The Patch notes for the impending Heroes of the Storm update can be found below.
New Battleground
Towers of Doom
The Grave Keeper and Raven Lord have risen over a dark and mysterious city, each seeking to add it to the territories under their control. Now, these Realm Lords call upon the aid of Heroes in their battle for dominance over the Towers of Doom.
Each Core on this Battleground is surrounded by an indestructible barrier, and cannot be razed by Heroes, Minions, or Mercenaries.
Instead, Heroes must capture the Altars that periodically activate within the city. Upon doing so, each of the Bell Towers controlled by the capturing team will fire a payload that damages the opposing Core.
Bell Tower allegiance is fickle! A Bell Tower that has been destroyed will respawn after a short delay, aligning itself with the team that took it down.
Toppling a Bell Tower not only increases a team’s area of control over the Battleground, but also grants an additional payload in the volleys that fire on the enemy Core after capturing an Altar.
Towers of Doom Available Now on PTR
Towers of Doom is the only Battleground available for play in PTR matchmaking queues.
Battleground pools on the PTR have been reduced so that more thorough Towers of Doom playtesting can be done] and any bugs discovered during this time can be fixed before the Battleground is officially released.
Please note: Towers of Doom will not be available in the live version of Heroes immediately on patch day, but will remain playable on the PTR until playtesting concludes on November 24.
Art
General •Tower targeting ring size reduced by 50%
Heroes •Artanis has received improvements for his walk animations •Stitches has received additional facial animation polish.
Hero Abilities
The following Hero Abilities and Talents have received visual polish:
Magni Muradin – Storm Bolt (Q)
Imposing Presence (Talent) – Heroes affected by Imposing Presence’s Attack Speed Slow will now display visual effects.
User Interface
General
Party and game invitation pop-ups will now display the inviting player’s portrait frame.
In-Game UI
In-Game Score Screen
The XP column on the in-game Score Screen has been removed. The Takedown column on the in-game Score Screen (TAB) has been split into two new columns: Kills and Assists.
Kills can be earned by scoring the final blow on an enemy Hero.
Assists function in much the same way that Takedowns did in previous versions of the game. Any ally that is nearby when an enemy Hero is slain will receive an Assist for that kill.
Minimap
The minimap will now visually indicate when allied Heroes are using Hearthstone to return to the Hall of Storms.
Additionally, a chat message will be displayed whenever an ally activates Hearthstone.
Design & Gameplay
Scaling Changes
Health and damage scaling for all Heroes, Battleground Events, Minions, and Mercenaries has been changed from flat, additive values to values that are multiplicative by percentage.
A large portion of Heroes’ total scaling amounts, which were previously gained over the course of a game, have been added to their base values.
Respawn timers have been increased for levels 1 – 10.
Please review our recent blog on scaling and respawn timer changes for more details.
Attack Speed Slows
Attack speed slows now apply only to Heroes and Summons.
Tooltips
Several tooltips that lacked specific details regarding delays, charges gained, etc., have been updated with exact details.
Talents
Gathering Power
Hero takedowns now increase Ability Power by 2% per kill, up to a maximum of 30%. All stacks are now also lost upon death.
Heroes
Assassin:
Falstad
Conjurer's Pursuit (Talent) removed
Gathering Power (Talent) removed
Hammerang (Q)
Power Throw (Talent) moved from Level 1 to Level 4
New Talent (Level 1): Gathering Storm
Permanently increases Hammerang's damage by 1 every time it damages an enemy Hero
Flow Rider (Talent)
No longer decreases Barrel Roll’s cooldown
Now causes Basic Abilities to recharge 100% faster while the Tailwind trait is active
Jaina
Frostbite (Trait)
Deep Chill (Talent)
Bonus to the Movement Speed slow applied by Chill decreased from 35% to 30%
Zeratul
Focused Attack (Talent) removed
New Talent (Level 4): Master Warp-Blade
Every 3rd consecutive Basic Attack against the same Hero deals 100% bonus damage
Support
Kharazim
Insight (Trait)
Mana regeneration granted on every third hit increased from 12 (+0.21 per level) to 14 (+0.36 per level)
Iron Fists (Trait)
Damage bonus granted on every third hit increased from 100% to 125%
Uther
Eternal Devotion (Trait)
Spirit form duration decreased from 10 to 8 seconds
Divine Shield (R)
Cooldown increased from 70 to 90 seconds
Warrior
Leoric
Drain Hope (W)
Cooldown decreased from 12 to 11 seconds
If Leoric is stunned while casting Drain Hope, the stun will no longer cancel the Ability and the missile will continue to travel
Damage dealt and Health gained reduced from 25% to 20%
Damage and healing now increase over time as a flat value
Rexxar
Misha (Trait) (D)
Misha's death timer portrait will now appear in the death timer bar while she is respawning
The frequency at which Rexxar's voiceover will play when commanding Misha has been reduced
Misha, Fixate (1)
Misha, Fixate has been renamed Misha, Focus!
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed an issue which could cause a team with no Support Heroes to be matched against a team with Support Heroes in the Quick Match queue.
Fixed an issue in which the Auto-Select Hero could occasionally fail to give the player a Support Hero on teams that lacked Supports.
Fixed an issue that could cause French AZERTY keyboards to revert to using QWERTY keyboard hotkeys.
Battlegrounds
The tooltip for the Plant Terror’s Overgrowth Ability no longer states that it does not disable the enemy Core.
Fixed an issue that prevented Hero vision radiuses from displaying on Infernal Shrines and Battlefield of Eternity minimaps.
