Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused the Recon Camp to have the scaling value reset when captured.

Design & Gameplay

Building Changes

• Healing Wells
  • Additional Functionality: Healing Wells are now invulnerable, and are destroyed when their nearby Fort or Keep are destroyed. Stand alone Healing Wells on Battlefield of Eternity and Braxis Holdout are destroyed when both Keeps are destroyed.
• Forts
  • Health increased from 12900 to 15450.
• Keeps
  • Health increased from 17000 to 20050.

Developer Comment: We're happy with how Healing Wells function in our ARAM game mode, so we're giving it a try everywhere. Additionally, Forts and Keeps now have additional health as they've absorbed the health of their nearby Healing Wells.

Design & Gameplay

• Map
  • Tower, Fort, and Keep damage to enemy Heroes increased by 10%.

Developer Comment: We've given our tower changes some time to settle, and while we like how their current targeting mechanism works, we believe we went a little too far in lowering their damage. We're giving them some of their teeth back so that enemies who tower dive have a little less time to hang around in their opponent's base before they have to disengage.

• Healing Fountains
  • Health and Shield values swapped. The Shield value now accounts for 75% of the total Health.
  • Shield regeneration rate increased to 10% of total Shields per second.

Developer Comment: We've heard feedback that players dislike how their Healing Fountains can be sniped by the opposing team early in the game. While we agree that this can be frustrating, we don't want to completely remove alternative strategies for creating an advantage. We're experimenting with a change to move the total Health of the Healing Fountains to be much more in favor of a Shield that quickly regenerates instead of Health. This should make it riskier for players to snipe Healing Fountains, as they will not get any value unless they destroy the building, while also rewarding players who are able to protect their Healing Fountains early in the game.

Design & Gameplay

• Nexus Anomaly - A Call For Help

Developer Comment: Firstly, thank you all for the overwhelming amount of feedback related to the Call for Help Anomaly. We appreciate the time you took to write out your responses, and it greatly helped us make a decision on where to go going forward. In regards to the changes, we decided to keep the tower aggro system with some adjustments. To help reward aggression in the laning phase of the game, we are removing both the negative Armor debuff that front towers used to provide and also reverting their aggro systems to no longer prioritize Heroes who attack other Heroes in their range. Forts, Keeps, and the Core will still prioritize enemy Heroes who attack other Heroes, which will make them stand out as important structures to both defend and take down. We will continue to monitor how these changes play out, and will adjust these systems more in the future if we believe it to be necessary.

Battleground Updates

• New Nexus Anomaly - Climate Phenomena

Strange weather disturbances have been spotted across the Nexus, with realms experiencing rain storms, snow flurries, and foggy mists! Mei's arrival is just in time to help analyze and study these strange weather conditions that have begun occurring. Climate Phenomena is our newest Nexus Anomaly, bringing a variety of fun weather effects to the game. Each battleground has a specific type of weather event that will occur every 4 minutes, with the first event starting at the beginning of the match. Each weather event lasts for 2 minutes before clearing up. This cycle will repeat periodically until the game ends. While these weather events are active, Heroes can gain a unique buff based on the type of active weather. These buffs are:

• Rain Storms
  • Periodically Strike all heroes with lightning every 25-40 seconds, increasing Movement Speed and granting a Lightning Shield that damages nearby enemies.
    • Movement Speed increased by 15%.
    • Damage nearby enemies for 46 damage per second.
    • Buff lasts 8 seconds.
• Snow Flurries
  • Heroes accumulate a small shield over time while out of combat.
    • Heroes gain 28 Shields every 0.5 seconds, stacking up to 224 (8 stacks total).
    • Shield lasts until destroyed or until the Snow stops falling.
• Foggy Mists
  • Allows Heroes to gain Stealth after standing in shrubs for a few seconds.
    • After standing in a shrub for 1.5 seconds, Heroes gain Stealth.
    • Stealth lasts 40 seconds or until attacking, taking damage, using an ability, or until the Foggy weather dissipates.

