EPTChanges from PTR
Performance
- Additional improvements have been made to Heroes of the Storm’s overall framerate, affecting all game modes and Battlegrounds.
Braxis Holdout
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All Zerg Units have received the following changes:
Early-game damage scaling significantly reduced
Mid-game damage scaling slightly reduced
Late-game damage scaling moderately increased
Banelings
Base damage increased by 20%
Hydralisks
Base damage increased by 25%
Guardians
Base damage increased by roughly 17%
Ultralisks
Base damage increased by 20%
Developer Comments: We’ve noticed a few more one-sided games than we’d like on Braxis Holdout. The battleground plays faster by design, but we think that a few changes to reduce the early game effectiveness of the zerg will put the balance closer to what we’d like after the battleground goes live.
Early-game damage scaling significantly reduced
Mid-game damage scaling slightly reduced
Late-game damage scaling moderately increased
Banelings
Base damage increased by 20%
Hydralisks
Base damage increased by 25%
Guardians
Base damage increased by roughly 17%
Ultralisks
Base damage increased by 20%
Developer Comments: We’ve noticed a few more one-sided games than we’d like on Braxis Holdout. The battleground plays faster by design, but we think that a few changes to reduce the early game effectiveness of the zerg will put the balance closer to what we’d like after the battleground goes live.
Alarak
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Abilities
Talents
Level 1
Level 7
Level 13
Developer Comments: While we expected Alarak’s win rate to be a bit on the lower side due to how difficult his kit can be to fully execute, we felt that he could use some buffs to make him feel better to play. Across the board Lightning Surge is slightly under-performing, so we’re upping the power of the base ability and its related talents. We hope that this will properly reward Alarak players who take Lightning Surge related talents, particularly those who master the gameplay of clotheslining enemies with the Lightning. When we first designed Counter-Strike, we felt that crowd control was an appropriate counter to the ability since it was so powerful on paper and on a reasonably low cooldown. Since his release, we have seen that Counter-Strike is simply not as reliable as we had predicted since Alarak has 3 potential ways to fail to get value (enemies can fail to damage him, they can dodge the returning skill shot, or they can crowd control him out of his channel). We’ve decided to grant him Unstoppable for its duration to make it more reliable, and we are increasing its damage to further separate it from Deadly Charge.
- Discord Strike (Q)
Mana cost reduced from 60 to 55 - Lightning Surge (E)
Mana cost reduced from 40 to 30
Damage increased from 90 to 100
Width increased by 50% - Counter-Strike (R)
Damage increased from 250 to 275
Added Functionality:
Now grants Alarak Unstoppable for its duration
Talents
Level 1
- Power Conduit (E)
Mana cost reduction decreased from 15 to 10 - Wide Lightning (E)
Removed
Level 7
- Thunderstruck (E)
Slow duration increased from 1.5 to 2 seconds
Level 13
- Hindered Motion (W)
Slow duration increased from 1.5 to 2 seconds
Developer Comments: While we expected Alarak’s win rate to be a bit on the lower side due to how difficult his kit can be to fully execute, we felt that he could use some buffs to make him feel better to play. Across the board Lightning Surge is slightly under-performing, so we’re upping the power of the base ability and its related talents. We hope that this will properly reward Alarak players who take Lightning Surge related talents, particularly those who master the gameplay of clotheslining enemies with the Lightning. When we first designed Counter-Strike, we felt that crowd control was an appropriate counter to the ability since it was so powerful on paper and on a reasonably low cooldown. Since his release, we have seen that Counter-Strike is simply not as reliable as we had predicted since Alarak has 3 potential ways to fail to get value (enemies can fail to damage him, they can dodge the returning skill shot, or they can crowd control him out of his channel). We’ve decided to grant him Unstoppable for its duration to make it more reliable, and we are increasing its damage to further separate it from Deadly Charge.
Chromie
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Stats
Abilities
Talents
Level 13
Developer Comments: Reaching Through Time had a dominating pick rate, for good reason. We’re taking a little bit of that range from the Talent and adding it baseline. While we’re at it, we’re reducing the range on Temporal Loop slightly to require Chromie to put herself more at risk. Temporal Loop isn’t overpowered per se, but the majority of the counterplay required specific Heroes (Medivh, Auriel, Uther) or Cleanse. We’re also buffing her Health so that the sum total of all these changes will result in an improvement to her winrate, since she is slightly less powerful than what we’d like to see.
