Today’s spreadsheet can be found here. The official BlizzHeroes notes can be found here.

While this article covers the Alexstrasza patch, the newest hero will be addressed in a later article. The focus of this article is mainly to discuss some of the map changes, important bug fixes, and the Li Li rework.

Haunted Mines

The Haunted Mines changes were on the PTR patch notes but did not made it onto the live patch.

• Summoned Golem
  
• Attack speed is no longer reduced by Fort and Keep attacks
  
• Will no longer interrupts its attack mid-swing to cast Slam or Roots
  
• No longer stops to crush player created walls, but will now pass through them effortlessly

Golems are much more relevant now. Removing the 40% attack speed slow applied by Forts and Keeps effectively increases the Golem’s DPS by 66%, a monumental upgrade. It isn’t quite a flat 66% DPS buff since the Golem did not have its attack speed slowed when destroying the front towers, but this should tip the balance of Haunted Mines from the Golem being a waste of time to being a powerful map objective. As a side note, this nerfs the relative power of Sylvanas on Haunted Mines. Her ability to disable forts and keeps is mitigated by the Golem’s newfound immunity.

As an example of how big this buff is, a 10:00 golem (golem snapshots when 60 skulls total have been collected) from 220.1 DPS to 366.83 DPS. This is an incredible buff that dramatically changes how the map is played.

Important Bug Fixes

• Kel’Thuzad: Glacial Spike will now correctly deal bonus damage granted by Ability Power gains.
  
• Kel’Thuzad: The Hungering Cold Talent will now correctly deal its bonus damage to non-Heroic enemies rooted by Frost Nova.
  
• Tassadar: The Templar’s Will Talent’s second reward will no longer increase Basic Attack range in Archon form.
  
• Uther: After learning Divine Protection, Devotion Armor will now stack correctly when Healing an allied Hero using Flash of Light during Eternal Vanguard.
  
• Valla: Manticore will no longer deal its bonus damage to Valla’s Basic Attack target while Valla is Blind or the target is Evading.

Glacial Spike will now properly gain 45 damage when Kel’thuzad reaches 30 Blight, slightly improving his combo damage. Furthermore, Kel’thuzad deals significantly more damage when clearing Mercenaries or bringing down the Immortal post-16.

The Tassadar change is impactful for the popular build that relies on Templar’s Will and Archon. The base range on Archon makes the build substantially less appealing compared to builds that provide more utility.

Uther’s level 20 Divine Protection will allow him to stack up to 30 armor, up from 15, when using Flash of Light on an allied Hero. Going from 15 to 30 armor increases the target’s EHP by 21%.

The change to Valla’s Manticore talent is a nerf against heroes like Johanna, Cassia, Li Li, and Illidan. Against Illidan specifically, Manticore could do 82.5 damage per third auto. Valla’s base attack speed is 1.67, which means Manticore was worth 45.9 DPS even against an evading Illidan.

Li Li Rework

• Abilities
  
• Fast Feet (Trait)
  
  • Added Functionality:
    
    • Basic Ability Cooldowns recharge 50% faster while Fast Feet is active.
  
  
• Healing Brew (Q)
  
  • Cooldown increased from 3 to 4 seconds
  
  
• Cloud Serpent (W)
  
  • Cooldown increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
  
  
• Blinding Wind (E)
  
  • Cooldown increased from 9 to 12 seconds

"50% CDR” on Fast Feet means an effective 33% cooldown reduction.

Healing Brew: +33% base, but -11% with Fast Feet at full uptime
Cloud Serpent: +20% base, but -20% with Fast Feet at full uptime
Blinding Wind: +33% base, but -11% with Fast Feet at full uptime

Base Kit Changes

• Abilities
  
  • Healing Brew (Q)
    
    • Range reduced from 7 to 6
      
    • Mana Cost reduced from 30 to 25
  
  
  • Cloud Serpent (W)
    
    • Mana Cost increased from 30 to 40
      
    • Attack Speed reduced from .75 to 1 attacks per second
      
    • Damage increased from 25 to 27
      
    • Added Functionality:
      
      • Each time a Cloud Serpent attacks, the Hero it is attached to is healed for a small amount.
  
  
  • Blinding Wind (E)
    
    • Duration reduced from 2 to 1.5 seconds
      
    • Mana Cost decreased from 35 to 30
  
  
  • Jug of 1,000 Cups (R)
    
  • Cooldown reduced from 70 seconds to 20 seconds
    
  • Jug of 1,000 Cups can now be cancelled early
    
  • Added Functionality:
    
    • Each time an ally is healed by Jug of 1,000 Cups, its cooldown is increased by 2 seconds, to a maximum of 50 additional seconds.

