Heroes of the StormJul 25, 2016 2:34 pm CT

Gul’dan buffed in latest Heroes of the Storm patch

A new patch is heading to Heroes of the Storm featuring an all-new round of hero changes. This week we’re seeing a round of buffs for Gul’dan whose performance was below the devs’ expectations. While there are a lot of hero changes, you’ll probably want to know about the heroes on this week’s free rotation that are getting tweaks:

Chromie is getting some buffs to make some of her lesser-picked talents more appealing
Brightwing’s overall healing output has been somewhat reduced
Zagara’s Nydus Network and Infest both have significant nerfs to bring her to the devs’ desired goal of a 50% win rate

Beyond the hero changes, we’re finally getting a fix to the collision bug that popped up a couple of patches ago. So good news everyone: you shouldn’t get shoved around the map anymore.

Check out the full patch notes below.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

Assassin

Chromie

Abilities

Slowing Sands (R)
- Mana cost reduced from 4 to 2 per second
- Slow increased from 50% after 5 seconds, to 60% after 3 seconds

Talents

Level 7
- Mobius Loop (W)
  - Cooldown and Mana cost reduction increased from 40% to 50%
- Chrono Sickness (E)
  - Slow duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
  - Now also reduces the Mana cost of Time Trap by 50%
Level 20
- Pocket of Time (R)
  - Slow increased from 70% to 80%
- Past and Future Me (Passive)
  - Damage reduced from 50% to 40%

Developer Comments: We’ve seen Chromie trend upward steadily, and we’re happy to have the little gnome be a scary character in the right circumstances. We don’t really want to make any large overall balance adjustments to her right now, but we do want to make a few of her less picked Talents and Heroic more enticing. We’ll continue to work on more of these as time passes. Don’t worry, Chromie already told us she’s completely balanced a few patches from now.

Falstad

Abilities

Mighty Gust (R)
- Movement speed initial slow reduced from 60 to 40%
- Movement speed decay time reduced from 5 to 4 seconds

Talents

Level 1
- Gathering Storm (Q)
  - Damage per Hero hit reduced from 2 to 1.5

Developer Comments: Falstad is performing really well and brings a lot to any team. He’s not too far out of bounds, however, so we decided to do a couple minor tweaks. We are closely watching him and will make additional changes if needed.

Greymane

Abilities

Curse of the Worgen (Trait)
- Worgen form Damage bonus decreased from 50 to 40%
Go for the Throat (R)
- Range reduced by roughly 20%
Marked for the Kill (R)
- Cooldown reduced from 50 to 40 seconds

Developer Comments: We overdid it with the Worgen form buffs last patch. They were designed to encourage people to go into Worgen form more often, but realistically all it did was make Greymane have bigger burst potential and PvE damage. He should have slightly less bite than before. We’re also reducing the range of Go for the Throat, as it provided too much stickiness to an Assassin that already has a gap closer.

Gul’dan

Stats

Base Health increased from 1650 to 1700
Health Regen increased from 3.44 to 3.54

Abilities

Fel Flame (Q)
- Damage increased from 181 to 200

Talents

Level 1
- Chaotic Energy (Passive)
  - Mana refund increased from 25 to 40
Level 4
- Health Funnel (W)
  - Cooldown reduction increased from 6 to 7 seconds

Level 13
- Healthstone (Active)
  - Heal amount reduced from 30 to 25% of maximum Health

Developer Comments: Guldan’s performance ended up being a bit lower than we expected, so we’re giving him some buffs to compete with other Heroes. His Fel Flame should be a little more threatening, which we’re also hoping will greater incentivize players to take talents related to the ability. As a side-effect of his Health buff, we’re slightly nerfing his Healthstone talent to keep it consistently powerful with its current version. We are also making some small tweaks to other talents help their pick and win rates.

