Heroes of the Storm

Post-BlizzCon Developer AMA Recap
As yesterday's developer AMA received more than 60 replies, many of them quite descriptive, we're providing a full archive thread on the forums instead of on the frontpage. You can find a short recap below of the most prominent features talked about, but be sure to check out the dedicated thread for more information.

Orphea

• Orphea is overperforming on the PTR and will receive a nerf upon release to live servers
• The team decided to have only Orphea as a hero reveal at BlizzCon for a few different reasons: There have been several highly-requested hero releases throughout 2018, and not all Heroes players are familiar with other Blizzard universe. Heroes from those universes might not mean anything to everyone, so they decided it would be a good time for an original character to make an appearance
• Orphea is a teenager
• The "dead magic" utilized by Orphea is not death magic. The term was rather used by the Raven Lord to describe her magic as old and outdated, and as being "beneath him"

Other Heroes

• Options for buffing Malthael's Tormented Souls are actively being discussed by the team
• The team will focus on existing Blizzard universe heroes before doing more Nexus-heroes
• The Lost Vikings aren't looking at receiving a major rework in the near future
• Preliminary work has started on giving D.Va a talent update. As it is still early, we should not expect a release until maybe the middle of 2019
• The hero release schedule will remain largely similar to what we've seen in 2018
• Ana's level 1 tier is on the to-do list
• The team decided not to put heroes into multiple roles after all. A "tag" system is still being worked on, which will be used to provide finer details on specific heroes and their roles
• Abathur will likely receive a small balance update to address his shield build's power in high-end play. No rework is currently planned

Ranked Play

• With HL and TL being merged, the team is currently looking to use a unified MMR. Players reaching the leaderboards will have separate entries for solo-queue and standard-queue
• Party restrictions will be reintroduced to ranked if in parties of less than 5 players. If in a party of 5 players, there will be no restrictions but the team's combined MMR will be set to the MMR of the highest-ranked person in the party
• The First Come First Serve (FCFS) pick type, currently found in Team League, will be used for all ranked games once the queues are unified
• Enemy player names will return to draft modes
• No plans for a 4th ban in 2019
• A soft-reset of the ladder will be performed when the unified queue is implemented. Players' reseeding will happen based on an average between their HL and TL MMR

Miscellaneous

• Internal testing of the upcoming catapult and XP changes has been ongoing and iterated on for months. Feedback has been very positive
• The community requests for the Carbot Stick Horse mount are being heard
• Options for social features like the Endorsements and Avoid Player features found in Overwatch are being looked at
• One of the goals with the XP changes is to provide less of a snowballing statistical lead for the winning team but more of a sustained strategic one

Heroes Brawl of the Week, November 9, 2018: Trial Grounds

Post-BlizzCon Developer AMA Starting
This week's advertised developer AMA is about to start, and you can now submit questions on reddit. So if you have a reddit account and some burning questions, go ahead and see if you can't get an answer for them! We will be providing a full recap of developer responses once the AMA has concluded.


Orphea PTR Datamining
While we already knew about most of the upcoming content, which can be found here, poking around the latest PTR build still uncovered some things not officially announced. We've got sprays, announcers, new bundles, and indications that shard packs are going to be a thing you can spend gems on.



InvenGlobal Interview with Matthew Cooper
InvenGlobal had a chance to sit down with Matthew Cooper, Lead Content Designer on Heroes of the Storm, to talk about Orphea and future releases.

• The team has not discussed any details for potential future Nexus-original heroes yet
• Map bans have been discussed internally but there are no solid plans at this point. They'd rather make every map fun so there won't be a need for map bans
• Alan Dabiri has not been game director for a while now. Kaeo Milker, as Production Director, already knows how to run things
• One of the reasons behind the slowed hero release pace is that the meta was changing too quickly for comfort
• Heroes of the Storm started out using the Starcraft 2 engine but was moved to another one
• Team is actively working on improving matchmaking and reconnection systems
• Orphea can be countered by dodging her attacks and blinding her

InvenGlobal Interview with Steve Holmes and Adam Jackson
Not content with just one interview, InvenGlobal managed to swing another one! This time, Steve Holmes, Battleground Designer, and Adam Jackson, Live Game designer, sat down to answer questions about Blackheart's Bay and Haunted Mines.

• It was easy for the team to decide to rework Hanamura and Garden of Terror
• Blackheart's Bay isn't as easy since it is surprisingly not universally disliked
• A lot of people like the unique gameplay the map offers, so any rework would have to keep aspects of that
• Haunted Mines is a complicated problem to solve
• The map used to be the Wild West of Heroes, with a lot of crazy stuff happening
• It's hard to play the map optimally and still have a good time
• The team cannot say if Haunted Mines will be reworked again any time soon

Upcoming Heroes of the Storm Post-BlizzCon AMA - Thursday, November 8, 2018

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