Sylvanas has no time for games, and neither do I! Why, someone has to analyze the latest Heroes of the Storm patch notes from a high level point of view. Let’s get to it.

Disclaimer: I’m not a wizard. Things change very quickly early on with new patches, and as such, most of the meta-gaming discussion is conjectural



I have the distinct feeling that these two changes go hand in hand. Weaker structures cause you to level up more rapidly, as the experience they provide is simply easier and faster to collect. And as such, our devs must have decided to decelerate early experience gains to “even it out”. Of course, this is hard to 100% correlate because they didn’t deem essential to provide us with numbers.

The potential reasons behind the changes still make for an interesting discussion.
Were games becoming too long? Weaker structures objectively make individual rounds end faster because, well, you can just win (or lose!) faster. However, when we compare game length data from last week with, say, data from last November, we can that there isn’t much of an increase - only ~20 seconds on average. Still, it could’ve been decided that games were lasting too long anyway, notwithstanding any old data. Doubtful, though.

Were “pushers” falling out of favor? Let’s have a look at our big five: Abathur, Azmodan, Gazlowe, Sgt. Hammer and Zagara. We’ll leave Sylvanas out of the contest because I can’t invent data. Last week, the popularity rates for these Heroes were 1.4%, 1.0%, 0.8%, 5.4% and 4.4%, respectively. In other words, only Sgt. Hammer and Zagara were getting reasonable representation, and something tells me that this isn’t exclusively due to their PvE potential. What about their popularity rates, say, back in November? 3.6%, 3.5%, 2.5%, 1.6% and 2.5%, respectively. Even Gazlowe, one of the least popular picks, saw about twice the amount of play. On average, they saw more play. We all remember the popular Abathur-Azmodan cancer push. You just don’t really see anything like that anymore. Perhaps that the introduction of Sylvanas (a pusher!) was a convenient opportunity to review examine how pushers were faring as a whole.

Tl;dr: Pushing Heroes were falling out of favor. Structures are now weaker to improve their appeal, and experience rates were slightly reduced early on to do so without upsetting game balance.



By design, map objectives need be impactful. Their purpose is both to create hot-spots for Hero combat and provide powerful channels to influence game state. The Dragon Knight and Garden Terror could feel extremely unrewarding, being dominated by crowd control-heavy team compositions. This should assuage the issue.



Poor Haunted Mines, getting slammed with changes every other patch. The general consensus with the map is that it’s “too snowbally”. Which is just another way of saying that early advantages too often translated into victories. And it showed in game length stats: On average, Haunted Mines games ended between two and four minutes faster than other maps.

So, what do we have here? Nothing too fancy: weaker early Golems, less disparity between Golem health, and the inability to capitalize on “skull hoarding”. But you’ve read the patch notes as well as I have, so what does this mean? Let’s not make a muck of things. A weaker Golem means less structure kills. Less structure kills mean less experience and less pushing. Less pushing and less experience mean less disparity between the leading team and the underdog. Games should last longer, opening wider windows for comebacks.



So, we’ve discussed the impact of the Garden Terror’s crowd control resistance, but that’s not all there is to it. Before the patch, there were basically two (and a half) “correct” ways of using the Terror.

#1 involved kiting around and between two Forts or Keeps and dropping pots (Overgrowth) where enemy Heroes weren’t around to take them out.

#2 involved obtuse team fighting techniques, setting sights on a vulnerable/high value target and right clicking them to either push them out of the fight or kill them, all whilst using the Spore Queen’s Curse to interrupt valuable channeled skills and generally disrupt.

“#2.5” had you secure more seeds - which wasn’t really optimal, though sometimes proved necessary, given the Terror’s relatively useless skills outside of the situations described above.

Both #1 & #2 were frustrating to deal with, but on different levels. Chasing a 12,000-something health pool Terror to clean Overgrowths up felt like anything but a chore, and I’ve discussed a few patches ago how Heroes without an escape skill were overly vulnerable to the Terror’s attacks. Reducing its movement speed will go a long way towards alleviating both of these frustrating aspects. It only makes sense now to improve the Terror’s Health to compensate.

