heroes Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes: August 6th

[Stan 2743]

The latest patch with Qhira, Storm League Season 1, and map updates to Braxis Holdout is now live.

Patch Highlights

• Qhira is the second Nexus-born Hero added to the game after Orphea. You can watch the official spotlight here and check out a full list of her abilities and talents, before she's available in the talent calculator.
• Braxis Holdout has been updated to even out the power curve of Zerg waves by introducing a new mechanic called Drop Pods.
  • Zerg waves will periodically appear via Drop Pods, which makes effects like Fenix's Planet Cracker and Ragnaros' Lava Wave less powerful.
• Storm League Season 1 has arrived.
  • The number of Placement matches has been reduced to 3.
  • Promotion and Demotion games have been removed, making transition through Leagues and Divisions seamlessly.
  • Storm League pool contains 11 maps.
  • A Ranked Seasonal Questline is now available, and more.

Check out the official patch notes below for details!

Blizzard (Source)

The next Heroes of the Storm patch has arrived! The update brings a new Hero, Qhira the Iresian Bounty Hunter, alongside bug fixes, new bundles, new skins, and much more! Dive on in for more information.

General

On-Fire System

• Hero name-plates will now display that a Hero is On-Fire when they are performing well during a match

New Hero: Qhira, Iresian Bounty Hunter

A sworn knight and holder of a singularity shard, Qhira’s only desire is to seek out others who may have escaped the destruction of her doomed home realm, Iresia. While she searches, she gets by as a bounty hunter--- a job she loathes, despite her exceptional skill.

Trait

• Grappling Hook [D]
  • Qhira fires a Grappling Hook that pulls her to any terrain it contacts. If an enemy Hero is hit, they take 36 damage and Qhira launches at them, dealing an additional 112 damage on impact. Can be used while Revolving Sweep is active.
    • Cooldown: 25 Seconds

Basic Abilities

• Carnage [Q]
  • Unleash your sword in a targeted direction, continuously dealing 31 damage to enemies caught in its path.
    • Cost: 40 Mana
    • Cooldown: 6 seconds
• Blood Rage [W]
  • Passive: Basic Attack and Ability damage cause enemies to bleed for 46 damage over 4 seconds. Stacks 5 times.
  • Active: Qhira deals 33 damage and heals for 88 health per enemy Hero affected. Damage and healing is increased by 50% per each additional stack on that Hero.
    • Cost: 35 Mana
    • Cooldown: 8 seconds
• Revolving Sweep [E]
  • Attach your sword to the first enemy Hero hit, Stunning them for .25 seconds. Once attached, Qhira becomes immune to all effects, swinging around the target for 2.75 seconds, and dealing 109 damage to any enemies between you and the target. Reactivate to send you to the target’s location, knocking them back, dealing 112 damage and Stunning them for .75 seconds.
    • Cost: 70 Mana
    • Cooldown: 16 Seconds

Heroic Abilities

• Unrelenting Strikes [R1]
  • Deal 46 damage to all nearby enemies every .5 seconds for 2.5 seconds as your sword grows outward. Upon expiring, deal 86 damage to all nearby enemy Heroes and Stun them for .75 seconds.
    • Cost: 60 Mana
    • Cooldown: 75 Seconds
• Final Strike [R2]
  • After 1 second, strike your sword in a line to deal 432 damage to all enemies in its path. This damage is increased by 25% to any enemy below 50% Health.
    • Cost: 45 Mana
    • Cooldown: 40 Seconds

Storm League

Storm League - Season 1, 2019

• Ranked Points are now directly mapped to a player's Storm League MMR.
  • Rank is no longer considered by the matchmaker.
  • Leaving a Ranked Match Lobby or Game results in a 500 Rank Point penalty which can be slowly regained in future matches.
• Placement Matches have been reduced from 10 to 3.
• Promotion and Demotion games have been removed and players will seamlessly transition through Leagues and Divisions.
  • The MMR range has been rebuilt and remapped to handle this.
• A Team Leader (banning player in Ranked Draft) is selected on the highest Rank for placed players, or MMR for unplaced ones. In mixed teams, placed players have priority.
• Rank Decay has been adjusted
  • Only players that are Diamond 5 or higher and that have finished their Placement Matches are eligible for decay
  • If a player's decay timer is less than 3 days, it resets to 3 days upon playing a Storm League game. If the timer is at or above 3 days, players will gain an additional grace day for each game played (up to a maximum of 30).
• A Ranked Seasonal Questline is now available to players
  • This Questline will be available each Season and must be completed in order to be eligible for both the Ranked Seasonal Rewards and the Grand Master Leaderboards.

