heroes Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes: March 1, 2016

[Zadina 923]

A new patch is live in the Americas and will go live later today in other regions. It introduces a variety of new features and changes.

 

We have already covered most of the new additions of this patch, but let's take another look at them anyway. Xul, Cryptic Necromancer is the new Hero that will join the Nexus from this week. Two new UI features will also be added: more observer slots and ability cooldown announcements.

 

Moreover, the weekly balance changes (mistakenly posted under the World of Warcraft tag) are contained in this patch and they involve Nova and Rehgar. New bundles have been added and there are various bug fixes, too. Lastly, Lunar Festival 2016 is officially over.

 

Here are the full patch notes:

 

Blizzard Entertainment

General

 

Lunar Festival 2016

• The Monkey Elder has vanished from the Nexus, and this year’s Lunar Festival event has reached its conclusion, along with several limited-time promotions.
  • Lunar Festival Special Event quests are no longer available, and players can no longer earn progress toward, or unlock, the rewards they offer.
  • Lunar Festival bundles have been removed from the in-game Shop. Review the Shop section of the patch notes below for details.

 

New Hero

 

Xul, Cryptic Necromancer, has been added to Heroes of the Storm and is now available for play! Read on for a brief overview of his Abilities.

 

Trait

• Raise Skeleton
  • When a nearby enemy Minion dies, it becomes a Skeletal Warrior for 15 seconds. Up to 4 Skeletal Warriors can be active at once.

Basic Abilities

• Bone Armor (1)
  • Activate to gain a Shield equal to 25% of your maximum Health for 3 seconds.
• Spectral Scythe (Q)
  • Summon a scythe at target location that travels toward you after a 1 second delay, damaging enemies in its path.
• Cursed Strikes (W)
  • Once activated, your Basic Attacks over the next 4 seconds deal damage in a wide arc and reduce the Attack Speed of enemies hit by 50% for 2 seconds.
• Bone Prison (E)
  • After a 2 second delay, root target enemy in place for 2 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

• Poison Nova ( R )
  • After a short delay, release poisonous missiles that deal massive poison damage over 10 seconds to all enemies hit.
• Skeletal Mages ( R )
  • Summon 4 Skeletal Mages in a line that attack nearby enemies and slow them by 30% for 2 seconds. Lasts up to 15 seconds.

Shop

 

Bundles

• New Bundles have been added for a limited time!
  • Serpent King Xul Bundle
  • Eternal Conflict Bundle
  • Eternal Conflict Ultimate Bundle

Heroes

• Xul has been added to the in-game Shop

Mounts

• New Mounts
  • Cloud Serpent – Exclusively available through purchase of the Serpent King Xul Bundle. This Mount will become purchasable as an individual item about four weeks from today.
• Mount Removals
  • Lunar Dragon – This Mount was exclusively available by purchasing the Lunar Festival 2016 Bundle, and will return as an individual item in the future.

Price Reductions

• Thrall’s prices have been reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold.

Skins

• New Skins
  • Serpent King Xul

 

User Interface

 

Custom Games

• Observer Slots
  • Four more Observer Slots have been added to Custom Game lobbies, which now allow for up to 6 Observers in total.
  • This change also affects Replay lobbies, meaning that up to 16 players can now use Watch with Others to view Replays simultaneously.

In-Game UI

• General
  • Abilities that use charges will now display charge cooldown timers over the Ability icon.
  • Buffs that use charges, such Block or Focused Attack, will now display charge cooldown timers in the Buff bar found next to the Hero portrait.
• Cooldown and Status Announcements
  • Players can now press ALT and left-click any of their Ability or Talent icons to quickly indicate their remaining Ability cooldown durations to teammates via chat messages.
    • This can also be used to indicate the current number of charges on Abilities like Brightwing’s Phase Shift, or Xul’s Raise Skeleton.
    • Additionally, players can now also use ALT + Left-click to indicate when an Ability is not on cooldown, but they do not have enough Mana to cast it.
  • Players who are below 25% of their total Health or Mana can now ALT + Left-click their own Health and Mana bars in the lower-left corner of the screen to inform teammates that they are low on the associated resource.
  • Take a look at our recent blog post to see how these features will appear in-game.

 

Heroes

 

Assassin

 

Nova

• Snipe (Q)
  • Damage increased from 295 (+4% per level) to 310 (+4% per level)
  • Snipe Master (Talent)
    • Damage bonus per stack increased from 12% to 15%. This effect can still stack up to 5 times

Developer Comments:

We are continuing to tune Snipe Master to make it a more attractive choice, assuming you are consistently landing your Snipes.

 

Support

 

Rehgar

• Lightning Shield (W)
  • Electric Charge (Talent)
    • Bonus to Lightning Shield radius decreased from 33% to 25%
  • Stormcaller (Talent)
    • No longer increases Lightning Shield duration
  • Earthshield (Talent)
    • Shield amount reduced from 15% to 12% of the target’s maximum Health
• Ancestral Healing ( R )
  • Cooldown increased from 80 to 100 seconds
• Bloodlust ( R )
  • Mana cost reduced from 125 to 70

Developer Comments:

 The initial round of Rehgar nerfs weren’t quite enough to bring his winrate down to a level that we think is healthy. We like that his base kit feels powerful, so we are aiming to reduce the synergy between his Lightning Shield Talents. We are also increasing Ancestral Healing’s cooldown to better reflect the healing power it brings to a teamfight. The Bloodlust Mana change is simply a quality of life improvement. Overall, we enjoy how Rehgar plays right now, and are excited to see him bring other Heroes, such as Illidan, back into prominence. With that in mind, we’re aiming to cautiously nerf Rehgar over time as we bring this Shaman in line with other Healers.

 

Bug Fixes

 

General

• Corrected several typos and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game. 

Battlegrounds

• Towers will now properly fire Ammo provided by an allied M.U.L.E. immediately after 2 Ammo has been restored.

Heroes and Talents

• Fixed an issue that could cause Tychus to walk or stand while Mounted.
• Brightwing’s Phase Shift cooldown will no longer be reset after activating the Rewind Talent.
• Gall will no longer be separated from Cho after manually exiting a Dragon Knight or Garden Terror.
• Gazlowe’s Rock-It! Turrets will now properly attack Doubloon Chests on Blackheart’s Bay.
• Li-Ming’s Critical Mass Trait will no longer trigger when one of The Lost Vikings is killed if she did not participate in the takedown.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause the effects of Li-Ming’s Aether Walker Talent to become permanent under specific circumstances.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Li-Ming’s Magic Missiles to fire in erratic directions when cast immediately after exiting Archon form.
• The effects of Nova’s Explosive Round Talent will now be properly applied to Snipe after casting Rewind and Snipe in rapid succession.
• The Gladiator’s War Shout Talent will no longer cause Rehgar’s Bloodlust to affect Heroes outside its intended area of effect.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Uther to become stuck in a death state if he was killed while the Redemption Talent’s cooldown expired.

(source)