PAX East: Heroes Of The Storm News

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Posted April 16, 2014 by Tom Collins in Announcements, Gaming News, PAX, PC, Trailers

 

Heroes of the Storm has been in Alpha stage for a fair few weeks now. One thing that is on many of ours minds is the relatively small roster of characters. There is certainly a good amount to choose from, but the MOBA genre is famous for having a huge list of heroes to play with. With that in mind, the lucky people at PAX East have had some juicy morsels flung their way in regards to upcoming goodies.

As you can see, there are four new playable characters coming our way very soon. Fist up is LiLi Stormstout. As many of you will know, she is a character from World of Warcraft. She pops up in the Mists of Pandaria expansion along with her uncle, Chen Stormstout.

LiLi

  • Lili is a new support hero with an ability set that helps her to very effectively aid her teammates throughout the game.
  • She has lots of ways to protect herself and allies, and she doesn’t need to be babysat.
  • You’ll see a lot more from her in the showmatch commentary at the end of the panel.

Next we have Brightwing. Whilst not a prominent character, the little Faerie Dragon will be well known to any WoW player. Brightwing will be taking on a utility/support role.

Brightwing

  • Brightwing has the ability to passively heal any allies nearby.
  • She can also transform enemies into animals.
  • Brightwing is a versatile support hero capable of teleporting from ally to ally, healing them and providing them with the help they need to succeed in battle.

 

Zagara is one of the Brood Mothers from StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. She features heavily in the expansion and looks to fill a sort of utility role from what I can tell.

Zagara

  • Zagara has map-wide components to her design.
  • She can drop Creep Tumors to spread Zerg Creep, which helps speed up her movement speed, as well as the speed of her summons.
  • What’s more, Zagara can use her Nydus Worms to hop back and forth around the map, giving her plenty of opportunity to Creep up and siege multiple lanes at once.

Murlocs. The bane of many WoW players existence. Not tough on their own, but as we all know, there’s never just one. it seems Murky will have a very specialised roll with the way his mechanics work. I personally can’t wait to see some games with him in.

Murky

  • When we talked about putting Murky in the game, we initially struggled with what to do with him. Making him a really powerful hero just didn’t seem to fit quite right (he is a Murloc, you know.) Instead, we chose to make him very, very weak, but incredibly persistent.
  • Murky can lay an egg which he can use to respawn near instantly upon being killed. If his egg is destroyed, Murky will face the same respawn timers as other heroes do, so be sure to hide it well!
  • Murky is going to die A LOT, but he’s a hero who eventually overwhelms enemies across multiple battles. He doesn’t need to win every fight; he just needs to win once.

There was also a Q&A session with some great pieces of info regarding seeing characters from other games and platforms we might see it on.

 

Q&A Session: Once the presentation wrapped up, Dustin fielded questions from the live audience. Read on to get the full Q&A Session breakdown.

Q: Is there any opportunity to see Heroes on other platforms, such as mobile or console?

A: We haven’t really worked on that and it could be a lot of work considering we’d have to take controls into account. At one point Kaeo did manage to hook up an Xbox controller to his home computer and play using that.

Q: Balance aside, which hero would you like to see in the game?

A: The hardest heroes for us to do are the really huge ones. We’ve talked about Deathwing as a hero we’d really like to put in, but he’d have to be very big. We’ve found heroes like this to be really challenging to make so far.

Q: Do you think you’ll eventually run out of existing Blizzard characters to use as heroes?

A: Our library of Blizzard characters is pretty massive. We’ve got a very long list of potential heroes that we’d like to implement, and we do want to add many more heroes to the game than are present right now. We’re ready to do more. There may be a few heroes who you might not entirely familiar with if you haven’t played the game they’re from (Stitches from World of Warcraft, for example,) but we can dip into all of our universes to continually create new heroes.

Q: Will there be more high-risk, high-reward Talents added to the game?

A: We’re constantly talking about Talents — what to add, and what to change. For example, Zagara’s talents are kind of insane right now. One idea, which Matt Cooper proposed, was to double the range of her Baneling ability, and I really hope that one will stick around. We’re continuing to evolve the Talent system to add more customization, more options, and more ways for you to play your favorite heroes how you’d like.

Q: Originally Heroes was going to be part of the StarCraft II Arcade. Is Heroes still based off the StarCraft II Editor, or has it changed?

A: Yes, it’s still based on the StarCraft II Editor, but it has changed a bit. We want to get to a place where we can make the map editor available for Heroes, as well.

Q: With regard to new characters, are there any hopes for seeing heroes from older blizzard games?

A: You mean like Rock N’ Roll Racing, or the Lost Vikings? Yes, we’d definitely love to look into creating Heroes from our older titles. I can’t make any promises right now, but we will certainly work on it.

Q: With so many unique characters and ways to play, how do you balance the game?

A: We get this question a lot. It’s going to be a lot of work for us, but we have a team of balance guys working on this night and day, and we’re pretty confident at the moment. We’re not afraid to admit when we’re wrong, see what the community has to say, and make changes. The editor also lets us make changes on a hero by hero basis. For example, the way Sgt. Hammer roots herself basically attracts skillshots from her enemies. If we need to fix something about that, we can adjust her talents to give her more survivability while she’s sieged up.

Finally, as of the 16th of April, we have a new patch for HotS which addresses a ton of balance “issues” with heroes, some bug fixes, performance increases and more. For the full notes you can go here. For those of you interested in the hero changes, look no further.

 

Heroes

 

  • New Heroes
    • Brightwing and Lili have been added and are now available for play!

