heroes HotS New Patch: Li-Ming, Lunar Festival and Balance Changes

[Zadina 923]

A huge patch has been released in the Americas and it should be available in the other regions later today. It contains the new Hero, Li-Ming, as well as this week's balance changes; it also introduces Lunar Festival 2016 in the Nexus.

 

As it was already announced, Li-Ming will be arriving in the Nexus with this patch. Moreover, Lunar Festival 2016 will start today and it will go on until the end of February. Blizzard released a promotional video for this event:

 

 

Other features include the two new Cho'gall and Protoss portraits, as well as the improvements on replays. The patch also brings improved button artwork and animations for various Heroes. The 2015 Champion's Nexagon mount has been removed. Along with the usual weekly discounts, Johanna will also have a reduced price. Additionally, there are various UI, design and gameplay features, as well as bug fixes. Lastly, the new replay and observer interface will be enabled by default from now on, so it doesn't have to be downloaded anymore.

 

Changes were also made to various Battlegrounds. Here's the extract from the official patch notes, concerning Battlegrounds:

 

Blizzard Entertainment

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Battlegrounds

Structures

• Towers, Forts, and Keeps now deal 50% bonus damage to Heroes
• Cores will now display an “Invulnerable” message if attacked by an enemy when no allied Keeps have been destroyed.
•  Structures can no longer be made Vulnerable

Developer Comments: The scaling changes we released in December made it so Heroes could dive into Structures with impunity during the early game. Increasing the damage that Structures deal to Heroes allows defending players to feel a bit safer. We are exploring other fixes to help Structures feel more meaningful throughout the game and will release them when they are ready.

Dragon Shire

• Dragon Knight
  • Damage reduction from Structures increased from 50% to 60%
  • Savage Charge (W)
    • Channel time reduced from 1.125 to 0.75 seconds
    • Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds

Developer Comments: Since the Dragon Knight is flagged as a Hero, the increased structure damage was doing too much damage; Increasing Rubble Maker’s effectiveness to compensate felt appropriate. Savage Charge felt like a dead button a lot of the time due to the Ability’s long channel time. This change has made the button feel a lot better to press.

Infernal Shrines

• The minimap now more clearly indicates when a Shrine is ready to activate
• Arcane Punisher
  • Arcane Sentry damage reduced by 20%

Developer Comments: The Arcane Punishers have shown to be more effective than their Frozen and Mortar counterparts, so we lowered their Arcane Sentry damage to bring them more in line with other Punisher types.

Towers of Doom

• Ownership of nearby Bell Towers will no longer determine which lane Sapper Mercenaries will travel down. The two southern Sapper camps will now always travel down the bottom lane.
• Text has been added to the Tunnels to help clarify their one-way use.

 

Try Mode

• A new Healing Dummy has been added above the existing Target Dummy, that calculates healing and healing over time.

(source)

 

Lastly, the patch also brings this week's balance changes - and it's a lot of them. We already knew about them, since they had been datamined, but we will remind you anyway. The Heroes that will be receiving balance changes are: Gall, Illidan, Jaina, Lunara, Nova, The Butcher, Tychus, Zeratul, Abathur, Azmodan, Gazlowe, Malfurion, Rehgar, Tyrande, Uther, Cho and Sonya. Cho and Gall, Nova and Rehgar are the Heroes with the most dramatic changes. Abathur received some minor buffs, whereas Sonya received some minor nerfs.

 

You can read the whole post with the patch notes here. Spoiler alert: it's quite big.

[mnime 17]

I'm not sure what kind of ppl play in the PTR patches, but either they really suck or blizzard doesn't care about their feedback and want some heroes to be op. I mean rehgar was doing great as a healer and now they buffed him so he can deal massive amount of damage too? Couldn't they realize it on PTR? He's so op right now with the lightning shield build. 

I'm actually happy cause he's the healer I go with but last game I ganked Greymane at 50% hp alone, killed him easily at lvl 16, then Morales came in with Artanis and Kharazim, I killed morales too and then 1v2 the others. I mean I'm enjoying it but this really scares me!! This game is not supposed to be like League of Legends where you get fed and buy items and penta the enemy. When you 1v3 a team with any combination, the hero is so overpowered. 

Shields, Heals, the op Ult, and now damage with ghost wolf, It's like he's 3 heroes in 1.

He's just unstoppable at 16

 

Meanwhile nova gets nerfed LOL.

Edited February 8, 2016 by mnime

[Zadina 923]

I guess with the weekly balance patches they don't mind some Heroes being OP, since they will be nerfing them in 1-3 weeks.

 

Afaik, Li-Ming is the new Nova. However, Dustin Browder said they will be tuning down the former and buffing the latter.