Weather events will be active on these Battlegrounds:

• Foggy Mists
  • Hanamura Temple

Design & Gameplay

• A Call For Help - Balance Update
  • Tower, Fort, and Keep damage to enemy Heroes reduced by 10%.
  • Maximum Armor reduction from Structures reduced from -40 to -20.

Developer Comment: Thank you for your discussions and feedback regarding the Call For Help system. We've seen a trend that players believe towers are still too punishing to dive under for lengthy periods of time, so we're going to reduce their damage as well as how powerful their Armor debuff is so that players are more incentivized to make aggressive plays when pushing. We'll be continuing to keep an eye on how these changes unfold, so please continue to give us your feedback.

Bug Fixes

• The Sentinel's Warning Splat for Horizontal Slash properly matches its searches.

Design & Gameplay

• Nexus Anomaly - A Call For Help
  • Tower, Fort, and Keep structure damage reduced by 10%.
  • Structures will only focus their attacks on enemy Heroes if they attack an allied Hero who is also in their range.
  • Self-damage from Heroes will no longer cause structures to focus them.
  • Periodic damage over time will no longer cause structures to focus Heroes.

Developer Comment: We're making some changes to the Call for Help system that should help the overall player experience. We believe that currently Towers are punishing aggressive play too much, so we're lowering their damage to give diving Heroes more time to make plays before they have to escape. Our goal overall with the system is to still have aggressive play be possible and rewarded, but to also give the defending team a way to punish prolonged Tower dives, which is primarily due to the stacking Armor debuff. We're also changing the A.I. of structures to require that both the attacking and defending Hero be in their range in order for them to switch aggro onto an aggressor. This means that the defending Hero needs to also be near their structures in order to be defended, and it removes some unintuitive situations where a Hero can get aggro from attacks that are happening in far away places. Lastly, periodic damage will no longer cause structures to focus Heroes, so Heroes like Lunara will no longer pull aggro for the entirety of their DoT effects.

Battleground Updates

• Objective Missile damage increased from 1800 to 1900. Undocumented
  • This change was implemented in game on 2020-05-12
• Samurai Camp
  • Laner version Health reduced from 8,000 to 7,200.
    • This change was implemented in game on 2020-05-12
  • Laner version Health scaling reduced by ~10%.

Developer Comment: We've heard feedback that players believe the pushing Samurai camp is too strong and the objective is too weak. For some insight, we purposefully designed the map so that the Samurai camp was uniquely powerful, and we wanted it to be a viable, effective strategy that was available for a large portion of the game, particularly since the map only has 2 lanes. Now that the map has been out for some time, we believe that the balance of power can shift a little in favor of the objective being a more central way to win the game.

Design & Gameplay

Nexus Anomaly - A Call For Help

We've heard feedback over the years that a lot of you would like to feel more protected by nearby friendly structures. Currently, Minions, Summons, and non- Heroic units can hold a structure's attention for so long that defending players feel that they're offered no additional protection when taking refuge under their Cannon Towers, Forts, Keeps and Cores. In order to address this issue, we will be making the following changes to structures:

Cannon Towers, Forts, Keeps and Cores

• A beam is now created from these structures to their targets, making it easier to see what is being attacked at a glance.
• Allied Heroes of the structures who are being attacked by enemy Heroes will cause the structure to focus the offender until the offender is dead or leaves tower range.
• A bright beam indicates that the structure is defending an ally Hero and is focusing on the beam target.
• Structures reset targeting when the Call for Help target becomes invalid.
• Structures reset targeting logic when they recover from being disabled.

Cannon Towers, Forts and Keeps

• Damage to Heroes increased by 10%.
• Attacks reduce Hero Armor by up to -40.
• Cannon Tower attacks reduce enemy Hero Armor by 5.
• Forts and Keeps attacks reduce enemy Hero Armor by 10.
• Forts and Keeps no longer slow enemy Heroes.

