Heroes of the Storm

Greetings, Heroes!

As mentioned in our recent blog post, we’re going to host a Matchmaking and Ranked Play AMA right here on /r/heroesofthestorm on Thursday, August 9! The Heroes devs will join the thread and answer your questions starting around 10:00 a.m. PDT (7:00 p.m. CEST) until 12:00 p.m. PDT (9:00 p.m. CEST).

Developers from the design, engineering, and productions teams will be on hand to answer your questions.

When posting multiple AMA questions: Please make an effort to post one question per comment. This will make it easier for others to read through the thread, and will help the devs focus on one question at a time. However, please feel free comment as many times as you'd like in order to get your questions posted.

You might also see Blizzard Community Managers posting questions on behalf of players in our non-English speaking communities during the AMA. Feel free to upvote those questions if you’d like to see answers to them.

We will be starting a new thread on the morning of the AMA, so please hold your questions until then.

We’ve just released a new patch to Heroes of the Storm to introduce Whitemane, some balance adjustments, bug fixes, and a number of other changes.

Note: Orange text indicates a difference between the Live and PTR notes.


Quick Navigation:

• General
  
• New Hero
  
• Art
  
• User Interface
  
• Design
  
• Heroes
  
• Collection
  
• Bug Fixes

General

• Reduced the amount of bandwidth required to transfer gameplay information between the client and server.
  
• Reduced the size of replay files.

New Hero: Whitemane

As the High Inquisitor of the Scarlet Crusade, Sally Whitemane zealously leads her champions in a never-ending war against the undead. Under her guiding Light, all who have been touched by the plague of death will be purged by her cleansing flame… no matter how much they protest.

Trait

• Zeal
  
  • Whitemane’s Healing abilities apply Zeal for 8 seconds.
    
  • Allies with Zeal are healed for 100% of the damage Whitemane deals to Heroes.
    

Basic Abilities

• Desperate Plea (Q)
  
  • Mana: 30
    
  • No cooldown
    
  • Heal an allied Hero for 145 and gain Desperation for 4 seconds.
    
  • Desperation increases Desperate Plea’s Mana cost by 60 and stacks up to 3 times.
    
• Inquisition (W)
  
  • Channel on an enemy Hero for up to 3 seconds, dealing 53 damage every 0.5 seconds and slowing them by 30%
    
• Searing Lash (E)
  
  • After 0.5 seconds, smite enemies in a straight line for 82 damage.
    
  • If the first strike hits an enemy Hero, a second strike will occur after a short delay.
    

Heroic Abilities

• Scarlet Aegis (R)
  
  • Cooldown: 60 seconds
    
  • Bolster the spirits of nearby allied Heroes, healing them for 250 and granting them 40 Armor for 4 seconds.
    
• Divine Reckoning (R)
  
  • Cooldown: 100 seconds
    
  • After a 1 second delay, consecrate an area for 4 seconds, dealing 50 damage every 0.5 seconds to enemies in the area.​
    

Art

• Hero, Skin, and Mount platforms in the Collections menus have received a visual update.

User Interface

• Checkbox options have been added to profiles to filter results by game mode.

Design

Summon Abilities

• Summoned creatures (Zagara Roaches, Azmodan Demons, etc.) now deal ability damage which can be enhanced by the Hero’s Ability Power.
  
• Summoned creatures now obey Blind and Evade rules.

Heroes

Assassin

Chromie


Stats

• Basic Attack Range has been increased from 5.5 to 7

Abilities

• Sand Blast (Q)
  
  • No longer gains bonus damage when hitting enemy Heroes
    
  • Range has been decreased from 17 to 15
    
  • Scaling damage increased from 2 to 4%
    
  • Echo scaling damage increased from 2 to 4%
    
  • Cast time decreased from 1 to .8 seconds
    
  • Mana cost decreased from 20 to 15
    
• Past and Future Me (Sand Blast Quest)
  
  • Echo unlock requirements reduced from 60 to 50 Sand Blast hits
    
• Dragon’s Breath (W)
  
  • Mana cost reduced from 70 to 50
    
  • Range decreased from 17 to 15
    
  • Dragon’s Breath’s ground splat is now visible to enemies .5 seconds after cast
    
  • Damage reduced from 480 to 360
    
  • Cooldown reduced from 12 to 9 seconds
    
• Trait Addition: Bronze Talons
  
  • Hitting an enemy Hero with a Basic Ability increases the damage of Chromie’s next Basic Attack by 100%
    

Talents

• Level 1
  
  • Mounting Sand (Q)
    
    • Additional Functionality:
      
      • Now also increases the damage of Sand Blast’s Echo by 40%
        
  • Timewalker’s Pursuit (Active)
    
    • Adjusted Functionality:
      
      • No longer grants Mana Regeneration per Regen Globe gathered. Now grants 1 extra Mana Regeneration on quest complete.
        