Heroes and Talents
Abathur can no longer capture objectives at his body’s location while using Ultimate Evolution.
Abathur’s Adrenal Overload Talent now properly increases Monstrosity’s attack speed while it is under the effects of Symbiote.
Ultimate Evolution Clones and Monstrosities will now properly receive the benefits of Abathur’s Volatile Mutation Talent if it is selected after a Summon is already active.
Heroes with the Relentless Talent that become Polymorphed will now properly receive damage from Brightwing’s Unstable Anomaly Talent when Polymorph expires.
The visual effects for Butcher’s Brand will no longer persist on a target that is protected from death by Kharazim’s Divine Palm.
Chen’s Spirit forms will now properly leave Stealth after casting an Ability during Storm, Earth, Fire.
Heroes that are simultaneously struck by Diablo’s Overpower and Stitches’ Hook will no longer be thrown outside the playable area.
A Hero that activates Ice Block while simultaneously coming under the effects of Stitches’ Gorge will now properly retain Ice Block’s visual effects for the duration of the Talent’s effects.
Fixed a bug that could cause Stealthed Heroes to fire a Basic Attack at a nearby enemy immediately after Mounting.
Fixed an issue that could allow Leoric to change direction while using March of the Black King.
Fixed an issue that could cause a Medivac to persist on the battlefield if Lt. Morales was killed while casting Medivac Dropship.
Damage prevented by Lt. Morales' Safeguard will now always be displayed in whole numbers.
The cooldown for Kerrigan’s Ravage will now be properly reset when it is used to destroy an enemy Structure.
Misha can now properly return to Rexxar if she is on the opposite side of an enemy Gate and an open path exists where a Wall was destroyed.
Sonya’s next Basic Attack after casting Ancient Spear will now properly benefit from the Follow Through Talent.
Heal over time and damage over time previews for Tyrande’s Shadowstalk and Kael’thas’ Living Bomb will now more accurately reflect the burst Healing and burst damage amounts at the end of each Ability’s effects.
User Interface
Legendary and Epic Hero Skins are now appropriately labeled as such on the Hero Select screen.
Fixed an issue that prevented mouse-wheel scrolling through the Friends List while browsing the Shop.
Players in Hero League draft lobbies can no longer be invited to join a Real-ID friend’s party.
It will be interesting to see the scaling stats impact on talents like Seasoned Marksman and Globe talents. Some heroes have well over double the health on the PTR at start, so the impact of 5 bonus attack damage in early game is pretty weak. Likewise 3 bonus regen isn't much value if you start with twice as much health and opponents are hitting harder. Late game things are the same, but it's a noticeable nerf to these talents in the early game. Granted they are mainly taken for mid to late game effect. With the increased death timer, what happens in the early game is going to matter more. It will be interesting to see if they are valued the same way.
I also like Zeratul's change. It makes it so he can't just truck you completely frontloaded then get away for free with blink. Granted if you do a typical rotation you'll still receive the critical bonus.
Just played some of the PTR. I know we tend to scroll straight down to Hero changes, but the biggest parts about the upcoming patch are the scaling/death timer changes, which will affect the way all Heroes are played. Based on just a couple of games and a few other's opinions, the power of auto-attackers has gone through the roof, and kills feel WAY easier to secure early on. In particular, these Heroes got very scary:
Falstad Thrall Chen Kerrigan Valla Butcher Nova
I expect we'll see quite a few changes made after the initial patch to try and smooth the early game out, but as of right now, it feels like you have to play VERY safe or very aggressive, depending on your composition.
The second big part of this patch is the introduction of Towers of Doom. Last night on THH, the hosts were shitting all over it as just a terrible map with no comeback potential, and at the time, I was incredulous (especially because they were also hating on my boyz on Dig). After playing a few games on Towers of Doom, I know exactly what they mean. Nothing feels rewarding. Killing a fort doesn't do much other than take the possession away from your opponent for about a minute, and if you don't get an altar within that next minute, it doesn't do much at all. Kills don't really seem to matter unless it happens during an altar phase. You can get a team wipe, but unlike a normal map, you cannot use that advantage to push core or even a keep and get a strong, permanent advantage; if there's no altar up, there's advantage to be had.
Maybe there's a lot more to the map, but, along with the changes to scaling, it feels like the best strategy is to either cower in fear next to your towers until the altars activate or roam around as 3-4 and get constant ganks all game long and hope it's right before an altar phase. Either way, it begins to feel a bit more like an FPS with constant action rather than a game of Heroes with a nice early/mid/late game arc :/. We'll see how it evolves, but for now, I'm not a big fan of the map.
On November 13 2015 04:06 SC2John wrote: Just played some of the PTR. I know we tend to scroll straight down to Hero changes, but the biggest parts about the upcoming patch are the scaling/death timer changes, which will affect the way all Heroes are played.
See, I was thinking this would be the case---- except Browder said testers didn't see a large difference on the test map. Maybe the test map was tried by too few people :\
Playing Thrall, I immediately noticed how much harder he hit (relatively speaking) in the early game. His full skill rotation easily chunks 30-50% of a hero's HP in the early game (depending upon which hero).
On November 13 2015 04:06 SC2John wrote: Just played some of the PTR. I know we tend to scroll straight down to Hero changes, but the biggest parts about the upcoming patch are the scaling/death timer changes, which will affect the way all Heroes are played.