Battleground Updates

New Core Abilities

• We want fights around the Core to feel like exciting ends to cap off great games, and we feel like we can do more to deliver on that front. To that end, this Seasonal Nexus Anomaly will introduce themed abilities to non-ARAM Battleground Cores:
  • Hanamura
    • Every 8 seconds, the Core fires 2 volleys of missiles around it, dealing 5% maximum Health to enemy Heroes and slowing them by 70% for 1.25 seconds.

Battlegrounds

Experience

• Floating Combat Text for experience earned from killing blows now has a unique purple color and displays at the position of the killed unit. Floating Combat Text from experience earned from Experience Globes remains unchanged.

Experience Globes

• Pickup Radius increased from 1.5 to 1.75.
• Experience Globes that are actively travelling to a Hero will attempt to follow more closely.

Developer Comment: We're making some small improvements to Experience Globes to make them more readable and to improve how they feel to pick up by adding a unique purple text that displays where they are killed. With these changes, players should more clearly see when they gained experience via a killing blow. We also found that sometimes picking up experience globes while mounted could be a bit of a hassle due to the pickup radius of the globes as well as how quickly they travel to players, so we are slightly buffing both of these aspects to make them a little easier to collect in these instances.

Design & Gameplay

• Experience Globes
  • Heroes who kill Minions with Abilities or Basic Attacks will automatically collect the experience from the Minions.
  • Experience Globes will no longer time out while travelling to a hero.
  • They will still expire if the hero moves out of range of the Experience Globe before it reaches them.
  • Removed a .5 second delay before Experience Globes can be collected.

Developer Comment: While we're excited for the experience globes and the increased clarity that they offer in regards to how experience is gained, we've read the feedback that it can be too difficult for many heroes to gain the globes. While we think there are some good reasons to keep them as a pick- up only mechanic, we overall agree with the sentiment, and are going to allow heroes who kill Minions to get the experience from them. We still believe that this change will allow for more interesting hero interactions overall, and are excited to see how it pans out over the course of the rest of the season. We're also including some quality of life changes that should make Experience Globes feel generally better to collect.

Design & Gameplay

Nexus Anomaly - Experience Globes

Nexus Anomalies are seasonal gameplay changes that directly affect all game modes in Heroes of the Storm. These events will last the entire season, allowing us time to receive feedback on them. Depending on this evaluation, some of them may become permanent additions to the game, while others may just be a limited time event.

The first Nexus Anomaly has arrived! In order to make collecting experience more satisfying and intuitive, we're changing how experience is collected from Minions in the Heroes of the Storm. Players will no longer get experience from simply being nearby, but instead need to gather an Experience Globe dropped by dying Minions.

Experience Globes

• Minions no longer give Experience by killing them, but instead drop an Experience Globe that must be collected.
  • Footman and Archer Minions (and their equivalent on different Battlegrounds) drop an Experience Globe that lasts for 6 seconds and awards 80 experience (plus 2 every minute).
  • Wizard Minions no longer give Experience, but Experience Globe values have been increased to compensate.
  • Experience Globes slowly move toward the closest allied Hero within 6 range, and are collected when an allied Hero comes within 1.5 range.
  • Experience Globes will not move toward Heroes that are hidden in bushes or Stealthed, but they can be still collected by these Heroes if they move within 1.5 range.
• A few Heroes have special interactions with Experience Globes.
  • Ragnaros Lava Wave will now instantly collect Experience Globes as it passes by.
  • Abathur's Symbiote is treated as a Hero for the purposes of collecting Experience Globes.
  • Hallucinations like Samuro's Mirror Images or Nova's Holo Clones are treated as a Hero for the purposes of collecting Experience Globes.

Bug Fixes

• Removed Minion flag from Mercenaries and Monsters.

