heroes Heroes of the Storm Balance Update: December 19th

[Stan 5,240]

A new balance update is here just a week after the latest content patch with Sylvanas and Stitches reworks went live. Check out the patch notes for more information!

Update: The following changes were omitted from the official patch notes (thanks to @Damien)

Deckard

• Field Study - Each enemy Hero hit by Scroll of Sealing grants 15% 20% Spell Power for 14 seconds, up to 30% 40%.

Orphea

• Growing Nightmare - Each Hero hit by the wave of Dread increases the damage of its eruption by 25% 20%.

Blizzard (Source)

We’ve just released a new Heroes of the Storm patch to apply a number of balance changes and bug fixes. 

Heroes

Assassin

Gall

Abilities

• Runic Blast (E)
  • Damage from 233 to 210

Talents

• Level 1
  • Taskmaster (Z)
    • No longer reduces the cooldown of Shove by 10 seconds
• Level 4
  • Bomb's Away (E)
    • Bonus damage now caps at 200
• Level 7
  • Double Trouble (Q)
    • Quest unlock cooldown reduction decreased from 1 to .5 seconds

Orphea

Stats

• Maximum Health reduced from 1662 to 1525
• Health Regen reduced from 3.46 to 3.18

Abilities

• Crushing Jaws (R)
  • Damage reduced from 275 to 250
  • Stun duration reduced from .75 to .5 seconds

Talents

• Level 1
  • Ancestral Strength (Trait)
    • Damage bonus reduced from 25 to 20%
• Level 4
  • Fright (E)
    • The slow effects no longer stack
  • Backbiter (W)
    • Added functionality:
      • Passively increase your maximum Health by 10%

Samuro

Abilities

• Illusion Master (R)
  • Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds
  • No longer grants Samuro bonus Basic Attack damage

Talents

• Level 1
  • Way of Illusion (Q)
    • Bonus Attack Damage per quest stack reduced from .5 to .25

Developer Comment: Samuro has become a bit of a nuisance for many players to deal with, particularly when playing against people who are competent in using IIllusion Master. We’re reducing the power of Way of Illusion and Illusion Master, which should generally reduce the overall damage that Samuro can deal throughout the game. 

Specialist

Sylvanas

Stats

• Maximum Health increased from 1550 to 1650
• Health Regeneration increased from 3.23 to 3.44

Abilities

• Shadow Dagger (W)
  • Damage increased from 29 to 32

Developer Comment: We are still gathering and evaluating data on Sylvanas, but her win rate is looking a little low, so we are giving her some small preliminary buffs while people figure out how to play with her updated kit and talents. 

Zagara

Stats

• Basic Attack Damage reduced from 80 to 76

Abilities

• Hunter Killer (W)
  • Cooldown increased from 14 to 16 seconds
  • Damage reduced from 65 to 71
  • Health increased from 420 to 450
  • Mana cost increased from 60 to 75
• Nydus Network (R)
  • Cooldown reduction per Basic Attack reduced from .5 to .4 seconds

Talents

• Level 13
  • Hydralisk Transfusion (W)
    • Life Leech reduced from 75 to 60% of damage dealt

Support

Auriel

Talents

• Level 1
  • Increasing Clarity (Q)
    • Damage bonus upon quest completion increased from 150 to 180

Deckard 

Talents

• Level 1
  • Field Study (E)
    • Spell Power bonus increased from 15 to 20% per stack
• Level 4
  • Ruby (Active)
    • Healing increased from 205 to 220
• Level 13
  • Potion of Revival (Q)
    • Healing increased from 35 to 45%
  • Super Healing Potion (Q)
    • Healing increased from 80 to 100%
• Level 16
  • Safety in Numbers (Trait)
    • Armor bonus increased from 10 to 15

Developer Comment: After the last round of changes, Deckard’s win rate has fallen more than we would like.  Rather than put more power back into his base kit, we are buffing some of his talents on various tiers to make his talent choices more impactful and to increase his power growth throughout the game.

Lt. Morales

Talents

• Level 7
  • Physical Therapy (W)
    • No longer grants cooldown reduction when removing Slows with Safeguard
      • Additional functionality:
        • Reduce the cooldown of Safeguard by 2 seconds

Uther

Talents

• Level 7
  • Armor of Faith (Q)
    • Now has a 20-second cooldown
    • Additional functionality:
      • Now also restores 90 Mana when Uther is Stunned, Rooted, or Silenced

Developer Comment: There was a large disparity of the value that Uther could receive when taking Armor of Faith against various heroes who have small stuns that proc often against enemies (such as Johanna.) While we still like the idea of this talent turning crowd control against Uther into a boon for him, we want to be able to control its frequency so that his output isn’t drastically different when facing off against certain heroes. To compensate for the loss of uptime in these situations, we are giving him a fairly significant Mana return, which should offset the cooldown reduction that he receives on Holy Light when this talent activates.