See, I was thinking this would be the case---- except Browder said testers didn't see a large difference on the test map. Maybe the test map was tried by too few people :\
Its much easier to give feedback about individual abilities, maybe people couldn't spot the differences, data shows they exist so chances are that big buffs could be confused with big plays since its subtle. Also, scaling affects every single hero so the sample of feedbacks might be very small.
The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
On November 13 2015 07:44 Garbels wrote: The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
To get a 20% damage increase by level 20, you have to hit heroes 3 times per level with it. Sounds pretty good to me since that should be the low end.
I suspect the bonus damage will also apply to boomerang?
On November 13 2015 07:44 Garbels wrote: The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
To get a 20% damage increase by level 20, you have to hit heroes 3 times per level with it. Sounds pretty good to me since that should be the low end.
I suspect the bonus damage will also apply to boomerang?
I doubt the damage bonus will apply to BOOMerang because it reads "Reactivate Hammerang mid-flight to deal 25 (+12 per level) damage around the Hammer" with its own specific damage numbers.
On November 13 2015 07:44 Garbels wrote: The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
To get a 20% damage increase by level 20, you have to hit heroes 3 times per level with it. Sounds pretty good to me since that should be the low end.
I suspect the bonus damage will also apply to boomerang?
I doubt the damage bonus will apply to BOOMerang because it reads "Reactivate Hammerang mid-flight to deal 25 (+12 per level) damage around the Hammer" with its own specific damage numbers.
Just tested it on PTR. Can confirm it doesn't apply to BOOMerang, but it does go up by 1 both on the way out and the way back if it hits both ways.
On November 13 2015 07:44 Garbels wrote: The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
To get a 20% damage increase by level 20, you have to hit heroes 3 times per level with it. Sounds pretty good to me since that should be the low end.
I suspect the bonus damage will also apply to boomerang?
It seems like a terrible talent if you compare it to the stacking talent on muradin which gives 5 per hit. Getting hits with that is not really harder, hammer will be avoided a lot.
On November 13 2015 07:44 Garbels wrote: The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
To get a 20% damage increase by level 20, you have to hit heroes 3 times per level with it. Sounds pretty good to me since that should be the low end.
I suspect the bonus damage will also apply to boomerang?
It seems like a terrible talent if you compare it to the stacking talent on muradin which gives 5 per hit. Getting hits with that is not really harder, hammer will be avoided a lot.
Vampiric Assault is also a terrible talent compared to Vampiric Strike, but you can't just compare different talents on different heroes when they aren't available to each other.
Falstad needs some more damage and this talent, especially in addition to the Gathering Power buff which will multiply this talent, might bring back the spellcaster build for him.
Edit: Well Gathering Power is being removed from Falstad, so forget that >.< At least Power Throw will be an option at 4 now.
So guys what about the Butcher? I was arguing with buddies literally yesterday that auto-attackers should be buffed a lot with the scaling, especially those that have abilities to increase their damage by X%.
And I know that Butcher is stronger, but how much stronger is he?
I'm gonna come out and say it - I really don't like the scaling changes.
The death timers I can get behind, to an extent.
But the HP and damage changes... I don't see why they were necessary. It's going to shake the meta up so much and require a crap ton of balance changes to sort out now, from what I think was a fairly stable position.
It seems like now you are going to be passive as fuck until level 10 because you can get annihilated in an instant if you're alone. It's going to be so punishing to new players and with the death timers factored in, dying becomes way more significant in the early game... which is, dare I say it, a bit too Leaguey... I personally enjoyed the relative insignificance of falling victim to an early game gank and conversely not being in a snowball position once you get a few kills and an early advantage.
I know that things are relatively the same by level 10 and by 20 are identical etc but the way melee assassins with high health pools DOMINATE in the early game atm is quite unsettling to me.
On November 13 2015 07:44 Garbels wrote: The falstad talent Gathering Storm seems really bad. Is it bad? I suspect you can proc it 3 times per hero with boomerang but even then how many stack can you expect?
To get a 20% damage increase by level 20, you have to hit heroes 3 times per level with it. Sounds pretty good to me since that should be the low end.
I suspect the bonus damage will also apply to boomerang?
It seems like a terrible talent if you compare it to the stacking talent on muradin which gives 5 per hit. Getting hits with that is not really harder, hammer will be avoided a lot.
I dunno, I think Falstad's is easier to hit with and Falstad has fewer mana problems since he can cycle quickly.
Blizzard said the roles sharpened with this change, so not very unexpected if an assassin takes alot of damage. Did the spells get buffed in the early game? Heals should heal for more etc
On November 13 2015 12:40 Foxxan wrote: Blizzard said the roles sharpened with this change, so not very unexpected if an assassin takes alot of damage. Did the spells get buffed in the early game? Heals should heal for more etc
Yes, it is all scaled up. Although the actual algorithms are much more subtle, basically everything was multiplied by 3...
The new map seems like Blackhearts Bay replacement, just more awesome. But if you dislike Blackhearts bay, you will dislike this as well. That Nydus town steal when the altars comes out is aweose though XD.
But Blizzard stop all production and work on bringing in Alarak, and a Battleground like in his Mission. He demands it !
I wonder if they should add a component where the altar spawn timer goes down with either hero deaths or with each fort capture so there is a faster way to end games when the other team gets team wiped.
