Bug Fixes

• Sewers are now clickable while they are in the fog of war.
• Warheads now interact with physics objects.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused Hellbats and Gnolls to reduce the Armor of enemies before damage was dealt.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused Hellbats to reduce the armor of Evading targets.

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.

Battleground Updates

• Layout Changes
  • Sewage Tunnels have been added to the top and bottom of the Battleground.
  • The bottom one has replaced the Junk Swarm Host.
  • An additional Sight Tower has been added below mid lane.

Developer Comment: Since the release of the Battleground, we have been hearing two resounding pieces of feedback: the map is very large and teams find it difficult to engage with each other due to the amount of ground needed to cover while picking up Warheads, and very often the game either ends up being a base-race as each team takes a Junk Swarm Host and tries to push opposite lanes to end fastest. To address this we have added a couple of Sewage Tunnels (think teleporters) to the map, one of which replaces the bottom Junk Swarm Host, and added an additional Sight Tower to allow teams to keep an eye on the bottom tunnel. We feel like these changes have been a breath of fresh air for Warhead Junction and are excited to hear your feedback!

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:

• Rain Storms
  • Warhead Junction

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:
  • Warhead Junction
    • Every 18 seconds, the Core launches a Nuke at a nearby enemy Hero, dealing 30% maximum health to enemy Heroes hit.

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.

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.

Battlegrounds

Mercenaries

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

Bug Fixes

• Warhead Junction: Visual effects created by Boss and Podling Abilities are no longer visible through the Fog of War.

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

• Nuke (F)
  • Bonus damage has been removed and Nukes now deal a flat amount of damage across the entire area of impact.

Developer Comment: The bonus damage dealt by Warheads had very little counterplay in late-game situations. Teams could hoard Warheads and kill any Structure—including the Core—very quickly. Although this center bonus damage presented players with interesting decision points, the mechanic's problems outweighed its positives. We feel encouraging players to hit as many structures as possible is a similarly fun mechanic that is healthier for the game.

Bug Fixes

• Objectives: Channeling is now correctly paused if a Hero is hit by a Time Stop effect, like Zeratul's Void Prison, while attempting to capture the following Battleground Objectives:
  • Dragon Shire: Dragon Knight
  • Towers of Doom: Altars
  • Warhead Junction: Warhead collection

Battleground Updates

• Neutral Swarm Host Boss
  • Will no longer burrow while defending its camp.
  • Slime Pods
    • Pod impact locations will now display warning indicators on the terrain.
    • Pods now explode immediately on impact, and no longer spawn Podlings.
    • Increased the number of Pods launched per cast.
• Captured Swarm Host Boss
  • All of the above changes also apply to captured Swarm Hosts.
  • Slime Trail
    • Removed.
  • Slime Pods
    • Pods can now target Structures.

Developer Comment: We believe the Warhead Junction boss is a cool variant of the standard golem boss found on most maps, but it had some inconsistencies that needed addressing. These changes essentially make the boss a better version of itself—its neutral and captured versions are closer in power, and its Slime Pods create a cooler moment than its Podlings did previously.

Bug Fixes

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

Bug Fixes

• Warhead Junction: Fixed an issue that could cause Heroes to teleport back to the Hall of Storms after moving to a specific area of terrain before the game begins.