Healing Brew has 1 less range and a 16% reduction in mana cost. This range nerf is not all downside; Li Li can actually use the reduced range to better select her targets.

Cloud Serpent got a 33% mana cost increase, lost 25% attack speed (10 attacks to 8), but gained 8% damage and heals for 13.5 per attack. The total damage goes from 250 to 216, a 13.6% reduction. E suffers a 25% duration reduction, but gains a 14% mana cost reduction in exchange. The removal/condensation of Blind talents is more important, though. Li Li’s Blinds are a much less important part of her kit than before.

Jug of 1,000 Cups shoots 25 Cups over 6 seconds, with each Cup that fires adding to the cooldown. While it remains the most valuable to use the full duration, Jug being canceled early is significantly less disastrous compared to pre-patch.

Talents

Free Drinks reduces the cooldown of Healing Brew by 1s (25%) and refunds +25 mana if Q hits a target below 50% health. While the CDR increases her primary throughput by 33% as well as provides upwards of 9.67 mana per second, the condition is difficult to meet in general.

Wind Serpent provides a relevant 3s CDR for Cloud Serpent per Blinding Wind hit. With 100% Fast Feet uptime, this gives a 4s cooldown on the first cast of Cloud Serpent and then an 8s CD on the second.

Eager Adventurer increases the duration of Fast Feet from 1s to 1.5s and adds +150% mana regen for the duration, which translates to +5.8 MPS +0.15 per level.

Looking at this tier, Eager Adventurer is the clear winner, helping enormously with Li Li’s mana problems and giving her more leeway on proccing her necessary cooldown reduction. While Wind Serpent does enable the “W build,” the post-rework strength of that build is too low.



Serpent Sidekick adds 0.5s duration each time the Cloud Serpent attacks an enemy Hero. With full uptime, the talent increases the duration from 8s to 14.5s, getting a total of 14 attacks off (up from 8). While Serpent Sidekick does not truly improve Cloud Serpent’s uptime on a single target if Li Li is fully utilizing Fast Feet, it does allow Li Li to spread her serpent to two targets.

Hindering Winds adds a 30% slow that lasts 2s on E hit. The slow reduces the target’s mobility by 2.64m over the 2s, assuming they tried to move during this time.

Safety Sprint is an active that grants Fast Feet for 2s and increases the speed bonus to +30% on a 30s CD. Baseline, the movespeed adds 2.64m of movement, or 1.76m of movement over the 2 seconds. As a form of mana regeneration (synergizing with Eager Adventurer), Safety Sprint regenerates 15.6 mana + 0.3 per level. If used on cooldown to fill in times when Fast Feet is down, this translates into 0.5 mps, which is fairly insignificant.

For level 4, Hindering Winds is superior for generally helping the team while Safety Sprint can help Li Li if she expects to be focused by the enemy team throughout the game.



The Good Stuff causes Healing Brew to heal for an additional 42 hp over 3s, which is doubled while Fast Feet is active to 84 hp over 3s. Out of combat, The Good Stuff improves Li Li’s healing efficiency from 7.8 health per mana to 9.52, a 21% increase. If Li Li is healing a single target in combat, this adds 14 HPS, or 28 HPS if Fast Feet is active. Elsewise, if Li Li can alternate between two or more targets (meaning the HOT does not refresh itself), this increases her healing output by 21%, which is 15.75 HPS baseline or 31.5 HPS with Fast Feet active.

Lightning Serpent causes Cloud Serpent attacks to bounce to Heroes twice for 50% damage and added healing per bounce. This adds 27 DPS split across two targets and 13.5 HPS to the Cloud Serpent’s bearer.

Let’s Go! heals the target for 140 hp and grants Unstoppable for 1s. Let’s Go! only has a 40s CD that is affected by Fast Feet, which can reduce the cooldown as low as 26 seconds. However, Let’s Go! has a major weakness compared to traditional Cleanse, in that it only has 4 range rather than 10.

For level 7, The Good Stuff is the best for overall healing, while Let’s Go! provides a powerful but extremely short range cleanse. Below Diamond rank, The Good Stuff is simply superior as teams aren’t skilled enough to CC chain properly nor are players adept enough at abusing the 1 second of Unstoppable. At Diamond or above, Let’s Go is much more situational than The Good Stuff due to the extremely short range on Let’s Go.



