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Published on September 4, 2018

Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes – September 4, 2018

We’ve just released a new patch to Heroes of the Storm to introduce Mephisto, some balance adjustments, bug fixes, and a number of other changes.

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Heroes:

General Updates

Certain game visuals now appear smoother, such as Channel/Duration progress bars and Fog of War.
Dynamic Spell Power Updating
- Ability Damage is now calculated while abilities are in flight instead of only at the time of cast.

Battlegrounds & Map Updates

Hanamura Temple
- Hanamura has been renamed to Hanamura Temple and has received a significant gameplay update.
- Hanamura Temple has been added to the Battleground Rotation.

Battleground Rotation
- The Unranked Battleground Rotation has been updated to the following:
  - Cursed Hollow
  - Dragon Shire
  - Alterac Pass
  - Hanamura Temple
  - Towers of Doom
  - Infernal Shrines

Hero Balance Updates (2)

Tyrande

Hero Balance Adjustments

Stats Builds Impact

Developer Comment

** While we enjoy the flexibility of Tyrande's kit, she has struggled to find a home in the current meta. As we started looking at broadening our Hero roles, we felt like we had an opportunity to make some simple yet very substantial changes to our Night Elf Priestess. This rework pulls her slightly away from her hybrid status, reducing her damage output potential while introducing a lot more healing potential. While she keeps the vast majority of her older talents, they have been updated and shuffled to better coincide with her changes. We have enjoyed playing her internally and are excited to see what our players can do with her!   Return ### Collection New Bundles

Base Abilities & Stats

General Base Stats

Basic Attack damage reduced from 82 to 55
Basic Attack range increased from 5.5 to 6

Light of Elune (Q)

Heal increased from 270 to 275
Cooldown increased from 11 to 15 seconds
Mana cost reduced from 30 to 10
New functionality:
Now has two charges that refresh simultaneously.
The cooldown is lowered by 1.5 seconds every time you Basic Attack.
The cooldown is lowered by 1.5 seconds every time you damage an enemy Hero with an ability.
There is a one second cooldown between charge uses.

Sentinel (W)

Mana cost reduced from 70 to 50
Cooldown reduced from 18 to 15 seconds
Damage reduced from 165 to 120
The Sentinel baseline quest has been removed.

Lunar Flare (E)

Damage reduced from 195 to 150

Hunter’s Mark (D)

Armor reduction decreased from 25 to 15
Range increased from 5.5 to 6

Shadowstalk (R)

Cooldown increased from 60 to 80 seconds
New functionality:
Grant Stealth to all Allied Heroes and heal them for 400 Health over 10 seconds.

Talent Changes

Level 1

General

Moonlit Arrows (Q)
Celestial Attunement (Q)
New functionality:
Light of Elune now removes all Stuns and Slows from its target
Kaldorei Resistance (Q)
Duration of Spell Armor decreased from 6 to 3 seconds
Maximum stacks of Spell Armor decreased from 3 to 2
Ranger (W)
Bonus travel damage increased from 75 to 150%
Added functionality:
Activate to have your next Sentinel pierce all targets. 30 second cooldown.
Lunar Blaze (E)
New functionality:
Increase the range of Lunar Flare by 50%
Quest: Hitting a Hero increases the damage of Lunar Flare by 5% up to a maximum of 100%
Trueshot Aura (Active)
New functionality:
Tyrande permanently gains 20% Basic Attack damage.
Activate - Instantly reset Hunter’s Mark and grant nearby allies 20% additional Basic Attack damage for 5 seconds. 60 second cooldown.
Mark of Mending (D)
Elune’s Chosen (Active)
Duration increased from 5 to 10 seconds
Your Basic Attacks heal your target for 200% of the damage they deal. 30 second Cooldown.