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%

Mercenaries

• Hellbats
  • Defender
    • Armor Shred amount reduced from 5 to 4% per stack
    • Base Health reduced from 4275 to 3420
  • Laner
    • Armor Shred amount reduced from 5 to 4% per stack
    • Base Health reduced from 4700 to 3760
      • Health Scaling (Minutes 1-5) reduced from 50 to 40
      • Health Scaling (Minutes 6-10) increased from 75 to 110
      • Health Scaling (Minutes 11 -15) increased from 100 to 150
      • Health Scaling (Minutes 16-20) increased from 125 to 235
• Slime Boss (Warhead Junction)
  • Laner
    • Base Health amount reduced from 20000 to 16000
      • Scaling (Minutes 1-5) reduced from 630 to 500
      • Scaling (Minutes 6-10) increased from 945 to 1050
      • Scaling (Minutes 11 -15) increased from 1260 to 1400
      • Scaling (Minutes 16-20) increased from 1575 to 2250
    • Base Basic Attack damage reduced from 400 to 320
      • Scaling (Minutes 1-5) reduced from 10 to 8
      • Scaling (Minutes 6-10) increased from 15 to 17
      • Scaling (Minutes 11 -15) increased from 20 to 23
      • Scaling (Minutes 16-20) increased from 25 to 38
    • Base Spit impact damage reduced from 250 to 200
      • Scaling (Minutes 6-10) increased from 5 to 6.25%
      • Scaling (Minutes 11 -15) increased from 6 to 7.25%
      • Scaling (Minutes 16-20) increased from 6 to 8.25%
    • Base Spit ‘Damage over Time’ damage reduced from 150 to 120
      • Scaling (Minutes 6-10) increased from 5 to 6.25%
      • Scaling (Minutes 11 -15) increased from 6 to 7.25%
      • Scaling (Minutes 16-20) increased from 6 to 8.25%
    • Acid Trail Base damage reduced from 80 to 64
      • Scaling (Minutes 6-10) increased from 5 to 6.25%
      • Scaling (Minutes 11 -15) increased from 6 to 7.25%
      • Scaling (Minutes 16-20) increased from 6 to 8.25%

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.

Battleground Updates

Battleground Objectives

• The first Battleground objective event will now activate 3 minutes into the match, following a 30-second warning, for the following Battlegrounds:
  • Warhead Junction
• The Minimap will now indicate the next objective spawn location for the following Battlegrounds:
  • Warhead Junction
    • The first Warhead indicators will appear on the Minimap 30 seconds after the game begins, as well as 30 seconds after the final Warhead in an event has been collected.

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
• Hellbat Camp
  • Respawn times have been doubled
  • Hellbats will now prioritize structures
    • Defender Hellbat Stats
      • Base health increased by 114%,
      • Health scaling increased by 160%
      • Damage increased by 83%
      • Damage scaling reduced by roughly 60%
    • Laner Hellbat Stats
      • Base health increased by roughly 18%
      • Health scaling increased by 25%
      • Base damage increased by 25%
      • Damage scaling decreased by 66%
        • Damage scaling will now stop after 20 minutes (previously 30)
      • Damage taken from structures reduced by 50%
  • Attacks now apply a 3-second stacking -5 Armor debuff to all targets, stacking up to 20 times (structures included)

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.

Bug Fixes

• Boss: Captured Bosses will now correctly use their area of effect Abilities when attacking down a lane.

Bug Fixes

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

• Minions: Catapults that are destroyed while their projectiles are mid-air will no longer deal half-damage.

• Sylvanas: Can cast Possession on units spawned by Bosses on Warhead Junction.

• Warhead Junction: AI players will no longer become stuck in the southwest hand corner of the Battleground when retreating down the bottom lane.

Bug Fixes

• Mercenaries – Fixed an issue causing the Raven Mercenary’s Seeker Missile reveal effect to occasionally persist after the Seeker Missile detonated.

• Warhead Junction – Fixed an issue causing players to be incorrectly flagged as AFK when standing near or collecting Warheads.

• Warhead Junction – Fixed an issue preventing the damage-over-time effect applied by the Boss’s Podling spawns from being cleansed by abilities intended to cleanse these effects.

Battlegrounds

Minions

• Catapults
  • Can now slightly overlap with one another to help prevent them from becoming stuck against one another when multiple Catapults bunch up around a Core.

Bug Fixes

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

Bug Fixes

• Murky: Can no longer call down a Nuke during Safety Bubble on Warhead Junction.

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

Bug Fixes

• Braxis Holdout & Warhead Junction - Heroes that are revealed by Raven Mercenaries will now display the revealed eye icon over their heads.

• Warhead Junction - Fixed an issue that caused queued commands to be cleared after casting a Nuke.

