Heroes of the Storm proves that it’s still got gas left in the tank by adding just cutest new mount

We have a fresh patch for Heroes of the Storm that have made some big changes to how easy it is to take buildings, but that’s a small change compared to the brand-new mount that was just added to the game. Players can now ride into battle on a plush lamb mount! The new lamb comes in a pink or orange color and is set up on the same rigging as the also adorable plush unicorn from the Winter Veil toy box event. It has a special animation cycle that looks like it’s being held and walked along by a child playing with their stuffed animals, and it is as cute as that sounds. The plush mounts showcase truly outstanding work by all the animators involved.

Just look at that cute lil lamb — the pink nose and the adorable bow! Truly, your foes will be left quaking in their all too serious boots at the sight of you barreling down the lane at them. Fun and silly things like this aren’t out of the ordinary in the MOBA space that Heroes found itself. Smite had a Bob Ross skin, and League of Legends has any number of silly things for its champions, but I still feel like Heroes was able to set itself apart with the full universe takeovers that it was rolling out three times a year. Especially when we got sequel events to them and the world was expanded. We could see in the tags that were added that there were ideas for most of the roster to fit in with the new Toy/Mecha/Luchador style; all that was missing was the time it took to get them all out.

This is the second piece of newly added content in Heroes of the Storm to be added this year, and much like the Thrall skin, it was probably mainly done and ready for an event that was on the roadmap but didn’t get the chance to come out. Which makes me sad that we never got a third trip to the big toybox of Heroes because those skins were always a really fun twist on childhood favorites and Blizzard characters. I still play with my legally distinct Lego Dehaka skin on.

The other big changes look to really adjust how early building aggression works by giving attack speed buffs to defending minions and armor to a defending Hero, making it harder to really push them down as fast. However, buildings will also not snap to attacking heroes anymore; they’ll work through whatever the closest target is — so that does take a little pressure off of attackers to be careful around clipping defending heroes.

The rest of the patch revolves around the usual hero balance changes. With the big standout being Maiev’s W Umbral Bind ability losing some of its pulling strength. A good Maiev could be used as a pretty solid off-tank due to the amount of control she could exert over the enemy team — this change will make her easier to escape.

Lots of map mechanics got fairly large adjustments to be less damaging to the core, specifically, while still being a strong push against forts and keeps. While the pirates of Blackheart’s Bay have also gotten a stronger economy and will see three treasure chests spawning on the third set of chests, and then every set after that. Players visiting Blackheart’s Bay have also been given upgraded coin pouches and will no longer drop all of their coins on death — they’ll only lose half of them.

A team making big adjustments like these feels more like they’re testing the waters on trying to attract new players by streamlining gameplay to be more about hero power and less about building and map power. I remember that being a fairly large complaint from early on that the maps were too impactful, and it made your own contributions feel lesser because of it.

We’ve had a consistent patch cycle for Heroes for a while now, and the calm and rational part of my brain knows that this is just what maintenance mode was supposed to be. Adjustments for the health of the game, but no new content. Except now we’ve gotten new content, and while that may be content that was 95% complete when the game was shuttered, it’s still something new. It’s getting harder and harder to shut down the part of my brain that is saying that better things are just on the horizon.

Until the next patch, I know I’ll keep holding this torch — see you in the Nexus (probably on a sheep).