 75 to 55.
  • Unrelenting Pursuit (Talent)
    • Cooldown reduction decreased from 40% to 33%.
• Furnace Blast (R)
  • Cooldown reduced from 90 to 80 seconds.
  • Damage increased from 456 (+4% per level) to 500 (+4% per level).

Developer Comments: There are a lot of ways for enemy teams to shut down our favorite meat-cleaving demon friend. We want to give him some more opportunities to engage enemies by reducing the cooldown of Ruthless Onslaught, which we feel is appropriate since he puts himself at risk when diving opponents. While taking a look, we saw an opportunity to buff up some of his weaker Talents, which should make him feel more compelling to play.

SPECIALIST

NAZEEBO

• Gargantuan (R)
  • Basic Attack damage reduced from 274 (+4% per level) to 219 (+4% per level).
  • Stomp damage increased from 151 (+4% per level) to 181 (+4% per level).

Developer Comments: We streamlined Gargantuan’s damage a few patches ago to no longer deal bonus damage to non-player targets. In the process, he ended up clobbering enemy Heroes a bit harder than we liked. We’re lowering his base attack damage to bring it more in line, and buffing Stomp damage to make activating this ability more impactful.

WARRIOR

REXXAR

• Basic Attack range increased by 22%.
• Health increased from 1643 (+4% per level) to 1725 (+4% per level).
• Health regeneration increased from 3.42 (+4% per level) to 3.59 (+4% per level) per second.
• Throwing Axes (Talent) removed.
• Misha (Trait)
  • Leash range increased by approximately 12.5%.
• Misha Charge! (W)
  • Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds.
  • Aspect of the Beast (Talent)
    • Cooldown reduction earned from Misha’s Basic Attacks reduced from 2 to 1.5 second.

Developer Comments: We’re currently looking at doing a larger pass on Rexxar in the future, but wanted to give him some love in the meantime to help make him more rewarding to play. It should now be easier to stick Misha to targets with her increased Leash range, and Rexxar should be able to both zone and survive against enemies better with increases to his Health and to his Basic Attack range. We’re listening to your feedback on him, and are looking forward to bringing out something more substantial in the future.

General

• Issuing a Mount command while holding down the right mouse button to move will no longer interrupt Mount channeling.

Heroes and Talents

• Murky’s Egg location will no longer be revealed if he is killed by Tracer’s Melee Ability.
• Regeneration Globes will no longer grant 200% Health Regeneration to Tracer after learning her Untouchable Talent.
• Fixed an issue causing Malfurion to receive an inconsistent amount of healing when casting Tranquility. Additionally, the tooltip for the Serenity talent should now reflect the correct amount of bonus healing provided.
• Fixed an issue causing Tyrande’s Starfall to deal lower than intended damage, and have a higher than intended Mana cost and cooldown after learning her Celestial Wrath Talent.

User Interface

• Corrected several Hero Skin names in tooltips that display when hovering the cursor over another player’s portrait in draft lobbies.

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20102776/

[Belial-sama]

Developer Comments: We streamlined Gargantuan’s damage a few patches ago to no longer deal bonus damage to non-player targets. In the process, he ended up clobbering enemy Heroes a bit harder than we liked. We’re lowering his base attack damage to bring it more in line, and buffing Stomp damage to make activating this ability more impactful.

This 'impactful' theme they have been doing for a while is becoming a meme...
Rexxar changes!!!!

General
Issuing a Mount command while holding down the right mouse button to move will no longer interrupt Mount channeling.

YESSSSSSSS

[Deleted]

This 'impactful' theme they have been doing for a while is becoming a meme...
Rexxar changes!!!!



YESSSSSSSS

Nice change indeed.

[Tharkkun]

My Nazeebo keeps getting beat down!

[Nerraw]

I'll be playing some Butcher I think.

[Sir Andy]

Don't think that's enough to make The Butcher popular, but every bit helps.

[Mormolyce]

Yeah they seem pretty mild but okay.

Look forward to a proper Rexxar rework. He badly needs some love.

[Ryme]

I was watching pallytime play Butcher earlier and was wondering if they'll give him some love. Frankly, I think he suffers from an issue a lot of dive heroes do in that he has so many tools to go deep but none to get back out again.

I think a talent in the same vein as friend or foe would would work wonders for Butcher.

[Well]

Yay, rexxar buffs. I luv Rexxar.

They might just delete Kael while they are at it. They have no idea about what they are doing with him. AAing mage? Who thought that making an AA spec for a mage was a good idea, really?

[Tenjen]

Don't think that's enough to make The Butcher popular, but every bit helps.

change need to happen in steps. they gauge the effect of the change which tells them how far to take the next step.

- - - Updated - - -

Yay, rexxar buffs. I luv Rexxar.

They might just delete Kael while they are at it. They have no idea about what they are doing with him. AAing mage? Who thought that making an AA spec for a mage was a good idea, really?

They most certainly do know what they are doing. It was a necessary adjustment and he'll still do amazingly well.

[Nerraw]

Yay, rexxar buffs. I luv Rexxar.

They might just delete Kael while they are at it. They have no idea about what they are doing with him. AAing mage? Who thought that making an AA spec for a mage was a good idea, really?

Li-Ming has an AA build that works pretty decent.

[Well]

Li-Ming has an AA build that works pretty decent.

Not really. Staying still to AA with Ming's weird AA animation and speed is only deadly and there certainly are much better options.

- - - Updated - - -

They most certainly do know what they are doing. It was a necessary adjustment and he'll still do amazingly well.

No, certainly not. AAing is not what a mage is supposed to do. Kael has never been about autoattacking. It's just not valid. You might balance and crap, sure, but AAing as Kael? Just no. It's terrible.

[Nerraw]

No, certainly not. AAing is not what a mage is supposed to do. Kael has never been about autoattacking. It's just not valid. You might balance and crap, sure, but AAing as Kael? Just no. It's terrible.

Kael has always had the AA option. It just sucked until his rework.

[Gamevizier]

didn't notice they gave Azmodan's epic skin a third option color, and a good one I might say.

[blankfaced]

It's kind of crazy those few changes to Kael a few patches ago made his WR jump back up that high and that they already have to nerf some things. It's also crazy they didn't realize (just napkin math) how much extra damage Fel Infusion added. At level 20 it's 42 damage to living bomb and 35 damage to flame strike, then it adds 107 damage to Pyro and if Phoenix gets off at least 7 attacks that's at least an extra 60 damage. It just overshadows Convection by far too much. Just the extra damage on living bomb makes it better, especially since he can cast them mana free (unlike Flame Strike) and get healed while doing it.

And to the point: I hope this shifts Convection to a better place, but I probably won't ever use it just because you can lose the stacks.

[Ballistic]

There are still ignorants picking Butcher in HL, when ppl are gonna learn that this hero is just for good laughs not for serious ranked games.

[Sheevah]

Maybe they're just trying out the new changes. :P

[Nerraw]

Maybe they're just trying out the new changes. :P

Which haven't happened yet.

[Sheevah]

Minor detail. When people see "Wednesday, April 27th" as release, they're already jumping in to test changes early on. A lot of your casual base will be operating under the assumption that they've already been patched in once their calendar displays April, 27th.

[Sir Andy]

There are still ignorants picking Butcher in HL, when ppl are gonna learn that this hero is just for good laughs not for serious ranked games.

Hardly. Give Butcher Divine Storm or Stim Drone and watch him do work.