[NEW] The Storm League pool is now:

• Alterac Pass
• Battlefield of Eternity
• Braxis Holdout
• Cursed Hollow
• Dragon Shire
• Hanamura Temple
• Infernal Shrines
• Sky Temple
• Tomb of the Spider Queen
• Towers of Doom
• Volskaya Foundry

The Quick Match pool is now:

• Blackheart’s Bay
• Garden of Terror
• Warhead Junction

[NEW] Dev Comment:  Due to player feedback about their favorite Battleground being removed or least favorite added, and also us questioning the value that we were gaining by having a Battleground rotation, we’ve decided to get our Storm League pool to 11 Battlegrounds and probably leave it there for the immediate future.  The original idea behind a rotation was to facilitate a different metagame and make the game feel fresh and different, but we found that this wasn’t really panning out this way and in fact created more confusion and volatility than enjoyment.  We still think that altering the game from season to season is important to keep things feeling fresh, and we’ll be exploring ways to do this beyond our regular Hero updates and new Heroes in the future.

Map Updates

Braxis Holdout

• Functionality of the Braxis control-point is now consistent with that of Dragon Shire
• Zerg Waves
  • Make-up and stats of the Zerg Wave units have been adjusted
  • Zergling
    • Health reduced from 750 to 450
    • Health scaling over time increased
    • Damage increased from 5 to 10
    • Damage scaling over time decreased
    • No longer has a 10% damage penalty to Structures
  • Baneling
    • Health reduced from 500 to 450
    • Health scaling over time increased
    • Damage increased from 55 to 150
    • Damage scaling over time decreased
    • Now have a 50% damage bonus to Heroes
    • No longer have a 50% damage bonus to Structures
    • Explosion radius increased from 2.75 to 3
    • Now prefers attacking Structures
  • Hydralisk
    • Health reduced from 1500 to 850
    • Health scaling over time increased
    • Damage increased from 25 to 70
    • Damage scaling over time decreased
    • No longer have a 10% damage penalty to Structures
  • Guardian
    • Health reduced from 2250 to 1000
    • Health scaling over time increased
    • Damage increased from 80 to 110
    • Damage scaling over time decreased
    • No longer have a 25% damage penalty to Structures
  • Ultralisk
    • Health reduced from 6000 to 4700
    • Health scaling over time increased
    • Damage increased from 50 to 100
    • Damage scaling over time decreased
    • No longer have a 10% damage penalty to Structures
  • While attacking, Guardian and Ultralisks now spawn Drop Pods with 3 Zerglings and 1 Hydralisk (can occur once every 13 seconds)

Developer Comment: We've made some changes to Braxis to even out the power curve of Zerg waves and introduce what we've found is a fun new mechanic in Drop Pods. By causing reinforcements of Zerg to periodically appear via Drop Pods, it makes some effects like Planet Cracker and Lava Wave a little less powerful against them. It also provides a stronger focus for single target characters, as removing Ultralisks and Guardians earlier will cause fewer Drop Pods to spawn, thereby indirectly helping against the massive zerg onslaught. The tuning changes get the zerg in line with most of our other Mercenaries and Minions, which mostly mirror a Hero's power level over the course of a game (though Battleground events tend to get more deadly in the late game to force a conclusion to matches). Overall, we think you'll enjoy these small changes to Braxis. It won't greatly change the way the Battleground feels but introduce a little freshness to the map while helping balance a few longstanding issues with over the top Hero imbalances on the Battleground.

Collection

New Bundles (Limited Time Only!)

• Qhira Heroic Bundle
• Warchrome Commanders Bundle
• Deathranger Nova Bundle

New Skins

• Fearless Qhira
• Jade Qhira
• Scrapper Queen Qhira
  • Berserk Scrapper Queen Qhira
  • Executor Scrapper Queen Qhira
  • Desert Scrapper Queen Qhira
  • Vanquisher Scrapper Queen Qhira
• Deathranger Nova (Limited Time Only!)
  • Mirage Deathranger Nova
  • Rugged Deathranger Nova
  • Dusk Deathranger Nova
  • Ember Deathranger Nova
• Daredevil Roadraider Raynor
• Molten Diesel Speaker Nazeebo

New Mounts

• Daredevil Helldorado
• Scavenger’s Ripper
• Outrider's Ripper
• Soldier’s Ripper

New Announcer

• Qhira Announcer

New Content

• Several emojis, portraits, banners and other items have been added to the collection!

