Events and Features

2021 has been a year of ups and downs for Heroes of the Storm. The lack of new characters and the slower pace of game updates may have felt disheartening on a daily basis, but some things did really change in the Nexus in 2021.

Back in May, patch 2.54 brought some changes to the Experience Globes. Instead of disappearing after their 6-second lifespan, the globes now shrink and stay for 39 more seconds, granting a quarter of their original experience value. This update made soaking and laning more forgiving, enabling players to rotate and join their teams across the map. Experience Globes were introduced in 2019 as a Nexus Anomaly and have become a core part of the game since.

The other gameplay change introduced during 2021 affected the Healing Wells. As it already happened in ARAM, wells are now invulnerable and can only be destroyed alongside their forts of keeps. If they aren’t attached to a specific structure, wells fall when both keeps are taken down. To compensate for this change, the health points from wells are now part of the forts and keeps health pool, making them harder to take.



Ranked seasons have been cut down to two per year, instead of the four there used to be. Even if seasons are longer, we’ll probably keep waiting until the very last day to grind the points we are missing to achieve our desired rank. Since 2021 ranked season 2, Volskaya Foundry isn’t part the ranked battleground rotation any longer and Warhead Junction is its replacement.

Despite not having a new hero, there have been many reworks in 2021. The first batch of reworked heroes came in patch 2.54. Anduin, Johanna, Raynor, Stitches and Valla were revamped, with all but Anduin featuring a new type of talents: the Gambit Talents. These talents are some kind of reverse quest. Instead of getting a reward when completed, you begin having the reward and it diminishes every time you die. Later in the year also Lt. Morales and Rehgar were reworked, turning the healer hero pool into one of the most interesting of the game.

When speaking of cosmetics, there have been two events in the Nexus in 2021: Overwatch Cosplay and Legends of the Past. The first one took place in May. Alongside their reworks, Johnna, Raynor, Stitches and Valla received new skins to cosplay their favorite Overwatch characters: Reinhardt, Soldier 76, Roadhog and Reaper, respectively. The second event, Legends of the Past, took us down memory lane with classic skins for Kerrigan, Raynor, Rehgar, Butcher and Li-Ming from their original games.

Esports

In terms of esports, 2021 has been the beginning of a new era for Heroes of the Storm. CCL has brought some order into a chaotic scene where there were many good tournaments but no stability at all. As old HGC used to do, the HeroesHearth league splits the year into two seasons. Its draft format allows the talent pool to constantly regenerate and turns all the other events outside CCL into a big showcase, granting them an additional layer of interest.

CCL Season 1 ended in January with the triumph of Simplicity after a miracle run in playoffs, where they only lost four of the 22 maps they played. They also won CCL Season 2, though they found a great rival in STORM Esports, one of the two organizations that joined the league during its second season. The third CCL season is still at play, with its playoffs beginning next January 8. All the teams are evolving game after game, so everything can happen in the upcoming playoffs.

2021 has brought back the offline events at the Western Heroes of the Storm scene. After being cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19, Masters Clash Championship returned to Paris, making us relive the HGC days with their Western Clashes. After dropping to the losers’ bracket, 30k played an impeccable Grand Finals and earned the right to lift the MCC trophy in front of a live audience.



Apart from CCL and MCC, each region had its own great event or series during 2021. North America reunited with one of the greatest tournament organizers across the whole esports industry: DreamHack. The Swedish company made Heroes of the Storm part of their online events with DreamHack Beyond, where Simplicity showed its supremacy once again. Europe witnessed the birth of the X-Cups, a series of tournaments funded by a mysterious “Mr. X” and hosted by Khaldor. Mascarade’s Wurst And Homies won both the X-Cup Summer and X-Cup Fall with the core that also won MCC.

After a long hiatus, the Chinese scene reactivated with the Storm League series. Tsunami, the team that won every single tournament in China in 2020, couldn’t keep its streak up. They lost against C8 in the Grand Finals of Storm League Season 1. A couple months later they proved that the defeat against C8 was merely a setback by taking them down in SL Season 2 finals and claiming back the crown of the Chinese scene. Meanwhile in South Korea, everything’s quickly changing. The first season of the FiSH Bowl Heroes League was the last beacon of the old dynasties, sealed by the victory of Lockdown’s team. After that mirage, the second FiSH season was defined by the emergence of many talented newcomers, which ended with Penthios’ triumph.

We can’t finish our yearly recap without addressing the terrible news coming from Activision Blizzard, the developer of Heroes of the Storm. We want to express our solidarity with all who experienced discrimination, sexual harassment or abuse at Activision Blizzard. In contrast to the alleged discriminatory politics of the company, the Heroes of the Storm community celebrates diversity and equality. For example, CCL added a column for pronouns in their free agents list, so everybody is addressed properly no matter their gender identity. Heroes of the Storm can’t be understood without acknowledging all the great women who are an essential part of the community, the dev team and the esports scene.