Battleground Updates

• Swordsman Mercenary camps respawn timer increased from 120 to 150 seconds

Bug Fixes

• Garrosh is no longer able to throw Hanamura Temple's Payload

Design & Gameplay

Catapults

• When a team destroys a Fort, they'll now gain a Catapult in every 3rd Minion wave.
  • NOTE: In order to keep early-game Catapults from being too devastating to defending teams, Catapult attack splash size, attack range, and damage/health will gradually increase as the game progresses.

Experience Changes

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep
• Destroying a Fort or Keep will now provide your team with a stacking 20% increase in Passively-earned Experience
  • NOTE: Towers of Doom is exempt from all Experience and Catapult changes.
• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50%
• Passive Experience gain increased by 15%
• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%
  • ​Hanamura Temple and Volsksaya Foundry Item Camps are excluded from this change.
• Laning Mercenary Experience
  • Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience.

Developer Comment: Thank you so much for all of the feedback regarding the 2019 Gameplay Updates. While there is still a lot of community speculation about the outcome of these changes, there has been a resounding amount of concern about the loss of Fort and Keep XP. We agree that the complete loss of XP from Forts and Keeps may reduce the incentive to kill them to unhealthy levels, especially at higher levels of play. In response, we have reintroduced XP to the structures in a way that will reward players for taking them early while granting a gradual increase in power instead of large bursts. This should reinforce our goal of making matches closer while also rewarding teams for destroying enemy structures as quick as possible.

Developer Comment: After listening to feedback, we have decided to pull back the laning Mercenary change outlined in our 2019 gameplay updates in order to give winning teams more opportunities to pull ahead.

Mercenaries

• Boss Camps, Sentinel Camps (Hanamura Temple), and Support Camps (Volskaya Foundry) will now be flagged as Elite.
  • Elite Mercenary Camps are Unstoppable & Unbribable

Unit Radii

• The unit radius values for most Heroes has been reduced by 5-15%

Developer Comment: In an effort to improve visual clarity when many heroes are on-screen, we've updated the art for the Hero Ring displayed underneath heroes. To reinforce this effort, we've also done a pass on the Unit Radii for all heroes. We understand that these radius adjustments will have a minor but intended impact on landing and dodging abilities, and as a result, felt that the 2019 Gameplay Updates were the best time to make these changes.

Battlegrounds

• Experience gains from Mercenary Camp captures have been unified. All Mercenary Camps now grant all Experience on capture.

Bug Fixes

• Minions/Mercenaries: Fixed an issue where Heroes could block the movement of Catapults, preventing them from passing through intact gates.

Battleground Updates

• Sentinel and Engineer camps have had their XP and XP scaling values adjusted to grant more overall experience
• Recon camps have had their kill and capture XP adjusted to grant slight less overall experience
• NOTE: These changes are intended to slightly increase the amount of overall experience available from mercenary camps, but in a more consistent spread.

Battleground Updates

• Hanamura Temple
  • Hanamura has been renamed to Hanamura Temple and has received a significant gameplay update.
  • Hanamura Temple has been added to the Battleground Rotation.

Battlegrounds

Mercenaries

• Heroes can no longer Heal, Shield, or target allied Mercenaries with Abilities unless an Ability specifically states that Mercenaries are valid targets.

Design & Gameplay

Structures

• Fort Tower experience reduced from 500 to 250.
• Fort experience increased from 1,000 to 1,200
• Keep experience increased from 1,650 to 2,050
• Towers of Doom
  • Fort Tower experience reduced from 500 to 250.
  • Fort experience increased from 1,100 to 1,200.
  • Keep experience increased from 1,900 to 2,050.
    • Note: Towers of Doom Forts upgrade to Keeps when the Tunnels open, approximately 12 minutes into a match.

