heroes Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes: Oct 16 & Mal'Ganis Build Guide

[Stan 5,240]

The latest Heroes of the Storm content patch is now live with Mal'Ganis, disabled Haunted Mines, and changes to certain Support abilities to only work on Heroes.

Patch Highlights

• Mal'Ganis is now live and you can check out our build guide here. The Hero is also available in the talent calculator.
• The game no longer supports DirectX9 and the 32-bit version of the client.
• Haunted Mines have been removed from all gameplay modes.
• Ana's Healing Dart now pierces targets at full Health.
• Multiple Support abilities have been reworked to only work on Heroes.

Blizzard (Source)

General

• Heroes of the Storm no longer supports DirectX 9 and the 32-bit version of the client.

Battlegrounds

Unranked Battleground Rotation:

• The Battleground Rotation for all Unranked modes has been adjusted to the following:
  • Alterac Pass
  • Battlefield of Eternity
  • Blackheart's Bay
  • Braxis Holdout
  • Cursed Hollow
  • Dragon Shire
  • Garden of Terror
  • Hanamura Temple
  • Infernal Shrines
  • Sky Temple
  • Tomb of the Spider Queen
  • Towers of Doom
  • Volskaya Foundry
  • Warhead Junction

• Haunted Mines: Haunted Mines has been removed from all gameplay modes. It will still be available to be played in Custom Games.
• Mercenaries: Sappers can no longer have their charge attack interrupted by a Silence effect. Silencing Sappers will still prevent them from starting to channel this ability

New Hero: Mal'Ganis (Warrior)

Cunning and intelligent, Mal'Ganis was chosen to bring Arthas Menthil into the Lich King's service. After manipulating the prince into purging Stratholme of life, he finally fell to Frostmourne as Arthas's first act as the Lich King's champion... yet a demon does not die so easily.

Trait

• Vampiric Touch
  • Mal'Ganis heals for 45% of damage dealt to enemy Heroes and 15% of damage dealt to non-Heroes.

Basic Abilities

• Fel Claws (Q)
  • Violently slash in the chosen direction, dealing 78 damage to enemies.
  • Reactivate to slash up to 2 more times. The third slash Stuns enemies for 0.75 seconds.
• Necrotic Embrace (W)
  • Desecrate the air, dealing 119 damage to nearby enemies and gaining 25 Armor for 3 seconds.
• Night Rush (E)
  • After 0.75 seconds, gain 50% Movement Speed for 2 seconds. While active, Mal'Ganis can move through enemy Heroes and put them to Sleep for 2.5 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

• Carrion Swarm (R)
  • After 1 second, disperse into an Invulnerable swarm of bats for 3 seconds, dealing 74 damage per second to enemies.
  • Vampiric Touch heals for 100% of Carrion Swarm's damage to Heroes.
• Dark Conversion (R)
  • Channel on an enemy Hero for 0.75 seconds, then swap Health percentages with the target over 3 seconds.

Design

Support Heroes

• We've unified certain Support abilities to only work on Heroes (not minions or Mercenaries):

Alexstrasza

• Gift of Life (Q)
• Breath of Life (Q-Dragon Form)

Brightwing

• Pixie Dust (E)

Li Li

• Healing Brew (Q)

Rehgar

• Healing Totem (Active - Level 4)
• Earth Shield (W - Level 13)

Tyrande

• Light of Elune (Q)

Uther

• Holy Light (Q)

Developer Comment: We're unifying the vast majority of our heals for their intended purpose: healing allied Heroes.  We're maintaining the ability for a few heals to affected Minions still where we think it's an important part of their gameplay: Lt. Morales Healing Beam (so that she can heal herself), Rehgar's Chain Heal (to allow bounces travel across Minions), Tyrael's Righteousness (because shielding Minion waves is part of the lane interaction with the ability), and Uther's Holy Radiance (to unify expectations, since it can damage Minions).

Heroes

Support

Ana

Abilities

• Healing Dart (Q)
  • Healing Dart will now pierce targets at full Health.

