heroes Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch Notes: February 4th

[Stan 5,240]

A new patch is available for playtesting on PTR until February 10. Abathur and Ana received talent reworks, Rehgar's Ancestral Healing can now be self-cast, and more!

Patch Highlights

• Abathur has been reworked to introduce more counter-play to the Hero. Sustained Carapace is now baseline, the cooldown of Carapace has been lowered, so Carapace no longer needs to be removed to be efficient. Abathur's locusts are now more potent, but last for a shorter period of time, and more.
• Ana is the second Hero that has been reworked in the patch. Her Aim Down Sights was implemented into her base Shrike functionality, and many talents have been reshuffled.
• Rehgar's Ancestral Healing can now be self-cast.
• New Delta skins are in for Blaze, Deckard, and Hanzo.

Blizzard (Source)

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until February 10. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

General

• Mac
  • Improved compatibility with latest Mac OS versions.
• A.I.
  • Made several improvements to Hero A.I. behavior.

Heroes

Specialist

Abathur

Abilities

• Carapace (E)
  • Cooldown reduced from 12 to 6 seconds
  • Duration reduced from 8 to 6 seconds
  • Additional functionality:
    • Shield now persists after Symbiote ends
  • Additional functionality:
    • Shield now Heals allied Heroes for 22 Health per second while Carapace is active
• Locust Strain (Trait)
  • Duration reduced from 25 to 16 seconds
  • Damage increased from 34 to 40
• Evolve Monstrosity (R)
  • No longer takes 50% reduced damage from non-Heroic enemies
  • Now shows a warning indicator showing where it is going to burrow to
  • Additional Functionality:
    • Now has the ability to Deep Tunnel to a visible location every 80 seconds

Talents

• Level 1
  • Regenerative Microbes (E)
    • Removed
  • New Talent: Reinforced Carapace (E)
    • Increase the Shield amount of Carapace by 40%
  • Survival Instincts (Trait)
    • No longer increases Locust duration
    • Additional functionality:
      • Increase Locust attack damage by 40%
• Level 4
  • Ballistospores (Trait)
    • Removed
  • Sustained Carapace (E)
    • Removed
  • Needlespine (Q)
    • Moved from Level 7
• Level 7
  • Calldown: MULE (Active)
    • Healing per second reduced from 100 to 90
• Level 13
  • Assault Strain (Trait)
    • Removed
  • Bombard Strain (Trait)
    • No longer increases Locust attack damage
    • Additional functionality:
      • Increase the duration of Locusts by 50%
• Level 16
  • Volatile Mutation (R)
    • Additional functionality:
      • Damage dealt by Volatile Mutation against enemy Heroes heals the host for 50% of the damage dealt
• Level 20
  • Evolutionary Link (R)
    • Additional functionality:
      • Increase the duration of Ultimate Evolution by 50%
  • Evolution Complete (R)
    • No longer gives the Monstrosity the ability to Deep Tunnel
    • New functionality:
      • Now increases the Monstrosity’s Basic Attack damage by 100%

Developer Comment: For a long time Abathur has had a unique place in Heroes, being a powerful force at high level play while having a relatively low win-rate across the board. These changes are meant to spruce up his talents while streamlining his gameplay and introducing more counter-play to the hero. Carapace, particularly with the Sustained Carapace talent, created some awkward gameplay where it was much more efficient to use Symbiote on cooldown, even when the desire was to stay on one target, due to the cooldown refresh that it gave Carapace. In order to clean this up, Sustained Carapace is baseline and the cooldown of Carapace has been reduced, so Abathur no longer has to continuously remove Carapace to be efficient. In addition, Abathur’s Locusts are now more potent, but they last for a shorter duration, meaning Abathur players will be more rewarded for positioning themselves aggressively and punished when they overextend too much.

