heroes Sylvanas 2018 Gameplay Update

[Stan 5,243]

The Banshee Queen will be reworked alongside Stitches in the next Heroes of the Storm content patch. Check out the highlights!

Rework Goals

• Improve her teamfighting capabilities
• Increase skill-cap while adding counter-play
• Create more powerful and engaging talents

Rework Highlights

• Trait
  • Updated with new functionality. Enemies that are auto attacked will gain a stack of Banshee's Curse, stacking up to a maximum of 3.
    • At 3 stacks, enemies will take increased damage from Sylvanas, until the Banshee's Curse buff wears off.
  • Her trait can be activated, causing all damage that she inflicts to lock down enemy minions, mercenaries, and towers for a short amount of time.
• Basic Abilities
  • Withering Fire [Q] no longer has individual charges. She will instead fire 5 arrows in quick succession, prioritizing the nearest enemy Hero.
  • Shadow Dagger [W] will no longer spread automatically. Once cast, Sylvanas must attack the same target in order to change Shadow Dagger to nearby enemies.
• Heroic Abilities
  • Mind Control [R1] is now a skill shot. She will fire a projectile in a given direction. The first Hero to come in contact with it will be silenced, slowed, and move towards Sylvanas. 
• Talents
  • Barbed Shot (Level 6) drastically increase damage on the last arrow, provided all 5 shots hit the same target.
  • Unfurling Shadows (Level 1) permanently increases the damage of her Shadow Dagger on enemies with 3 stacks of Banshee's Curse.
  • Mercenary Queen was moved to Level 4.

[Steveson 193]

All these changes make her more of an assassin than pusher that she was. Maybe now people will consider picking other specialists rather than her to push lanes.

[Hypersonic 119]

Yeah this is absolutely from specialist to assasin revamp and I hate it. 

[ValkyrieFreya 30]

Think the success of this rework will be pretty dependent on her new cooldowns (especially her trait).

I'm not convinced, but curious to see what she'll bring.

[Noxado 2]

Hots is dead 

[Plergoth 277]

It's one of the most frustrating things to witness in the game are people playing a specialist almost exclusively away from the team for the majority of the game if not all of it to get maybe a fort or two down and keep wall destroyed while the enemy team completely stomps everywhere else. Sylvanas has some incredible talents and, amongst the specialists, very strong team fight orientated ults. I don't know how many Battlefield of Eternity maps where Sylvanas has made me cry fucking blood tapping a tower when she's one of the strongest heroes to race an Immortal down or fight during the contest, as well as moving with the team during the following push. 

Edited November 30, 2018 by Plergoth

[lChronosl 182]

Well, they sure want us to rise our APM. You will need to work at least twice as hard to get some of the same results.

Not saying it's a bad thing, but some slow players such as myself might have some difficulties.

[SMOrcMan 76]

Don't forget merc queen increases her dmg to mercs now

[Migol 433]

So Rework now means nerf?   Because that's all I see, a tremendous nerf?    Yes she'll be able to pvp a bit better but she'll just become another generic assassin, and not even a good one with the lack of CC (even her ult is nerfed!) and 2nd rate teleport.

[Arcling 898]

12 hours ago, Steveson said:

All these changes make her more of an assassin than pusher that she was. Maybe now people will consider picking other specialists rather than her to push lanes.

That's why role reclassification is a good thing to happen, too many people are still thinking you need a specialist in every comp or that their sole purpose is to push lanes, while it wasn't the case for over 2 years. You already had assassins with good wave clear, so specialist role was too vague and redundant, as it didn't include only lane pushers but also supports like Medivh. Simply classifying those heroes as "rule breakers" was too confusing for people, even after changing icon and description, significant portion of players still viewed them as they were during early HotS design, being lane pushers, which caused issues with playstyles and during draft.

It's probably for the best if that Sylvanas rework will change how she is played. Perhaps more people will stop playing her as solo push, while ignoring objectives. So annoying to end up as 4vs5, because people are still thinking her kit (and being "specialist") means you should stay on lane 100%. This should also kill those afk farmers. Now she can contribute more in team fights, while also retaining some push capabilities, but it is no longer that mindless, snowbally push, when she had to be heavily contested, because towers were no threat to her (especially annoying on some maps).

Edited November 30, 2018 by Arcling

[Xaethron 36]

This is Sylvanas's at least 3rd actual rework. It'd be nice for the designers to fix other characters that are literally never used instead of touching the same ones over and over again. Like do you guys even remember probius?