Bug Fixes

• [NEW] Interrupting Brightwing’s Intensive Winds cast will now set the cooldown to 5 seconds.
• [NEW] Fixed various Movement Speed bugs that had occurred with the increased Movement Speed patch.
• Zeratul no longer auto-acquires targets that walk within range while Cloaked.
• Taking the Snowstorm talent on Jaina in the middle of a Blizzard cast no longer changes the damage value for the rest of the game.
• Learning Yrel’s Seraphim talent while channeling or disabled no longer leaves it permanently disabled.
• Blinding Wind, Shadow Dagger, Seeker Swarm, Frost Blast, Unstable Compound, and Weak Spot Acquired will no longer apply their effects to Heroes in Time Stop.
• Critical Strike, Oil Spill, Lightning Fury, Ravage, Keg Smash, and Particle Grenade are now affected by cooldown reduction effects.
• Sgt. Hammer’s Siege Mode can no longer out-range kill credit for the Salvaging the Stables questline.
• Varian’s Banner of Ironforge now correctly displays the plus-Healing UI when augmented with Glory to the Alliance.
• Uther can now /dance and /taunt during Eternal Vanguard.

Qhira, Storm League Season 1, Braxis Holdout map updates and various bug fixes are now live!

[LostDeep 4]

I really hope that the 'Quick match pool' isn't an exclusive list... I've had trouble with repeating maps before.

[Arcling 255]

1 hour ago, LostDeep said:

I really hope that the 'Quick match pool' isn't an exclusive list... I've had trouble with repeating maps before.

Looks like that line was removed when copying as on site it also reads: All maps that are available in Storm League. So every map is available in quick match (except Haunted Mines, who knows when and if it will return).
 

Edited August 6, 2019 by Arcling

[Lampanelli 73]

I still find it annoying that since I live in the EU, we have a to wait to see this stuff. 😕 I wanna play with Qhira.

[lChronosl 167]

Qhira is really fun, but not that strong on teams lacking healer and/or tank.

I have also played a couple games vs AI to test her out and it's really annoying how it keeps dodging all my skillshots.

[LostDeep 4]

41 minutes ago, lChronosl said:

Qhira is really fun, but not that strong on teams lacking healer and/or tank.

I have also played a couple games vs AI to test her out and it's really annoying how it keeps dodging all my skillshots.

I did some Vs. AI on the PTR and the AI is definitely worse than last time I played. Maybe not in straight game skill, but definitely in game sense. I'm always afraid to turn the AI above Beginner because it seems like when I do that all the allied AI actively plots to lose the game.

[Kuarinofu 52]

Gave up after the game constantly matched me with below lvl 50 players who had no idea what they were doing. Kind of tempted to try Qhira on live but I'm sure this trend will continue and there is no way I am getting into 50-50 fair match anymore, not that many people left to play with.

[ArtVandelay 24]

I still don't understand why they can't put the minimum hero level in storm league.  So tired of people that haven't played a hero picking them in ranked.

[ShadowerDerek 69]

7 hours ago, Lampanelli said:

I still find it annoying that since I live in the EU, we have a to wait to see this stuff. 😕 I wanna play with Qhira.

We Asians have to wait until Thursday to get the patch.

[Morcalivan 78]

8 hours ago, lChronosl said:

Qhira is really fun, but not that strong on teams lacking healer and/or tank.

I have also played a couple games vs AI to test her out and it's really annoying how it keeps dodging all my skillshots.

AI is the best to practice skillshots. Human players are so easy to hit.

The auto dodge feature makes you create situations where dodging is impossible and better your positioning and combos especially.

If you are missing with the E, use D first to close some distance first for an easier shot. Same with the W.

Just remember not to do so vs groups since you need D for escape.

The R finisher on the other hand takes a long time to fire, making your stuns not too helpful to finish with it and easy to dodge.

Might have to give up on it unless your team has CC. The other R's stun is just too valuable overall anyways.

[Kurosu 57]

18 hours ago, Kuarinofu said:

Gave up after the game constantly matched me with below lvl 50 players who had no idea what they were doing. Kind of tempted to try Qhira on live but I'm sure this trend will continue and there is no way I am getting into 50-50 fair match anymore, not that many people left to play with.

Due to how few people play this game anymore ,matchmaking no longer takes levels into account ( on qm at least).  Probably because that is the only way to get a match without waiting 5 minutes on the queue.Its sad. When they put level 3 people vs ones that play for years what kind of outcome do they expect?

[Kuarinofu 52]

29 minutes ago, Kurosu said:

Due to how few people play this game anymore ,matchmaking no longer takes levels into account ( on qm at least).  Probably because that is the only way to get a match without waiting 5 minutes on the queue.Its sad. When they put level 3 people vs ones that play for years what kind of outcome do they expect?

I know right, dude? I got more and more of these matches. There's no fun in stomping new players and there's definitely no fun in playing with ones on your team. I'm not sure it's even fun for them since the game kind of plays around them while they are not sure what they are supposed to do. HotS requires communication and you have to be very careful when telling new players what to do since they will just consider you toxic and you don't want that (people to tend to get very defensive these days). It's like you're stuck till the end of the game and you can lose even if you try hard since HotS is very team-oriented. I never leave games and I never feed intentionally so when I lose these games I feel like the game punishes me for even trying, very discouraging.