• Level 2
  
  • Bronze Talons (Passive)
    
    • Removed
      
  • New Talent: Draconic Barrage (Trait)
    
    • Increase the bonus Basic Attack damage from casting Abilities by an additional 100%. Hitting an enemy Hero with Sand Blast grants 2 empowered Basic Attacks.
      
• Level 5
  
  • Mobius Loop (W)
    
    • New functionality:
      
      • If an enemy Hero is hit by Dragon’s Breath, lower the cooldown by 2 seconds and refund the Mana cost
        
  • Chrono Sickness (E)
    
    • Slow amount reduced from 50 to 35%
      
• Level 11
  
  • Time Out (Active)
    
    • Duration reduced from 7 to 5 seconds
      
• Level 14
  
  • Fast Forward (Q)
    
    • Range requirement reduced from 75 to 70%
      
  • Quantum Overdrive (Active)
    
    • Ability Power bonus increased from 20 to 25%
      

Developer Comment: We’re making a few changes to Chromie to reduce the frustration when playing against her and to reduce her wide power variance between games. A number of these changes are designed to increase counter-play when playing against Chromie, like reducing her range on her abilities and letting enemies see Dragon’s Breath shortly after it has been cast. In exchange, Chromie’s Sand Blast has a shorter cast time, and she will now have a modified version of Bronze Talons baseline, where she can weave in auto-attacks for hitting enemy Heroes with her abilities. The reason we decided to give her the additional Bronze Talons trait is so that Chromie players are encouraged to interact more with their opponents. We’re rewarding them for getting into more dangerous positions with the possibility of increased damage output. This also lets us redistribute her damage away from her high burst, long range abilities, and more into something her opponents have a better opportunity to play around. We like Chromie’s unique place in our game as a long-range, artillery mage that requires enemies to pay attention to their positioning but over time we found that she simply had too much range and burst for players to feel like they had an engaging experience when playing against her. While we’ve had a blast with these changes, we’ll continue to keep an eye on her going forward and are prepared to make additional tweaks as needed.


Jaina


Abilities

• Summon Water Elemental (R)
  
  • Damage reduced from 78 to 62
    
  • Damage now benefits from Frostbite
    
  • Damage now counts towards Frostbite’s quest
    

Support

Stukov


Talents

• Level 1
  
  • Low Blow (E)
    
    • Moved from Level 13
      
    • Bonus damage reduced from 150 to 100%
      
  • Poppin’ Pustules (D)
    
    • No longer has a Quest component
      
    • New functionality:
      
      • Detonating a Weighted Pustule within 1.5 seconds of it expiring increases its damage by 100% and applies its damage and slow in an area
        
    • Explosion radius reduced from 4.5 to 3.75
      
• Level 4
  
  • Biotic Armor (Q)
    
    • Physical Armor reduced from 50 to 15
      
    • Now works on all targets that have Healing Pathogen
      
    • Additional Functionality:
      
      • Now also grants 50 Physical Armor for 2.5 seconds to targets who have Healing Pathogen when Bio-Kill Switch is detonated
        
  • Vigorous Reuptake (D)
    
    • No longer has a Quest component
      
    • New functionality:
      
      • Bio-Kill Switch’s healing is increased by 25% if 3 or more targets have Healing Pathogen on them when Bio-Kill Switch is detonated
        
• Level 7
  
  • Within My Reach (E)
    
    • Removed
      
  • The Long Pitch (W)
    
    • Bonus range reduced from 100 to 50%
      
    • Additional functionality:
      
      • Detonating 2 or more Weighted Pustules with a single cast of Bio-Kill Switch causes the cooldowns of non-Heroic abilities to recharge 100% faster for 3 seconds.
        
  • Growing Infestation (E)
    
    • Moved from Level 1
      
    • No longer increases the cooldown of Lurking Arm
      
    • New functionality:
      
      • Now reduces Lurking Arm’s channel duration to 4 seconds
        
• Level 13
  
  • It Hungers (E)
    
    • Moved from Level 7
      
    • New functionality:
      
      • Increase the range of Lurking Arm by 20%. If Lurking Arm hits enemy Heroes 15 times, reset its cooldown and refund its Mana cost
        
• Level 20
  
  • Push Comes to Shove (R)
    
    • Speed bonus removed
      
    • Additional functionality:
      
      • After colliding with terrain, enemy Heroes are slowed by 50% for 4 seconds
        
  • Top Off (Q)
    
    • Moved from Level 4
      
    • Bonus healing reduced from 50% to 30%
      
    • Adjusted Functionality:
      
      • Increased healing is now applied to all targets that have Healing Pathogen
        

Developer Comment: In the same vein as our earlier changes to Kael’thas, we felt that Stukov could use some love in the talent diversity department. We’ve made a number of functionality changes that should open up new builds and play styles, particularly in his earlier talent tiers.