Support

Ana

Abilities

• Healing Dart (Q)
  • Heal reduced from 205 to 195
• Shrike (Trait/D)
  • New Active - Aim Down Sights
  • No longer grants Sight or Attack Range
  • Cooldown from 3 to 4 seconds
  • Self-slow increased from 20 to 25%
  • New functionality:
    • While active, Sleep and Healing Dart ranges are increased by 25% and pierce one target
• Eye of Horus (R)
  • Heal reduced from 285 to 225
  • Damage reduced from 166 to 135
  • Added functionality:
    • Shots now pierce all targets (but still impact and cease on structures)

Talents

• Level 1
  • Piercing Darts (E)
    • Removed
  • Grenade Calibration (W)
    • Removed
  • Contact Healing (W)
    • Moved from Level 16
  • New Talent – Slumber Shells (E)
    • If an enemy is affected by Sleep Dart, Ana gains 25% movement speed
  • New Talent – Vampiric Rounds (Trait)
    • Quest: Each time you stack max Doses on a target Hero, increase Shrikes self-heal by 1.5%
• Level 4
  • Air Strike (Active)
    • Removed
  • Aim Down Sights (D/Trait)
    • Removed (New Trait Addition)
  • Debilitating Dart (Active)
    • Moved from Level 7
  • New Talent – Biotic Enhancements (W)
    • Increase the bonus healing duration of Biotic Grenade by 50% and reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds
• Level 7
  • Temporary Blindness (E)
    • Removed
  • New Talent – Anti-Healer (W)
    • Biotic Grenades area is increased by 100% and the duration of the Healing debuff is increased by 25%
  • New Talent – Night Terrors (E)
    • When a Slept target wakes up, they are dealt 8% of their maximum Health in damage. If they are woken up early, reduce the cooldown of Sleep Dart by 7 seconds
• Level 16
  • New Talent - Active Reload (Active)
    • Activate to gain 3 charges of Healing Dart (60 second CD)
• Level 20
  • Ballistic Advantage (R)
    • Removed
  • Dynamic Shooting (Passive)
    • Removed
  • Somnolent Doses (Trait)
    • Removed
  • Custom Optics (Trait)
    • Removed
  • New Talent – Dead-Eye (R)
    • The healing and damage of Eye of Horus is increased by 4% for every Hero hit. This resets after all shots have been fired.
  • New Talent - Armored Stance (D/Trait)
    • Increase Shrike’s damage by 50%. Gain 25 Armor while Aim Down Sights is active.
  • New Talent – Dynamic Optics (D/Trait)
    • While Aim Down Sights is active, increase the range of your Basic Attacks by 4. Each attack increases your Attack Speed by 10% for 3 seconds (up to 50%)

Developer Comment: Ana came to the Nexus during the ‘Quest Revolution’ where we were adding them in as many places as we could. We have learned a lot since that time, so we spent some time re-designing and re-organizing Ana’s talent tree. Bringing Aim Down Sights into her base Shrike functionality gives us a design solve for the powerful yet flawed Piercing Darts quest. The rest of the talent changes and shuffles were directed at opening up some new builds while keeping all of her current beloved capabilities!

Rehgar

Abilities

• Ancestral Healing (R)
  • Rehgar can now self-cast Ancestral Healing

Whitemane

Talents

• Level 4
  • High Inquisitor (W)
    • Mana return per stack reduced from 75 to 50

Collection

New Bundles

• The following new bundles are only available for a limited time!
  • Join the Resistance Bundle
  • Viper Returns Bundle
  • Firestorm Blaze Skin Pack
  • Deckard Pain Skin Pack
  • Delta Hanzo Skin Pack

New Skins

• Firestorm Blaze
• Red Hot Firestorm Blaze
• Atomic Firestorm Blaze
• Deckard Pain
• Infiltrator Deckard Pain
• Desert Ops Deckard Pain
• Delta Hanzo
• Blackout Delta Hanzo
• Veteran Delta Hanzo
• Badlands Imperator Stukov
• Badlands Sidewinder Ana
• Badlands Deathfang Genji
• Cryo Imperator Stukov
• Cryo Sidewinder Ana
• Cryo Deathfang Genji
• Paramour Pajamathur Abathur

New Mounts

• D.E.R.P.A.
• Commando D.E.R.P.A.
• Desert D.E.R.P.A.
• Badlands Viper Dominator
• Flirty Cloud

