September 16th Teaser
Originally Posted by
Blizzard
(
Blue Tracker)
The Raven Lord and his generals seek retribution for the defiance at Alterac Pass. The siege of King’s Crest begins soon.
Brightwing & Kerrigan Rework Interviews
InvenGlobal sat down for a talk with Lead Live Designer, Brett Crawford and Senior Live Game Designer, Alex Neyman about both the
Brightwing and
Kerrigan reworks coming to the game soon. The Brightwing interview in particular includes a few talents that were not covered in the rework video preview, so be sure to check it out!
Brightwing
- This rework, as with other recent support reworks, is part of making healers feel less like healbots and give them more fun gameplay options, with Arcane Flare being the prime target of this since it already has the bullseye mechanic
- Her new Cleanse on Soothing Mist is on a long cooldown (120 seconds), but the team expects players to make massive plays with it
- She will remain as a really strong global hero, but with options to make up for her weaknesses such as burst healing
- This is in line with the reworks and recent releases of other supports. Healers being super strong in one respect and weak in all others was part of what made the double-support meta happen. Players picked a second support to make up for that weakness
- The level 20 upgrade to Emerald Wind lowers the cooldown to 3 seconds but makes it cost 200 mana
- This rework has been in the works for almost a year
Kerrigan
- A lot of factors go into deciding when a hero is up for a rework. Outdated kits, pick-/win-rates, etc.
- Kerrigan is the last hero left with a combo of the original generic talents (Envenom and the Essence for Essence talents)
- The generic talents were a result of the talent system as we know it being added to the game very late in development, so the team had to come up with a lot of things to populate the trees with very quickly
- Chrysalis was the obvious choice for a strong defensive talent that incorporates a mix of first aid and ice block abilities. It also has strong lore connections
- The goal with reworks such as Kerrigan's is to maintain character identity, such as the iconic Q-W-E combo, while at the same time updating the character to the current hero standards of the game
- That means she now has things to think about and do after using her combo, instead of standing around waiting for it to be ready to use again
- The team also wants talent options that actually alter gameplay instead of just being stat boosts in some way
- Stun-charge added to the Ultralisk is an effort to make the ability feel like a proper heroic ability and not "just" a pet. The stun-charge also fits well with her base combo-based gameplay
- The developers also know that some people enjoy the pet control aspect of the ability, so they kept the original spirit of the ability intact
HeroStorm Episode 47 - Rogue Won
Carbot Animations returns with yet another HeroStorm animation. This one has Valeera doing Valeera things, as one would expect.