heroes How the Upcoming 2019 HotS Updates Will Change the Game

[Straften 24]

With the announced changes hitting Heroes of the Storm in 2019, we've put together a summary of what you can expect to happen to your gameplay, as well as how each change will affect the style of matches that are being played.

The changes, in short, are as follows:

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep
• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50%
• Passive Experience gain increased by 15%
• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%
  • Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience

Note: you can see the full details of the changes here.

It will become much more important to push with Minions and Mercenaries, even though experience will be removed from Forts and Keeps. The passive experience increase should make up for the removal of Fort and Keep XP, keeping the game's average pace relatively intact.

The Mercenary camp changes are a bit more interesting; defeating any camps captured by the enemy team will, once again, grant experience. Capturing Mercs and allowing them to push alone will not result in an experience gain anymore. The Mercenaries and the Minions they push forward will actually feed experience to the enemy. This will shift the meta away from the current capture-and-forget mentality, and encourage teams to push with their Mercenaries instead.

Destroying Forts will now spawn Catapults in every third Minion wave. Not only will destroying Forts no longer give experience to your team, it will actually push experience toward the enemy team. Catapults in every third wave will result in very slow pushes toward the enemy. Because of this, soaking will be harder for a team that has Catapults.  A team defending passive Catapults will recieve large globs of Minions,  composed of two or more waves that accumulate as the Catapults push forward. A team that is ahead will need to maintain an aggressive stance in order to stay ahead. When a team runs out of Health or Mana resources while pushing,  the defending team will be more likely to recover some (or all) of the experience loss.

These changes basically boil down to two important ideas. Defending Structures will now grant much more experience than before, and winning teams will need to stay on the offensive in order to maintain their XP lead. 

[XeaKon 23]

Why will the distruction of forts give the enemy more exp ? From what I know catapults give 1xp and they go and push waves and do structure damage.

[lChronosl 182]

I am willing to give it a try before complaining _{(too much)}, but I gotta say those exp changes sound bad, specially for us on lower ranked peasant lands, where getting your teammates to soak is the hardest part of the game.

On the flip side, maybe TLV will become popular and the team might finally rework them (I am still hopeful after the TLV spray Twitch drop).

Edited November 2, 2018 by lChronosl

[Pixen 0]

And no visible MMR, -5/10 would play again!

[Evincare 39]

7 hours ago, XeaKon said:

Why will the distruction of forts give the enemy more exp ? From what I know catapults give 1xp and they go and push waves and do structure damage.

 

8 hours ago, Straften said:

Destroying Forts will now spawn Catapults in every third Minion wave. Not only will destroying Forts no longer give experience to your team, it will actually push experience toward the enemy team. Catapults in every third wave will result in very slow pushes toward the enemy. Because of this, soaking will be harder for a team that has Catapults.  A team defending passive Catapults will recieve large globs of Minions,  composed of two or more waves that accumulate as the Catapults push forward. A team that is ahead will need to maintain an aggressive stance in order to stay ahead. When a team runs out of Health or Mana resources while pushing,  the defending team will be more likely to recover some (or all) of the experience loss.

These changes basically boil down to two important ideas. Defending Structures will now grant much more experience than before, and winning teams will need to stay on the offensive in order to maintain their XP lead. 

If I read your question correctly, this should answer it. If I got the changes right, there will be no direct XP gain when you lose a Fort - that would be strange indeed. I don't know how much actual XP killing a catapult yields. The changes should not get the defending team xp directly, but rather passively, I'm tempted to say. That's ofc not completely true, because Defenders would still have to kill the Minions to actually get XP, or at least be in the vicinity. So an appropriate term might be an opportunity for the defending team, to get XP and close the gap.

As the amount of catapults is now reduced by 2/3, the waves in the lane, where the fort was destroyed should not push as hard as  they are doing now. This should change two things primarily: one the defending team has more time to react and two - and that's what Straf wrote - should generate bigger minion waves, which translates into bigger amounts of XP to the defending team, closer to their Nexus and therefore more easy and safe to get. Now that only holds true if the Wave is left alone. In such a case defenders could send a specialist or mage to that lane to blow the minions up, to get a lot of XP. That way Defenders should be able to catch up - at least that's what it should work like in theory I guess. And since there will be no immediate next wave with catapults, pressure is relieved and mage/spec can return to the Teamfight, objective or whatever. Therefore it should be more important to push with the waves. The changes they are doing to Mercs only encourage this play style even further. It still is an advantage to destroy the a fort, because the catapults still generate lane pressure that should be dealt with by the defenders.

I agree with Chronos though - in lower ranks and in QM in general it will be difficult to get people to soak. But then again, as long as both teams ignore every basic rule of the game and brawl mid until first objective it shouldn't be that much of a change and no advantage to any team. I'm willing to give those changes a shot - I think mainly because over the last few days I've lost quite some games were things got out of hand rather quickly after losing the first objective (mainly alterac and garden games, where we lost some towers and even forts during the first objective). The loss of the objectives was not even close as well so you could basically tell by then, that it would snowball out out of hand with basically no chance of coming back. Was QM though, so comps were kind of wonky sometimes and ppl tended to go LEEROY JENKINS 5v1 - so that sucked as well... yes I got frustrated in those games, I admit ? Maybe the removal of XP from dropping buildings could change that a bit, I guess we will see.