 

  • General
    • Hero movement speed increased from 4.0 to 4.4.
    • Several measures have been implemented to help prevent snowballing.
    • It is now easier to click on both friendly and enemy Heroes when they are near Structures (especially Gates) and Minions.
    • Calldown: M.U.L.E. duration reduced from 90 to 60 seconds.

 

  • Arthas
    • Basic Attack damage increased from 55 (+5 per level) to 59 (+6 per level).
    • Frost Strike damage increased from 60 (+11 per level) to 80 (+15 per level).
    • Frostmourne Hungers
      • Basic Attack damage bonus from 20% to 40%.
      • Duration increased from 4 to 6 seconds.
    • Rune Tap now requires 3 stacks for an 8% heal, rather than 5 stacks for a 10% heal.

 

  • Barbarian
    • Fury Combat Trait
      • Fury’s life steal component has been removed.
      • Now gains a temporary 10% movement speed bonus any time an ability is cast, and additional casts refresh its duration.
    • Ancient Spear cooldown reduced from 15 seconds to 13 seconds.
    • Hammer of the Ancients
      • Now deals baseline splash damage equal to 25% of the ability’s base damage.
      • The Seismic Slash Talent increases splash damage to 100% of base damage.
    • Whirlwind
      • Duration reduced from 4 to 3 seconds.
      • Damage reduced from 320 (+16 per level) to 210 (+21 per level) dealt over the course of its duration.
      • Added 20% life steal while Whirlwind is active.
      • Fury cost increased from 20 to 25.
    • Leap
      • Cooldown increased from 40 to 50 seconds.
      • Arreat Crater duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
      • Arreat Crater can now be cancelled.
    • Wrath of the Berserker
      • Now generates 25 Fury on cast and costs 4 Fury per second to remain in this form.
      • Cooldown reduced from 100 to 20 seconds, and the timer starts once Wrath has completed.
      • Previous movement speed and life steal gains removed.
      • Now gains a 30% bonus to all damage dealt.
    • Many Talents were tweaked in order to account for the above changes.

 

  • Diablo
    • Apocalypse
      • Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds.
      • Damage decreased from 160 (+12 per level) to 100 (+10 per level).
    • Soulstone has been reworked.
      • Soulstone stacks now cap at 100 and require 100 to resurrect from the dead.
      • Diablo no longer loses all Soulstone stacks on death, but instead loses 100 on resurrection.
    • Endless Death now increases Soulstone stack maximum to 200 (previously 250).

 

  • Demon Hunter
    • Hatred has been reworked.
      • Every Basic Attack grants Demon Hunter a stack of Hatred, capping at 10.
      • Each stack of Hatred gives 3% Attack Speed and 1% Movement Speed.
      • Hatred stacks fade at a rate of 1 per second, rather than all at once.
      • The Rancor talent now increases auto-attack damage when at maximum stacks.
    • Strafe
      • Damage per level increased from 4.5 to 5.
      • Search area increased from 7.5 to 10.
      • Cooldown increased from 45 to 50 seconds.
    • Rain of Vengeance
      • Cooldown decreased from 100 to 90 seconds.
    • Siphoning Arrow life leech increased from 25% to 50%.

 

  • E.T.C.
    • Mosh Pit cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds.
    • Rock God! damage bonus increased from 40% to 50%.

 

  • Falstad
    • Aerial Blitzkrieg cooldown increased from 90 to110 seconds.
    • Flight cast time increased from 1.5 to 2 seconds.

 

  • Gazlowe
    • Grav-O-Bomb 3000 cooldown increased from 90 to 110 seconds.

 

  • Kerrigan
    • Ultralisk Movement Speed increased from 4.5 to 5.

 

  • Muradin
    • Haymaker cooldown reduced from 70 to 50 seconds.

 

  • Nova
    • Holo Decoy sight radius increased from 3 to 6.
    • Wounding Shot damage amplification reduced from 30% to 25%.

 

  • Raynor
    • Base Attack damage decreased from 63 (+12 per level) to 63 (+11 per level).

 

  • Sgt. Hammer
    • Basic Attack starting damage increased from 50 to 55.
    • Tank Mode cast time decreased from 1 to 0.5 seconds.

 

  • Stitches
    • Putrid Bile slow duration increased from 1.125 to 1.5 seconds.
    • Putrid Bile search radius increased from 2.5 to 3.

 

  • Tassadar
    • Protective Shield cooldown increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
    • Health reduced from 850 (+160 per level) to 800 (+145 per level).

 

  • Tychus
    • Commandeer Odin
      • Annihilate starting damage increased from 20 to 70.
      • Ragnarok Missiles starting damage increased from 20 to 70.

 

  • Tyrael
    • Righteousness
      • Shield amount decreased from 250 (+25 per level) to 200 (+25 per level).
      • Explosion damage increased from 75 (+9 per level) to 90 (+12 per level).
      • Righteousness explosion radius increased from 2 to 3.
    • Judgment cooldown reduced from 100 to 80 seconds.

 

  • Tyrande
    • Sentinel reveal duration reduced from 8 to 5 seconds.
    • Lunar Flare stun duration reduced from 1.25 to 1 second.
    • Shadowstalk cooldown reduced from 80 to 60 seconds.

 

  • Zeratul
    • Basic Attack damage scaling reduced from 15 per level to 12 per level.
    • Singularity Bomb damage increased from 50 (+12 per level) to 100 (+20 per level).

It’s also worth noting that with this patch comes an account wipe, meaning all experienced earned and heroes bought, have been reset. It’s quite possible this may happen several more time before release, I don’t think there is any worry for people being left behind by Beta testers.

Since we are only in Alpha stage, there will be a lot more changes and additions coming our way. Be sure to keep it with Push-Start for more info.

 

 


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