HEROES OF THE STORM PATCH NOTES - April 4, 2017

Official Patch Notes v 24.4

We just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm introducing a new Hero, balance updates, and more to the Nexus!

New Hero: Cassia

After shattering the Worldstone, the young Amazon Cassia had changed. She had seen hatred, terror, and destruction firsthand. If the Askari were to survive the coming darkness, they needed an army. She would begin their training immediately.

Trait

  • Avoidance
    • When moving unmounted, Cassia gains 65 Physical Armor against Heroic Basic Attacks, reducing the damage taken by 65%.

Basic Abilities

  • Lightning Fury (Q)
    • Hurl a javelin that damages the first enemy hit, and splits into two lightning bolts that deal damage to enemies in their paths.
  • Blinding Light (W)
    • After 0.5 seconds, Blind enemies in the target area for 2 seconds.
    • Passive: Cassia deals 15% increased damage to Blinded targets.
  • Fend (E)
    • Charge at an enemy and on arrival channel for 1.5 seconds, damaging enemies in front of Cassia every 0.25 seconds.
    • Deals 50% reduced damage to non-Heroes.

Heroic Abilities

  • Ball Lightning (R)
    • Throw a ball of lightning at an enemy Hero that bounces up to 6 times between nearby enemy Heroes and Cassia, damaging enemies hit.
  • Valkyrie (R)
    • Summon a Valkyrie that rushes to Cassia after 0.75 seconds, pulling and damaging the first enemy Hero hit and stunning them for 0.5 seconds at the end of her rush.
    • The Valkyrie knocks back all other enemy Heroes in her way.

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Battlegrounds

Heroes Brawls

  • Lost Cavern
    • Now uses Shuffle Pick instead of All Random for hero selection.
      • All Random can still be played via Custom Games.

Developer Comment: We've received a very positive response to shuffle pick in our one lane battlegrounds and decided to add this to Lost Cavern. Players can still do complete random with Lost Cavern in custom games and don't plan on changing that for the die-hard pure random players.

Design & Gameplay

Hero Radii

  • The radius of many heroes in the game have been adjusted to better match their actual model size.
    • Increased Radius - Abathur, ETC, Gul'dan, Baleog, Muradin, Misha, Sgt. Hammer, Thrall, Uther, Varian, Zagara
    • Decreased Radius - Li Li, Tracer, Valeera

Cloaked Attack Move Commands

  • Nova and Zeratul will no longer attempt to automatically acquire attack targets after issuing and canceling an attack order while cloaked.

User Interface

Score and Stats Screen

  • Varian will now display Damage Taken stats in the Score and Stats screens.
  • Abathur will now display Healing Done in the Score and Stats screens.

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Art

  • The base and third variations of Nova's Novazon skin have received visual updates.

Shop

  • New Bundles
    • Pirate Queen Cassia Bundle - Available until 4/18
    • Teamwork Bundle - Available until 4/25
    • Ultimate Teamwork Bundle - Available until 4/25
  • Removed Bundles
    • Stars of War Bundle
    • Ultimate Stars of War Bundle

New Hero

  • Cassia has been added to the in-game Shop

New Skins

  • Pirate Queen Cassia
  • Master Cassia

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Heroes

Assassin Warrior
The Butcher E.T.C.

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Assassin

The Butcher

Abilities

  • Fresh Meat (Trait)
    • Hold ALT and click the Fresh Meat Ability icon to notify allies of The Butcher's current number of Meat stacks.

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Warrior

E.T.C.

Stats

  • Health reduced from 2428 to 2100
  • Health Regeneration reduced from 5.06 to 4.37

Abilities

  • Rockstar (Trait)
    • Redesigned:
      • ​Instead of increasing nearby allies' Basic Attack speeds, Rockstar now grants E.T.C. 20 Armor for 2 seconds when he uses a Basic or Heroic Ability. This effect does not stack with itself.

Talents

  • Level 1
    • Guitar Hero (E)
      • Healing gained from Basic Attacks increased from 35% to 40%.
      • No longer increases Attack Speed.
  • Level 7
    • Echo Pedal (Passive)
      • Damage reduced from 29 to 15.
      • Damage bonus against Minions and Mercenaries increased from 75% to 250%.
  • Level 16
    • Show Stopper (Q)
      • Armor reduced from 25 to 15.

Developer Comment: These changes to E.T.C. are a continuation of our attempt to align Warriors with a “big picture” role, so that we can continue to see a variety of them regardless of who’s really strong at the moment. Alongside a lot of specialization, we need a couple generalist Warriors, and we think E.T.C. (as well as Muradin) should fill that role. They should always be a safe pick for your team because they fit into every team composition or battleground, but may be outperformed by the specialized Warriors in their ideal situations. We found that having Attack Speed on his Trait pointed him toward Basic Attack teams and maps like Battlefield of Eternity, where sustained damage was important. Instead, we’ve decided to add general Armor, but wanted to make sure that it still had that fun “bard” style gameplay where playing optimally includes spreading out abilities. We’ve updated Show Stopper to provide less Armor, because stacking Armor makes every point more and more valuable. Lastly, we’ve reduced Echo Pedal’s damage against non-Minions and Mercenaries so that it’s the obvious pick when you need wave clear, but Hammer-On and Pinball Wizard are better during a team fight.

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Bug Fixes

Battlegrounds

  • Blackheart's Bay - Fixed an issue that could cause cannonballs to fail to deal damage if the primary target of the volley was destroyed just as the shots were fired.
  • Braxis Holdout & Warhead Junction - Heroes that are revealed by Raven Mercenaries will now display the revealed eye icon over their heads.
  • Infernal Shrines - Fixed an issue causing the Punisher minion to instantly kill Lt. Morales’ Medivac.
  • Towers of Doom - The Headless Horseman boss Mercenary will no longer have his Basic Attack damage reduced by Armor.
  • Warhead Junction - Fixed an issue that caused queued commands to be cleared after casting a Nuke.

General

  • Fixed an issue causing some friendly buff effects (Rehgar’s Lightning Shield and Ragnaros’ Blast Wave) to reveal their cloaked targets when they damaged enemy units.

Heroes

  • Probius - Fixed an issue that caused the Turbo Charged talent to grant too much movement speed during Worker Rush.
  • Varian - The sound effect associated with the Iron Forge Banner will no longer play globally.
  • Raynor - Fixed an issue with the Relentless Leader talent causing it to fail to grant the passive cooldown reduction.
  • Rexxar- Misha will now have a reduced death timer in Arena mode Heroes Brawls.
  • Valeera & Abathur - Fixed an issue that caused Heroes affected by Abathur’s Symbiote to fail to trigger Valeera’s Assassinate talent.
  • Valla - Fixed a rare issue that could cause Valla’s Hatred stacks to drop to 0 while firing Basic Attacks.
  • The Lost Vikings - Fixed an issue that caused focus to be taken away from the currently selected Viking if a Viking enters the Garden Terror.
  • Probius - Fixed an issue preventing crowd control duration bars to fail to display on Probius’ health bar while he was in a Pylon power field.
  • Diablo - Fixed an issue that caused Devastating Charge damage to show as damage dealt to Diablo on the Death Recap screen.

User Interface

  • Fixed an issue that could prevent the “Right-Click through Minimap” option from working.
  • Observer UI - Fixed an issue that caused the Victory and Defeat messages to overlap with the Red/Blue Team game ending messages.

Sound

  • Quest talents were generating pings every second will now properly ping every 5 seconds.

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