Another thing to note is how inefficient the Terror was at sieging guarded positions. It really felt like it couldn’t soak as much damage as it should, and Overgrowth had a tendency to not really do too much. Let’s see how the buffs fare.
Last but not least: Overgrowth not instantly trivializing Mercenaries is certainly not a bad thing.


Structures now have 10% less health as well, so this checks out. Moving on….



With a pick rate of 85% to 99% the week prior to the patch, Healing Ward was a strong contender for the most over-picked support talent in the game. And rightly so: the wooden pole was as strong as it was polarizing - and will remain a top pick in spite of the nerfs. While its overall healing remains the same, the longer duration will not only offer more room for counterplay (read: killing the ward), but also make it less effective as a raw team fight healing tool.



Ice Block saw some very niche popularity on Malfurion, while being pretty much overshadowed in pick rates on Brightwing, Jaina and Nazeebo. Sprint just has that versatility Ice Block can never really offer, and I suspect the only reason it is ever picked on Malfurion is that he doesn’t have Sprint as a choice in the first place. The cooldown reduction is nice (it’s now on par with Sprint!) but does little to address its usability issues. I highly doubt it’ll be enough to beat the 1-to-95 pick rate for Nazeebo.



Look! It’s a Mutalisk… It’s a new talent… no! It’s Scouting Drone! I’m so sorry, I somehow forgot you existed. I couldn’t honestly tell who actually has access to this talent before looking it up, but here’s the list: Brightwing, ETC, Malfurion, Raynor and Tychus. Arguably, only Tychus has a mandatory level 1 talent pick (Armor Piercing Rounds, at ~98%). Anyone else could make a pretty good candidate to experiment with the Drone. And I predict that there will be experimentation, though only at an extreme level of play - there one where people actually understand the importance of information… and how to capitalize on it. Looking good, Mr. Drone. Your time will come.


Toxic Net talents have never been very attractive. The skill, in itself, is very much peripheral to Abathur’s gameplay, the core of which is Symbiote, and the icing of which are Locusts. Players agreed: Before the patch, these talents had between ~1% and ~5% pick rates. These rates have quickly grown, up to ~20% in Envenomed Nest’s case. Understandably so; that thing makes very short work of Minion waves, and is generally obnoxious to deal with, especially as Cloaked Heroes. The other choices aren’t quite as popular, mostly because they have to contend with other very competitive picks - Adrenal Overload is godsent, and Vile Nest just doesn’t provide enough to be justified.

As for Heroic choices, some big buffs all around. The implications of a permanent Monstrosity are actually pretty significant: Given that it grows in power over time (5% health and damage per kill, up to 30 stacks), it now has the potential of becoming a lane-crushing threat that must imperatively be answered, and perhaps by more than one Hero. At max stacks, it actually stands to have more health than a tank and damage than an assassin of equal level! Brace yourselves.

The ramifications of Ultimate Evolution’s changes are much harder to gauge. The ultimate point of interest, back in the olden days, for the skill, was the cloning of Heroic skills. This obviously isn’t a feature anymore, and I such, I stand tempted to say that the damage buffs don’t quite make up for the missing Heroic and talents. There’s also the fact that you can’t use Symbiote with your clone, unlike Monstrosity. It’s also really short lived, so you can’t mess up on your timing. Edge to Monstrosity.



“Pool” Azmodan has seen quite a bit of play since the Taste for Blood buffs, and I had unsuccessfully predicted that it wouldn’t. Shame on me perhaps, but the trend quickly faded when players figured out that a strong early game team composition could very easily deal with the Lord of Sin’s shenanigans. And here we are, a month later, with a late nerf to an already out-metagamed talent. Not much of a nerf at that; stacks very seldom reached 250 in the first place. And so, why has this change showed up at all? Simply put, I think it promoted a playstyle that was out of line with Blizzard’s desires. Concepts like farming and carrying belong to your other popular titles, and Taste for Blood went against this ideology. And it still does - though only up to a certain point. Which is good.


