Heroes Of The Storm Balance Update – July 26, 2017

[Nerraw]

We just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm in order to apply balance changes and a few bug fixes.


Assassin

Genji


Stats

• Health reduced from 1600 to 1550
• Health Regen reduced from 3.3 to 3.2

Abilities

• Shuriken (Q)
  • Mana cost increased from 15 to 20
• Dragonblade (R)
  • Cooldown increased from 80 to 100 seconds
  • Mana cost increased from 50 to 75

Talents

• Level 7
  
  • Dodge (Passive)
    • Charges reduced from 3 to 1
    • Cooldown reduced from 12 to 8 seconds

Greymane


Abilities

• Cursed Bullet (R)
  • Damage reduced from 40 to 35% of enemy Heroes’ current Health

Tychus


Talents

• Level 4
  • Fully Loaded (Q)
    • Cooldown reduction increased from 33% (4 seconds) to ~41% (5 seconds)

Specialist

Xul


Abilities

• Raise Skeleton (Trait)
  • Health reduced from 300 to 270
• Cursed Strikes (W)
  • Cooldown increased from 15 to 16 seconds

Talents

• Level 1
  
  • Backlash (Trait)
    • Damage reduced from 15 to 12% of enemy Heroes’ maximum Health
• Level 4
  • Grim Scythe (W)
    • Cooldown reduction per attack increased from .5 to .75 seconds
    • Maximum cooldown reduction increased from 10 to 12 seconds

Support

Stukov


Abilities

• Healing Pathogen (Q)
  • Mana cost increased from 30 to 40
• Flailing Swipe (R)
  • Pushback distance increased by 50%

Talents

• Level 1
  • Spine Launcher (Passive)
    • Slow duration increased from 1 to 1.5 seconds (now matches his attack speed)
  • Fetid Touch (W)
    • Quest requirements reduced from 20 and 40 Heroes hit to 15 and 30
  • Growing Infestation (E)
    • Added functionality:
      • Now increases the Cooldown of Lurking Arm by 4 seconds
• Level 4
  • One Good Spread… (Q)
    • Spreading requirement reduced from 4 to 3 Heroes
    • Mana refund increased from 30 to 40
  • Vigorous Reuptake (D)
    • Healing bonus reduced from 50 to 40%
• Level 16
  • Pox Populi (D)
    • Adjusted functionality:
      • Detonating Bio-Kill Switch no longer refreshes heal duration, but instead extends it by 3 seconds
• Level 20
  • Controlled Chaos (R)
    • Cooldown between casts reduced from 3 to 1 second
    • Cooldown for each charge reduced from 40 to 30 seconds
  • Push Comes to Shove (R)
    • Duration requirement reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 seconds

Uther


Abilities

• Holy Light (Q)
  • Healing reduced from 380 to 360
  • Self-healing reduced from 190 to 180
• Holy Radiance (W)
  • Mana cost increased from 60 to 70

Warrior

Chen


Abilities

• Fortifying Brew (Trait)
  • Brew per second reduced from 40 to 30
  • Chen will now instantly gain 25 Brew upon activation

Talents

• Level 1
  • Elusive Brawler (Active)
    • Cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds
    • Cooldown reduction from Basic Attacks reduced from 3 to 2 seconds

Muradin


Stats

• Health increased from 2633 to 2765
• Health regen increased from 5.5 to 5.8

Rexxar


Talents

• Level 1
  • Flare (Active)
    • Cooldown reduced from 25 to 20 seconds

Stitches


Abilities

• Vile Gas (Trait)
  • Damage reduced from 18 to 17

Talents

• Level 1
  • Heavy Slam (W)
    • Bonus damage reduced from 50 to 40%

Bug Fixes

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Diablo: Casting Shadow Charge on Sgt. Hammer while she is in Siege Mode will no longer cause Diablo to pass through her.
• Malfurion: The Moonburn Talent will no longer cause Moonfire to deal bonus damage to Mercenaries and Monsters prior to reaching 25% bonus damage against Minions.
• Malfurion: Casting Astral Communion now properly consumes 100 Mana.
• Nazeebo: Fixed an issue that could prevent Voodoo Ritual from gaining stacks after scoring the killing blow on a Minion.
• Stukov: Fixed a typo in the tooltip for Fetid Touch.
• Stukov: Stop, Hold Fire, Taunt, and Dance commands can no longer be issued while casting or channeling Lurking Arm.
• Stukov: Fixed an issue that could cause FPS to drop to 30 when targeting Lurking Arm.
• Stukov: Massive Shove will no longer be cancelled when used on Sgt. Hammer while she is in Siege Mode.
• Tyrande: After learning Huntress’ Fury, Basic Attacks against targets with Hunter’s Mark will now correctly splash to nearby enemy Mercenaries.
• Tyrande: Fixed an issue causing Sentinel to benefit from increased width prior to learning the Ranger Talent.

