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:

• Snow Flurries
  • Volskaya Foundry

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.

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.

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:
  • Volskaya
    • Every 6 seconds, the Core shoots 3 Rocket Fists at nearby enemy Heroes, dealing 150 damage and knocking them back.

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

• Triglav Protector
  • Health increased from 10450 to 11500.
  • Health scaling in minutes 1-5 increased from 550 to 575.
  • Health scaling over time increased by a proportional amount.
  • Starting Basic Attack damage increased from 140 to 155.
  • Charge [Q]
    • Starting damage increased from 140 to 160.
    • Damage bonus vs. non-Heroic targets increased from 400% to 500%.

Developer Comment: Since our last round of changes, game times have gone up on Volskaya Foundry a little more than we would like. We're buffing the Triglav Protector's pushing power so that it can get more damage done when it's taken.

Battleground Updates

• Triglav Protector
  • Swap Vehicle (R)
    • Removed
  • Pilot
    • Now properly scales Health and Basic Attack damage at the first minute of a game
    • Basic Attacks
      • Starting damage reduced from 200 to 140
      • Scaling damage reduced from 10 to 7 from minutes 1 to 5
      • Scaling damage reduced from 15 to 10.5 from minutes 6 to 10
      • Scaling damage reduced from 20 to 14 from minutes 11 to 15
      • Scaling damage reduced from 25 to 17.5 from minutes 16 to 20
      • Scaling damage reduced from 30 to 21 from minutes 21 to 60
      • Now deal 50% bonus damage to Structures
    • Health
      • Health scaling increased from 1100 to 1375 from minutes 16 to 20
      • Health scaling increased from 1375 to 1650 from minutes 21 to 25
    • Charge (Q)
      • Impact radius reduced from 2.5 to 2
      • Starting damage decreased from 225 to 140
      • Scaling damage decreased from 20 to 14 per minute
      • Damage bonus to non-Heroes increased from 200% to 400%
    • Rocket Fist (W)
      • Width increased from 1 to 1.5
      • No longer roots Heroes, but knocks them back equal to the full distance the Rocket Fist would travel instead
      • Starting damage reduced from 200 to 150
      • Scaling damage increased from 10 to 15 per minute
  • Gunner
    • Particle Cannon (Q)
      • Starting damage decreased from 225 to 190
      • Scaling damage increased from 15 to 19 per minute
    • Gatling Cannon (W)
      • Impact radius reduced from 0.5 to 0.3
      • Starting damage reduced from 45 to 38
      • Scaling damage increased from 3.5 to 3.8 per minute
    • Scorching Laser (E)
      • Impact radius reduced from 2.25 to 1.25
      • Starting primary impact damage reduced 75 to 60
      • Scaling primary impact damage increased from 3 to 6 per minute
      • Starting delayed explosion damage reduced from 500 to 380
      • Scaling delayed explosion damage increased from 25 to 38 per minute

Developer Comment: We're making these changes to the Triglav Protector to shift a little of the vehicles power out of its team fight potential, and into its pushing power (particularly in the early game). We believe that it has to have some teeth to discourage enemies from committing to a team fight when it pushes, but its capability to nuke someone from almost full health was a little too powerful. We've changed Rocket Fist's root into a knockback to make landing all its abilities more difficult as well, but still force enemies to disengage when it connects. We've also taken this time to adjust some of the scaling of the Protector, so that it follows a more typical power curve in relation to Heroes, Minions, and Mercenaries. We've removed the Swap Vehicle button as well. While it was cool, it was a hold out from the previous undesired gameplay of a solo player controlling both seats of a vehicle that we discouraged via the Spell Power buff to both seats being occupied.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue causing the Volskaya Foundry Support camp to lose Unstoppable after the Battleground objective spawned.

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.

Battleground Updates

• Channelling to enter the Triglav Protector is no longer interrupted by damage.
  • NOTE: This change has been live as of the week of November 19

Developer Comment: While not a bug, the interaction between Orphea's Eternal Feast and the Triglav Protector was too strong and could negate an entire objective without any opportunities for counter-play attached to it. This also highlighted an inconsistency with the battleground where a team could spend all their resources winning the objective but find themselves unable to actually use it under certain circumstances so with this change, we've addressed both issues.

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.

Bug Fixes

• Volskaya Foundry: Fixed an issue that caused Time Stop effects to fail to cancel channels on the Volskaya Protector.

Battlegrounds

Mercenaries

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

Battleground Updates

Vehicles

• Vehicle Exit hotkey has been moved to the Trait key (default: “D”), and Vehicle Trait hotkeys have been moved to the Heroic key (default: “R”). This includes:
  • Dragon Knight
  • Garden Terror
  • Triglav Protector
  • Blaze's Bunker Drop

Bug Fixes

• Volskaya Foundry: Minions can no longer clip through the northern Wall near the Fort in the bottom lane.

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.

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

• Volskaya Foundry: Fixed an issue that could cause Heroes who were piloting a Triglav Protector to become unresponsive after the Protector is destroyed by a Damage over Time effect.