Now for a curveball. Although Apocalypse wasn’t exactly an unpopular choice - 10% more picks than Lightning Breath - it did share the spot for longest cooldown in the game with Mosh Pit, Maelstrom and Bloodlust. It is a powerful skill, it is easy to whiff, and it is fun to use. I’m all for a cooldown reduction, although I’m unsure if it was actually warranted.



In the current meta, E.T.C. is broadly considered to be the numero uno tank. Fury of the Storm gave him an interesting yet unexploited pushing niche, but Hardened Shield… is just really good, to the point where it’ll likely easily compete with the also really good Bolt of the Storm. It also seems like a more fitting talent. Not much else to say here.



I can’t help but feel that Falstad was outclassed by Valla in a lot of cases - her damage and utility being simply more reliable. And as such, the gap is now slowly closing. The Barrel Roll changes are actually huge, amounting to an enormous 100% buff, which is to say that it now has half the cooldown it once had, thanks to last patch’s Flow Rider changes. To put things into perspective, it’s like Vault… with 2 seconds less cooldown… and a shield… that goes through obstacles. It’s good.

As for the Mighty Gust changes, well, the skill remains as situational as ever, and as outclassed by Shock a-- Hinterland Blast as ever.



So… now that Jaina is seeing some competitive play, she gets a huge buff! Look at all that damage! Now, if the numbers don’t seem so high, don’t be fooled - Frostbite increases all of them by 50%, and by another 15% while talented. The most notable change however is to Frostbite itself. Jaina’s inability to deal with Mercenaries and Structures was a blaring weakness of hers. It is no more - and she should, in fact, turn into a very potent wall killer.

In my last analysis, I pointed out that Nexus Fury did not belong on Jaina. Blizzard responded (to me personally, I am sure) by replacing it with Arcane Power, a really iconic WoW mage spell. It’s not quite up to Overdrive’s power level (15% damage versus 25%), but it does give you mana instead of sapping it. Will it take over Bolt of the Storm in popularity? Nothing does. Will it see some play? Most definitely. I like the tradeoff, and more talent choices should offer meaningful choices.



Cool.


I suppose this is fine, given that the clone only lasts for 20 seconds now. Healing Holo Decoys was definitely undesirable.



This must be a mistake. Murky buffs? In all seriousness, all of these changes are sound. Pufferfish felt really clunky to use with such a long cast time on a character that otherwise should’ve felt very nimble. Slime received the Frostbite treatment versus Unstoppables and should go towards making Murky feel less useless at times (though barely). The Health Regen is insignificant at best, but the experience changes put him on par with the Lost Vikings in terms of feed. Last but not least, Living the Dream. This is actually one of the more interesting talents to date. Murky typically doesn’t really care all that much about dying, but this certainly changes the Hero’s playstyle - and comes with a hefty reward. Overall, is Murky in a better spot? Yes. But there’s still some work to be done.



Ravenous Spirit was one of the biggest culprits in terms of one-sided pick rates. They tried making Gargantuan more attractive by increasing its Health and making it less dumb, but it probably wasn’t enough - and so, Ravenous Spirit itself had to be hit. Not only does it do less damage, but also is it less reliable. And not only that; Specialized Toxin, oh-so-potent when used together, was hit as well, on top of Gidbinn no longer increasing its duration. So, was the goal met? Will Gargantuan see play? Yes, it will - but Nazeebo, as a whole, will see less play in himself. He’s far from a dead pick, but certainly won’t pack the punch he once did. And for as long as Sprint exists, nobody will care about Toads of Hugeness, by the way. The buff is irrelevant.



I’d rather not dignify this change with an analysis.



Hammer always had an awkwardly high amount of Health to match an… awkwardly high amount of slipperiness. That’s a ~7% nerf at level 1, and a hefty ~15% at level 20. Do keep in mind that less total Health means less overall healing from First Aid as well, a popular pick on her.



Which is how it was in the first place, some months ago. This is certainly a most welcomed change, especially now that Sonya is starting to see more play.



And more Stitches nerfs that aren’t targeted towards Hook. Why bother? But, in all seriousness now - these are actually quite nice. Vile Gas is just so insidious in that it deals so much “hidden” passive damage that I’m glad to see it take a hit again. As for Pulverize, that thing just hard countered anyone with channeled abilities with very little possible counter play. The new version has some very neat synergy with Vile Gas, Hook and Putrid Bile, which I like. And the reduced cooldown will certainly help players fill the dead time between his other long cooldowns. Cool stuff.