[SenatorBinks27 16]

34 minutes ago, Arcling said:

That's why role reclassification is a good thing to happen, too many people are still thinking you need a specialist in every comp or that their sole purpose is to push lanes, while it wasn't the case for over 2 years. You already had assassins with good wave clear, so specialist role was too vague and redundant, as it didn't include only lane pushers but also supports like Medivh. Simply classifying those heroes as "rule breakers" was too confusing for people, even after changing icon and description, significant portion of players still viewed them as they were during early HotS design, being lane pushers, which caused issues with playstyles and during draft.

It's probably for the best if that Sylvanas rework will change how she is played. Perhaps more people will stop playing her as solo push, while ignoring objectives. So annoying to end up as 4vs5, because people are still thinking her kit (and being "specialist") means you should stay on lane 100%. This should also kill those afk farmers. Now she can contribute more in team fights, while also retaining some push capabilities, but it is no longer that mindless, snowbally push, when she had to be heavily contested, because towers were no threat to her (especially annoying on some maps).

But I LIKE having Specialists that are better for PvE vs PvP Assassins. Yes, join the teamfights and PvE also means objectives, but you can teach that without completely changing the uniqueness of the game. 

[Arcling 898]

50 minutes ago, SenatorBinks27 said:

But I LIKE having Specialists that are better for PvE vs PvP Assassins. Yes, join the teamfights and PvE also means objectives, but you can teach that without completely changing the uniqueness of the game. 

Well, for that you already have assassins who are also good at clearing waves, like Ragnaros, Jaina, Kael and several others. In the end it's just a label, since lane pushing isn't going away, and other specialists aren't getting a rework, only redistributed between melee/ranged assassins, bruisers and supports. Sylvanas is rather special case, as her trait was too powerful, no other character could disable towers and minions like her, which caused problems on several maps.

[Brutalis 165]

RIP Sylvanas.

 

Admittidly, I never really felt her role matched her lore in the least and it was a really odd portrayel of the Banshee Queen but hot damn did I enjoy the hell out of her.

I do feel, though, that the continued homogenization of heroes is a bad thing. She had some great, unique mechanics and filled a few great niches but this is another shift towards her being a generic ranged assassin. With her in this state why would I ever pick her over any one else?

[Aasgier 36]

On 11/30/2018 at 8:39 PM, SenatorBinks27 said:

But I LIKE having Specialists that are better for PvE vs PvP Assassins. Yes, join the teamfights and PvE also means objectives, but you can teach that without completely changing the uniqueness of the game. 

There are quite a few like that already. Jaina, Zagara (even if the splitpush build gets nerfed which wouldn't surprise me at all), Illidan, Ragnaros, Malthael...

 

That being said, Sylvanas' trait is an abomination in terms of game design and I'm glad it's curbed with the rework.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Aasgier

[lChronosl 182]

I had a bit of hope that they would change her trait to work more like W3 Dark Ranger's Black Arrows, the one that summoned skeletons. But I guess it would be too close to Xul.

[shanghaied 55]

I'll reserve judgment until I see how her AA damage and stats have been altered.

In a vacuum I absolutely hate these changes.  But there may be additional pieces to the puzzle that help.

I am tired of her trait being used as an excuse for extremely risky solo pushing by other players so her losing that mechanic isnt totally bad for me.  So I'm keeping a cautiously open mind for now.

[Baelfyer 4]

Great, now if only they would rework her in WoW.....

[HSpawn 0]

Is it just me? Or is she got a nerf here? Im 320 lvl with Sylvanas and her Q attack is slow and her W doesnt spread to all enemies exept those who are VERY close to each other. Her W build takes like forever to stuck plus that 3 curses from her trait isnt easy to stuck. (Especially if the enemy team is comp with long range assassins - pokers) other than that she got a nerf on her AA dmg because of her trait. (Even with 25% more dmg is like they gave her back the dmg they took) Other than those things her new MC is cool. No more selfstun :P :P :P 

 

As for the talent tree choice is kinda messed up. Other heroes have their escape and dmg upgraded. They did put her double E in the same place with her Armor reduction (tier 13) 

There are way more better ranged assassins than her. So for me bottom line is that just nerfed her even by making her Ranged assassin (Take for example Genji-ranged assassin with more dmg than her, mobility, plus tones of escapes.)

 

Its officialy a NERF! :p