- Base maximum Health increased from 1260 to 1323
- Health regen increased from 2.63 to 2.76
Abilities
- Sand Blast (Q)
Range increased by 6% - Dragon's Breath (W)
Range increased by 6% - Temporal Loop (R)
Range decreased by 8%
Talents
Level 13
- Reaching Through Time (Passive)
Range bonus decreased from 25 to 15%
Developer Comments: Reaching Through Time had a dominating pick rate, for good reason. We’re taking a little bit of that range from the Talent and adding it baseline. While we’re at it, we’re reducing the range on Temporal Loop slightly to require Chromie to put herself more at risk. Temporal Loop isn’t overpowered per se, but the majority of the counterplay required specific Heroes (Medivh, Auriel, Uther) or Cleanse. We’re also buffing her Health so that the sum total of all these changes will result in an improvement to her winrate, since she is slightly less powerful than what we’d like to see.
Gul'dan
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Abilities
Talents
Level 1
Level 4
Developer Comments: Gul’dan’s slightly underperforming compared to other assassins, so we’re giving him some throughput buffs as well as buffing his Fel Flame ability. We know that the Echoed Corruption change may not be positively received as it is a slight nerf, but we believe it is better for the health of his talent tier and for him overall. The intent of this talent was for it to be a relatively large power spike but for it to come very late into the game. Currently it’s still being unlocked earlier than we would like, and it has a slightly higher win rate compared to other talents on the tier. We wanted to buff Corruption by lowering its cooldown, so we felt that it was appropriate to slightly increase its quest completion time to help balance it out.
- Life Tap (Trait)
Base self-inflicted damage decreased from 234 to 222 - Fel Flame (Q)
Increased base size by 5% - Drain Life (W)
Base healing increased from 43 to 47 - Corruption (E)
Cooldown reduced from 16 to 14 seconds
Mana cost reduced from 90 to 80
Talents
Level 1
- Echoed Corruption (E)
Quest completion requirement increased from 35 to 40 Heroes hit by Corruption
Level 4
- Health Funnel (W)
Cooldown reduction gained when an enemy dies under the effects of Drain Life changed from 7 seconds to a full cooldown reset
Developer Comments: Gul’dan’s slightly underperforming compared to other assassins, so we’re giving him some throughput buffs as well as buffing his Fel Flame ability. We know that the Echoed Corruption change may not be positively received as it is a slight nerf, but we believe it is better for the health of his talent tier and for him overall. The intent of this talent was for it to be a relatively large power spike but for it to come very late into the game. Currently it’s still being unlocked earlier than we would like, and it has a slightly higher win rate compared to other talents on the tier. We wanted to buff Corruption by lowering its cooldown, so we felt that it was appropriate to slightly increase its quest completion time to help balance it out.
The Butcher
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Abilities
- Furnace Blast (R)
Cooldown reduced from 80 to 60 seconds
Tychus
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Abilities
Commandeer Odin (R)
Commandeer Odin (R)
- Added Functionality:
Now grants Tychus Resistant for the duration of Commandeer Odin, reducing damage taken by 25%
Valla
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Abilities
Talents
Level 1
Level 4
Level 7
Developer Comments: We’re seeing a lot of success with Multi-Shot Valla’s builds, but the Basic Attack and Hungering Arrow focused Valla’s aren’t keeping pace. We really want to reward players for keeping their Hatred at high stacks and landing those Puncturing Arrows on their intended targets.
- Vault (E)
Damage bonus per stack of Hatred increased from 5 to 6% - Hungering Arrow (Q)
Increased base damage from 140 to 151
Bounce damage increased from 80 to 86 - Rain of Vengeance (R)
Cooldown decreased from 60 to 50 seconds per charge
Talents
Level 1
- Monster Hunter (Q)
Mana redund amount increased from 30 to 40
Minion and Mercenary bonus damage increased from 100 to 150%
Level 4
- Puncturing Arrow (Q)
Quest reward bonus damage increased from 50 to 75
Level 7
- Death Dealer (E)
Bonus damage per Hatred stack increased from 10 to 12%
Developer Comments: We’re seeing a lot of success with Multi-Shot Valla’s builds, but the Basic Attack and Hungering Arrow focused Valla’s aren’t keeping pace. We really want to reward players for keeping their Hatred at high stacks and landing those Puncturing Arrows on their intended targets.
Li Li
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Talents
Level 16
Level 16
- Shake It Off (Passive)
No longer has a cooldown
Resistant amount increased from 25 to 50%
Resistant duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
Anub'arak
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Stats
- Base maximum Health increased from 1926 to 2120
- Health regen increased from 4.0 to 4.4
Bug Fix
- Artanis: Fixed an issue that caused Artanis' Shield Overload trait to fail to override existing shields when triggered.
