Huge Heroes of The Storm Patch Adds New Map, Hero, Reworks And More

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Huge Heroes of The Storm Patch Adds New Map, Hero, Reworks And More

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The massive patch is on the Heroes of The Storm PTR right now, with dozens of new features.

Heroes of The Storm fans brace yourselves: the game is about to get a massive patch that will rework a lot of underused heroes, and bring in plenty of new features.

First up, it brings with it a new map: Lost Cavern [http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20064917]. MOBA veterans will recognize Lost Cavern as Heroes of The Storm's take on the popular "all random all mid (ARAM)" mode. A single lane map in which heroes do not heal when returning to base, Lost Cavern challenges all five heroes to a single skirmish in the middle of the map. Lost Caverns will only be playable in custom games, and won't be a part of the normal map rotation.

Next, Dehaka, Primal Pack Leader, is the game's newest hero. StarCraft fans will know him as a significant Heart of The Swarm character. His abilities are as follows:

Brushstalker (Z)
You cannot use Mounts. Instead, you may burrow to any bush or vent on the Battleground. 40 second cooldown.
Essence Collection (D)
You collect 10 Essence per Hero Takedown, and 2 per enemy Minion killed nearby, storing up to a maximum of 50 Essence.
Activate to consume all stored Essence and regenerate Health over the next 5 seconds for each stack consumed.
Can be cast during Drag and Burrow.
Drag (Q)
Lash out with your tongue, dealing light damage to the first enemy hit, and dragging them with you for 1.75 seconds.
Dark Swarm (W)
Over the next three seconds, you gain the ability to move through units and deal damage in an area around yourself. Deals double damage to Heroes.
Can be cast during Drag and Burrow.
Burrow (E)
Burrow into the ground, entering Stasis and becoming Invulnerable for 2 seconds.
Isolation (R)
Launch biomass that deals damage, silences, and slows the first enemy Hero it hits by 30% for 3 seconds. For the next 6 seconds, the affected enemy loses sight of allied Heroes, and has greatly reduced vision.
Adaptation (R)
After a 5 second delay, 60% of all damage taken during this time will be returned to you as Health.

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For ranked play fans, the patch brings some significant changes. Just like in other MOBAs, you can now ban two heroes per team during the draft phase. To compensate for this, players will now need to have 14 unlocked heroes to play ranked, but free-to-play rotation heroes that are level 5 or above will count towards that number.

Finally, Gazlowe, Illidan, Kael'thas, Sylvanas, and Tychus have all had significant talent reworks, while several more heroes have had minor balance changes. There are way too many changes to list here so please check the official patch notes [http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20060107#Heroes] to see what's in store for your favorite hero.

The patch is currently playable on the Public Test Realm, although we don't have any idea of when it will hit live servers.

Source: Blizzard [http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20060107#Heroes]

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Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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Aug 2, 2015
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I. Collect. Essence. From These So Called. "Heroes".

Sad they only offered one new Starcraft hero. We could have had Tosh and Stukov aswell. But we need another Zerg-ish hero.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! First you completely fuck over Nova, now you're going to screw up my Sylvanas build?!

SCREW YOU, BLIZZARD! LEAVE MY MAINS ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!
 

Jeremy Dawkins

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Oct 17, 2011
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RJ 17 said:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! First you completely fuck over Nova, now you're going to screw up my Sylvanas build?!

SCREW YOU, BLIZZARD! LEAVE MY MAINS ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!
You should see how badly they are ruining Kael.
 

Jeremy Dawkins

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Oct 17, 2011
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Samtemdo8 said:
I. Collect. Essence. From These So Called. "Heroes".

Sad they only offered one new Starcraft hero. We could have had Tosh and Stukov aswell. But we need another Zerg-ish hero.
Stukov is also with the zerg, unless you mean before he was brought back. Also still might get them, Blizz only brings out one new hero every time, around every 3 or 4 weeks now.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Jeremy Dawkins said:
RJ 17 said:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! First you completely fuck over Nova, now you're going to screw up my Sylvanas build?!

SCREW YOU, BLIZZARD! LEAVE MY MAINS ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!
You should see how badly they are ruining Kael.
Well thanks for the heads up, I was thinking of making him my next 10k hero.

Seriously though, I don't mind clearly OP stuff getting nerfed. Game balancing is needed for every game. But Blizzard has a really bad habit of taking stuff that's strong and nerfing it to the point of being absolutely useless.
 

laggyteabag

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RJ 17 said:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! First you completely fuck over Nova, now you're going to screw up my Sylvanas build?!

