HEROES OF THE STORM BALANCE UPDATE — MARCH 28, 2017

Official Patch Notes v 24.2

We just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm in order to apply a few bug fixes and balance changes.

Heroes

Assassin Multi-Class Specialist Support Warrior
Gall Varian Murky Tassadar Arthas
Ragnaros Probius Cho
Tychus Leoric

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Assassin

Gall

Abilities

  • Shadowflame (Q)
    • Damage from 125 to 135

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Keep Moving! (Z)
      • Increased Movement Speed duration increase from .5 to 1 second
  • Level 4
    • Double Back (W)
      • Bonus damage to non-heroic targets increased from 100 to 200%
  • Level 20
    • ​Psychotic Break (Passive)
      • Now allows the use of Gall’s Heroic Abilities.

Developer Comments: We have been actively reading the feedback for our friendly Ogre and cross-referencing it with our internal statistics. We are seeing great talent diversity and are happy with the new design, but feel that we can inject a bit more power into the duo. Today’s changes are focused on increasing Cho’s self-sustain and injecting a bit more damage into both ogres.

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Ragnaros

Stats

  • Basic Attack damage decreased from 180 to 171

Abilities

  • Empower Sulfuras (Q)​
    • Damage decreased from 201 to 191
  • Sulfuras Smash (R)​
    • ​Cooldown increased from 60 to 80 seconds

Talents

  • Level 13
    • Resilient Flame (Passive)
      • Cooldown increased from 10 to 15 seconds
      • Armor bonus decreased from 50 to 40

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Tychus

Abilities

  • Minigun (D)
    • Damage increased from 2 to 2.5% Max Health

Talents

  • Level 4
    • The Bigger They Are (D)
      • Damage threshold decreased from 40 to 35% maximum Health

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Multi-Class

Varian

Stats

  • Base Health increased from 2150 to 2322
  • Base Health Regeneration increased from 4.48 to 4.84

Abilities

  • Taunt (R)
    • Health bonus reduced from 40 to 30%

Talents

  • Level 4
    • Warbringer (E)
      • No longer increases the slow amount of Charge
      • Cooldown reduction increased from 6 to 8 seconds
  • Level 13
    • Juggernaut (E)
      • Damage reduced from 5 to 4% of a Hero’s maximum Health

Developer Comments: We think pushing the cooldown of Charge after taking Warbringer from 6 to 4 will push it further into the hyper-mobile style of gameplay that we want. We removed the additional slow since it didn’t add much to actual gameplay (most people didn’t move when they were slowed). Now Warbringer Varians will be zipping around the battlefield applying slows at a high frequency. By increasing Varian’s base Health but lowering Taunt’s Health bonus, Twin Blades and Colossus Smash will have about 8% more Health through the game, while Taunt will only have a little more Health before 10.

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Specialist

Murky

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Egg Hunt (D)
      • Cooldown reduced from 6 to 3 seconds
    • Fish Eye (D)
      • Vision bonus increased from 200 to 300%
  • Level 4
    • Tufferfish (W)
      • Bonus damage increased from 35 to 50%
  • Level 7
    • Slippery When Wet (E)
      • Movement Speed bonus increased from 40 to 50%
      • Now also reduces the cooldown of Safety Bubble by 2 seconds
  • Level 13
    • Fish Tank (Passive)
      • Armor duration increased from 2 to 3 seconds
  • Level 16
    • Wrath of Cod (W)
      • Damage increased from 10 to 15% of maximum Health

Developer Comments: These tuning changes were made to add a greater variety of viable Talent builds. Overall each of these Talents weren’t performing to Murloc-Standard-Efficiency (MSE), so they’ve been buffed up to regulations.

