heroes Zul'jin Patch Notes: January 4

[Stan 5,242]

Zul'jin is going live and this time there is no PTR. Usually, every new Hero that's supposed to be released can be tested out on PTR one week before going live.

The patch also includes the Tournament Draft for Custom Games, which allows players to swap Heroes at will at the end of the draft.

Blizzard Entertainment

New Hero: Zul'jin

Before the elves and their Alliance, the forests of Lordaeron belonged to the trolls of the Amani empire. As their warlord, Zul’jin has united the tribes into an army that stands ready to take back what is theirs and to slay the elves who stole it from them.

Trait

• Berserker (D)
  • Activate to increase Zul’jin’s Basic Attack damage by 25%, but consume 2% maximum Health per attack.
  • Passive: Zul’jin attacks 1% faster for every 1% of maximum Health missing.

Basic Abilities

• Grievous Throw (Q)
  • Zul’jin throws an axe forward, dealing damage to the first 2 enemies hit and marking them for 8 seconds. Marked enemies take 50% bonus damage from Zul’jin’s next 3 Basic Attacks against them.
• Twin Cleave (W)
  • Throw 2 axes in a large circular arc, dealing damage and slowing affected enemies by 15% per axe for 2 seconds.
• Regeneration (E)
  • Zul’jin channels to regenerate 25% of his maximum Health over 4 seconds. Moving or taking damage while channeling will interrupt this effect.

Heroic Abilities

• Taz’dingo (R)
  • Zul’jin is Unkillable for the next 4 seconds, and cannot be reduced to less than 1 Health. Taz’dingo!
• Guillotine (R)
  • Zul’jin throws a massive guillotine blade into the sky that crashes down on enemies in the targeted area. The lower Zul’jin’s Health, the more damage it deals. 

Shop

Bundles

• New Bundles
  • Emberlord Zul’jin Bundle – Available until January 17, 2017
• Removed Bundles
  • Lil’ Ragnaros Bundle
  • Maraudin’ Muradin Bundle
  • Winter Veil 2016 Bundle
  • Winter Veil Classic Bundle

New Hero

• Zul’jin has been added to the in-game Shop.

Mounts

• New Mounts
  • Amani War Bear – Available by purchasing the Emberlord Zul’jin Bundle
• Removed Mounts
  • Cyber Ram
  • Special Snowflake
  • Festive Treasure Goblin

New Skins

• Emberlord Zul’jin
• Master Zul’jin

User Interface

New Draft Mode: Tournament Draft

• Tournament Draft is a new draft mode added to Custom Games which allows players to swap their Hero Picks at-will at the end of a draft.
• Set up a Custom Game to use Tournament Draft by clicking the Lobby Mode dropdown, and then selecting Tournament Draft from the list.
  • All pick and ban timers have been set to 60 seconds during Tournament Draft mode.
  • Tournament Draft uses First Come, First Served (FCFS) pick order, and Mid Bans.
• Once all picks and bans are complete, a 20-second Swap Round will begin.
  • During this time, players can freely swap Hero picks with their teammates to help ensure that everyone is playing their strongest Heroes.
  • After swapping Heroes with a teammate, the swap button next to that player’s name will go on a brief cooldown in order to prevent repeated or accidental swaps.
• During a Tournament Draft, player names will not be visible to Referees or Spectators and picks will appear from top to bottom.
  • Chat will not be visible to spectators in the Draft screen.
• Please Note: This is our first implementation of Tournament Draft mode, and we plan to bring additional improvements and adjustments to it with future patches.

In-Game

• Removed the Targeting indicator from Tracer’s Status Bar.

MVP and Commendations

• The MVP screen will now display the MVP’s top three stats from the match instead of only displaying the stats that were the Best in Game or Best in Team.

Team League

• A notification has been added to inform two-player parties when they may experience long wait times in the Team League queue and encourage them to add more party members to find matches more quickly.

Design & Gameplay

Armor & Vulnerability

Developer Comments:  With today’s patch you will notice that a lot of our tooltips that used to reference the Resistant/Vulnerable system have been changed. Matthew Cooper detailed the changes on our forums last month explaining a bit about the new system. While the tooltips may have changed, the actual functionality for the system has been in since the Varian patch hit during the week of November 14, so the game itself should not feel any different than what you are currently used to. You will also notice that we have added baseline Armor to three Heroes – Arthas, Anub’arak, and Greymane’s Worgen Form. These are the first of a handful that we are planning to release and would love to hear any feedback you have. We are hoping that the Armor System will open up future design flexibility, increase the depth of strategy (both in game, and in draft), and grant us another knob to help balance the game.

Battlegrounds

Haunted Mines

• Grave Golem
  • Attack Damage scaling for summoned Grave Golems has been increased at all stages of the game. 