SCREW YOU, BLIZZARD! LEAVE MY MAINS ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!
I'm not even sure that Sylvanas even needed that much of a rework. Don't get me wrong, possession was poop, and Mind Control is way, way, better, but I don't really see why they needed to fiddle that much with a lot of her talents. It isn't like she was considered to be underpowered or overpowered; she was in a pretty nice spot, IMO.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Laggyteabag said:
RJ 17 said:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! First you completely fuck over Nova, now you're going to screw up my Sylvanas build?!

SCREW YOU, BLIZZARD! LEAVE MY MAINS ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!
I'm not even sure that Sylvanas even needed that much of a rework. Don't get me wrong, possession was poop, and Mind Control is way, way, better, but I don't really see why they needed to fiddle that much with a lot of her talents. It isn't like she was considered to be underpowered or overpowered; she was in a pretty nice spot, IMO.
That's what gets me the most. If you ask me, massive reworks are for older champs who have fallen out of relevancy due to new heroes and meta changes. You don't need to rework an all-around good - but not too OP - character like Sylvanas.
 

Solo-Wing

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Dec 15, 2010
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Samtemdo8 said:
I. Collect. Essence. From These So Called. "Heroes".

Sad they only offered one new Starcraft hero. We could have had Tosh and Stukov aswell. But we need another Zerg-ish hero.
Or how about Alarak? I would fucking LOVE to get him in the game.
 

Jburton9

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Aug 21, 2012
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I feel the company is no longer interested in making Heroes of the Storm fun with with their laser focus on eSports over everything else.

Stripping down characters that had interesting traits and an over focus on combat rotations. Makes for quick turn around in matches and grist for for the eSport announcers... "Ooh what an upset! No one saw that one coming..."

"I want to developers to stop love making games and love money more..."
 

shintakie10

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Sep 3, 2008
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RJ 17 said:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! First you completely fuck over Nova, now you're going to screw up my Sylvanas build?!

SCREW YOU, BLIZZARD! LEAVE MY MAINS ALONE, GOD DAMNIT!
You can basically make the same builds you used to on Sylvanas though, they're just better. The only talent that is significantly worse is the one that makes Shadow Dagger targets vulnerable since it no longer spreads the vulnerable debuff, which was ridiculous anyway btw.

Other than that, a lot of talents got mixed together to form a single, much better, talent. The cast haunting wave twice talent and the refill withering fire talent got merged which gives you some serious burst power if you take the faster cooldown on withering arrow talent.

Plus they actually made some really smart choices with some picks. The level 7 talent choices now make perfect sense because its 3 different ways to go about wave clear, instead of having 3 talents in 3 separate tiers that all do the same thing.

I've been having a lot of fun with Windrunner based builds. Its super risky, but with the buff to Withering Fire you can lay some serious smackdown on someone in a very short amount of time. You can negate the risk by using the free Haunting Wave to gtfo after bursting with it, or if you're like to yolo, use it again to refill your Q and finish someone off. Once you hit 20 you can take bolt of the storm and have absolutely ridiculous mobility. Still not sure what to take in the 16 tier though. Movement speed is great since its very easy to get 30% with the faster Withering Fire, but being able to melt someone with the Shadow Dagger vulnerability is extraordinarily helpful.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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shintakie10 said:
You can basically make the same builds you used to on Sylvanas though, they're just better. The only talent that is significantly worse is the one that makes Shadow Dagger targets vulnerable since it no longer spreads the vulnerable debuff, which was ridiculous anyway btw.

Other than that, a lot of talents got mixed together to form a single, much better, talent. The cast haunting wave twice talent and the refill withering fire talent got merged which gives you some serious burst power if you take the faster cooldown on withering arrow talent.

Plus they actually made some really smart choices with some picks. The level 7 talent choices now make perfect sense because its 3 different ways to go about wave clear, instead of having 3 talents in 3 separate tiers that all do the same thing.

I've been having a lot of fun with Windrunner based builds. Its super risky, but with the buff to Withering Fire you can lay some serious smackdown on someone in a very short amount of time. You can negate the risk by using the free Haunting Wave to gtfo after bursting with it, or if you're like to yolo, use it again to refill your Q and finish someone off. Once you hit 20 you can take bolt of the storm and have absolutely ridiculous mobility. Still not sure what to take in the 16 tier though. Movement speed is great since its very easy to get 30% with the faster Withering Fire, but being able to melt someone with the Shadow Dagger vulnerability is extraordinarily helpful.
If your build didn't get screwed over then that's great, I'm happy for you. My build will be completely broken...and not in the fun way.