Design & Gameplay

Body Blocking Improvements

• Improvements have been made to allied body blocking.

Bug Fixes

• Observer Mode: Excess Regeneration Globe visual effects will no longer appear for Observers and other neutral players while watching replays or custom games.

Design & Gameplay

Minions

• Minion leash range decreased from 10 to 9.

Bug Fixes

• Color Blind Mode: Fixed an issue causing Minimap icons for uncaptured Merc Camp to appear very similar in color to Merc Camps that have been captured by allies.

Bug Fixes

• Alarak: Telekinesis will now correctly interrupt a Hero who is channeling to launch a Nuke on Warhead Junction.

• Gazlowe: Gazlowe’s Nuke Ability icon on Warhead Junction will no longer be visually replaced with a lock icon after casting Rock-It! Turret while carrying a warhead.

• Structures: Fixed an issue in which the Core could continue to reveal enemy Stealth Heroes in a small radius outside its intended reveal range.

Design & Gameplay

Armor & Vulnerability

Developer Comments: With today’s patch you will notice that a lot of our tooltips that used to reference the Resistant/Vulnerable system have been changed. Matthew Cooper detailed the changes on our forums last month explaining a bit about the new system. While the tooltips may have changed, the actual functionality for the system has been in since the Varian patch hit during the week of November 14, so the game itself should not feel any different than what you are currently used to. You will also notice that we have added baseline Armor to three Heroes – Arthas, Anub'arak, and Greymane’s Worgen Form. These are the first of a handful that we are planning to release and would love to hear any feedback you have. We are hoping that the Armor System will open up future design flexibility, increase the depth of strategy (both in game, and in draft), and grant us another knob to help balance the game.

Bug Fixes

• Minimap: Catapult Minimap icons are now slightly lighter in color to help players more easily differentiate them from other Minions.

Battleground Updates

• Warheads
  • Base damage reduced from 2750 to 2300.
  • Warhead damage now scales by a flat 70 every minute, and no longer has a large jump at 18 minutes.
  • Inner Warhead damage is still a 50% bonus.
• Warheads Undocumented
  • Deal 70% more damage in the center (50% more damage to Heroes)

Developer Comments: We didn’t like the gameplay of holding off on using a Warhead for a sudden unintuitive damage spike, so we’ve smoothed out their damage curve over a longer period. This should end up playing mostly the same across the game, with only about 10% differences in damage at various points in the match.

Bug Fixes

• Medivh: Fixed an issue that could enable Medivh to cast Abilities while in Raven Form on Warhead Junction.

• Minions: Catapult Minimap icons will now appear team-colored.

• Samuro: Mirror Images can no longer launch Nukes on Warhead Junction after learning Illusion Master.

Bug Fixes

• Braxis Holdout/Warhead Junction: XP earned by capturing Mercenary Camps will now properly scale throughout the match.

• Medivh: Fixed an issue which could allow Medivh to path into the terrain after launching a Nuke on Warhead Junction while in Raven form.

Battleground Updates

• Reduced Nuke inner damage bonus from 100 to 50%
• Time at which Nukes upgrade their damage changed from 14 to 18 minutes

Developer Comments: This is a temporary solution to prevent the Nuke Core rushes at the 14-minute mark. In a coming patch, we’ll likely be making further changes that makes Nukes gradually scale over time, so that they mirror the Core’s scaling over time.

Battleground Updates

Once a testing facility for nuclear weapons, Warhead Junction has since fallen into ruin. However, the site's abandonment hasn't stopped its glitchy adjutant from continuing to produce and hand out nuclear weapons. Join the arms race of Warhead Junction, build up your stockpile, and rain hell on your enemies!

• Warhead Deployment
  • Multiple Warheads will spawn periodically across the battleground.
• Collect Warheads
  • Pick up a Warhead to activate your Nuke. Use it or you will drop it when you die!
• Call Down the Thunder
  • Launch Nukes to devastate the enemy team's fortifications.