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Probius

Abilities

  • Worker Rush (Z)
    • Cooldown reduced from 40 to 30 seconds
    • Now automatically activates when Probius is in the Hall of Storms
  • Warp in Pylon (D)
    • Cooldown reduced from 14 to 12 seconds
  • Warp Rift (W)
    • Range increased by 15%
    • Slow amount increased from 20 to 25%
  • Photon Cannon (E)
    • Damage increased from 95 to 105
    • Duration increased from 11 to 13 seconds
  • Null Gate (R)
    • Range increased by 12%
    • Cooldown decreased from 40 to 30 seconds

Talents

  • Level 4
    • Turbo Charged (Z)
      • Cooldown reduction reduced from 20 to 10 seconds
  • Level 13
    • Aggressive Matrix (D)
      • Damage bonus increased from 20 to 25%
    • Shield Battery (D)
      • Shield amount decreased by 13%
  • Level 16
    • Interference (W)
      • Duration increased from 3 to 5 seconds
    • Quantum Entanglement (W)
      • Duration decreased from 3.5 to 3 seconds

Developer Comments: We’re making several small tweaks to Probius across the board, largely to make him a little more powerful and, more importantly, more engaging to play. Many of his abilities have had small tweaks to them to make them more usable, and we’re buffing the damage and duration of his Photon Cannons to make them more threatening.

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Support

Tassadar

Abilities

  • Plasma Shield (Q)
    • Duration reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
    • Life leech increased from 20 to 30%
  • Archon (R)
    • Damage reduced from 175 to 166
    • Splash damage reduced from 87.5 to 83

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Khaydarin Resonance (Q)
      • 15 Regen Globe quest
        • Bonus Shield amount increased from 15 to 20%
      • 30 Regen Globe quest
        • No longer increases duration of Plasma Shield
        • Now lowers the cooldown of Plasma Shield by 3 seconds
  • Level 4
    • Khala’s Embrace (Q)
      • Bonus life leech increased from 40 to 50%
  • Level 20
    • Shield Battery (Active)
      • Cooldown reduced from 75 to 60 seconds

Developer Comments: The duration on Plasma Shield has always matched the Cooldown, but we are ready to try separating them. Enemy teams will now have a small window of time to deal meaningful damage between Shield applications (unless Tassadar fully unlocks Khaydarin Resonance). Since he is currently over-performing we are also looking to bring down the damage of Archon slightly.

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Warrior

Arthas

Stats

  • Physical Armor decreased from 15 to 10

Talents

  • Level 16
    • Remorseless Winter (E)
      • Root duration from decreased from 1.75 to 1.25 seconds

Developer Comments: We’re happy with the performance of Arthas, particularly as a capable solo-warrior that brings something unique to the team with Frozen Tempest. We’ve added a lot of power to this ability, so we’re reducing his Physical Armor from 15 down to 10 to better enable enemy heroes to get more value by poking him down. We’re also reducing the Root duration of Remorseless Winter to be more in line with similar effects.

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Cho

Stats

  • Basic Attack damage increased from 120 to 130
  • Cho’s Basic Attacks now refresh Consuming Blaze

Abilities

  • Consuming Blaze (W)
    • Healing amount increased from 30 to 40
    • Basic Attack reapplication on Heroes now extends to non-Heroic targets
  • Upheaval (R)
    • Damage increased from 100 to 175

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Fuel for the Flame (W)
      • Minion quest reward increased from .2 to .3% amount healed
      • Hero quest reward increased from 2 to 3% amount healed
  • Level 13
    • Runed Gauntlet (Passive)
      • Heroic Cooldown Reduction per Basic Attack increased from .5 to .75 seconds

Developer Comments: See Gall’s dev comments.

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Leoric

Stats

  • Basic Attack damage increased from 138 to 150

Abilities

  • Skeletal Swing (Q)
    • Damage increased from 116 to 125

Talents

  • Level 16
    • Renewed Swing (Q)
      • Bonus swing damage increased from 50 to 80%

Developer Comments: All shall suffer.

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Bug Fixes

General

  • Season 3 reward portraits have been updated to read “2016” instead of “2017”.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause players to stall when Zarya was affected by certain attack speed modifiers.

User Interface

  • The observer user interface will now display Core health on Towers of Doom as raw numbers instead of as a percentage.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the observer user interface to fail to show Heroic ability cooldowns.
  • Fixed several minor issues with button alignment and questing talent indicators in the observer user interface.

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