New Portraits, Sprays, and Emojis

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

Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed an issue causing Shields applied to non-Heroes to be applies towards Healing Score.
• Super Cleanse effects (Abolish Magic) will no longer remove delayed damaging effects (Consume Souls, Last Rites)
• Fixed an issue causing Time Stop and Stasis effects to remove Armor Vulnerability effects.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a player’s ready state to become locked if Ready and Cancel were pressed in rapid succession.
• Fixed an issue that could occasionally prevent players from pressing the ready button when using the Call of the Nexus Quick Match system.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Ana: Fixed an issue allowing cooldowns to tick down during Time Stop if the Hero is affected by Nano Boost.
• Cassia: Fixed an issue causing Lightning Fury to be invisible if it pierced a Hero at melee range.
• Cassia: Fixed an issue causing Fend to immediately cancel if cast immediately after Lightning Fury.
• Chromie: Slowing Sands will no longer slow Battleground vehicles (Dragon Knight, Triglav Protector).
• Deckard: Fortitude of the Faithful’s range indicator now matches the actual range of the ability.
• Deckard: Fixed an issue with how Potion of Revival benefits from spell power. (should now heal for more)
• Kerrigan: Fixed an issue preventing Sharpened Blades from granting kill credit against Heroes with post-death effects.
• Li Li: Fixed an issue that caused healing from Cloud Serpent to temporarily fail if the Blessing of Yu’lon talent was chosen while a Cloud Serpent was active.
• Maiev: Fan of Knives will now refund the correct amount of Mana.
• Maiev: Fixed an issue with Blade Dance’s visual effects blocking command inputs.
• Muradin: Fixed an issue preventing Thunder Burn from creating the secondary thunder clap if it lands the killing blow on the affected Hero.
• Nova: Fixed an issue causing Holo Decoy’s Snipe projectile to be destroyed mid-flight if the Decoy died.
• Nova: Triple Tap will now immediately cancel if the target becomes invalid immediately after starting the Triple Tap cast.
• Ragnaros: Fixed an issue allowing Ragnaros to immediately complete the Catching Fire quest if it was chosen during Molten Core.
• Rexxar: Fixed an issue preventing Rexxar from controlling Misha while silenced.
• Stitches: Fixed a number of issues caused by using Helping Hand on an allied Hero using a Channeled ability that grants Unstoppable.
• Stitches: Fixed an issue that could prevent Stitches’ Hook from landing at point blank range.
• Tyrande: The Shooting Star talent will no longer attempt to target Sand Tornadoes created by the Boss.

User Interface

• Fixed an issue preventing critical healing effects from showing the Crit UI indicator.
• Adding and Removing favorite emojis will no longer cause the chat panel and emoji picker to close.

[VegaPl 88]

About that Ana rework, truth be told, I really enjoyed those questing talents. Generally, I am a glutton for the mechanic, it's like a minigame within the actual game. perhaps that is why I like playing the Butcher so much. So with that talent gone, I think playing Ana will lose a lot of joy for me. Let's remember that playing her is much more challenging than the majority of other healers.

[Fransoa 25]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

Ancestral Healing (R)

• Rehgar can now self-cast Ancestral Healing

at long last the nerf has been reversed ??

[mada7 29]

Really like the abathur changes. It lets him take some strong damage talents like pressurized glands and adrenal overload without sacrificing healing ability in the early game

[Errautsak 1]

26 minutes ago, Fransoa said:

at long last the nerf has been reversed ??

I'm so glad that's back tbh

I missed out even playing with it like that since I joined the game 2 weeks before Machines of War ended ?

[lChronosl 182]

OMG! Deckard Old Snake! Ancestral Healing Self Cast! Sustained Carapace + Regenerative Microbes  + Evolve Monstrosity burrow baseline! Eye of Horus pierce + Q and W range increase baseline for Ana! Best update evar!

The community might be dying somewhat, but the last 2 updates were still strong. (I am aware that these changes were probably in the works for a long time, but still...)

5 hours ago, Stan said:

Fixed an issue that could cause a player’s ready state to become locked if Ready and Cancel were pressed in rapid succession. 

I have been waiting years for this fix, finally!

Edited February 5, 2019 by lChronosl

[Valhalen 1,484]

1 hour ago, VegaPl said:

About that Ana rework, truth be told, I really enjoyed those questing talents. Generally, I am a glutton for the mechanic, it's like a minigame within the actual game. perhaps that is why I like playing the Butcher so much. So with that talent gone, I think playing Ana will lose a lot of joy for me. Let's remember that playing her is much more challenging than the majority of other healers.