Developer Comment: We're taking some of the experience offered by outer Towers and distributing it amongst other Structures in an effort to keep teams closer in levels for a little while longer. We still want to reward skillful play, but a team that completes the first objective is frequently able take out a lot of the opposing team's outer Structures. Not only did this open up a strategic advantage (Healing Fountains get destroyed, Fortifications provide less safety), but it also pushes the winning team further ahead. Usually, this results in one team reaching level 10 before their opponents, allowing them to snowball to an even greater lead. We'd like to instead slow down early game leads, so that winning teams have to play well for a longer period of time.

Battleground Updates

Custom Games

• Hanamura has been temporarily removed from Custom Games.

Developer Comment: Development on Hanamura is still going smoothly. Unfortunately, it seems all of the noisy construction has irritated the Mega Enforcer who has captured several of our designers and artists. We need to take bring this Battleground offline while we negotiate for their safe release.

Bug Fixes

• Brightwing: Can now correctly cast Blink Heal on Turrets and Biotic Emitters that were placed by Brightwing herself.

Bug Fixes

• Structures: Fixed an issue in which certain Abilities could be used to move Structures.

Bug Fixes

• Mercenaries: Fixed an issue in which neutral Mercenaries could spawn twice at their Mercenary Camp under specific circumstances.

Battleground Updates

Regeneration Globes

• Total Health regen over 5 seconds reduced from 11.7% Maximum Health to 9%
• Total Mana regen over 5 seconds reduced from 7.8% Maximum Mana to 7%

Forts

• Gate Tower Damage to Minions, Mercenaries, Monsters, and Heroes increased by 33%.
• Fort Damage to Minions, Mercenaries, Monsters, and Heroes increased by 33%

Keeps

• Gate Tower Damage to Minions, Mercenaries, Monsters, and Heroes increased by 33%
• Keep Damage to Minions, Mercenaries, Monsters, and Heroes increased by 33%
• Keep Health increased from 16,000 to 17,000

Developer Comment: As expected, our gameplay update for 2018 resulted in large changes to many of our game systems. While we’re overall happy with the direction of the update, there have been some unintended side effects that we’re hoping to remedy. We overestimated how much more powerful unlimited ammo would be for Structures, and as a result pushing mechanics have become too strong, resulting in lower game times on nearly all maps. We’re giving our towers some of their teeth back with this update, which should help teams hold pushes from Mercenary Camps and map events. We’re also making some tuning changes to some of our Mercenary Camps now that we have had some time to see how they have been performing. Hellbats and Knights in particular are pushing harder than we would like, so we’re reducing their power. We’re also taking a look at the Warhead Junction boss and reducing its early and mid-game pushing power, as right now it is too strong when combined with Nukes from the map event. Lastly, we are reducing the power of Regeneration Globes. While we like the new mini-game that Neutral Regen globes provide in the laning phase, we are not comfortable with how much they are currently benefitting the team that is ahead while they are pushing into a defending team. We’re also seeing players picking up more Regeneration Globes in general, so this will help to keep the game’s overall sustain in check. These are some hefty changes, and it’s likely that there will be more needed to be done over time as things continue to settle. We’ll be keeping an eye on things, and are prepared to make more updates as they’re needed.

Bug Fixes

• Structures: Auriel's Blinding Flash and Artanis' Suppression Pulse can no longer Blind Structures.

Bug Fixes

• Melee Lane Units: Melee Minions, Mercenaries, and Braxis Holdout’s melee Zerg units will no longer ignore an enemy Ragnaros in Molten Core form.

Battleground Updates

• Mercenary item drops no longer require a short channel time to be picked up.

Developer Comment: This change is aimed at making the flow of picking up items from mercenary camps smoother and more intuitive. We found the flow of defeating a mercenary camp, capturing it, then channeling on the dropped item was disruptive to what players are accustomed to with typical mercenary camps.

• Support Camps can no longer be captured with "Bribe" talents.

Developer Comment: Thanks for all of the early responses on Volskaya Foundry. We’re making this change in response to consistent community feedback.

Battleground Updates

• Hanamura has been temporarily removed from all game modes except Custom Games in order to undergo changes. Click here to learn more.

