Two years ago, the Heroes of the Storm team introduced the Scaling Update, which converted Heroes of the Storm from the traditional RPG linear scaling to the current percent, exponential scaling. These changes completely overthrew the meta and redefined the relationships between heroes, battlegrounds, and abilities.

The 2018 gameplay update looks even bigger than the scaling changes. In an effort to make sense of the massive changes coming out way, this article attempts to put the many pieces of the puzzle together.

The focus today is primarily on the battleground changes, with an analysis of stealth updates next week. The changes to regeneration globes, battleground timers, and mercenary camps have a huge impact and fundamentally alter how the first 10 minutes of the game are played.

How the professional scene handles and adapts to these changes will make an even bigger impact in how the game is played, but that’s something we won’t see until next year’s HGC begins.

Relevant Links:

• Official Patch Notes
• 2017 vs 2018 comparison
• Updated NPC stats spreadsheet
• Experience analysis

*Majority of info courtesy of Ahli

Globe Changes

Splitpush, Deathpush, and Globe Quest buff

• Regeneration Globes will now become neutral (claimable by both teams) if not claimed within 3 seconds.

One of the simpler changes in the patch. Halfway through a globe’s 6 second lifespan, they become available to both teams. 6 seconds is enough time to travel 34.32 meters on mount, or 26.4 meters on foot. Picking up an allied globe in the 3 seconds by foot only allows 13.2 meters of movement, severely restricting options.

A number of heroes like Thrall and Sonya have melee steroids that last 3 seconds and allow them to effectively zone enemies away from health globes until they turn neutral.

Health globes are worth 11.7% health and 38.2 mana plus 0.8 mana per level. The globe drops from the wave’s wizard minion, which comes every 30 seconds. Thus, one globe is worth 0.39% HPS and 1.27 MPS plus ~0.03 MPS per level. This is 187% more health regeneration, 44% more base mana regeneration, and 27% more mana regeneration per level.

Doubling the above numbers for two globes is 23.4% health, 76.4 mana plus 1.6 mana per level. This is 0.78% HPS, 2.55 MPS plus 0.05 MPS per level. That’s a 374% boost to health regeneration, 88% more base mana regeneration, and 53% more mana regeneration per level.

Going beyond the early laning phase, globes becoming neutral means globe quests will complete faster and uncontested pushes will be more effective. In the mid game, when heroes go to clear lanes that are pushing, they’ll consistently pick up 1-2 more globes from allied globes turning neutral. Furthermore, heroes that are in lane and are pushing alone will regenerate significantly more HP and mana.

An example of a hero that strongly benefits from this is Gazlowe. He can be very mana hungry with his turrets, but he has the lane control to consistently grab both globes. Conversely, heroes that already have excellent sustain or that rely on global push mechanics like Abathur or Azmodan do not particularly benefit from this change.

Timer Changes

Objectives at later levels, merc spawn changes fundamentally alter early game

• The 5 second delay before Minions spawn after the game begins has been removed.
  
• Mercenary Camps will now spawn 60 seconds after the game begins
  
• Undocumented Bosses now spawn 10 minutes after the game begins. When a boss is captured on Cursed Hollow or Warhead Junction, if the other boss has not already been pulled then it will despawn
  
  • This change did not go through to live

Let’s start with the smallest of the above changes: the minion spawn timer. This change is likely to end the “group 5 mid to start” meta. Unless teams immediately split to top or bottom after congregating mid, players risk losing side lane soak by engaging in a 5v5 poke war.

The objective timer changes mostly standardize objective timers to 1:30 or 3:00, with the exception being Tomb of the Spider Queen and Volskaya Foundry. Tomb of the Spider Queen is a less relevant standardization because the soonest a team can acquire 50 gems is with the 6th minion wave that spawns at 2:30.

Volskaya Foundry’s lack of standardization is curious, given that the map also seems to have issues with overall objective strength and how long the objective takes to complete. Considering Blizzard’s plan to remove the map for the next season of competitive play, it’s fair to assume that this map is going back to the drawing board for now.

The more important piece of these battleground changes is what level the players on each team will be when the objective starts. Most objectives are moving from the “barely level 4” area to “approaching level 7”. The biggest swings are Garden of Terror and Sky Temple, as 1:30 was often right before teams hit level 4. 3:00, on the other hand, is when a team has accomplished some push and soaked close to level 7. This creates a different priority for various heroes power spikes. The level 4 power spike will be significantly downplayed in terms of teamfighting compared to level 7.

