Heroes of the Storm Balance Update Notes -- February 17, 2016

Official Patch Notes v 16.2

We’ve just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm that applies a few Hero and Talent balance changes. Check out the patch notes below.

Heroes

Assassin Support Warrior
Li-Ming Rehgar Anub'arak
Stitches

Assassin

Li-Ming

  • Astral Presence (Talent)
    • Mana Regeneration bonus now only triggers while below 25% Mana, rather than 50%
  • Diamond Skin (Talent)
    • Shield amount decreased from 25% to 20% of maximum Health
  • Tal Rasha’s Elements (Talent)
    • Ability Power bonus decreased from 20% to 10%
  • Magic Missiles (Q)
    • Damage reduced from 147 (+3.5% per level) to 147 (+3% per level)
  • Arcane Orb (W)
    • Ess of Johan (Talent) removed
    • Triumvirate (Talent)
      • Distance traveled requirement reduced from 80% to 65% of maximum distance

Developer Comments: Li-Ming is a little too strong right now. Her ability to deal incredible damage is awesome, it was just happening too often, too easily. We’ve nerfed Astral Presence and Diamond Skin to preserve a couple of her core weaknesses: Mana tension and fragility. We’ve also removed Ess of Johan, because we found that it made landing Magic Missiles too easy. While we know that a lot of players really enjoy Ess of Johan, we think that it will be better for Li-Ming in the long run to preserve her high skill cap.

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Support

Rehgar

  • Lightning Shield (W)
    • Rising Storm (Talent)
      • Damage bonus reduced from 20% to 10% per stack
      • Maximum stacks increased from 10 to 20

Developer Comments: Rehgar is still doing too much damage with his Lightning Shield. We like the high potential for damage output in this Talent, as chasing the dream is fun! However, we found that Rehgar players were reaching high damage values too fast, and reaching maximum stacks early became the rule rather than the exception.

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Warrior

Anub'arak

  • Harden Carapace (W)
    • Shield amount increased from 242 (+4% per level) to 260 (+4% per level)

Developer Comments: Anub’arak’s survivability is a little low right now, though not by much. We think that increasing it by buffing his low cooldown Shield helps him feel unique, and will give him a slight nudge toward becoming another enticing Warrior option at all levels of play.

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Stitches

  • Devour (E)
    • Last Bite (Talent)
      • Cooldown reduction on kill decreased from 15 to 12 seconds

Developer Comments: We started to notice a few situations where Stitches, after selecting Last Bite, would feel nigh unkillable when fighting near Minion waves or around Battleground Events that featured lots of small Monsters, like Infernal Shrines. We think this smaller nerf will embrace those situations without allowing them get out of control.

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