On November 12 2015 BlazingRain wrote: There were a lot of questions about whether or not minions and structures were scaled to accomodate the much stronger level 1 power levels of heroes, and if they were, by how much. After some testing, here's what I was able to determine:
Minions: Minion health values were buffed by 50%. I wasn't able to determine if the per minute scaling or damage values were changed. Footmen: 600 -> 900 Wizards: 300 -> 450 Archers: 400 -> 600
Structures: It seems tier 1 structures were buffed by 25%, but I was not able to verify fort health numbers to make sure the 25% buff is across the board or not. I wasn't able to determine whether or not tier 2 structures were buffed. Tier 1 Towers: 3000 -> 3750 health, 100 -> 125 damage Tier 1 Forts: ? health (assuming 25% stronger), 150 -> 187 damage
These changes alone make early game pushes much stronger. Previously, it took 6 tower shots to kill a full health, first wave footman, 3 for a wizard, and 4 for an archer. Now, it takes 8 to kill a full health footman, 4 for a wizard, and 5 for an archer. While in a real game all 7 initial minions rarely make it to the towers at full health, it still means minions that do get to the towers will drain their ammo much quicker.
But when you add the much stronger heroes into the equation, things get even worse. While minions and structures were buffed by 50% and 25%, respectively, heroes have had their level 1 power levels more than doubled. This trivializes a lot of the early game PvE aspects of the game.
For example, while towers used to be serious threats in the early levels, they're no longer damaging enough to discourage tower dives. Previously, the towers did 50% more damage than the highest level 1 AA in the game (Butcher's), and 9.4% of the health of the tankiest heroes in the game (Azmodan and Stitches). Now, they actually do less damage than the AAs of a few heroes, and only 4.4% of Azmodan or Stitches' new health pools. Azmodan can quite literally take out a tower all by himself right out of the gate and survive (not that that would happen in a live game, but it shows how much weaker they are).
But perhaps even more concerning, early game wave clear is almost completely trivial now. So many heroes can wipe waves out in a few seconds now. To give an example, Kael'thas' empowered Flamestrike now does 370 damage at level 1, up from 153 (an almost 250% increase). So whereas previously an empowered Flamestrike dealt about 25% of a footman's health, it now deals over 41%. You can now cast an empowered Flamestrike, then Living Bomb the wizard, and you'll have killed the wizard, left the archers about a single AA from death, and the footmen very low. Jaina can do even more. To put into perspective how much weaker early game minions are now, when everyone thought Leoric and Johanna had too strong wave clear, Leoric's Skeletal Swing dealt 36.6% of the the footmen's health at level 1, and Johanna's Knight Takes Pawn did 21%. Here's a list of abilities that do as much or more relative minion damage than Leoric's old (pre-nerf) Skeletal Swing at level 1 (note that the numbers were taken from HeroesNexus, and may be off by a few points, but should be generally accurate):
Basically half the roster has some sort of wave clear that is stronger than Johanna's Knight Takes Pawn (it is important to note that Knight Takes Pawn scales really well and also provides the long stun however). When you add to this the increased death times, a single death early game will probably mean at least a single tower will be taken. More than one death, and a team can do serious damage to a fort. It's hard to tell exactly how early it'll be possible with the lack of coordination and proper matchmaking on the PTR, but I can see forts being taken before level 4, unless teams play extremely conservatively.
And although this is sort of unrelated to this topic, the last thing I want to point out is how much the scaling changes will break some heroes. The one that catches my attention the most, perhaps because I use him a lot, is Leoric. Leoric currently provides a few things, but the most important are perhaps his lane dominance owed to his excellent wave clear, his ability to heavily damage tanks through Drain Hope, and his quick respawns. His wave clear is actually being nerfed with these scaling changes, as Skeletal Swing is only 29% stronger at level 1, while minions were buffed by 50%. This is because Skeletal Swing is one of the most front-loaded abilities in the game right now, and because of this, just scaling down everyone's level 20 power levels means it actually becomes weaker than many wave clear tools permanently. Add to that the questionable nerfs to his tank busting and respawn timer (Drain Essence only reduces the death timer by 10% now instead of 12.5%), and he's going to be much weaker after the next patch goes live. But this points to the fundamental flaw behind the way the scaling is going to be changed.
It seems like the idea was that since the game is relatively balanced right now (which is true), just scaling everyone down from their strongest state would preserve the state of balance. However, the flaw with this is that, while it's true most heroes are pretty balanced right now, they are not balanced at level 20. Simply put,whether it be through talents or raw attribute scaling, there are heroes that are much stronger at level 20 than others. Right now, that's not necessarily a balance issue, as those weaker late game heroes can be stronger earlier. But that gets thrown out the window when all heroes scale the same. Right now, there are roughly three types of heroes: heroes that have strong base stats/kits (like Zagara and Jaina), heroes that scale through strong attribute scaling (Raynor, Thrall), and heroes that scale through powerful talents (Artanis, Murky). What the new scaling system does is make the attribute scaling heroes extremely strong the entire game, and remove the possibility of strong base vs attribute scaling heroes altogether, so the only possibilities are heroes that are strong initially, and heroes that scale through strong talent options. While this decrease in variability is arguably acceptable (I personally don't like it), the larger problem is that there are heroes that, as they exist right now, were designed to have a high initial power level but taper off as the game goes on, and not only are there no buffs coming to those heroes along with these changes in scaling, one is even being nerfed.