Collection

New Bundles

• The following new bundles are available for a limited time!
  • Mal'Ganis Heroic Bundle
  • Death & Undeath Bundle
  • Meat Wagon Bundle

New Announcer

• Mal'Ganis

New Mount

• Meat Wagon
  • Northrend Meat Wagon
  • Blackrock Meat Wagon
  • Deathguard Meat Wagon

New Skins

• Mal'Ganis
  • Dreadmachine Mal'Ganis
  • Neocarbon Dreadmachine Mal'Ganis
  • Master Deadmachine Mal'Ganis
  • Infernal Mal'Ganis
  • Northrend Mal'Ganis

New Portraits, Sprays, and Emojis

• Several new emoji packs and portraits have also been added to the game. 

Bug Fixes

General

• AI Heroes: Fixed multiple cases of AI-controlled Heroes incorrectly using their abilities.
• Spell Power: Fixed an issue where Spell Power would no longer affect a Hero’s abilities after they died. (For example: Jaina’s Blizzard will now continue to deal bonus damage if she received increased Spell Power but died before the second and third waves.)
• Statis/Time Stop: Fixed an issue where player created terrain could move Heroes affected by Stasis or Time Stop.

Battlegrounds

• Garden of Terror: Fixed an issue where all three Garden Terrors could spawn in a single lane.
• Minions/Mercenaries: Fixed an issue where Heroes could block the movement of Catapults, preventing them from passing through intact gates.

User Interface

• Fixed an issue where a space would appear before the player’s name in a Whisper.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Ana: Fixed an issue where Ana’s Shrike healing was not accurately reflecting her damage done (via Spell Power or her target’s Armor).
• Chromie: Fixed an issue where Temporal Loop’s return location would appear incorrect if a movement ability was used by the target.
• Diablo: Fixed an issue where Diablo would not be displaced by knockback and similar effects while casting Overpower.
• Gall: Fixed an issue where not all cases of Damage Reduction would work on Gall.
• Gul’dan: Fixed an issue where Darkness Within’s bonus Spell Power would not increase the healing of Drain Life.
• Kharazim: Can now Radiant Dash to all allied units, including Mercenaries, Creep Tumors, and Toxic Nests.
• Li-Ming: Fixed an issue where Tal Rasha's Elements would grant bonus damage to Calamity after being twice in a row.
• Murky: Egg Hunt’s Slime no longer benefits from Slime talents.
• Sylvanas: Targets of Mind Control will now clear their move orders when affected by the ability.
• Uther: Fixed an issue where Holy Fire’s damage was affected by Spell Power.

Mal'Ganis is now live and it's time to check out our build guide and the official patch notes.

[CptPretzel 11]

Haunted mines removed again? 

So, you could say that this map is kinda... haunted (puts on glasses)

[VegaPl 88]

Actually, this patch introduces some meaningful changes.

Ana's Healing Dart being able to pierce through, if the initial target is full HP is huge I think, at least at my silver / gold level, where everybody could use some better positioning. But on the other hand at HGC level as well I guess.

Map going up / down is also always quite a piece of news IMO, especially one that has already been reworked once. [BTW, I joined HOTS after the rework, could somebody please explain it to me how the map was initially?]. I mean, HM did have its flaws, such as IGNORING THE OBJECTIVE (sic!) and going for camps and pushing. It was super effective on my level if the enemy team was not aware of it. I guess removing the sapper camps could improve it; adding a third lane would achieve similar effect as well.

I am kinda hyped for Mal'ganis, he might be the first hero I'm going to buy at release date. His kit seems really fun to play.

2 hours ago, Stan said:

Minions/Mercenaries: Fixed an issue where Heroes could block the movement of Catapults, preventing them from passing through intact gates.

There was this flick from one of the WTF videos where TLV blocked the whole gate, releasing approx. 10 catas at once, getting the opponent busy at the same time. That was kinda fun, the core went down in a matter of seconds ?