Those quest talents handicapped Ana greatly, and completing the them was anything but fun. Plus you often would find yourself using your abilities in a non-optimal way just to get their completion was fast as possible (such as spamming Sleep Dart mindlessly just to be able to hit two targets with Healing Dart); if you played defensively, you could end up not completing the quest, which greatly hindered her healing output.

I'm all in favor for Quest Talents if done right, but Ana's were poorly designed. I'm glad they got rid of them. Now Aim Down Sights now being baseline and merging it with her Dart Quest was the best thing they could have ever done. Now she will be way more technical and rewarding to play.

The only thing I'm really sad is that they removed Somnolent Doses, which was her best talent ever.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Valhalen

[cowboy 0]

I'll definitely miss ballistospores; I really hope they reconsider that change.  It's also a little mind-boggling to me that they felt they needed to add more counterplay to Abathur.

[lChronosl 182]

2 hours ago, Valhalen said:

The only thing I'm really sad is that they removed Somnolent Doses, which was her best talent ever.

Maybe on coordinated play, but on my rank it would usually get no value since random AoE (or even AA) damage from your teammates would awake them immediately. I usually went for Dynamic Shooting, but now am really interested on both her lvl 20 Trait upgrades, Armored Stance (Increase Shrike’s damage by 50%. Gain 25 Armor while Aim Down Sights is active) and Dynamic Optics (While Aim Down Sights is active, increase the range of your Basic Attacks by 4. Each attack increases your Attack Speed by 10% for 3 seconds (up to 50%)).

And I bet lvl 7 Night Terrors (When a Slept target wakes up, they are dealt 8% of their maximum Health in damage. If they are woken up early, reduce the cooldown of Sleep Dart by 7 seconds) will be the new must pick on every build.

@Edit: I just checked in game and the description for Night Terror is wrong. In game it says "If they are not waken up early, reduces the CD to 6 seconds", instead of "if they are woken up early".

Edited February 4, 2019 by lChronosl

[Valhalen 1,484]

8 minutes ago, lChronosl said:

Maybe on coordinated play, but on my rank it would usually get no value since random AoE (or even AA) damage from your teammates would awake them immediately.

What made it powerful was the ability to lock people. For instance, you'd throw a Overdose infused Sleep Dart, and two auto-attacks later you'd put the scrub to sleep again. Amazing to secure kills.

[SuperKaioken 0]

Wont the reduction on Abbathur's carapace healing from 64 per second to 22 per second be a hit to his healing ability? I understand that you no longer need to shield cancel to maximize healing, which means you deal more damage in the long run as you dont potentially lose time you could be casting symbiotes other abilities, but 64 per second for 4 seconds vs 22 per second for 6 seconds, with the 4 seconds being refreshed by shield canceling, seems to be a fairly sizeable reduction to abbathurs healing ability?

 

Love the ana changes though!

[Plergoth 277]

Ana changes seem like an overall nerf slightly but less compromised by your ability to complete the quests to a point where you can be effective or not. However would prefer not to be dropping 5 stacks of dose on someone to reapply it again for the sake of the Vampiric quest. I'd also like to know if Eye of Horus isn't completely horrid to use still where you can't click on the mini map without using the middle mouse button... ? 

Anti-Healer sounds quite oppressive. Maybe too much (looking at lvl 4 talent sync) 

Edited February 5, 2019 by Plergoth

[VegaPl 88]

6 hours ago, Plergoth said:

Anti-Healer sounds quite oppressive. Maybe too much (looking at lvl 4 talent sync) 

I honestly think that HOTS underuses healing reduction mechanic. The one from Ana is a little extreme to have 100% cancelled out, but something less oppressive like Mortal Strike from Varian could be more common. I'm thinking about 20-50% less healing. Armour ignorance could also see some more action. Or talents that give you benefits for attacking armoured targets. They could just introduce Void Ray as a new hero and give it Prismatic Alignment as a trait :P

[mada7 29]

13 hours ago, SuperKaioken said:

Wont the reduction on Abbathur's carapace healing from 64 per second to 22 per second be a hit to his healing ability? I understand that you no longer need to shield cancel to maximize healing, which means you deal more damage in the long run as you dont potentially lose time you could be casting symbiotes other abilities, but 64 per second for 4 seconds vs 22 per second for 6 seconds, with the 4 seconds being refreshed by shield canceling, seems to be a fairly sizeable reduction to abbathurs healing ability?