Level 16

New Talent: Everlasting Light (Q)

The healing granted by the second charge of Light of Elune is increased by 40% if used on a different target.
Quickening Blessing (Q)
Movement Speed decreased from 30 to 20%
Added functionality:
Tyrande permanently gains 10% Movement Speed
Ranger’s Mark (D)
New functionality:
Basic Attacks lower the cooldown of Hunter’s Mark by 1 second. Tyrande’s Basic Attacks against marked targets extend the duration of Hunter’s Mark by .5 seconds
Harsh Moonlight (W)
Adjusted functionality:
The first Hero hit with Sentinel is slowed by 40% and deals 40% less damage for 4 seconds.
Overflowing Light (Q)
Removed
Huntress’ Fury (D)
Basic Attacks now splash to all nearby targets
Range increase reduced from 50 to 25%
Added functionality:
Increases the duration of Hunter’s Mark by 1 second
Empower (W)
New functionality:
Reduce the cooldown of Sentinel by 3 seconds. The first enemy hit takes an additional 7% of their Maximum Health in damage.
Darnassian Archery (Passive)
Damage bonus per attack increased from 5 to 10%
Duration increased from 4 to 8 seconds
Eyes of the Huntress (R)
Enemy reveal duration reduced from 3 to 2 seconds
Added functionality:
Increase Shadowstalk’s heal by 50% for allies who are under 50% of their Maximum Health
Shooting Star (Passive)
Attacks needed reduced from 10 to 8
No longer requires Heroic targets to gain stacks
No longer only targets Heroic units (but does prefer them)
The following new bundles are available for a limited time! Be sure to check out the latest In-Development blog for more details.
Mephisto Heroic Bundle
Hellforged Heroes Bundle
Mephisto
Beleth
Athena

Level 20

Mephisto

Star Wraith Mephisto
Cybernetic Star Wraith Mephisto
Eternal Star Wraith Mephisto
Golden Mephisto
Soulburn Mephisto
Several new emoji packs and portraits have also been added to the game. You can get a look in our most recent In-Development blog.

Alexstrasza

Hero Balance Adjustments

Stats Builds Impact

Developer Comment

** We’ve seen amazing results since adding a front-loaded heal-over-time to Lifebinder in the Warchrome Wastes patch. In fact, this addition has brought Lifebinder’s win-rate up to be neck-and-neck and the popular Cleansing Flame Heroic. However, after adding this, we noticed some inconsistencies with how the ability functioned compared to other healing abilities in the game. While we think that ‘setting’ a Hero’s Health to a given percent was cool and unique, at its core it was still using a heal effect that was being uniquely handled to ignore Mortal Strike/Amplification effects. At the end of the day we decided to unify this heal and have the end effect take into account any of these debuffs/buffs.

Base Abilities & Stats

Lifebinder (R)

Heal over Time base Heal amount reduced from 75 to 60
Lifebinder is now affected by healing reduction and amplification effects (Mortal Strike, Biotic Grenade, etc.)

NOTE:

This has been active in the live client for a few patches, but was not clearly documented.

Bug Fixes

General

Loading Screen: Fixed an issue that could cause a vertical black line to appear on loading screens in certain resolutions.
Custom Games: Fixed an issue that could cause game stalls when launching custom games with more than 8 players.

Art

Fixed an issue that could cause Heroes to appear to walk on their mounts if certain abilities were cast immediately after mounting.

Battlegrounds

Volskaya Foundry: Fixed an issue that caused Time Stop effects to fail to cancel channels on the Volskaya Protector.

User Interface

The Unstoppable effect now has a status duration bar underneath nameplates.
Alarak: Alarak's Deadly Charge now has an icon in the death recap screen.
Ana: Ana's abilities amplified by Nano Boost's Spell Power buff now display critical effects.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

Cassia: Fixed an issue that could cause the stun effect from Valkyrie to end early if the target collided with terrain.
Diablo: Fixed an issue that prevented Diablo from being thrown by Garrosh’s Wrecking Ball if Diablo was casting Overpower.
Johanna & Li-Ming: Fixed an issue that prevented some “marked” effects from being consumed if the target was Shielded or Protected.
Lunara & Stitches: Fixed an issue that could cause permanent screen shaking if Lunara was hooked by Stitches under certain conditions.

Mac

Fixed an issue that caused responsiveness degradation when using the middle-mouse button on fullscreen settings.

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