After driving the Raven Lord out of the Haunted Mines and doing a little. . . redecorating. . . the Grave Keeper has re-opened the Mines to all who wish to summon powerful and destructive Grave Golems.
Haunted Mines Basics
- Venture Underground
- The Haunted Mines will periodically open with an Undead Army underneath.
- Collect the Skulls
- Destroy the Undead and collect their Skulls to summon a powerful Golem. The more Skulls each team collects, the stronger their Golems become.
- Unleash the Golems
- After the Undead have been defeated, a Golem will rise for each team and travel down lane in search of Structures to destroy.
Haunted Mines Updates
- Grave Golems now spawn in fixed positions in each lane, and switch lanes each time they are summoned.
- The layout of the Underground Mines has been reworked, and the Neutral Grave Golem can now be found at its center.
- The upper level’s center area has been reworked.
- Additional Mine Entrances have been placed to the East and West of the Battleground’s center area, for a total of 4.
- A Mercenary Camp has been placed near each Mine Entrance, featuring Siege Giants at the East and West Entrances, and Sappers in the North and South.
Art
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
- The following Heroes have received updated visual effects and talent icon color tints to coincide with their reworks:
- The following Hero Abilities have received slight animation changes to coincide with timing changes:
- Kael’thas: Pyroblast
- Zarya: Particle Grenade
Shop
The following changes will take place in the Shop once the Public Test Realm is brought offline and the patch is officially released to the live version of Heroes of the Storm next week.
Bundles
- New Bundles
- Lil’Ragnaros Bundle – Available until January 4, 2017
- Removed Bundles
- Druid of the Flame Malfurion Bundle
New Hero
- Ragnaros has been added to the in-game Shop.
Mounts
- New Mounts
- 2016 Fall Champion’s Mount
- Returning Mounts
- Removed Mounts
- 2016 Summer Champion’s Mount
- Blackheart’s Doubloon
Skins
- Lil’ Ragnaros
- Master Ragnaros
Price Reductions
- Sylvanas’ prices reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold.
User Interface
General
- The search terms "melee" and "ranged" can now be used to filter Hero Select for melee or ranged Heroes.
- Click the Grand Master Leaderboards and Ranked Play Guide buttons on the Ranked Play screen to view these pages within the Heroes of the Storm game client.
Hero and Role Chat Links
- Press SHIFT and click a Hero portrait or Hero Role icon during Hero Select or in a Draft Lobby to add a link to that Hero or Role in the chat.
- Clicking a Hero or Role link in chat will automatically filter players’ Hero lists accordingly.
- Alternatively, type a Hero name or Role in square brackets to create chat links.
- For example: Typing “[Jaina]” into the chat box will create a link to Jaina in Hero Select. However, the spelling must be exact or the link will not work.
- These Hero and Role links can be used to suggest picks and bans in Draft Lobbies.
- Clicking a Hero or Role chat link while viewing the Shop will also filter the list of items accordingly.
Penalties for Leaving Games
- Much like Hero League, players who repeatedly leave Unranked Draft and Team League games or draft lobbies will now be flagged to receive leaver penalties.
- Players with active penalties for leaving games can no longer queue for Unranked Draft or Team League games.
MVP and Commendations
- Press TAB at any point during the MVP and Commendations sequence to view the in-game Score Screen for that match.
- A Skip button has replaced the Exit button on the MVP screen.
- Clicking Skip will immediately take the player to the Commendations screen.
- Players can still leave the Commendations screen normally by pressing the Exit button.
Design & Gameplay
Unrevealable Heroes
- Heroes who are considered unrevealable will no longer shimmer like other stealthed heroes.
- After the unrevealable period ends, they will shimmer again.
Heroes Brawl - Blackheart's Revenge, Garden Arena, Punisher Arena, Temple Arena
- Healing Fountains
- Healing Fountains will now be Invulnerable when these Brawls next return to the Nexus
Braxis Holdout
- Zerg Rush
- Initial Zergling spawn increased from 3 to 6 Zerglings
Warhead Junction
- Warheads
- Base damage reduced from 2750 to 2300.
- Warhead damage now scales by a flat 70 every minute, and no longer has a large jump at 18 minutes.
- Inner Warhead damage is still a 50% bonus.
Developer Comments: We didn’t like the gameplay of holding off on using a Warhead for a sudden unintuitive damage spike, so we’ve smoothed out their damage curve over a longer period. This should end up playing mostly the same across the game, with only about 10% differences in damage at various points in the match.