Bug Fixes

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

Battleground Updates

• Mercenary Pickups
  • Healing Pulse now acts as a totem, healing all Heroes in the area after being placed.
  • Turrets can now be placed instantly.
• Triglav Protector
  • The Protector will gain 10 Armor and 25% increased damage if both the Pilot and Gunner seats are occupied
  • Base Health has been increased from 9500 to 10450
  • Health Scaling has been increased by 10%
  • Pilot: Rocket Fist (W)
    • Duration of structure debuff effect has been increased from 2 to 4 seconds
  • Gunner: Gatling Cannon (W)
    • Gatling Cannon will now fire immediately, instead of after a short delay
    • Gatling Cannon rounds will now travel 50% faster

Bug Fixes

• Volskaya Foundry: Fixed an issue that allowed Junkrat to permanently displace and leash Fortification Camps.

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

• The Butcher: Fixed an issue preventing The Butcher from using consumable items such as Healing Pulse or Turrets on Volskaya Foundry.

Battleground Updates

Battleground Objectives

• The following Battleground objective timers are unchanged:
  • Volskaya Foundry

Regeneration Globes

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

Structures

• All attacking structures no longer have ammunition.
• Walls will now be destroyed if their connected Towers and Gate are also destroyed. Walls can still be attacked normally.
  • After reviewing community feedback, we’ve decided to revert this change. Destroying the Gate and Towers will no longer automatically destroy connected Walls.
• Tower vision range has been increased by 25%
• 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
  • Structure attack warning responsiveness has been significantly improved
• 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.
• Forts and Keeps now have True Sight, meaning they will reveal and attack Stealthed Heroes.
  • True Sight is disabled while the Structure is disabled by effects such as the Raven Lord’s Curse or Sylvanas’ Black Arrow Trait.

Minions

• Minion base damage has been increased by roughly 10%
• Minion base health has been increased by roughly 10% Undocumented
• The 5 second delay before Minions spawn after the game begins has been removed.

Mercenaries

• Respawn Timers
  • Mercenary Camps will now spawn 60 seconds after the game begins

Bug Fixes

• Murky: Spawn Egg with the Egg Hunt Talent can now be cast correctly on Volskaya Foundry’s conveyor belts.

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

• Volskaya Foundry: Fixed an issue in which Heroes on the outer edge of the Hall of Storms would not receive Healing or protection.

Bug Fixes

• Volskaya Foundry: Fixed a bug that could cause players to lose control of their Heroes after exiting a Triglav Protector.

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.

Bug Fixes

• Volskaya Foundry: A Mercenary Camp’s respawn timer will no longer suddenly appear and begin counting down if that camp has only been partially cleared.

Battleground Updates

• Objective
  • Control Points
    • Throughout the match a Control Point will activate at one of three locations, beginning in a neutral capture state.
    • Once a player stands on the control point without any enemies, they gain control progress for their team at a steady rate.
    • If an enemy enters the point, the point becomes contested and will not gain or lose control progress.
    • When a team's control progress hits 100, they gain control of the point.
    • As long as a team has control of the point, they gain victory progress at a steady rate.
      • Victory progress does not decay for any reason.
    • Overtime: When a point is at 99% victory progress about to tick over to 100%, it will stay at 99% and enter the overtime state if there are any enemy heroes on the point or the point just flipped from the enemy's control.
    • When a team's victory progress hits 100%, they win the event. The control point deactivates and a two-person Triglav Protector spawns on the point for the winning team after a short delay.
  • Triglav Protector
    • Pilot Abilities
      • Charge (Q)
        • After .5 seconds, charge to the target unit's current location and deal damage in an area. Deals double damage to structures and minions. 8 second cooldown
      • Rocket Fist (W)
        • Launch a Rocket Fist that impacts the first Hero or Structure hit. Roots Heroes for 1 second. Disables Structures for 2 seconds. Destroys all minions in its path. 14 second cooldown.
      • Shield Emitter (E)
        • Grants 25 armor to vehicle and grants a Shield to all nearby allies equal to 25% of their maximum health. 16 second cooldown.
    • Gunner Abilities
      • Particle Cannon (Q)
        • Enables the Particle Cannon ability and increases its range over 3 seconds. Reactivate to launch an orb dealing damage in an area. 5 sec cooldown.
      • Gatling Cannon (W)
        • Fires a barrage of cannon fire at the location of your cursor for 4 seconds. 11 second cooldown.
      • Scorching Laser (E)
        • A laser quickly cuts a line across the terrain dealing light damage. A secondary explosion triggers 0.75 seconds later for heavy damage. 10 second cooldown.

Mercenaries

• Impaler and Trooper Camps (Siege Mercenaries found on Volskaya Foundry, Battlefield of Eternity, and Infernal Shrines)
  • Early game health has been slightly decreased.
  • Base damage and scaling values have been increased by roughly 50%
  • Defender Mercenaries can no longer be affected by displacements effects.

Developer Comment: We’ve heard feedback on the lack of strength the Assault Trooper mercenaries possess. We hear and agree with this sentiment so we’ve increased their overall damage to make them more of a threat.

• 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.

Vehicles

• All vehicles, including the Dragon Knight, Garden Terror, and Triglav Protector are now Unstoppable.

Developer Comment: Prior to this patch, crowd control effects on vehicles were reduced by 50%. Initially, displacement effects affecting vehicles were not reduced at all. Over time, we’ve made the decision to make some abilities unable to target vehicles. As our hero roster grew, so did the amount of special rules associated with vehicle interactions. Instead of continuing to maintain a list of special interactions, we’ve opted to simplify the behavior and make vehicles Unstoppable. To compensate for the increased vehicle strength, we’ve also looked at each vehicle’s balance numbers.