Published on May 22, 2019
Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with Hero balance changes! Read on for details.
**While Ana is currently not greatly outperforming other Healers, even at the highest level of play, she is being seen much more often compared to her peers.  We’re reducing the healing power of Biotic Grenade, which should bring her down a notch as well as reduce the power of its associated talents.
Biotic Grenade [W]
**Blaze has been outperformed by other heroes in the last few months, and these changes are intended to bring him a bit more back into the meta.  Most of these buffs are intended to help his tanking capabilities, particularly when it comes to his initiation and survivability.
Jet Propulsion [E]
Pyromania [Trait]
Oil Dispersal [W]
Feeding the Flame [Q]
Bunker Drop [R1]
Suppressive Fire [Q]
Thermal Protection [E]
 **Ice Lance has been outperforming the other talents on its tier for a long time.  While we enjoy the playstyle that it enables, it is slightly too powerful compared to the other options.  We are reducing its cooldown reduction while also giving Jaina other build paths to consider.
Ice Lance [Q]
Icefury Wand [Passive]
Storm Front [W]
Snowstorm [W]
 **To help curb Maiev’s performance at the highest levels of play, we are reducing her wave clear damage with Spirit of Vengeance, which should mitigate her ability to easily rotate between lanes for ganks.  Due to the fairly low pick rates of talents related to the ability, we also saw an opportunity to beef them up and make them more meaningful options compared to others on their tiers.
Spirit of Vengeance [E]
Sudden Vengeance [E]
Ruthless Spirit [E]
 **We saw an opportunity to improve Zarya’s Heroic options, and while taking a look at her saw that Together We Are Strong was also underperforming compared to its peers, so we’re giving all of these talents a bit more punch. ### Melee Assassin
Together We Are Strong [E]
Gravity Kills [R1]
Clear Out [R2]
**These changes are meant to create better competition between Alarak’s Level 4 talents.  We are buffing Chaos Reigns and giving Show of Force an exciting new scaling bonus, while also reducing the power of Negatively Charged.  While we realize that Negatively Charged is an extremely attractive talent that can sometimes get out of control when Alarak gets a lot of stacks, and an obvious way to nerf it would be to cap its stacks, a large part of the enjoyment of playing Alarak and of taking talents like Negatively Charged is about living the dream when playing well.  We are instead going to try simply reducing the bonus and making the other talents on the tier more attractive, which should hopefully help talent picks on other tiers as well.
Chaos Reigns [Q]
Negatively Charged [E]
Show of Force [Trait]
 **Anduin’s Light is bringing victory! Just about 48% of the time, which is great for a new Hero release. What we’re aiming to do though is buff up a lot of the lesser chosen Talents on him so that he feels like he has a greater variety of options. We’re also looking to make Bold Strategy a little more bold, and a little less automatic. We’re aiming to do this by reducing his higher than typical Mana tension baseline (which Bold Strategy helped alleviated by increasing Flash Heal’s cooldown and making his healing more efficient), while also increasing the cooldown penalty for Bold Strategy. This is in addition to buffing up the other two Talents on the tier, which also buffs Bold Strategy. Net result is that Pursued by Grace and Renew will give Anduin a little more consistent healing, and potentially open up synergy with the significantly buffed Binding Heal at level 7.
Flash Heal [Q]
Divine Star 
Pursued by Grace [Passive]
Bold Strategy [Passive]
Holy Reach [E]
Binding Heal [Q]
Power Word: Shield [W]
Light Bomb [R2]
Enchant Boots – Lion’s Speed [Trait]
Push Forward [Passive]
Evenhanded Blessings [Q]
Holy Nova [W]
Inner Focus [Active]
Lightwell [Active]
 **Some of ETC’s talents could use some beefing up, so we’re milking this opportunity to bring ETC more into the meta so he can better compete with the likes of Anub’arak, Diablo, and Garrosh.  Don’t worry, if these changes butcher his balance we’ll take stock of the situation and nerf him appropriately.