Jug of 1,000 Cups should more accurately be called “Jug of 25 Cups”. Jug of 25 Cups starts by throwing out one Cup when Li Li presses R, then another Cup every 0.25s for 6s. These Cups have a significant travel time with ~0.5s of animation before shooting out to the lowest HP ally within 10m. Each Cup heals 66.5 HP for a total of 1662.5 HP over 6 seconds, which is 277 HPS. Because Jug of 25 Cups is a channeled ability, Li Li cannot cast or attack during the duration. This means Li Li will miss 0.5 to 2 casts of Healing Brew, depending on her talent choices and if she has Fast Feet going during the duration of Jug of 25 Cups. One cast of Healing Brew is worth 196 HP, plus any talent buffs. Averaging out to 1 missed cast of Healing Brew, this drops the added value of Jug of 25 Cups by ~12%, to 1466.5 added healing over 6 seconds.

Water Dragon summons a Water Dragon that, after 2 seconds, crashes down on the nearest enemy Hero dealing 318 damage and slowing them by 70% for 4 seconds. Furthermore, any enemies within 3m of the primary target also take damage and are slowed by the same amount.

Both Jug of 1,000 Cups and Water Dragon are powerful and relevant ultimate choices. Which is preferable is mostly dependent on Li Li’s team’s needs, with Water Dragon likely being preferable for the double support compositions that seem to be the norm as of late.



Gale Force adds 1 second to the duration of Li Li’s Blind from 1.5s to 2.5s, a 66% increase. Furthermore, it adds a Cassia-like passive of 50% bonus AA damage vs Blinded Heroes. Li Li’s basic attacks are rather weak at 63 damage. at 1.25 attacks per second, Li Li can fit in 3 attacks during the Blind, translating to 94.5 bonus damage.

Surging Winds says that if Blinding Winds hits 2 heroes, then its CD is reduced by 3s and she gains 10% spellpower for 10s. In a teamfight, this buff can maintain 100% uptime with ease, adding 19.6 HP per healing brew, 2.7 damage per Cloud Serpent attack, 14 damage per Blinding Wind, 166.25 HP to Jug of 1,000 Cups, and 31.8 damage to Water Dragon. Notably, this spell power buff affects Cloud Serpents on a per-attack basis, rather than a per-cast basis.

Mass Vortex increases the number of targets hit by Blinding Wind by 50% (from 2 to 3) and adds 105 damage to Blinding Wind if it hits 3 Heroes, for a total of 315 added damage. Furthermore, Mass Vortex synergizes with Wind Serpent at level 1, increasing the CDR from 6 to 9 seconds, bringing the cooldown from 6 to 3 (4 to 2 accounting for 100% Fast Feet uptime).

Gale Force improves Li Li’s dueling capabilities and helps her shut down melee carries (“Slayers” in my role terminology) that rely on lifesteal sustain such as Butcher or Illidan. Surging Winds is the best general pick, improving Li Li’s output in teamfights by 10% across the board. Mass Vortex is useful if the enemy team has multiple high threat divers or to synergize with the “W build.”



Two For One doubles Healing Brew’s number of targets but adds 1 second to the cooldown, a 25% increase. The net results is a 20% nerf to Li Li’s single target healing output, but a 60% increase to Li Li’s overall healing output.

Pick Me Up increases Healing Brew’s heal amount by 33% if target is below 50% life. Similar to Free Drinks at level 1, this is a strong talent if consistently available but does not improve her out of combat healing and will not always trigger in combat.

Blessing of Yu’lon causes Cloud Serpent to heal its bearer for 1.5% of their max hp every time the cloud serpent attacks. Blessing of Yu’lon does not benefit from the bounces on level 7 Lightning Serpent. Over the base 8 attacks, Blessing of Yu’lon will heal the bearer for 12% of their max HP, and over 14 attacks this will heal them for 21% of their maximum HP. For Li Li these values are 23.28 HPS, 186.24 HP over 8 attacks, and 325.92 HP over 14 attacks.

Analyzing this tier, the best talents are Two for One and Pick Me Up. Simply put, the added healing of Blessing of Yu’lon doesn’t begin to compare to Two For One or Pick Me Up, even with the extended duration talents. Even when there are heroes with high base HP on the team, the breakpoint at which the percentage healing finds value is too high to keep the talent from being a trap.Two For One is superior for overall healing throughput, while Pick Me Up is better for single target saves. Jug of 1,000 Cups can miss 1-2 casts of Healing Brew, but even then Blessing of Yu’lon still doesn’t add enough healing to justify the pick.




