The most recent Heroes of the Storm balance patch was released last July 20. Unlike other balance patches, it featured a rework: Lt. Morales. It also included a huge buff for Zagara and some more tweaks, buffs, nerfs and quality of life changes for a bunch of heroes. The patch arrived a few days before the second CCL season ended, in between the two playoff weekends. As Blizzard doesn’t support Heroes esports anymore, there isn’t a tournament realm in which pros can play without immediately dealing with the changes. That’s why the tournament organizers and the teams had to quickly adapt to the new patch. We’ve talked to Jules Scott (CCL commissioner) and Kolja ‘wuTz’ Denoix (coach for Chilly Mountain) about this fast adaptation process.

Without Blizzard’s support, tournament organizers can’t know for sure the release date of the patches. Jules reminds us that in the first CCL season there was another mid-playoff patch. Zul’jin had many bugs in that update, but luckily the dev team hotfixed them right before the finals.

In terms of patch testing, HeroesHearth gets as much feedback as they can from the players, team staff and the Heroes of the Storm community. Their most reliable sources are CavalierGuest (Oxygen’s coach) and Leonblack (CCL Player Liaison), who test everything extensively. Both provide Jules detailed information on the patch changes. If a talent or ability doesn’t work as intended—as it was written in the patch notes or in the ingame tooltip—the CCL staff analyzes it in depth. If it provides a competitive advantage or disadvantage, they determine whether it’s bannable. Jules, as the CCL commissioner, has the last word on what’s to be banned.



There’s a similar patch testing process in Chilly Mountain. wuTz tells us that both him and his players review the changes. The latter play Storm League on Master and Grandmaster to check how everything works at the top level. They discuss their impressions and agree on what might be playable, unplayable or over-tuned, as Zagara in the current patch. Apart from this player review, wuTz analyzes the data they gather to double-check their results and elucidate what fits in their playstyle for all the different maps.

Once Chilly Mountain had everything ready, they only could test it in a scrim against Granit Gaming and in a warm-up match versus 30k before playing the Loser Finals against Simplicity. CM had already faced the Season 1 champions in the upper bracket semifinals, where they defeated them 3-1. Though having a rematch just a week later, the new patch changed almost everything:



Their match ended with a 3-2 victory for Simplicity. The Season 1 champions carried the momentum and also defeated STORM Esports at the Grand Finals, keeping their CCL crown. During these two series, Zagara—the hero most affected by the new patch—was either picked or banned in every single map, while she hadn’t appeared in any of the previous playoff matches.