I was not a fan of the scaling changes when they were first introduced, and seeing how it's working in the PTR, I fear the game will be completely broken until a massive rebalancing takes place. And that is why I think this patch really should've included at least some changes to deal with the balance issues that scaling everyone to level 20 levels would bring. But what worries me more is I still don't really see the benefit that this change brings. While an early game stomp and snowball can suck right now, DB himself said that many of those stomps are caused by bad matchmaking, and I wonder why they didn't try to roll out the matchmaking changes first to see if that reduces the number of early stomps overall. I get that Cho'Gall was a really snowbally hero, but so is Lost Vikings, and since the nerfs they haven't really broken the game. And, there are cases when a snowball really should just happen. While comebacks are great, and the fact that this game has comeback mechanics (sorry IGN) is a good thing, I don't think the game needs more comeback possibilities. Sometimes teams are just outmatched, and there's nothing wrong with the better team dominating the weaker one.
Here I made a table to show how HP and autoattack DPS change for lvl 1 heroes compared to their versions now.
Pretty much AA increases by 150% average, so 2.5 times the old damage. HP by 125% average or 2.25 times the old. So there is a bit more damage relatively speaking early on. It is most profound in the different roles though, assassins gain a lot of damage and not so much hitpoints so roles are differentiated way more early on. Getting ganked as squishy hero will be much deadlier, getting ganked as tank doesn't change much.
Some heroes benefit more, for example Hammer and Murky have better relative hp and damage in the PTR than now. I didn't check spells though which matter a lot.
Minions and towers also get much weaker early on though. So not only is ganking more dangerous, pushing is also much better. I love these changes because the beginning is more impactful. As it stands the early game is only a waiting period for the first objective almost, nothing happens if you don't have complete idiots in the game. Kills give no xp and towers are impenetrable, nor does killing someone take them out of battle long. In the new version it will be much easier to push or gank though and actually get structural damage out of that which is cool. At the same time games don't suddenly snowball more because a 2 level disadvantage early won't be as big a deal to fight through as long as you aren't a talent down.
So overall I really like the idea of the changes. I also think hero balance won't be upset too much, by level 10 the difference between the old and new version will be minimal. And although some hero strength definately depends on how good they are early on it's not that big a deal now, frankly between lvl 1 and 5 nothing of worth tends to happen in high level games.
Biggest gainers I think are heroes like Nova, Butcher, Hammer and Murky. Ganking is more potent but only if you can really single out the squishy backliners which heroes like nova and butcher can. Someone like Jaina ganking won't really be much more scary I think, especially as she is insanely squishy herself now early. Murky and Hammer and that sort of hero get better I think because having a push composition probably becomes much more potent, getting an early fort should be much easier and a stats reliant hero like Hammer is much stronger now early.
Overall I think this will pan out much better than people think. More meaningful action early, some hero power shifts but i'm thinking even more balanced than now and perhaps somewhat shorter games but not neccesarily more snowbally. Which is all great in my eyes.
Illidan is going to demand even more skill early game now, it's a good thing. But in Illidan free week will be hell. Even more I mean. Comparatively Butcher needed that buff so why not. Time'll tell if he becomes unstoppable.
I hate the fact that more people will play Nova as it'll mean less chance for me to draft her. And with the gathering power buff, she's the new Zeratul. Only sexier. That level 7 will hurt really bad now. Looking forward to try it.
Tyrande's early game buff is really strange. They should nerf her she's a bit too powerful right now. Maybe trueshot aura is a bit of an overkill now that she's so powerful with many viable builds.
edit: also glad Murky got an early game buff. But the fact that death timers increase buff him a lot relatively to all other heroes. He's going to become OP with that, especially with Trace's 1v1 build (trading yourself for a kill will be even more worthy).
On November 14 2015 00:09 Leolio wrote: Great chart, thank you.
Illidan is going to demand even more skill early game now, it's a good thing. But in Illidan free week will be hell. Even more I mean. Comparatively Butcher needed that buff so why not. Time'll tell if he becomes unstoppable.
I hate the fact that more people will play Nova as it'll mean less chance for me to draft her. And with the gathering power buff, she's the new Zeratul. Only sexier. That level 7 will hurt really bad now. Looking forward to try it.
Tyrande's early game buff is really strange. They should nerf her she's a bit too powerful right now. Maybe trueshot aura is a bit of an overkill now that she's so powerful with many viable builds.
edit: also glad Murky got an early game buff. But the fact that death timers increase buff him a lot relatively to all other heroes. He's going to become OP with that, especially with Trace's 1v1 build (trading yourself for a kill will be even more worthy).
Yeah, I played Illidan in the PTR hoping that the blanket statement "auto attackers seem to have gotten a lot better" would hold true. It did not. If anything, he actually feels weaker in the early game than he already is now :/. The early game won't require more skill, it just requires Illidan players to stand behind the gate and wait until Level 10.
In other news, someone on reddit is saying that if you control all 6 towers on towers of doom your core starts firing at the other team's core constantly.
Yeah i dont understand one bit why blizzard EVEN CONSIDDERED REMOVING THE XP COLUMN. Its a huge part and also a very good information to have. For the K/D on the stat page: I really dislike it. Never had this much teamwork before in a Moba game where the team tries to win. In LoL or HoN which i played, some games i only cared about my K/D. Win or lose, that was what mattered. Hearing "you have 3k 3d, You suck" is not fun nor smart but yet it will come to this.
Having players waiting with their last attack to get the kill is not fun or good teamplay, it will come down to this just for the psychological barrier. Having players not anticipate in a teamfight just because they might die and ruin their K/D, ye it will come to this. Again, never have i seen so much teamwork in a game where you solo queue before and K/D might just ruin it.
Glad to hear they are keeping XP on the score screen.