[Pregrowth 46]

Im not gonna like these changes 

[Godeyes 25]

@XeaKon @Evincare

If you guys wanna discuss changes in the game then you should firstly be aware of the CURRENT rules. Also reading with understanding wouldn't hurt...

5 hours ago, Evincare said:

If I got the changes right, there will be no direct XP gain when you lose a Fort - that would be strange indeed.

There was never any exp gain for the team which Fort was destroyed.

5 hours ago, Evincare said:

As the amount of catapults is now reduced by 2/3, the waves in the lane, where the fort was destroyed (...)

Completely wrong. Destroying FORT never gave you catapults in lane. Neither to attackers nor defenders. So nothing will be "reduced".

 

Quick sum up of the changes with added comentary:

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep (for the team that destroyed the fort/keep)
• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50% (for the team that destroyed the tower)
• Passive Experience gain increased by 15% (most of you don't know but BOTH teams are ALWAYS getting exp PASSIVELY almost through whole game. 20xp/s. Now it will be 23xp/s)
• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%
• Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience
  (for the sake of example - now it looks like this: if you get a merc camp, you get some exp (lets say 1000xp), but clearing that mercs will give 0 exp to the enemy  team.
  And how it will be: if you grab same merc camp in the same minute of the game you will get 2000xp now BUT if the enemy clears it, they will get 4000xp.)
• Regarding catapults: now you (if you are attacker) you only get catapult in your lane when you destroy enemy KEEP. After changes you will get 1 catapult every 3rd wave if you destroy enemy FORT. It will go back to 1 catapult per wave if you destroy enemy KEEP.

Pls use it next time, when in doubt:
https://heroesofthestorm.gamepedia.com/Experience

Edited November 3, 2018 by Godeyes

[XeaKon 23]

@Godeyes

I never said the distruction of your forts give you exp.

Regarding catapults, a fort distroyed gives the enemy a catapult every 3 waves. A keep distroyed CHANGES that to one catapult every wave(you won't have 2 catapults every 3 waves) like it is currently in game.

I have to say that trying to make a thing perfect might end up breaking it as we all know perfection is unobtainable(i point this statement towards blizz decision to make everything "balanced" or as companies say it, without complain posts.

[QandikGaming 0]

1 hour ago, Godeyes said:

@XeaKon @Evincare

If you guys wanna discuss changes in the game then you should firstly be aware of the CURRENT rules. Also reading with understanding wouldn't hurt...

There was never any exp gain for the team which Fort was destroyed.

Completely wrong. Destroying FORT never gave you catapults in lane. Neither to attackers nor defenders. So nothing will be "reduced".

 

Quick sum up of the changes with added comentary:

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep (for the team that destroyed the fort/keep)
• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50% (for the team that destroyed the tower)
• Passive Experience gain increased by 15% (most of you don't know but BOTH teams are ALWAYS getting exp PASSIVELY almost through whole game. 20xp/s. Now it will be 23xp/s)
• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%
• Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience
  (for the sake of example - now it looks like this: if you get a merc camp, you get some exp (lets say 1000xp), but clearing that mercs will give 0 exp to the enemy  team.
  And how it will be: if you grab same merc camp in the same minute of the game you will get 2000xp now BUT if the enemy clears it, they will get 4000xp.)
• Regarding catapults: now you (if you are attacker) you only get catapult in your lane when you destroy enemy KEEP. After changes you will ALSO get 1 catapult every 3rd wave if you destroy enemy FORT. Which in consequence will give you 2 catapults every 3rd wave (and 1 cat. in every other)

Pls use it next time, when in doubt:
https://heroesofthestorm.gamepedia.com/Experience

Yo dude, i know you probably think you explained everything properly, but people like me still have no idea WTF are these new changes. 
Like i get it that forts wont give EXP anymore, and EXP per second will be raised, making this game a bit quicker and more dependant on team fights at kills, rather than pushing lanes. So no more "zagara push bot, while we try destract them in 4v5 fights" 
But about the Merc giving 2000 exp, but then 4000exp wtf is that about ? 

And the catapult... 

can you please elaborate, i didnt have the blizzcon ticket so i didnt watch the dev explanation 

[Wolfdy 1]

Quote

defeating any camps captured by the enemy team will, once again, grant experience

You mean "Defeating any MERCS captured by the enemy team..."? as far as i know camps are static, merc reside on then, after you kill then you cap the camp and the merc pushes a lane for you

 

Quote

Capturing Mercs and allowing them to push alone will not result in an experience gain anymore

They do now? I dunno but i dont think mercs "alone" can soak exp on lane, you get push power yeah, maybe get a tower or a fort that grants global experiencie, but mercs by thenselves dont give xp by pushing lanes

Edited November 3, 2018 by Wolfdy

[Godeyes 25]

2 hours ago, XeaKon said:

@Godeyes

I never said the distruction of your forts give you exp.