 

Love the ana changes though!

It's a reduction in his overall healing but it does make the healing easier to optimize and it opens up the option for him to take some strong damage choices early on while still being able to provide a decent amount of healing. He's probably not going to be able to replace a true support but he never should've gotten to that point. Instead he's now going to be able to function as an off healer with some pretty good damage too

[Morcalivan 86]

15 hours ago, cowboy said:

I'll definitely miss ballistospores; I really hope they reconsider that change.  It's also a little mind-boggling to me that they felt they needed to add more counterplay to Abathur.

Saw that too. ?

But I also saw the 40% Shield increase talent with halved cooldown. So it might turn out better for combat healing for reduced out of combat healing.

Let the math guys figure this one out. ?

I like the base tunneling but dislike the massive cooldown + warning. One of the primary reasons to tunnel is to split push but now it's more of a long term clone. Do like the clone duration increase though since that is the biggest issue with taking it.

The removal of global mines is odd. Perhaps they think Locust spawning is too strong in its burst now? Confusing.

The lvl 20 Monstrosity basic attack damage multiplier is also odd since they just nerfed his max stack damage for being too strong.

Some good and constantly requested changes like the shields moved to level one. But also some changes that look to just nerf or waste Abathur's abilities. We'll see.

[Arcling 898]

Looks like Deckard forgot how to use a sniper rifle or it's jammed, or ran out of ammo.

Ana changes seem good, she felt too dependent on the completion of her quests. Whitemane is going to have even more mana problems now. Not sure if returning self-cast on ancestral healing is going to help Rehgar that much, as it was mainly due to nerfs to his lightning shield talents that he had lost his value as one of top healers.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Arcling

[Valhalen 1,484]

41 minutes ago, Arcling said:

Looks like Deckard forgot how to use a sniper rifle or it's jammed, or ran out of ammo.

Who needs rifles when you're STACKED like that?

42 minutes ago, Arcling said:

Not sure if returning self-cast on ancestral healing is going to help Rehgar that much, as it was mainly due to nerfs to his lightning shield talents that he had lost his value as one of top healers.

I think it will definitely help him when being focused. But I think this change alone will make him leap a few ranks in the tier list.

[Erathis 53]

Abathur:  It's nice that a lot of his Carapace talents got baked in freeing up a few talent picks.  I'm a little surprised they let him keep Calldown: MULE (then again, now that he's like the only one left who has it it's no longer a generic talent and gets to stay?).  Otherwise not much really changes for him for me (at least at the skill level I play him at, ie low).  A quality of life "rework."

Ana: Now this is a big one.  Many talents removed and either baked in or rolled into new talents.  This will go a long way toward making Ana much more fun at all levels and stages of the game (ie not locked behind finishing the Piercing Darts quest) and freeing/changing many talent selections.  I especially like that her Detachable Magazine quest reward was just turned into a talent pick.  Very nice overall at first glance.

Rehgar:  Wow Rehgar, what did you do to earn a buff that big?  I have no words.

Whitemane: Meh, I never liked that talent anyway (even on a W focused build) since it forced you to play around it.  I much prefer Unwavering Faith so no change for me.

Overall an excellent looking patch.  Can't wait for it to go live.

[Honigdachs 2]

Rehgod!  I haven't been playing since the HGC announcement, and this alone makes me want to play again

[VegaPl 88]

8 hours ago, Honigdachs said:

Rehgod!  I haven't been playing since the HGC announcement, and this alone makes me want to play again

Did HGC news shake you up that much? I mean, I watched HGC occasionally, but I don't think I would ever consider leaving a game I play (and presumably enjoy doing so) on such grounds.

[Honigdachs 2]

On 2/6/2019 at 3:49 AM, VegaPl said:

Did HGC news shake you up that much? I mean, I watched HGC occasionally, but I don't think I would ever consider leaving a game I play (and presumably enjoy doing so) on such grounds.

I followed the pros pretty closely, which was most of the reason I was any good at the game.  The news hit at the same time I reached my main goal, which was Master rank, and while I was on a week hiatus.  When I got home I just had no motivation to play, and the games felt less fun to me