Kael’thas

Abilities

Living Bomb (W)
- Damage over time reduced from 50 to 40

Kerrigan

Stats

Base Health decreased from 1848 to 1680

Talents

Level 1
- Sharpened Blades (W)
  - Damage reduced from 30 to 25%
Level 4
- Psionic Pulse (E)
  - Damage reduced from 24 to 20 per pulse

Level 7
- Bladed Momentum (Passive)
  - Cooldown reduction per Basic Attack reduced from .75 to .6

Developer Comments: Our recent changes to the Queen of Blades had a much larger impact than we were expecting. Since her damage directly fuels her survivability, we feel like the additional Health increase pushed her a bit too far. We love that she feels more aggressive now and are happy to see her back in the mix of contested Heroes. By reverting her Health buffs and targeting a few over-performing talents we expect to see her come back in line.

Support

Brightwing

Abilities

Soothing Mist (Trait)
- Heal amount decreased from 120 to 115

Talents

Level 1

Unfurling Spray (Trait)
- Range increase on Soothing Mist reduced from 33 to 20%

Level 7

Mistified (Trait)
- Cooldown Reduction when casting abilities reduced from .75 to .5

Level 13

Shield Dust (E)
- Ability damage reduction decreased from 50 to 40%

Developer Comments: We had a feeling that Brightwing was going to get a bit stronger with our last round of buffs, but with the changes to her most popular build, we also wanted to make sure we adequately compensated her. These changes should lower her overall output slightly and keep her Soothing Mist talents competitive with others.

Specialist

Medivh

Abilities

Portal (E)
- Portals are now easier to click
- The cooldown on using a Portal has been significantly reduced

Nazeebo

Abilities

Gargantuan (R)
- Basic Attack damage reduced from 151 to 130

Xul

Abilities

Raise Skeleton (Trait)
- Skeleton damage reduced from 30 to 23

Talents

Level 1

Shade (Active)
- Shade version of Bone Armor’s cooldown increased from 40 to 50 seconds
Shackler (Active)
- Slow amount increased from 30 to 35%

Level 7

Rathma’s Blessing (Trait)
- Healing reduced from 66 to 55

Level 16

Flowing Wounds (Q)
- Cooldown reduction increased from 4 to 5 seconds

Level 20

Bone Spear (Active)
- Damage reduced from 260 to 230

Developer Comments: Xul has been a strong pick for a while now, and gotten better with the increased power of Minions. We think that someone with the consistent effectiveness he has should also be a little bit weaker overall, since you don’t need to worry about what the team compositions look like. We’re aiming to nerf a few of his stronger Talents, and reduce his pushing potential by weakening Skeletons.

Zagara

Abilities

Infested Drop (E)
- Impact damage reduced from 166 to 155

Nydus Network (R)
- Creep radius reduced from 25 to 15%

Talents

Level 1

Infest (Active)
- Initial damage buff to Ranged minions reduced from 200 to 150%

Developer Comments: It has been a great couple of weeks for Zagara. We have been monitoring her new kit and overall, we’re extremely happy with the changes. The new questing talent for Infested Drop was doing more damage than we like, but we believe our nerfs to it and a couple of her high win-rate talents should bring her win rate a bit closer to our goal of 50%.

Warrior

Artanis

Stats

Health increased from 2245 to 2470
Health Regen increased from 4.68 to 5.15

Talents

Level 7

Warp Sickness (E)
- Slow amount increased from 30 to 35%

Developer Comments: Artanis asked us for some buffs and we thought he was a pretty chill guy so we gave them to him.

Bug Fixes

General

Collision: Heroes can no longer be pushed by walking another Hero into them.
Collision: Heroes who are channeling an Ability can no longer be pushed when another Hero walks into them during the channel.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

Greymane: Fixed an issue that could cause opposing Greymanes to become stuck after simultaneously casting Darkflight on each other.
Greymane: Will no longer become stuck if Darkflight is interrupted by Diablo’s Shadow Charge or Stitches’ Hook.
Nazeebo: The Toads of Hugeness Talent no longer causes Plague of Toads to deal more damage than intended.

Blizzard Watch is made possible by people like you.
Please consider supporting our Patreon!