Mark my words, friends: One day, Force Wall’s true power will be revealed. But until then, Archon will keep its 90% pick rate.



I think that The Lost Vikings were actually supposed to get Fury of the Storm, as shown in the last patch notes, but did not in fact get it. It makes sense now, in hindsight - they would push in such a ridiculous fashion should they have the regular version of the talent. And so, this is what we get instead. This special version is 50% as effective as the regular version… but you get 3 Vikings. Don’t underestimate this.

Regarding Longboat Raid: This is too little of a nerf to actually impact pick rates... and frustration rates. I’m rather surprised this Heroic even exists in its current form, given that our devs have been very aggressive with “second health bars”. Well… sorry, Play Again next patch.


This is one of the most literal cases of nerf reversals I’ve ever witnessed. Remember these? :

• Frostwolf Resilience (Trait)


• Heal amount changed from 49 (+36 per level) to 60 (+23 per level)


• Chain Lightning (Q)


• Primary target scaling damage reduced from 17 per level to 15 per level

How has Thrall been lately, by the way? I don’t know, haven’t seen him! Maybe this’ll help, on top of the free rotation week.
And moving on… Onto the Windfury changes, that is. There is a bit of irony here. Thrall undoubtedly has issues with his uptime. Not that this is a bad thing, for he does hit like a truck. However, Wind Shear now competes with Stone Wolves - so you must choose between mobility cooldown and longer roots. The choice is interesting but comes off as an unfortunate and frankly unnecessary nerf. The trend of moving strong talents on the same tier has to stop, by the way. Weaker talents should instead be improved to become more attractive, somewhat like what we’ve seen for Abathur.



It seems to be that our devs are trying to open up a Basic Attack build path for Tyrande. Unfortunately for them, she just doesn’t really have the skillset and raw stats to support this. I have to say that I do, however, appreciate the changes to Light of Elune and Lunar Flare. Before the patch, Light of Elune felt terribly weak. But now, when supported by Overflowing light, the ability actually yields about 30% more healing output than Uther’s Holy Light. That’s nothing to scoff at. As for Lunar Flare, the Lunar Blaze talent dependency was eradicated by simply improving the base ability. We need more changes like this one.



And, just as with Raynor, the Uther rework will be featured in another article. Stay tuned!



Succinct, to the point: Valla has been a prime pick for too long, and removing Battle Momentum is a blow to her most popular build. Searing Attacks is likely to now be the prime pick at level 7.

The Vault changes are actually part of the ever-so-important “crowd control versus movement” debate that has forever plagued the genre. You are hit by a hard crowd control effect during a dash. What should happen? Before this change, the crowd control skill was denied its effect. Now, it’s the other way around, with Vault being denied its effect. Both situations are problematic because in both cases, there is an arbitrary decision to make one of the skill more important than the other. This is obviously frustrating, as a player, because we inherently expect our buttons to do things when we press them, with the notable exception of interruptible channeled abilities being a well-accepted convention. So, what’s the mature solution here? Simply put: crowd control effects should fully affect their target only after the movement ability has completed its displacement effects. This way, everyone would be happy.



After a year of unequivocal talent dominance, Double Bombs has been heavy-handedly cuffed. Unfortunately, I’m one to believe that the talent wasn’t the main culprit behind Zeratul’s ridiculous burst damage potential, but rather, a certain level 20 talent that allows one to rapidly chuck four Singularity Spikes in an instant. I certainly wish they’d go back and rewind that specific talent out of Zeratul’s choices.

Conclusion

All in all, most of the changes featured in this patch are sound, especially the map-specific changes. Most Heroes are seeing some degree of competitive play on the North American side besides Abathur, Anub’arak, Arthas, Gazlowe, Murky, Raynor and Thrall, making the current meta the most varied we’ve seen to date. The most powerful outliers are seeing reasonable nerfs, though the weaker Heroes seem to need a bit more attention. Regardless, I find this patch to be one of the best ever released.