I do expect stupid arguments revolving Kills vs Assists vs Deaths, but I expect most of them will come from the same people who are already making stupid or toxic comments with the current scoreboard, just focused on something else. I don't think K/D is going to be any more or less important than it currently is. People trying to delay to get last hits for credit on kills are going to be bad players and were probably bad players before the change.
On November 14 2015 05:53 MotherFox wrote: In other news, someone on reddit is saying that if you control all 6 towers on towers of doom your core starts firing at the other team's core constantly.
Seems like this would minorly address some of the concerns about being dependent on shrines to just win the game.
I haven't tested this, but someone else said that the pumpkin head mercs will suicide and do 1 core damage per merc if they reach where the main base cannons for the opponent start shooting at them.
Simply put, heroes that scaled well to the late game, stats wise, got buffed more. So Butcher, Tyrande, Hammer and Thrall win it big. Tyrande got buffed merely because she always had an abnormally good stat scaling, so she was great late game despite the fact her talents are not that strong. On PTR her stats are good from the start (and it matters, she had one of the lowest health pools on lvl 1 and was average on 20, she also did decent auto attack damage).
Interesting that Azmodan got buffed, his hp scaling was great and auto attack doesn't matter a lot sice he does ablility dps. Rhegar benefits quite a lot too, its a welcome change.
Weird throphies go to Valla and Stitches. Stitches does even less damage on autos and is even more tanky. Valla is even more squishier, despite the fact everyone does more damage but her autos are much stronger.
After trying out the new map, I am super confused on why they added back in the cores. During blizcon they claimed the map used to be "first team to 40 points", but that was anticlimactic. So they added back in the cores.
Now when they say that, I ASSUMED they meant a core with shields. But instead its a core with 40 hit points, and every time you earn a point the enemy core loses 1 hp. This is the EXACT SAME as first team to 40 wins. wtf?
Also, the comebacks thing. If our team has 24 hp on our core and the enemy has 2 hp on the core, I don't see how they can stage a massive comeback after a teamwipe even if both teams are level 30. Unless taking all six forts also basically insta kills the enemy team...
On November 15 2015 06:00 MotherFox wrote: After trying out the new map, I am super confused on why they added back in the cores. During blizcon they claimed the map used to be "first team to 40 points", but that was anticlimactic. So they added back in the cores.
Now when they say that, I ASSUMED they meant a core with shields. But instead its a core with 40 hit points, and every time you earn a point the enemy core loses 1 hp. This is the EXACT SAME as first team to 40 wins. wtf?
Also, the comebacks thing. If our team has 24 hp on our core and the enemy has 2 hp on the core, I don't see how they can stage a massive comeback after a teamwipe even if both teams are level 30. Unless taking all six forts also basically insta kills the enemy team...
Yeah, comebacks are almost entirely related to whether you happen to win a team fight during or right before an altar fight; if you win a team fight and there's no altar up, you don't really gain anything. At the same time, there's also no way to get around a composition that doesn't scale well into the late game. If your Heroes start to fall off by level 16 and you can't win direct team fights, you just lose on Towers of Doom -- there's nothing real to threaten by split pushing.
On November 15 2015 06:00 MotherFox wrote: After trying out the new map, I am super confused on why they added back in the cores. During blizcon they claimed the map used to be "first team to 40 points", but that was anticlimactic. So they added back in the cores.
Now when they say that, I ASSUMED they meant a core with shields. But instead its a core with 40 hit points, and every time you earn a point the enemy core loses 1 hp. This is the EXACT SAME as first team to 40 wins. wtf?
Also, the comebacks thing. If our team has 24 hp on our core and the enemy has 2 hp on the core, I don't see how they can stage a massive comeback after a teamwipe even if both teams are level 30. Unless taking all six forts also basically insta kills the enemy team...
Yeah, comebacks are almost entirely related to whether you happen to win a team fight during or right before an altar fight; if you win a team fight and there's no altar up, you don't really gain anything. At the same time, there's also no way to get around a composition that doesn't scale well into the late game. If your Heroes start to fall off by level 16 and you can't win direct team fights, you just lose on Towers of Doom -- there's nothing real to threaten by split pushing.
Well, even if altars are up---- if you are behind and win a team fight, if three altars come up you can win a max of 21 points, which is only half a core. Imagine a regular game at level 30 where you can get a half a core max, and get no permanent advantage otherwise.
To come back, you really just have to dominate the late game hard with perpetual team wipes.
On November 15 2015 06:00 MotherFox wrote: After trying out the new map, I am super confused on why they added back in the cores. During blizcon they claimed the map used to be "first team to 40 points", but that was anticlimactic. So they added back in the cores.
Now when they say that, I ASSUMED they meant a core with shields. But instead its a core with 40 hit points, and every time you earn a point the enemy core loses 1 hp. This is the EXACT SAME as first team to 40 wins. wtf?
Also, the comebacks thing. If our team has 24 hp on our core and the enemy has 2 hp on the core, I don't see how they can stage a massive comeback after a teamwipe even if both teams are level 30. Unless taking all six forts also basically insta kills the enemy team...
Yeah, comebacks are almost entirely related to whether you happen to win a team fight during or right before an altar fight; if you win a team fight and there's no altar up, you don't really gain anything. At the same time, there's also no way to get around a composition that doesn't scale well into the late game. If your Heroes start to fall off by level 16 and you can't win direct team fights, you just lose on Towers of Doom -- there's nothing real to threaten by split pushing.
Well, even if altars are up---- if you are behind and win a team fight, if three altars come up you can win a max of 21 points, which is only half a core. Imagine a regular game at level 30 where you can get a half a core max, and get no permanent advantage otherwise.