[DesoPL]

That was brutal nerf for Genji.

[ophion1990]

Pretty expected changes overall, Uther nerf was long overdue, Xul was probably too good after rework, Stitches gets some power taken away though he still has his enormous slow at 16 to keep him strong, Stukov gets some of his utility nerfed (surprised they're not adressing the E itself) and Genji gets Dodge/Dragon Blade nerfed (not sure if the HP nerf was needed). Nice that they reverted that seemingly random Cursed Bullet change aswell, I guess.

[Deleted]

No, my 'Don't mind me, I'm just here to stand in the way and look pretty, not to outdamage mages'-slam build nerfed.

Anything else looks good., including the first class funeral for Genji. But Uther will need more nerfs to restore support balance.

[apepi]

I honestly think they should have not nerfed Stukov at all. He has what? 49.5% win ratio? I just don't see it.

[Nerraw]

I honestly think they should have not nerfed Stukov at all. He has what? 49.5% win ratio? I just don't see it.

His skill-ceiling is high enough that most players are meh at playing him while the really good Stukovs are gods. Think a less extreme Medivh. I expect this nerf is targeted at the top-end scene.

[Hisholyness]

Genji seems overnerferd and arguably nuetered.

Stukov needed nerf on E mostly

Xul and Uther need to be hit harder imo

[Deleted]

His skill-ceiling is high enough that most players are meh at playing him while the really good Stukovs are gods. Think a less extreme Medivh. I expect this nerf is targeted at the top-end scene.

Not saying you are wrong, as Pros play on a completely different level than Master and Diamond players; but on the ladder he actually is not top heavy and tends to slightly underperform in Diamond/Masters and overperform in Bronze/Silver.

I'd be very surprised if we see him in Pro games on any map other than Braxis. Maybe Tomb/Towers if two supports get banned early (and Mines if that abomination makes it into the tournament map pool).

[apepi]

His skill-ceiling is high enough that most players are meh at playing him while the really good Stukovs are gods. Think a less extreme Medivh. I expect this nerf is targeted at the top-end scene.

The thing is, I think these nerfs hit his low skill cap people much more than the high ones. As Stukov it can be so hard then you enemy team dives you you can easily just die.

[Gallahadd]

Tbh, the Xul changes are probably a buff to his Cursed Strike build... Which is fine by me, because that's all I ever play on him.

Although sadly, I expect more in the future, he's RIDICULOUSLY strong against stupid enemies. Even stays pretty strong against good ones too.

[PPN]

he's RIDICULOUSLY strong against stupid enemies.

haha what does that mean?

I recently played some games with Xul and he doesnt feel so op to me. When he isnt on free rotation it seems that he sees no gameplay at all. I levled him to rank 15 and in all those matches i had him maybe 2 times as opponent.

Maybe popularity doesnt show how strong a char is. Even when i feel that usually it does. The more op something is the more ppl faceroll it.

[Gallahadd]

haha what does that mean?

He's very good at punishing grouped up enemies. With his Cursed Strikes maxed out, and Poison Nova he deals insane AoE damage... However, most decent teams know that having everyone group up is generally a bad idea, so they don't do it.

Of course, low ranked players haven't read that memo yet, so you tend to get big deathball groups... And then it's Xul's time to shine.

[Deleted]

Genji is far from dead.

'Dead' is a matter of definition; his ladder performance is on par with Medivh now. His prey, the four traditional mages (Jaina, KT, Guldan and Ming) all went up.

Muradin clearly up, Stitches clearly down, both around 48% together with ETC. I expect a really interesting tournament based on this balance patch, and see only Tass as clear first pick/first ban material. Behind him maybe Uther, Tracer, KT and the globals.

[RH92]

Genji is far from dead. Dragonblade cooldown increase is annoying, but maybe now people won't ban it so often so I will get to actually play it in ranked. If you know when and how to dive and your team is able to bring the others to lower HP, you will still be able to score triple/penta kills and few will be able to get away. I actually expected a catastrophic nerf on his damage, but all is fine, already gave it a test.

The Dodge passive nerf however makes him significantly weaker against AA, I kind of doubt people will take the talent often now.

They were good nerfs. His damage was always fine, just the number of defenses was insane.

He can still clean up with resets, he just needs to be more careful as he is much easier to punish now.

Which is good, I believe he remains relevant, just not as prevalent.

Muradin clearly up, Stitches clearly down, both around 48% together with ETC. I expect a really interesting tournament based on this balance patch, and see only Tass as clear first pick/first ban material. Behind him maybe Uther, Tracer, KT and the globals.

Even though Greymane received a small nerf, but with Genji being nerfed even more, I expect him to rise even more in priority.

[Deleted]

@RH92 Good point.