These changes also extend the laning phase, improving the power of lane bullies such as Sonya. Earlier merc camp timings at only 1:00 into the game also provide a possibility for “dedicated junglers” to focus on merc camps until the objective spawns.

The undocumented boss changes are perhaps the most jarring changes in the PTR. Bosses spawning 10 minutes into the game is hugely disruptive on Cursed Hollow and Sky Temple, where bosses were used as a means to push a level 10 to level 9 advantage. On Warhead Junction, bosses backed up by early nukes to set record wins in professional play will be a long gone strategy.

Tomb of the Spider Queen and Braxis Holdout, where the boss tends to be a late game objective, are less affected. “Tempo” bosses on Towers of Doom are functionally eliminated. However, it was usually considered better to just take a fort rather than take the boss in the mid game due to the risk anyway.

Tower and Minion tuning

Minions are figurative gods

• All attacking structures no longer have ammunition.
• Tower vision range has been increased by 25%
  • From 8 to 10
• Tower damage to minions has been reduced by 25%
• Structures now have a warmup period of .5 seconds before firing and must face their targets completely
  • This means Tower damage bonus vs. minions has been reduced from +100% to +50%
• Standalone Towers (found next to Forts and Keeps) have been removed.
  • The Health, granted Experience, and Damage of Standalone Towers has been redistributed into their surrounding gate Towers, Forts, and Keeps.
• Minion base damage and health has been increased by roughly 10%

The biggest, most fundamental change of this patch is the removal of structure ammo. The ammo system restricted towers to 20 shots maximum, taking 15 seconds to regenerate 1 ammo. If a tower ran out of ammo, it shut down for 30 seconds and regenerated 2 ammo.

To set up a model for analysis, I posit a full or nearly full HP wave marching in a box formation at an opposing set of towers and gate. The towers fire simultaneously, and get two free shots each before the minion wave gets in range to attack. Each turret fires at the closest footman, then together fire at the middle footman. Then, each turret fires at the wizard minion until it dies, potentially wasting shots if the wizard would die in an odd number of shots. Then, each tower fires at the closest ranged minion, then together fire at the final ranged minion. This takes 12 seconds in the 2017 patch, and takes 17 seconds in the 2018 patch. Starting at the 2 second mark, each minion that is alive fires an attack every 1.5 seconds.

A full HP wave crashing into fort towers does 870 damage on the 2017 patch, which increases to 1442 damage on the 2018 patch, a 65% increase. The old value increases by 7.05 each minute for the first five minutes, while the new value increases by 10.5 each minute for the first five minutes. Respectively, these represent 7% and 10% of the total HP of the front set of towers and a gate. Under the old ammo system, each wave drained 12 ammo per tower, completely draining the front pair of towers in two waves.

A full HP wave crashing into a fort does 1224 damage on the 2017 patch, which increases to 1836 damage on the 2018 patch, a 50% increase. The old value increases by 10.05 each minute for the first five minutes, while the new value increases by 13.5 each minute for the first five minutes. Respectively, these represent 11% and 14% of the total HP of the fort. Under the old ammo system, each wave drained 17 ammo, leaving just the ranged minions alive out of the third full wave.

Mercenary Changes

Siege giants much easier to take, Knights and Hellbats stronger to push with, Sappers stronger late game

Siege Giants

• Siege Giant Camp
  • Siege Defenders
    • Defending Siege Giant attacks are now telegraphed on the terrain and can be dodged.
  • Siege Laners
    • Attack telegraphing and missile trajectory has been significantly improved.

Siege Giants have been reverted to their Technical Alpha versions, in the sense that their attacks are now dodgeable. This means that for most heroes they will be able to easily take no damage while taking the camp, The new siege giants throw a rock every 2 seconds, which deals 120 damage in a 1m radius circle. This damage scales with game time. For details, check out the “NPC Scaling 2018” spreadsheet (also linked at the start of the article).