Assassin

Greymane

Stats

• Now has 10 Armor while in Worgen form

Lunara

Talents

• Level 7
  • Nature's Culling and Siphoning Toxin have had their icon colors swapped (Siphoning Toxin now has the green icon since it heals.) Their position in the talent tier remains the same.

Nova

Talents

• Level 1
  • Tactical Espionage (Passive)
    • Removed
  • Advanced Cloaking (Passive)
    • Now also restores 2 Mana per second while Stealthed
  • Covert Ops (Passive)
    • Functionality changed:
      • After being Stealthed for 5 seconds, Pinning Shot’s slow is increased to 55% and costs no Mana. Bonus is lost after losing Stealth for 1 second.

Developer Comments:  The functionality of Covert Ops was overly complex for such a simple concept: Buff your Pinning Shot if you’ve been cloaked for a while. The talent was performing well, so this isn’t an attempt to make it worse or better, but rather make it more clear when you have the bonus and when you don’t. Tactical Espionage, however, was underperforming quite a bit, so we decided to roll some of its components into Advanced Cloaking, since the fantasy and flavor of both talents were so aligned anyways.

Raynor

Talents

• Level 4
  • Relentless Leader (E)
    • Now places an inactive button on the item bar to display the cooldown of this talent’s AoE Knockback effect

Specialist

Azmodan

Abilities

• All Shall Burn (E)
  • Can now move at 40% base Movement Speed while channeling
  • Initial cast range of the ability has been decreased by 7%
  • Tether range required to cancel the effect has been increased by 6%
• Demonic Invasion (R)
  • Impact damage reduced from 110 to 104
  • Demon Attack damage reduced from 54 to 51

Talents

• Level 4
  • Mercenary Lord (Passive)
    • Removed
  • New Talent: Hellish Hirelings (Trait)
    • Doubles the effects of General of Hell on Mercenaries (15 to 30%).
  • Sin’s Grasp (Active)
    • Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds
    • Cooldown reduction from killing Minions increased from 5 to 10 seconds
  • Gluttony (E)
    • Healing increased from 20 to 25% of All Shall Burn damage
•   Level 7
  • March of Sin (E)
    • Now increases Movement Speed while channeling All Shall Burn from 40 to 80%
  • Gluttonous Ward (Active)
    • Cooldown reduced from 60 to 45 seconds
• Level 16
  • Sin for Sin (Active)
    • Reduced cooldown from 60 to 45 seconds
  • Imposing Presence (Active)
    • Removed

Developer Comments:  For a while now, Azmodan’s All Shall Burn hasn’t been an attractive ability to build around. We’re making part of March of Sin baseline to make it feel a little more useful in the early game, and reducing the initial cast range but increasing the tether range require to cancel it so that it will more consistently get some value (instead of cancelling immediately if cast at maximum range). A few of his less powerful Talents are also being improved to better fit the gluttonous Lord of Sin’s tastes.

Sylvanas

Abilities

• Mind Control (R)
  • Cast range increased from 10 to 11
  • Cooldown decreased from 70 to 60 seconds

Talents

• Level 1
  • Paralysis (Trait)
    • Removed
  • New Talent: Dreadful Wake (E)
    • Haunting Wave now disables Minions and Mercenaries for 7 seconds
    • Restores 5 Mana per minion hit by Haunting Wave
• Level 7
  • Possession (Active)
    • Cooldown per charge decreased from 12 to 8 seconds
• Level 13
  • Will of the Forsaken (Active)
    • Movement speed increased from 30 to 40%  

Developer Comments:  With the reintroduction of Haunted Mines, we wanted to take a look at Sylvanas and her ability to disable structures. While we feel this is a very important aspect of who Sylvanas is, the Paralysis talent at level 1 pushed this gameplay a little too far. Beyond that, we introduced a new level 1 talent to fill this spot and made some tuning changes to some of her under-performing talents.

Warrior

Anub'arak

Stats

• Now has 25 Spell Armor
• Health decreased from 2226 to 2003
• Health Regeneration decreased from 4.64 to 4.17

Arthas

Stats

• Now has 15 Physical Armor

Bug Fixes

General

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

Art

• Chromie: Chromie’s Hourglass will no longer appear to flicker after casting Hearthstone while moving.
• Samuro: A bowl no longer appears at Samuro’s feet during his dance animation.