Bug Fixes

• D.Va: Now properly contests and pushes Hanamura Payloads while exiting her Mech.

• Mercenaries: Heroes will no longer be pushed when allied Mercenaries path into them.

Battleground Updates

• Core Life increased from 7 to 8
• Sapper Minions will no longer spawn for the enemy team after a Keep is destroyed
• Map Objective:
  • First Payload spawn time increased by 15 seconds
  • Second Payload spawn time increased by 15 seconds
  • Payloads now grant 1200 XP upon reaching their destination
• Mercenaries:
  • Fortification Camp
    • Turret power-up will now prioritize attacking Heroes
    • Turret power-up health has been increased by 10%
    • Turret power-up now deals double damage to Minions
  • Recon Camp
    • Dragon Spirits power-up no longer dismounts enemy Heroes
  • Support Camp
    • Initial Spawn time increased by 15 seconds
    • Health total decreased by 10%
    • Base attack damage decreased by 12%
    • Attack damage scaling reduced by roughly 60%
    • Self-heal ability cooldown increased by 2 seconds

Bug Fixes

• Hanamura – Fixed an issue preventing Mercenaries from attacking Turret power-ups.

• Hanamura – Fixed an issue preventing Turret power-ups from being damaged by the Boss’s Energy Ring ability.

• Hanamura – Fixed an issue with AI players pacing near Payloads if a stealthed enemy was contesting.

Bug Fixes

• Hanamura: Map Mechanic Turrets can now correctly attack the Mega Enforcer and Mercenaries.

• Hanamura: The Mega Enforcer will no longer leash after consuming a Hero.

• Hanamura: When the player is not holding an item, the Map Mechanic Ability button tooltip now correctly explains that Hanamura-specific Abilities can be earned by defeating Mercenaries.

• Mercenaries: Captured enemy Mercenaries will no longer drop Fresh Meat stacks for The Butcher or Mineral stacks for Probius.

Battleground Updates

Objectives

• Protected Cores
  • Both Cores are protected by a barrier that cannot be attacked by Heroes.
  • Payloads must be escorted across the Battleground in order to deal damage to the enemy Core.
• Escort Payloads
  • The first set of Payloads spawn for each team after 2:30 into the match, and additional waves will periodically spawn throughout the rest of the game.
  • Stand near an allied payload to escort it. The more allies who are present to escort a payload, the faster it will move. This effect caps at 3 nearby allies.
  • Payloads that haven’t been escorted for a period of time will begin to slowly move backward.
• Empowered Payloads
  • Destroying enemy Forts will cause the next allied Payload to deal additional damage when it arrives at its destination.
  • Destroying enemy Keeps will cause Sappers to spawn with allied Minion waves, which will fire on the Core upon reaching the end of their lanes.
  • Deal a total of 7 damage the opposing Core to claim victory!

Mercenary Camps

• Three types of Mercenary Camps exist on Hanamura, and captured Mercenaries will not travel down a lane to attack enemies.
  • Instead, captured Mercenary Camps will each award one of three consumable power-ups.
  • Right-click a power-up to collect it, and then use the “Map Mechanic Ability” hotkey (Default: F) to activate it.
• Recon Camp
  • Reward: Dragon Spirits
    • Release 3 Dragon Spirits that seek out enemy Heroes, who are then revealed for 5 seconds. Dragon Spirits are destroyed after finding enemy Heroes or after 10 seconds.
• Fortification Camp
  • Reward: Turret
    • Place a Turret on the ground or on your team’s payload.
• Support Camp
  • Reward: Healing Pulse
    • Restore 35% Health and 23% Mana to you and your allies over 15 seconds.
• Mega Enforcer
  • Defeat the Mega Enforcer found at the center of Hanamura to fire 1 shot on the opposing Core.

Bug Fixes

• Regeneration Globes: Will now play an animation upon expiration rather than suddenly disappearing.