Guitar Hero [E]
Block Party [Trait]
Hammer-On [Passive]
 **Lunara is in the middle of the pack in regards to her performance against other ranged assassins.  We’re buffing a slew of her talents to make her stand out more, and to make playstyles more attractive that currently aren’t as popular on her.
Hippity Hop [Z]
Blossom Swell [Q]
Choking Pollen [Q]
Thornwood Vine [R1]
Abolish Magic [Active]
Endless Spores [W]
Accelerated Contamination [Q]
 **Now that Raynor has fairly meaningful Mana costs on his abilities, we are adding some reductions in his talents so that he isn’t punished in regards to his Mana consumption when taking them.
Fuel the Rush [Passive]
Debilitating Roungs [Passive]
 **These changes are to make Rexxar’s laning phase a little less overwhelming for the majority of opponents, particularly on maps with control points.  We're slightly lowering Misha's power in the early game, but increasing her scaling so that she is less powerful in early-game trades, but is still a threat in the mid to late portions of the game. ### Healer
General Base Stats
**We’re making some quality of life changes to some of Stukov’s talents to make them better.  Targeted Excision in particular suffered from some awkwardness where when used properly, the cooldown of Bio-Kill Switch would often be lower than the cooldowns of his Healing Pathogen and Weighted Pustule, which made part of its benefit meaningless.  This change should make its 5-second cooldown more important, as he can use his other abilities sooner after his initial cast of Bio-Kill Switch. ### Support
Fetid Touch [W]
Targeted Excision [Trait]
It Hungers [E]
Poppin’ Pustules [Trait]
Universal Carrier [Q]
 **Deckard has been performing well since his last round of buffs.  These changes are to increase the competitiveness of his Level 20 talents, which are all currently being outshone by Bottomless Flask.
Perfect Gems [W]
Horadric Cube cooldown reduction increased from 5 to 6 seconds
Respect the Elderly [R1]
Morenados! [R2]
 **While Garrosh is incredibly popular due to his ability to heavily displace enemy Heroes, he is not outperforming other Heroes in the game, sitting at a 48% win rate at higher levels of play in the hands of people who are skilled with him specifically. At lower levels of play his win rate drops to 47.2%, where he wins the award for being the second lowest win-rate Warrior in the game.  We’re slightly nerfing Wrecking Ball’s cooldown to help address his high popularity and frustrations playing against him, and buffing some of his under-picked talents to better compete with their peers to help stabilize his talent tree.
Wrecking Ball [E]
Unrivaled Strength [E]
Body Check [Active]
Brute Force [Active]
Decimate [R1]
Mortal Combo [Q]
Deadly Calm [R2]
 **Rain of Destruction has not been the predominant Heroic since Gul’dan’s release.  We believe there are two reasons for this: the first being that it has some randomness to its output in regards to where the meteors land, and the second being that it requires Gul’dan to channel for 7 seconds, which gives his opponents an incredibly long time to interrupt him while also not allowing him to use his other abilities or provide any other output during that time.  We’re targeting the second issue with this change, which will allow Gul’dan to gain the ability to move and use his abilities while the Rain of Destruction is happening.  We may in the future look at the randomness of the Heoric’s meteors, but at this time we want to try this change as it retains most of the original fantasy of Gul’dan raining Hellfire upon his enemies.  We’re also improving some of Gul’dan’s lesser picked talents.  We realize that he has some fundamental issues with Corruption focused talents dominating his talent tree, and are looking at exploring ways in the future to make alternative ways to play more meaningfully competitive.
Pursuit of Flame [Q]
Chaotic Energy [W]
Bound by Shadow [Q]
Curse of Exhaustion [W]
Rain of Destruction [R2]
 **Johanna is a solid, versatile Warrior that brings a strong frontline presence to her team.  In addition to giving her some talent buffs, we’re increasing the damage of Condemn to further push her unique role as a Warrior who brings a considerable amount of waveclear.