Warrior

Cho

Stats

• Maximum Health reduced from 2950 to 2750
• Health regeneration reduced from 6.15 to 5.73

D.Va

Stats

• Mech Basic Attack damage increased from 24 to 26

Mal'Ganis

Talents

• Level 4
  • Fueled by Torment (W)
    • Healing reduced from 12 to 11

Stitches

Stats

• Base Maximum Health increased from 3000 to 3060
• Health Regen increased from 6.25 to 6.38

Talents

• Level 4
  • Chop Chop (W)
    • Attack Speed slow duration increased from 4 to 5 seconds
• Level 13
  • Digestive Juices (E)
    • Damage reduction bonus increased from 40 to 50%
    • Duration increased from 4 to 5 seconds

Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed a number of tooltip issues across the game.

Heroes

• Sylvanas: Fixed an issue preventing Banshee’s Curse from working against Battleground event monsters.

[Fash 6]

Why did they need to nerf Cho’Gall exactly? 

Edited December 19, 2018 by Fash

[kurdi 20]

3 minutes ago, Fash said:

Why did they need to nerf Cho’Gall exactly? 

He was rising up in winrate because Tychus, Greymane and most % dmg dealers aren't in a good moment right now and it felt a little hopeless when your team just didn't had enough damage to stop a competent Cho.

Also, the Gall talents that are nerfed are the only ones the people picks because they are far superior than the others. I guess they are trying to convince people to use other talents before buffing them. They do this type of thing a lot.

[HugeMurloc 43]

Whenever i read news about my beloved Hots, i am feeling depressed

[Twych 24]

IMO Cho'Gall should get a rework. Mostly, just make the talent choices less linear. Also, even though it was probably broken, I want unstoppable surging fist back.

[CyberDVonaven 82]

 

4 hours ago, Stan said:

Gall

Talents

Level 4

• Bomb's Away (E)
  • Bonus damage now caps at 200

 

 ? I cry for this loss. You get SO many dmg stacks once Cho got the lvl 13 CDR talent. When I've played Gall with my friends by lvl 15-18 in team fights we would have like 50 stacks on it. We ended one game a couple weeks ago with 96 stacks on Infernal Shrines (or maybe it was Volskaya Foundry). It was ridiculously strong fun ?. 

[lChronosl 182]

Kinda sad to see they finally noticed how fun Uther with Armor of Faith was against  Jojo or Stukov, when you could voluntary get pulled or silenced for a bit just to get that massive CD reduction. Specially funny if you also had Holy Shock to poke them with.

Edited December 20, 2018 by lChronosl

[gerbercage 15]

Nerf orphea again? Really?

A short range with high cast time hero still keep getting nerf.

People really dunno how to play against hero and only know how to complain.

[Guest]

I'll Cho your gall! I'm amazed at the hp NERF. You would think being a 2 player controlled character would have the most hp undoubtedly at any point in the game but nope ?

Edited December 20, 2018 by Guest

[ShadowerDerek 69]

Holy *filtered*, there's already a build that let Sylvanas one-shot squishies with Shadow Dagger's quest and armor reduction + Festering Wound, and now they're buffing Shadow Dagger's base damage? 

And when will they stop nerfing Zagara? Seriously, she isn't that OP to begin with.

Somebody should be feeling happy about this particular Deckard buff right now.

Edited December 20, 2018 by ShadowerDerek

[Xaethron 36]

When Stitches has more HP than Cho Gall.

[Amit 17]

The only hero that "is for potatoes and noobs", called Cho'Gall, now gets awful nerfs without a plausible reason :(
I can't believe one of the least picked heroes of all time, and even unpickable in Hero League (due to obvious reasons), receives 5 nerfs at the same time T_T considering that each tweak affects both heroes and not only 1 of them :c

I don't support this nerf at all u.u!

Edited January 28, 2019 by Amit
typo

[XeaKon 23]

The Cho'gall and Samuro's Way of illusion nerfs were misplaced. Sam's quest was weak because it gave him a lousy bit of dmg. And regarding the base Runic explosion nerf on Gall, I am surprised to see they are nerfing the base kit without buffing talents.

[Valhalen 1,484]

Cho'gall already is a rarely picked hero even outside of ranked and they nerf them even more? That is plain stupid.

[SleepySheepy 41]

8 hours ago, XeaKon said:

The Cho'gall and Samuro's Way of illusion nerfs were misplaced. Sam's quest was weak because it gave him a lousy bit of dmg. And regarding the base Runic explosion nerf on Gall, I am surprised to see they are nerfing the base kit without buffing talents.

That's what you think about Samuro, but in reality it gave him a lot of burst with Phantom Pain, which allowed him to destroy opposition in seconds.

Just check Grubby's (little bit outdated) video "Samuro Overexplained".

[Aasgier 36]

8 hours ago, Valhalen said:

Cho'gall already is a rarely picked hero even outside of ranked and they nerf them even more? That is plain stupid.

61% winrate in Diamond/Master Team League and being firstban material (people used to playing Cho'Gall at this rank were not afraid to pick him in the first phase, even if this meant risking to face 3 counters) is probably why.

Outside of the Zagara nerf (which I think is a little misplaced - I think she needs a mini-rework centered around making Serated Spines baseline) I overall like this patch. Orphea and Samuro needed these nerfs, at least for higher levels of play.

In the end, the only change outside of Zagara that gave me question marks is the Mal'ganis one, because he is still absolutely busted. He needs so much more to be balanced.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Aasgier