Mage Knight

• Knight Camp
  • Wizard Knight Laner
    • Wizard Knight Laner has a Spell Armor Aura
    • Grants all nearby Allies (Minions, Mercenaries, and Heroes) 30 Spell Armor
    • Spell Armor is immediately removed upon leaving the aura area.
    • This Aura is destroyed when the Wizard is killed
    • Wizard Knight Defender
    • Grants nearby Knight Defenders a 15 Spell Armor aura
    • This Aura is destroyed when the Wizard is killed

The new and improved Knight Camp provides a powerful spell shield aura to each ally around the Wizard Knight. The 30 spell armor aura on the captured camp extends in a 7.5 radius from the Wizard Knight and represents a 43% EHP boost against spell damage. This greatly diminishes the effectiveness of waveclear against teams pushing with the Knight Camp, to the point that strategies based around healing the Wizard Knight will develop.

In contrast, the current function of the knight camp is to be a large sack of HP that drains a lane’s ammo. Without the ammo to drain, this change provides a more upfront option for pushing.

Hellbats

• Hellbat Camp respawn times have been doubled (from 1:30 to 3:00)
• Hellbats will now prioritize structures

Defender Hellbat Stats

• Base health increased by 114%
• Health scaling increased by 160%
• Damage increased by 83%
• Damage scaling reduced by roughly 60%

Laner Hellbat Stats

• Base health increased by roughly 18%
• Health scaling increased by 25%
• Base damage increased by 25%
• Damage scaling decreased by 66%
• Damage scaling will now stop after 20 minutes (previously 30)
• Damage taken from structures reduced by 50%
• Attacks now apply a 3-second stacking -5 Armor debuff to all targets, stacking up to 20 times (structures included)
  • This still follows the normal armor rules of capping at -25

Hellbats have been buffed significantly this patch. Defender Hellbats are roughly four times stronger than they were pre-patch, while Laner Hellbats are closer to 80% stronger. Laner hellbat damage is much higher early game, but the drop in damage scaling evens them out by 10:00 and then falls below current scaling at 20:00 when the damage scaling stops cold. The armor debuff reaches -25 in 4 seconds, as both Hellbats will generally hit the same target with their AoE.

Similar to the power of the spell armor aura on the Knight Wizard camp, Hellbats are very strong to push with due to their new armor interaction. Blizzard has steadily removed all other talent interactions that provided armor reduction against structures, making this a unique source. -25 armor represents a 20% EHP reduction for the affected targets. One other thing to note is that the Hellbat Camp is much riskier to take if the enemy team decides to invade, as a hero with -25 armor will die very quickly to a surprise attack.

Sappers

Sapper Defenders

• Now fire their attacks at target areas, instead of directly at Heroes.
  • This behaves like the laning Sappers
• Sapper Explosion damage now scales over time

Laning Sappers

• Health scaling increased by 33%
• Respawn timer across all maps increased from 105 to 120 seconds
• Now have 100 Armor vs Structures while charging and Towers will ignore charging Sappers

The sappers’ charge now deal ~7% less damage early game, which evens out by 7:00 and deals 14% more damage by 20:00. These changes improve the late game strength of Sappers while slightly weakening the earliest sappers.

The armor vs structures change prevents towers from killing off sappers mid-charge, making them much stronger in dedicated pushes late game.

Abathur

First of many specialist tunings

Abilities

• Spawn Locust (Trait)
  • Health increased from 288 to 316

Talents

• Level 1
  • Survival Instincts (Trait)
    • Bonus Health decreased from 50% to 40%

Abathur’s locusts now increase the number of shots they can tank 2-3 levels earlier. The biggest change is locusts tanking 3-4 tower shots at level 5 rather than level 7. Combined with the objective timer changes, this should help Abathur’s early game presence.

However, much of Abathur’s mid and late game presence came from draining ammo, which is no longer possible. Expect more changes like this in the future as Blizzard rebalances the other summon-centric specialists.

Final Thoughts

These changes are a reboot of the Heroes of the Storm meta. Base assumptions about how to play the game must be re-examined with these changes. Basic tenets like “clear and rotate” and 4-1 splits may no longer hold any water. Blizzard will likely continue to tune these changes in preparation for HGC 2018, but it will take a while to sift through the meta and understand the greater implications of these changes.

The current set of changes all point to a push-heavy meta with much longer early games. Lane dominance, pushing power, and high sustain all play a pivotal role in allowing teams to make sure they secure regeneration globes and take full advantage of the new and improved mercenary camps. Early game objectives are later, allowing teams more time to focus on pushing lanes and outplaying their opponents in small skirmishes.

All in all, it’s a dynamic turn of events that may make or break the game depending on how it’s implemented. For now, all we can do is play, watch, and wait.