To come back, you really just have to dominate the late game hard with perpetual team wipes.
Fair enough. That's more or less what I've been trying to articulate. Not a huge fan of that map -_-/
On November 15 2015 06:00 MotherFox wrote: After trying out the new map, I am super confused on why they added back in the cores. During blizcon they claimed the map used to be "first team to 40 points", but that was anticlimactic. So they added back in the cores.
Now when they say that, I ASSUMED they meant a core with shields. But instead its a core with 40 hit points, and every time you earn a point the enemy core loses 1 hp. This is the EXACT SAME as first team to 40 wins. wtf?
Also, the comebacks thing. If our team has 24 hp on our core and the enemy has 2 hp on the core, I don't see how they can stage a massive comeback after a teamwipe even if both teams are level 30. Unless taking all six forts also basically insta kills the enemy team...
Yeah, comebacks are almost entirely related to whether you happen to win a team fight during or right before an altar fight; if you win a team fight and there's no altar up, you don't really gain anything. At the same time, there's also no way to get around a composition that doesn't scale well into the late game. If your Heroes start to fall off by level 16 and you can't win direct team fights, you just lose on Towers of Doom -- there's nothing real to threaten by split pushing.
Well, even if altars are up---- if you are behind and win a team fight, if three altars come up you can win a max of 21 points, which is only half a core. Imagine a regular game at level 30 where you can get a half a core max, and get no permanent advantage otherwise.
To come back, you really just have to dominate the late game hard with perpetual team wipes.
You can also push the bottom mercs to core (3 x 2) plus the top merc (3) and the Boss (4 or 7?). Plus if you have full control of all the keeps, you get a free shot to core every few seconds which can takedown the enemy core pretty quickly. It's not as straightforward as other maps, but a full team wipe in the late game is still detrimental especially if the team knows how to capitalize it.
Regarding the K/D/A debate, I saw someone post a pretty good idea on Reddit earlier today that basically said, rather than the last hit being the person that gets the kill.....just give it to whoever did the most damage to the hero. Sure, your Johanna/Muradin/Uther/Malfurions aren't going to be stacking kills....but those heroes aren't designed to get kills anyway...so it shouldn't matter.
The bottom line is, with this type of mechanic, all specialists/assassins are encouraged to hold nothing back AND focus fire 1 hero (rather than spreading their damage everywhere for stat padding).
I think it is something worth talking about honestly.
It is not very often that focus fire and killing off heroes is a bad play in my experience, also looking at progames.
Possibly only when ultimates could be used for zoning, and some talent/hero choices, but still, what are we afraid of? Even chasing kills, it is much easier to get them if you are playing with the team and setting up teamfights.
Maybe I would have understood better if I had experienced carrying and kill-steals from other mobas, but I honestly can't see the problem...
Its unclear how this plays out but the problem could be that people care about the kill stat so they play to get kills and complain if they don't get them. How do you play for kills? You hold back. Either by saving high dmg spells or by standing cloaked at the sidelines until someone drops low.
If two people who care about the killstat participate in a kill one of them will not be happy and might complain because of course he is the one deserving of this kill. Even if no one complains one of those guys will be unhappy whereas right now everyone will be happy. And even if people don't hold back the others will/might perceive it as such adding another thing to complain about.
I don't think it will affect the higher ranks much but it might be a bad thing at the lower leagues. Also people already play for the scoreboard for example by suiciding into enemies to get some dmg done and complain a lot about everything. So all in all probably not a big deal but a bit risky for little gain.
meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
On November 15 2015 19:52 Slydie wrote: It is not very often that focus fire and killing off heroes is a bad play in my experience, also looking at progames.
Possibly only when ultimates could be used for zoning, and some talent/hero choices, but still, what are we afraid of? Even chasing kills, it is much easier to get them if you are playing with the team and setting up teamfights.
Maybe I would have understood better if I had experienced carrying and kill-steals from other mobas, but I honestly can't see the problem...
It's really hard to tell how it will affect people other than just projecting that some people will be petty about kills because it inflates their ego. Unlike in other MOBAs like LoL or Dota where kills are directly related to how much gold that person has and how powerful they are, kills in Heroes are pretty much irrelevant compared to assists, so it doesn't really change anything for people who already know that. We'll just have to see. Overall, I like the change because I think "takedowns" was a very nebulous term to begin with, but since kills vs assists have literally no effect on the game, I can see why they did it in the first place.
On November 15 2015 20:41 RouaF wrote: meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
They did, actually. They said it stemmed from their development of Cho'Gall because they were having troubles balancing him so he didn't create snowball effects, both in winning and losing, so they decided to go back to the drawing board and think of ways to make power curves a little bit smoother so that late game Heroes could be just as relevant early on and you wouldn't have snowballs built on early and mid game power spikes.
Is that actually solid reasoning? I don't know. From what I've experienced in the PTR, it's a very different game from levels ~1-13, but afterwards, it starts to feel normal again. We'll have to see how things turn out, but I agree; I thought we were in a really nice place balance-wise at BlizzCon.
EDIT: They also claimed that too much power came from level leads. In other words, a team that was 3 levels ahead (regardless of talents) was almost twice as powerful. By giving more early game stats to Heroes at default, they were able to equalize the difference in levels so that you would only be ~30-40% stronger 3 levels up.