Battlegrounds

• Punisher Arena: Casting Zeratul’s Void Prison on Punishers just before they leap will no longer prevent them from attacking when Void Prison ends.
• Temple Arena: Fixed an issue that could prevent Temples from activating correctly during the second round of the Brawl.
• Battlefield of Eternity & Infernal Shrines: Fixed an animation pop affecting Towers on the Heaven side of Diablo-themed Battlegrounds.
• Sky Temple: Fixed an animation pop affecting Temple Guardians.
• Try Mode: Fixed an animation issue affecting the allied Keep.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Alarak: Telekinesis will now correctly interrupt E.T.C.’s Mosh Pit.
• Diablo: The Hellgate Talent is no longer removed after being struck by Falstad’s Hinterland Blast Heroic.
• Diablo: The Hellgate Talent is no longer removed after being struck by the Archangel’s Bulletstorm Ability on Braxis Holdout.
• Gazlowe: Rock-It! Turret range indicators will now correctly display while they are active.
• Kharazim: Becoming trapped by Chromie’s Time Trap while using Radiant Dash with the Way of the Hundred Fists Talent will no longer prevent Kharazim from issuing Basic Attacks until Radiant Dash is cast a second time.
• Raynor: Fixed an issue causing Hyperion to gain benefits from several of Raynor’s Basic Attack Talents.
• Samuro: The cooldown for Critical Strike will no longer stop counting down when he is killed.
• Samuro: Casting Mirror Image after learning Way of Illusion will no longer cause a Talent Quest progress sound to play.
• Samuro: Fixed an issue that could cause certain Hero Abilities and Summons to continue tracking the primary Samuro after casting Mirror Image.
• Thrall: The Earthquake tooltip has been updated to reflect that it pulses once every 4 seconds.
• Tychus: The range indicator for Overkill will now correctly display while the Ability is active.
• Tychus: The range indicator for Drakken Laser Drill will now correctly display while the Ability is active.
• Zeratul: Fixed an issue that could prevent Shields granted by the Shroud of Adun Talent from fully recharging.
• Zeratul: Shroud of Adun will no longer accumulate Shields while using Hearthstone.
• Zeratul: Seeker in the Dark’s duration is now correctly paused while a target affected by Singularity Spike is caught within Void Prison.

Sound

• Core: Fixed an issue that could prevent the Core on the Hell side of Battlefield of Eternity and Infernal Shrines from playing certain attack sounds.

User Interface

• Death Recap: Fixed an issue that could cause Death Recaps to show inaccurate final blow damage.
• Minimap: Catapult Minimap icons are now slightly lighter in color to help players more easily differentiate them from other Minions.
• Profile: Fixed an issue in which the player portrait would not update correctly after selecting the Blackheart's Revenge portrait.

(Source)

[Valhalen 1,484]

Whoa. I wasn't expecting Zul'jin to be released so soon. Also, this Armor mechanic seems interesting... Although I don't want them to nerf heals. Why Blizzard loves nerfing heals?!

Edited January 4, 2017 by Valhalen

[Laragon 269]

Armor... interesting. Wonder what made them add the mechanic? I figure it would just make another moving piece to try and balance, especially since you can't increase/decrease it with any existing mechanic.
Also, Sylvanas changes makes me nervous. Why did mind-control get a buff when it's one of the strongest ultimates in the game at taking out a high-priority target?

[Valhalen 1,484]

46 minutes ago, Laragon said:

Armor... interesting. Wonder what made them add the mechanic? I figure it would just make another moving piece to try and balance, especially since you can't increase/decrease it with any existing mechanic.
Also, Sylvanas changes makes me nervous. Why did mind-control get a buff when it's one of the strongest ultimates in the game at taking out a high-priority target?

 I was expecting her to be needed giving how she often gets banned.

[Laragon 269]

1 hour ago, Valhalen said:

 I was expecting her to be needed giving how she often gets banned.

Exactly! And you also add in that 7 second stun (didn't realize I read that right as SEVEN!!!!) to minion and merc (and I assume Zerg?). That's a hell of a stun on any bruiser or siege camp. Thankfully they didn't let that stun hit structures too or she'd become an auto-ban. I bet blizzard does a quick rework on these two changes in particular.

[Voltorocks 40]

4 hours ago, Laragon said:

Thankfully they didn't let that stun hit structures too or she'd become an auto-ban.

If you read the dev comment it's clear that the reason this talent was even created was that the old talent was too strong specically against structures, so it's no surprise that it doesn't work on structures. Overall I think this talent is a nerf and I can't see choosing it over overflowing quiver. The main issue is that haunting wave is a longish cooldown and your only mobility/escape tool, and it's almost always wrong to burn it for waveclear (especially when Sylv has tons of other strong tools to evaporate waves).

 

mind control buff seems minor and given the prominence of wailing arrow I'm not too worried.

[Valks 2,375]

19 hours ago, Valhalen said:

Whoa. I wasn't expecting Zul'jin to be released so soon. Also, this Armor mechanic seems interesting... Although I don't want them to nerf heals. Why Blizzard loves nerfing heals?!

If they can balance it well, it could be brilliant. Look at OW with Shields/Armour/HP.

[Valhalen 1,484]

2 hours ago, Blainie said:

If they can balance it well, it could be brilliant. Look at OW with Shields/Armour/HP.

As long they don't nerf heals per se, all good. Maybe they could need those Warrior talents that increase healing received by 30%, that way it will affect only Warriors.