Jug of 1,000,000 Cups improves Jug of 25 Cups to Jug of 50 Cups, throwing an extra Cup every 0.25s if a second target is available. This doubles the total healing output of Jug from 1662.5 to 3325, a massive increase. This extra Cup does not count towards the new “Jugs CD increased by 2s for every Cup thrown,” as the extra cooldown is simply tied to the “Check for Cups target every 0.25s” baseline.

Double Dragon throws down a second dragon with a 2 second delay in the same 3m radius area that the first dragon hit.The 70% slow only allows the target to move 2.64m in the 2s delay, meaning it is impossible for the primary target to escape without some form of added mobility.

Mistweaver heals Li Li and any allies within 8m for 165 hp. Basic attacks from Li Li and any Cloud Serpents reduce the CD by 1s, with a 30s base CD. If Li Li does not miss a single AA and a single Cloud Serpent, she can reduce the cooldown to as low as 9 seconds. With two active serpents, this cooldown can go as low as 7 seconds. Due to the large radius, it is not unreasonable to assume Li Li will hit 4 or 5 teammates with each activation. At 4 members, this is 660 HP total. Comparing to Storm Shield, Mistweaver is equivalent to between 7% and 13% of most of the cast’s HP pools. Thus, to be equal to Storm Shield, Mistweaver needs to activate twice in a fight, with a third cast putting it ahead of Storm Shield. Storm Shield has the advantage of putting more HP up front, but Mistweaver’s HP does not evaporate after 4 seconds if not used, making this relatively comparable.

Shake It Off gives Li Li 2 armor every 0.25s while Fast Feet is active, capping out at 30 armor. 30 armor represents an EHP boost of ~43%, which affects not only Li Li’s current HP but the effective value of any self healing she does.

For Li Li’s level 20 tier, all talents are viable on paper. This is not to say that one talent will not end up dominating, but that from a purely mathematical basis it is not clear which talent is best. While Jug of 50 Cups provides much more healing than Mistweaver, it requires picking Jug of 25 Cups and Jug of 50 Cups not being interrupted.

Builds

“Standard” build: Eager Adventurer, Hindering Winds/Safety Sprint, The Good Stuff/Let’s Go, Jug of 1,000 Cups/Water Dragon, Surging Winds, Two For One/Pick Me Up, Shake It Off

Pro: Generally stronger build, easier mana management, higher healing throughput
Con: Weaker dueling, shorter range

W build: Wind Serpent, Serpent Sidekick, Lightning Serpent, Jug of 1,000 Cups, Mass Vortex, Blessing of Yu’lon, Mistweaver

Pro: Longer effective range, more independence with putting W on divers that would otherwise be out of range, stronger dueling
Con: Overall weaker, lower healing throughput, no Cleanse

Overall Rework Analysis

It is unclear if the Li Li rework is a buff. The cooldown changes are a buff if Li Li can remain engaged in combat and maintain Fast Feet but are a nerf if she does not put herself at risk. Li Li’s role as a "bruiser healer" is further reinforced by her short ranges but relatively high damage output and dueling capability as a healer.

Build-wise, the serpent build is weaker. The new serpent is significantly worse in PvE, as both the duration and bounces are reliant on the serpent hitting Heroes. Serpent damage is overall much lower due to the attack speed nerf, and the healing (even with both Lightning Serpent bounces) was nerfed from 29.33 to 28. The new Blessing of Yu’lon is a solid healing boost for the serpent itself, but the reason to pick the build was superior dueling and PvE, and Blessing of Yu’lon is outscaled by Q talents.

Comparing the two “standard” builds, Li Li lost in damage output but gained in healing. Gale Force was a convenient bit of bonus damage, and Conjurer’s Pursuit is easily replaced by Eager Adventurer. Blinding Wind went from a 10 second cooldown that hit 4 targets, lasted 2 seconds, and gave 20% spellpower to a cooldown as low as 6s lasting 1.5s, hitting 2 targets, and giving 10% spellpower. The gains elsewhere in talents that actually improve healing throughput are appreciated, but Li Li still struggles to compete with other healers in the raw healing category. At level 20 the old Kung Fu Hustle was easily one of the top power spikes in the game, allowing Li Li to throw out spells with remarkable speed. The removal of Kung Fu Hustle removes one of the main reasons to pick the panda.