[Laragon 269]

11 minutes ago, VegaPl said:

Map going up / down is also always quite a piece of news IMO, especially one that has already been reworked once. [BTW, I joined HOTS after the rework, could somebody please explain it to me how the map was initially?]. I mean, HM did have its flaws, such as IGNORING THE OBJECTIVE (sic!) and going for camps and pushing.

The original haunted mines biggest issue was that the "boss" stayed in one single lane, and spawned where he died at. So you would really only push down one lane of the map to their core. It was much more of a siege race than anything. 

[VinsX 33]

39 minutes ago, VegaPl said:

I mean, HM did have its flaws, such as IGNORING THE OBJECTIVE (sic!) and going for camps and pushing.

I could totally relate. My most ridiculous QM experience was on this map. We finished 58-17 but still almost lost. Because our team was Ming+Alarak+Valeera+Valla & Abby, and the enemy team was Xul+Naz+Sylv+Chromie & Medivh. All they did was what you said above, and all we could do was all-in gank and hurry back to save the other lane (xd). We only managed to win because we wiped their team before they were able to rush our core down. If they had a Zag or Az instead of Chromie we might end up with a bigger deficit but still lose.

[shanghaied 55]

That Ana change is simply huge and long overdue.  I wouldn't be surprised if it bumps her up in the meta a bit.

[Arcling 898]

Guess that rework of Haunted Mines wasn't enough. It still felt snowbally at times, especially with Sylvanas when objective could have been mostly ignored.

[clepsydriska 3]

After ~6 years of following LoL and now ~1.5 years of following HotS, I've found the best MOBA patch note I have ever or will ever read: "Haunted Mines has been removed from all gameplay modes."

[Guest]

3 hours ago, clepsydriska said:

After ~6 years of following LoL and now ~1.5 years of following HotS, I've found the best MOBA patch note I have ever or will ever read: "Haunted Mines has been removed from all gameplay modes."

That will only be true once Braxis Holdout is gone. Worst map ever designed. Haunted mines was far more fun. Hell, even the new Hanumura is more fun with the design changes. Braxis is literally one of the worst (I lied its thee worst )one sided map where you can almost never make a good turn around (majority of my experiences anyway). Im sick of seeing it in the damn rotation all the time.

[XeaKon 23]

Mal'ganis appears to be Illidan 2.0 or his final metamorphosis(evolution).

[mada7 29]

Haunted Mines getting some fine tuning is well overdue. When the best play is to ignore the objective and go get camps instead to push lanes something has gone horribly wrong. Fortunately this also seems like an easy problem to fix: make the monsters in the mine give experience, a lot of it so that it is more worth your time to go into the mines. The biggest problem in that map is that you lose out on XP in lanes when you go into the mines so if the monsters in the mine gave more XP than laning would people would actually do the objective and fight over it

[VegaPl 88]

16 hours ago, VinsX said:

I could totally relate. My most ridiculous QM experience was on this map. We finished 58-17 but still almost lost. Because our team was Ming+Alarak+Valeera+Valla & Abby, and the enemy team was Xul+Naz+Sylv+Chromie & Medivh. All they did was what you said above, and all we could do was all-in gank and hurry back to save the other lane (xd). We only managed to win because we wiped their team before they were able to rush our core down. If they had a Zag or Az instead of Chromie we might end up with a bigger deficit but still lose.

I can recall an almost identical game, except I was on the pushing team and we won. But honestly, we were totally STOMPED in terms of teamfights. This game was so strange, just like you described. It is generally counter-intuitive that you can win a game if for every kill you die around 5 times ?

[Amit 17]

On 10/16/2018 at 4:18 PM, Stan said:

• Haunted Mines have been removed from all gameplay modes.
•  

What the heeeeeeeeck??????? O_O WHY!!!¿

[Morcalivan 86]

On 10/16/2018 at 6:45 PM, shanghaied said:

That Ana change is simply huge and long overdue.  I wouldn't be surprised if it bumps her up in the meta a bit.

Looks funner and far less frustrating.

[VegaPl 88]

21 hours ago, Amit said:

What the heeeeeeeeck??????? O_O WHY!!!¿

Speculated above