Collection

New Bundles

• The following new bundles are available for a limited time! Be sure to check out the latest In-Development blog for more details.
  
  • Bow Before Viper Bundle
    
  • Whitemane Heroic Bundle
    
  • Sidewinder Ana Skin Pack
    
  • Imperator Stukov Skin Pack
    
  • Deathfang Genji Skin Pack
    

New Announcers

• Whitemane

New Skins

• Whitemane
  
  • Scarlet Whitemane
    
  • Twilight Whitemane
    
  • Celestial Empress Whitemane
    
  • Galactic Empress Whitemane
    
  • Warpspace Empress Whitemane
    
• Ana
  
  • Sidewinder Ana
    
  • Noxious Sidewinder Ana
    
  • Arctic Sidewinder Ana
    
• Stukov
  
  • Imperator Stukov
    
  • Noxious Imperator Stukov
    
  • Arctic Imperator Stukov
    
• Genji
  
  • Deathfang Genji
    
  • Noxious Deathfang Genji
    
  • Arctic Deathfang Genji
    
• Muradin
  
  • Butterscotch Kandy King Muradin
    
  • Frosted Kandy King Muradin
    
• Lunara
  
  • Emerald Lunara
    
• Murky
  
  • Clownfish Murky
    
• Chen
  
  • Pristine Chen
    
• Chromie
  
  • Obsidian Chromie
    

New Mounts

• Viper Dominator
  
  • Hazardous Viper Dominator
    
  • Noxious Viper Dominator
    

New Portraits, Sprays, and Emojis

• Several new emoji packs and portraits have also been added to the game. You can get a look in our most recent In-Development blog.

Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed a number of typo and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game.
  
• Fixed an issue causing some abilities to repeatedly automatically cast if right-click was held.
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from responding to whispers from other players with the “Only allow friends to send me messages” option enabled.
  
• Quick Cast: Fixed an issue causing some vector targeted abilities to behave as if quick cast was always enabled.
  
• Quick Cast: On Release’ commands are now immediately fired when the hotkey for another ability is pressed. This should prevent some ‘lost keypress’ issues when firing abilities in rapid succession.

Sound

• Increased the volume of Alarak’s announcer pack.

Art

• Diablo: Fixed an issue with the geometry of Diablo’s tail.

Battlegrounds

• Alterac Pass: Fixed an issue that could cause the Cavalry’s aura effect to fail to display on low settings.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Abathur: Fixed an issue causing Abathur’s Monstosity to fail to gain damage when nearby enemy Minions are slain.
  
• Chromie: Fixed an issue that could cause Chromie’s next attack after landing a Sand Blast hit to fail to gain the Bronze Talons effect if she was attacking from maximum range.
  
• Hanzo: The Target Practice quest tracker will now differentiate between targets that have been hit 3 times and those who haven’t been hit at all.
  
• Jaina: Fixed an issue that allowed the Water Elemental’s attacks to progress the Frostbite quest progress against unchilled targets.
  
• Leoric: Fixed an issue causing the visual effect seen on Heroes affected by Ominous Wraith to fail to appear.
  
• Lt. Morales: Healing Beam will no longer heal units affected by Time Stop.
  
• Medivh: Medivh the Black’s raven has been updated to match the theme of the skin.
  
• Medivh: Medivh can now be selected while in Raven Form when attempting to view his target info panel.
  
• Medivh: Portal Mastery portals can now be affected by cooldown reduction.
  
• Stukov: Fixed an issue that could prevent Virulent Reaction from rooting targets if the Poppin Pustules talent was chosen.

Destination: Korea

The Eastern Clash is here! The newly erected Paradise City resort in Incheon, Korea will host the top four Heroes of the Storm teams from both HGC China and HGC Korea in an epic competition. $100,000 in prize money will be up for grabs, along with the Eastern Clash trophy and international bragging rights.


In terms of frontrunners, Gen.G are looking stronger than ever—but veteran rivals Tempest and Ballistix are chomping at the bit. Chinese challengers CE and SPT are in the running as well and want nothing more than to upset these Korean superpowers.

Here are your Eastern Clash qualified teams:

• Gen.G Esports
• Tempest
• Ballistix
• Team BlossoM
• Super Perfect Team
• CE
• TheOne
• Beyond the Game

Teams will be seeded based on their current HGC standings into a double elimination bracket. The first day’s matches will be best-of-three. The remaining matches will be best-of-five, except for the grand finals, will which be a best-of-seven with a single Battleground advantage awarded to the team coming from the upper bracket (i.e. 1-0 in their favor to start).

