Heroes of the Storm free hero rotation, Winter Veil, and Lunara

It’s that time of the week again. Heroes of the Storm free hero rotation has rolled out another 10 heroes for you to play for free this week. In addition to this week’s freebies, Lunara‘s joining the Nexus roster, the Winter Veil event — with new skins and earnable stimpacks — begins, and a new patch brings bug fixes, buffs, and UI improvements.

For those wanting to pick up Lunara, the new skins — including Sugar Plum Sylvanas and Greatfather Winter Stitches — or absolutely anyone else, the Black Friday sale is still on for both North American and European servers, offering all heroes, skins, and mounts at half off through the end of the year. That’s could make for a happy holiday or wreck havoc on your budget, depending.

As usual, we’ll kick off this week with a poem from Mitch:

It’s Winter Veil in the Nexus, and heroes are the presents!

Do you like pulling your foes close with a hook?

Then perhaps you should give Santa Stitches a good hard look.

Prefer a hero that repositions and torments?

Diablo is perfect for the job, at least in my two cents.

When it comes to ranged kills, Azmodan wrote the book,

But Zeratul will assassinate you up close if you don’t know where to look.

(Though Morales may call in the ship for a quick turn of events.)

Raynor with guns shoots enemies from long range,

While Muradin leaps, stuns, and tosses his hammer,

And Brightwing polymorphs enemies but keeps you alive.

Though if you’re looking for a new hero to bring some change,

Don’t go with the Sergeant (strong she may be at causing a clamor),

Because onto the scene, new hero Lunara will soon arrive.

And Alex offers an acrostic about Raynor:

Really boring

Amazingly boring

Yo, he’s boring

Not exciting to play

Officially dull

Really super boring

However, it’s possible that Blizzard has beaten us all in their poetic efforts this week, with a new Winter Veil video:

Still, this just adds to our weekly purple glee. With poetic talent like that, who even needs to know this week’s lineup? Okay, probably you do. Let’s dive in with this week’s free heroes:

• Raynor — check out our guide to Raynor
• Muradin — check out our guide to Muradin
• Diablo — check out our guide to Diablo
• Azmodan — check out our guide to Azmodan
• Butcher — check out our guide to Butcher
• Stitches
• Lt. Morales (Slot unlocked at Player Level 5) — check out our guide to Lt. Morales
• Sgt. Hammer (Slot unlocked at Player Level 7)
• Zeratul (Slot unlocked at Player Level 12)
• Brightwing (Slot unlocked at Player Level 15)

If you need a starting point, check out our Assassin guide, Specialist guide, Support guide, and Warrior guide for quick rundowns on each hero.

Now let’s catch the team’s thoughts on this week’s lineup:

Anna: This week’s rotation seems like it’s split between easy to use, pretty standard characters (Raynor, Muradin, Diablo, Butcher, Stitches) and characters which are incredibly unique and use core mechanics very different from most other heroes (Azmodan, Hammer, Brightwing). Morales and Zeratul bridge the gap a bit. Don’t let that uniqueness throw you off from choosing them, however — Brightwing’s smart heals and global presence makes her quite newbie-friendly.

Mitch: The last time Stitches was free I managed to have so much fun that I got him to level 7 or 8 during the free week and proceeded to purchase him off the store. He’s not necessarily the strongest character but successful hooks are just so much fun. Also, he has a Santa costume coming out soon and, I mean, do I need to say more?

Mitch: Diablo’s playstyle mirrors his massive, hulking body. Which is to say, he is slow, tough, and a total tank. He can’t deal too much damage, but his true art comes from positioning enemies. Using his charge and throw abilities together can result in some deadly combos that either push your enemy back toward your team or help you catch up to them as they try to escape.

Mitch: I know almost nothing about Morales except for the fact that she’s not really the best team healer, but can do some amazing single-target heals. Her stimpack ultimate can be insane if used with an already fast-attacking assassin (like Butcher or Valla).

Anna: In my experience, the most fun combo with Morales is Hammer. Once you hit level 10 as long as you protect those two, use Stimpack and completely destroy any structure in a matter of seconds. Otherwise though, both of them are fairly situational and that strategy can be routed really easily if the rest of your team isn’t on board.

Alex: Conspire to have a team where you’re playing a full meat Butcher with an attack speed Abathur hat and Morales’s stim pack and watch the core melt away under your weird hook cleaver thing.

Mitch: Butcher can be a bit difficult to get used to because his charge will make you want to chase down enemies, when it’s really something that should be used cautiously. My favorite talent build with Butcher revolves around his blood-gathering trait. Increase the amount you can hold, allow gathering to heal you, and spec for attack speed increase and you can survive a bit longer while also nuking the heck out of enemies.

Anna: I feel ways about Raynor because he’s pretty powerful while still being incredibly boring to play. He’s all, ‘h-hey man’, plodding along in lane, and then he autoattacks and buffs everyone in team fights and wins the engagement.

Noxychu: I have no thoughts on the rotation, just that I’m super excited for Lunara. Because LUNARA. I fell in love with her at the blizzkawnzzzzzzzx.

Anna: I know, between Lunara, Pepe and Fruit Hat I’m plumb out of excitement for boring ol Jimmy Raynor.

This week’s freebies and sales should be going live this afternoon, so jump online to take advantage of them. And, as always, we’ll see you in the Nexus!