Regarding catapults, a fort distroyed gives the enemy a catapult every 3 waves. A keep distroyed CHANGES that to one catapult every wave(you won't have 2 catapults every 3 waves) like it is currently in game.

I admit I was more refering to Evincare's post. But about catapults, you are of course right. I had an image of 2 catapults in lane from blizzard changes site O_o I stay corrected.

[Godeyes 25]

1 hour ago, QandikGaming said:

But about the Merc giving 2000 exp, but then 4000exp wtf is that about ? 

And the catapult... 

can you please elaborate, i didnt have the blizzcon ticket so i didnt watch the dev explanation 

Every Mercenery Camp give you now experience when you CLAIM/TAKE it. This exp starts at a fixed number (lets say its 500xp from the 1st minute of the game) and then SCALES UP as the game go on. (that is exactly why for example Dragon/Triglaw past 20 minute mark is so powerful and can kill KEEP with couple auto attacks).

To be more precise - everything in this game scales, but differently. Heroes, minion waves, merceneries, bosses, etc.

There are many nice articles about this. Here is one of them (2 parts):

• https://heroeshearth.com/b/chaosos/read/math-of-the-storm-scaling-part-i/
• https://heroeshearth.com/b/chaosos/read/math-of-the-storm-scaling-part-ii/

Edited November 3, 2018 by Godeyes

[SleepySheepy 41]

4 hours ago, QandikGaming said:

Yo dude, i know you probably think you explained everything properly, but people like me still have no idea WTF are these new changes. 
Like i get it that forts wont give EXP anymore, and EXP per second will be raised, making this game a bit quicker and more dependant on team fights at kills, rather than pushing lanes. So no more "zagara push bot, while we try destract them in 4v5 fights" 
But about the Merc giving 2000 exp, but then 4000exp wtf is that about ? 

And the catapult... 

can you please elaborate, i didnt have the blizzcon ticket so i didnt watch the dev explanation 

I wouldn't drop Zagara as her taking down Fort and getting lane pushed works really well with she already does, applying pressure.
I think we will actually see Zagara nerf after this. Then again, her being forced to go forward might not actually work in her favour.

Catapults got Tracer Pulse Bomb treatment, they *should* be weaker at start and start scaling hard. Don't know breaking point, don't know anything. That's what they said.
XP being removed is so that game doesn't snowball as hard by giving you catapults AND XP. You still gain a lot by destroying Keep, but it's not immediate value.

Edited November 3, 2018 by SleepySheepy
Addition

[Baelfyer 4]

21 hours ago, lChronosl said:

I am willing to give it a try before complaining _{(too much)},

If only a tenth of the Diablo fans posting on forums had this much self control.

[Straften 24]

22 hours ago, XeaKon said:

Why will the distruction of forts give the enemy more exp ? From what I know catapults give 1xp and they go and push waves and do structure damage.

Catapults, especially in empty lanes, will push xp away from your team. This often happens during map objectives. After the map objective, the defending team will be able to safely soak all of the xp on their side of the map, while the attacking team will need to extend into enemy territory in order to soak lanes with Catapults in them.  Catapults are still a great thing to have. These changes simply encourage teams to push with Mercenaries and Catapults more often. 

[Straften 24]

16 hours ago, Pixen said:

And no visible MMR, -5/10 would play again!

Actually, they will be making MMR transparent. This was announced later in the day. They are also removing promotion and demotion games. 

[Pixen 0]

2 hours ago, Straften said:

Actually, they will be making MMR transparent. This was announced later in the day. They are also removing promotion and demotion games. 

Holy cow! I was expecting them to not actually give a fudge, but I'm actually quite surprised!

[Bnetmyke 21]

On 11/3/2018 at 6:37 AM, XeaKon said:

@Godeyes

I never said the distruction of your forts give you exp.

Regarding catapults, a fort distroyed gives the enemy a catapult every 3 waves. A keep distroyed CHANGES that to one catapult every wave(you won't have 2 catapults every 3 waves) like it is currently in game.

I have to say that trying to make a thing perfect might end up breaking it as we all know perfection is unobtainable(i point this statement towards blizz decision to make everything "balanced" or as companies say it, without complain posts.

As it currently stands, no it doesn't. Only when the inner Keep is destroyed does a Catapult start to spawn. It never spawned earlier than this. The change will make it so it spawns like what you're thinking of.

[XeaKon 23]

On 4 noiembrie 2018 at 5:34 PM, Bnetmyke said:

As it currently stands, no it doesn't. Only when the inner Keep is destroyed does a Catapult start to spawn. It never spawned earlier than this. The change will make it so it spawns like what you're thinking of.

I was talking about the changes, sorry for not using future tense.