The following commentators will be on hand for the main event:

• Christopher “Tetcher” Ivermee
• Josh “Jhow” Howard
• Thomas “Khaldor” Kilian
• Wade “Dreadnaught” Penfold
• Daniel “Gclef” Na
• Joshua “Snitch” Bennett

Bookmark the event page to follow the bracket and be sure to tune in right here at playheroes.com/esports when the broadcast goes live on Aug. 16. Matches will begin at 6:00 p.m. PDT / 3:00 a.m. CEST.

Which patch are the clashes being played on?
Both Clashes will be played on the Raynor/Azmodan Balance Patch - https://twitter.com/HeroesEsports/st...93968015392768 (u/dyluuxx)


If people can't receive messages from strangers, in my opinion, they shouldn't be able to send messages to strangers.
I agree, this is something we can change. (u/Blizz_Joe)


Whitemane suggestion: Zeal heal for damage to minions
I totally get where the desire for this comes from, but Zeal gets to be as strong as it is precisely because of its limitations. Clemency is there in part to add a PVE (or just safer) healing option if you have a strong need, and Unwavering Faith fills a similar role by making Q more spammable in PVE situations.

We'll see how things play out on PTR/Live and we can always make adjustments if needed, but at least in our internal testing her PVE-friendly talents didn't feel like must-picks. (MattVi)


[Whitemane's Clemency talent being an additional button]
Exactly this. I love Holy Shock Uther, but one of the most frustrating things that can happen there is healing a relatively healthy ally when you meant to hit an enemy. With Whitemane it was even more painful having them on the same key, because with how Zeal works there were numerous cases where hitting an ally by mistake was a 3-4x worse outcome than hitting your intended enemy target.

This took a little getting used to in testing, but ultimately became second nature and felt much more reliable. Frustrating misclick moments were completely eliminated.

If it works out well we might consider applying the same treatment to similar abilities, but it would be case-by-case and dependent on player feedback. (MattVi)


Quick Question About Color and Design Philosophy
When it comes to Mounts, we like to consider that they may be used by a much wider range of heroes than just the Skins in a given bundle, so it's good to have at least one option that isn't directly tied to those colour variations.

This also enables the art team to give the texture artist responsible a large degree of ownership: that artist now has the opportunity to choose what they want the additional variant to be. It's awesome and empowering when an artist gets to create something they want to make vs something they are directed to make, so it keeps things fresh for everyone -- players and developers alike. (BlizzLana)


Yea, I was worried she'll [Whitemane] sound too similar to Li Ming but she sounds almost like a different VA.
As a matter of fact she is a different VA! Grey DeLisle is super talented and does awesome work for many of our characters, but Whitemane in Heroes is actually voiced by Erica Lindbeck and she did an amazing job, especially on that laugh =) (MattVi)


Too many effects in one trait [Chromie rework]
This is totally fair. Having too much going on in any one ability or trait can make the tooltip hard to parse, and is something we try to avoid whenever possible. In general if something gets to a point where it feels really long like that, it's a sign that we should probably shift some of that complexity into talents.

However this is harder to do with Hero reworks, as in those cases we're trying to improve gameplay, often in very specific ways, without fundamentally changing the Hero. At minimum I think we should continue to be vigilant here, and look for opportunities to keep the presentation on these as clean as possible. (MattVi)

Free-to-Play Hero Rotation: August 7, 2018

• Raynor
• Muradin
• Sonya
• Nazeebo
• Uther
• Jaina
• Arthas
• Brightwing
• Tyrael
• Kharazim
• Fenix (Slot unlocked at Player Level 5)
• Garrosh (Slot unlocked at Player Level 10)
• Samuro (Slot unlocked at Player Level 15)
• Sgt. Hammer (Slot unlocked at Player Level 20)

Every Tuesday, we place a number of Heroes on sale, and swap a fresh set of cosmetics into the featured item rotation. Check out this week’s items and then head in-game to pick up anything that catches your eye.

Heroic Deals: August 7 - 13, 2018

Our next set of Heroic Deals will begin on Tuesday, August 7! Check out the list of upcoming featured items and Hero discounts below.

Upcoming Hero Sales

• Uther — Sale Price: 250 gems
• Alarak — Sale Price: 375 Gems

The following skins and mounts will be added to the featured item rotation and will become purchasable with gems until this round of Heroic Deals comes to an end:

Upcoming Featured Skins

• Judgment Uther
• Bone Herald of N'Zoth Alarak
• Desert Watchdog Greymane*
• Cyborghawk Kael'thas
• Cave Dweller Lurkablo
• Crimson Cyb'Arak Anub'arak
• Biohazard Raider Rexxar
• Violet Tiger Kharazim

Upcoming Featured Mounts

• Hoarfrost Road Chariot
• Ivory Tyrael's Charger

* First time featured item!