New Heroes PTR patch includes Lt. Morales, big changes to Warriors and more

Blizzard has announced a huge Heroes of the Storm patch for the Public Test Realm. The biggest news is the introduction of the StarCraft Support medic Lt. Morales. You will be able to purchase her on the PTR only with cash and that purchase will carry over to the Live servers when this patch goes live on (presumably) Tuesday, October 5th. But there is oh so much more to this patch than that.

The other big news is the number of balance changes coming to your favorite hero. Many Warriors are getting buffs to bring them back up into win/loss ratios (such as former favorites like Stitches, E.T.C. and Diablo.) However Johanna is getting a nerf to her minion clear ability as well as the stun function of her Blessed Shield (though a level 20 talent will bring it back up.) Leoric is also getting a nerf to his minion clear ability via Skeletal Swing. Datamining is also showing that his death timer acceleration via ability use is being cut in half. Rexxar is getting some love with increased effectiveness in controlling Misha’s movements.

For Assassins, Zeratul is getting a basic attack damage nerf and a reduction to his Blink recast time as well as his Void Prison range. Guess he was getting a little too good. For Support, Tassadar is seeing a buff to his shields (and a nerf to Archon damage) and Tyrande is getting her Shadow Stalk heroic turned into a burst heal. Devs recently tweeted that they wanted to see these two get more play as a Support choices and this is how they are going to make that happen.

A few notable map changes in the notes. In Garden of Terror, the Terror’s Overgrowth ability that disable structures will now affect the enemy core. On Infernal Shrines, the Punishers will take more kills to activate (30 -> 40) and have 10% less health to stop snowballing by one team. And on Battlefields of Eternity the Immortals’ damage will scale higher as the game progresses so they can keep up with player power levels.

The Try mode where you can take heroes for a spin before purchasing them is getting some great new features. Welcome new additions are a targeting dummy that shows damage dealt, mercenary camps and the ability to toggle Malfurion off. You can also remove your ability cooldowns, scale yourself immediately to max level and reset all your talents at any time. All of this together will allow you to get a much better feel for a hero before making that big purchase decision.

Finally, one small  but important addition: the loading screen will now show team composition for both sides. You can now start planning your talent build and strategies while the map is loading instead of finding out who is on your team and who is on the enemy team 10 seconds before the match begins.

You can read the entire patch notes on the official Blizzard post. Remember that any and all of these are subject to change before they are sent to the Live servers.

Note: Blizzard has confirmed the patch won’t arrive on the test server until Monday.