Heroes of the Storm free hero rotation and sales for August 18

Every week Heroes of the Storm has some heroes you’d usually have to pay for that you can play for free in the free hero rotation, plus a number of heroes and skins on sale in the weekly sale. It’s a great way to try out new heroes without committing to buy, as well as grabbing new heroes, skins, and mounts at bargain prices — so without further ado, let’s take a look at what this week’s rotation brings.

This week, we get some solid heroes with great AOE ability, who are sure to decimate the opposition of played well. Also, we’re expecting the latest patch to go up this week, which includes the new monk hero Kharazim as well as the much anticipated dynamic bundle pricing. So why do we expect a patch? In addition to it being about time for Blizzard to release a new hero (according to their own 3-4 week hero release promise), on sale this week is the Demonic Tyrael Skin — a skin that has been removed from the game while Blizzard revamped it, but is returning in the latest patch.

Now, let’s take a look at what this week has to offer, shall we?

We’ll start out  this week’s free heroes:

• Malfurion — check out our guide to Malfurion
• Valla — check out our guide to Valla
• Anub’arak
• Tychus
• Nazeebo
• Johanna (Available after you reach player level 12) — check out our guide to Johanna
• Kael’thas (Available after you reach player level 15)

If you need a starting point, check out our guides to Malfurion, Valla, and Johanna, then move on to our more general assassin guide, specialist guide, support guide, and warrior guide for quick rundowns on each hero.

If you’re in the market for new heroes or skins, here’s what’s on sale this week:

• Azmodan — Sale Price: 4.99 USD / 4.99 EUR / 3.69 GBP
• Azgul’dan Azmodan Skin — Sale Price: 4.99 USD / 4.99 EUR / 3.69 GBP
• Demonic Tyrael Skin — Sale Price: 4.99 USD / 4.99 EUR / 3.69 GBP

I polled our team of Heroes players to get some thoughts on what the rotation means for players this week:

Alex: I haven’t had a chance to play either Johanna or Kael’thas, but I’m eager to play both. Valla, Nazeebo, and Tychus are among my favorites. Tychus gets a bad rap, but I feel he’s underrated. He can do tons of damage and if you go with the Vampiric talent, can sustain himself pretty well. Shooting a wall to get back into a fight quickly rather than hearthing and hoofing it becomes viable.

Anna: Everyone on this rotation has fantastic AOE abilities that should be able to decimate the opposing team en masse if they group up… except Tychus who has Frag Grenade, which is literally the opposite of that. Overkill is an AOE ability so he can play into the wombo combo as well, and Johanna can help re-grab opposing heroes into the AOE, but that just kinda made me laugh. As always, Valla is my bae. So much DPS, great utility, etc. Consider that Rain of Vengeance to counter Malfurion’s ult.

Dan: Malfurion recently got upgraded abilities so he makes a solid, if boring, choice if you need to knock out a support daily. Nazeebo has been top of the charts lately for win rate, just make sure you don’t trap your teammates or yourself in your Zombie Wall. Kael’thas is a lot of fun, just remember he’s super squishy and only has Gravity Well as an escape mechanism.

This week’s freebies and sales should go live on Tuesday afternoon at 2:30 PST / 5:30 EST — until then, we’ll see you in the Nexus!