I just don't see the point of the detailed stats during the game. They are only used for whining. Kill stat is irrelevant to know during a game for anyone who knows how to play but only becomes a stupid argument for players who do. Similar to the damage stat now, somehow bad players think that is the most important. Just like the newbs that cry out in draft 'but we need more damage' when you're taking sonya instead of jaina when we already have kael and nazeebo for example.
I'd honestly think the game would just be better if the stat screen during the game was gone, it's not used by better players as it's only an annoying distraction. Then after game you should simply have very detailed stats with graphs over time even with even the option of 'start replay at this point' so you could see a huge peek in xp gained for example and quickly get the replay started to just rewatch that critical fight.
Mostly I miss the relevant stats, the stats at the moment don't learn you anything really. While i'd love to have stats like healing on non-supports, knowing how much activateable talents did like protective shield, first aid, stoneskin etc. Having xp separated by unique xp would be good too (so the sum of everyone's unique xp would actually be the team xp). In other words if you soak a lane alone you get the full value, if you dual or triple soak it's shared unlike now. Also information on CCs would be nice to know, how much damage did blinds prevent, how much did i stun etc.
All after game though, during game I couldn't care less for anything and I don't like (bad) players finding excuses in them why player X sucks or they rock.
On November 15 2015 20:41 RouaF wrote: meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
EDIT: They also claimed that too much power came from level leads. In other words, a team that was 3 levels ahead (regardless of talents) was almost twice as powerful. By giving more early game stats to Heroes at default, they were able to equalize the difference in levels so that you would only be ~30-40% stronger 3 levels up.
From what i understood, this change had nothing to do with cho'gall. The game snowballs to easily, thats why they want to change it. Right now two levels ahead=almost 40% stronger(their words). This change makes two levels ahead=i believe 12% only or something so its a major difference.
Personally i find it very good they are changing it. Although iam unsure about the consequences hope it turns out good!
On November 15 2015 20:41 RouaF wrote: meh I'm not sure why the felt the need to rebalance everything ... the game seemed to be in a pretty good place balance wise and gametime wise, we saw a lot of different heroes at blizzcon (even though there are obvious power picks, this is the case in any moba).
The early game being more punishing isn't a good thing imo as the game could get way too snowbally (a problem that already exists on haunted mines and blackheart)
Did they at least explain why they decided to start from scratch again ?
EDIT: They also claimed that too much power came from level leads. In other words, a team that was 3 levels ahead (regardless of talents) was almost twice as powerful. By giving more early game stats to Heroes at default, they were able to equalize the difference in levels so that you would only be ~30-40% stronger 3 levels up.
From what i understood, this change had nothing to do with cho'gall. The game snowballs to easily, thats why they want to change it. Right now two levels ahead=almost 40% stronger(their words). This change makes two levels ahead=i believe 12% only or something so its a major difference.
Personally i find it very good they are changing it. Although iam unsure about the consequences hope it turns out good!
the "snowballing effect" was an issue that they discovered while trying to balance Cho'Gall into the game, according to the developers.
I think its a good idea to adress core issues while making stat growth consistent. Previously it was hard to figure out what scales well or badly towards the late game. But i don't think the game was too snowbally. Anyway, i like that they are willing to make big changes, and if you gonna do those, the sooner the better.
On November 15 2015 14:44 Perseverance wrote: Regarding the K/D/A debate, I saw someone post a pretty good idea on Reddit earlier today that basically said, rather than the last hit being the person that gets the kill.....just give it to whoever did the most damage to the hero. Sure, your Johanna/Muradin/Uther/Malfurions aren't going to be stacking kills....but those heroes aren't designed to get kills anyway...so it shouldn't matter.
I think there's no perfect solution, and this one is interesting. But from my experience securing kills is more valuable than spreading damage. Usually when opponents are able to save their ass several times when being almost dead, we end up losing. That's why I always want to play Nova, it's because I don't let them escape. But it comes at a cost of course. You can compare that to burst heals from Uther or Karhazim. They are often more valuables than big numbers heals from sustain healers.
I like the idea that we will no longer see the healer with a 30 - 0 Kill/Death ratio because he's here all the time. He can be the best healer in the world and go 0 - 0 and 30 assists, I'm fine with that as long as he saves our asses. That'll also help discriminate warriors like ETC who rarely secures a kill from Leorics who actually kills. It'll help see people that a warrior can have more value than soaking damage and not dying. And we need that heal column for everyone. They have also split the exp. This is even more stupid than the current KD ratio system. It's more important even when playing Abathur and TLV.
Grubby's thoughts on the new scaling changes. In general, he's being pretty proactive this morning, posting two blogs on his site and watching all of the Gold Series Heroes League...just an observation. Also, what a handsome man. /fanboy rant
Grubby's thoughts on the new scaling changes. In general, he's being pretty proactive this morning, posting two blogs on his site and watching all of the Gold Series Heroes League...just an observation. Also, what a handsome man. /fanboy rant
I'm a fan too. ^^ He's one of the best to explain stuff and he's not a douche. I guess his one-stop guides topic here was closed but he's making great tutorials. The one with Nova taught me everything I needed to know to play competitively with no experience whatsoever. Glad the patch hits tomorrow. Can't wait to see what it changes. To me it basically means Nova doesn't gets her powerspike at level 13 but is good from level 1.
Cho'Gall should be released this Tuesday, starting the Cho'Gall virus. Anyone who went to BlizzCon or bought a virtual ticket will get Cho'Gall for free. They will then have a quest (that rewards a hefty amount of gold) to play games with people who don't have Cho'Gall yet. Players that don't have Cho'Gall can also earn him for free by pairing up a certain number of times.
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