Condemn [W]
Hold Your Ground [Trait]
Eternal Retaliation [W]
Zealous Glare [E]
Radiating Faith [R2]
 **We’re buffing some of Muradin’s underutilized talents, and giving all of his Level 13 options some kind of survivability so that they better compete with Healing Static.
Third Wind [Trait]
Sledgehammer
Reverberation [W]
Heavy Impact [E]
Skullcracker [Passvie]
Thunder Strike [W]
Bronzebeard Rage [Passive]
 **eratul has been a considerable threat, particularly at the higher levels of play.  This change is meant to simply reduce his power.  We chose to nerf Cleave because it is his least interactive way of dealing damage, particularly when combined with Wormhole.  ### Ranged Assassin
Cleave [Q]
**To make it more consistent with other damage modifiers, we are changing Consuming Flame’s bonus from a flat amount to a percent bonus, which will make it scale with Imperius’s level.  This is a slight nerf to his Level 1 damage, but overall a fairly significant buff to the talent during the middle and later portions of the game.  To make Flash of Anger more reliable, we are changing its functionality to be about consuming marks of Celestial Charge instead of trying to hit enemy Heroes first with Solarion’s Fire.  To compensate for the power and reliability bonuses we’re giving, we are reverting the damage bonus that we gave to the talent last patch.  This functionality change should make the use case for the talent much more clear: Impale enemies, gain benefits.
Consuming Flame [W]
Flash of Anger [Q]
 **To better round out Kharazim’s Level 7 talents, we are baking in some of the functionality of talents that normally come online for him later on.  This should make this tier more competitive while also opening up other options for players to take as a replacement for the talents that have been removed.  For example, players who want to get in and punch a lot with Blazing Fists will now have a defensive option to take at Level 13 since they no longer have to take Fists of Fury to complete the build.
Radiant Dash [Q]
Deadly Reach [E]
Heavenly Zeal [W]
Blazing Fists [E]
Divine Palm [R1]
Fists of Fury [E]
**We read the feedback that it is difficult to capitalize on the cooldown resets on Wraith Strike due to the high Mana cost of casting the ability multiple times.  To compensate for this, we are drastically reducing the Mana cost of Tormented Souls, which should make it much easier to get value. 
Throwing Shade [E]
Tormented Souls [R1]
Mortality [W]
 **It’s been awhile since we’ve reevaluated the Firelord’s place in the Nexus.  Overall he’s doing fairly well, but we felt he could use a small buff to compete with the current meta heroes in the game.  We also saw this as an opportunity to help his Level 20 pick rates out, so we’re buffing Flames of Sulfuron to be a fairly meaningful Stun increase and increasing the uptime of Submerge.
General Base Stats
Flames of Sulfuron [R1]
Submerge [Active]
 **Stitches like buffs.  We like Stitches.  We give Stitches buffs.  When Stitches happy, you happy too! ### Bruiser
Chop Chop [W]
Digestive Juices [E]
Gas Flare [Passive]
Meat Hook [Q]
**Anub’arak is still overperforming compared to other Warriors, so this time we are reducing the power of Legion of Beetles and Cocoon, which are still stand out talents for him.  We are hesitant to over-nerf him, so our strategy going forward is to combine these smaller nerfs with buffs to other Warriors to create a healthier meta for the role.
Legion of Beetles [Trait]
Cocoon [R2]
 **We’ve nerfed Mal’ganis multiple times since his release, and he has fallen off a bit too much since our last round.  These buffs to various talents are meant to increase his overall effectiveness while also rounding out his talent tiers to be more competitive.
Winged Guard [W]
Vampiric Aura [Trait]
Time to Feed [Passive]
Might of Sargeras [W]
Black Claws [Q]
Spreading Plague [E]
Nightmare Fuel [Passive]
Frenzied Assault [Passive]
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