heroes Heroes of the Storm BlizzCon 2019 Q&A Recap

[Stan 5,244]

Here's a recap of the Heroes Q&A from this year's BlizzCon. We learned more about Deathwing, why Ragnaros skins are hard to make, and plans for the game in 2020.

Q&A Highlights

• All of the brawl maps have their own data and coding. Every time they add something new to the game, they would need to update them too and maintain an upkeep which is a lot of work.
• The team wants to bring back old popular brawls like Pull Party, the Nova/Sgt. Hammer brawl, and so forth.
•  The team's internally discussing a dedicated ARAM mode.
• All Heroes are free to play until November 11.
• 2020 will focus on Heroes and Seasonal events. Battlegrounds are tricky to make because they have massive art costs upfront and there are currently no plans to make news Battlegrounds at this time.
• They've made a lot of internal changes to Blackheart's Bay and Haunted Mines the development and playtesting are still ongoing.
• They had to carefully determine the size of Deathwing because when you're this massive Hero, you become a magnet for skill shots and AoEs, just because you're easier to hit. He is big, but not squishy. On the other hand, body blocking and fitting through certain elements on the map also needed to be taken into consideration.
• Deathwing can't heal in the fountain by design. He heals 2.5% of HP per second while in the sky and it would become better for you to hearth, walk out, and hearth again to get your health back faster than sitting in the sky, which they wanted to avoid.
• Deathwing can still hide in the bushes.
• Deathwing was the most requested Hero by the community.
• Ragnaros is hard to make skins for due to the way he was built.
• Red and blue Heroes cause a lot of weird scenarios and confusion, so they don't want to release more recolors for Ragnaros.
• Deathwing has five color variations.
• Deathwing's landing animation has different colors for each team.
• Deathwing will still have Frostbite on him, but won't get Slowed.
• Gravity Lapse will hit him, but do nothing, Frostbolt will actually pierce.
• Silences don't affect him, but Blinds do.
• Cassia will ignore his Armor plates, and any Armor Reduction will work.
• Malthael, Tychus, Valla, and Zul'jin are very effective Heroes against Deathwing.
• Deathwing has no Quest talents. His kit is unique enough and they didn't want to make it too overwhelming.
• They don't want level 1 talents to determine your whole build.

You can find more details in our BlizzCon 2019 Content Hub and the Heroes Deep Dive Panel Recap.

Q&A VOD

[Twych 24]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

Deathwing can still hide in the bushes.

I found this quite entertaining. Just imagine a huge world destroying beast hiding a bit of tall grass.

[Morcalivan 86]

Maybe he's hiding in his own shadow?

[PatrickHenry 293]

i cant believe they actually put him in LOL  awesome

[PatrickHenry 293]

1 hour ago, Twych said:

I found this quite entertaining. Just imagine a huge world destroying beast hiding a bit of tall grass.

hide skill +20 roll

[Arcling 898]

2 hours ago, Twych said:

I found this quite entertaining. Just imagine a huge world destroying beast hiding a bit of tall grass.

When you think about it, the likes of Azmodan are also supposed to be very big. Certainly they wouldn't manage hiding in small bushes.

[darkgreenwax 413]

I hope they do release a change for Blackheart's Bay soon. Whenever we queue for this my friends immediately ask if I'm okay cause they know I'm triggered by its snowbally aspect. I don't even like winning on it ?

[Morcalivan 86]

16 minutes ago, TyZone said:

I hope they do release a change for Blackheart's Bay soon. Whenever we queue for this my friends immediately ask if I'm okay cause they know I'm triggered by its snowbally aspect. I don't even like winning on it ?

Yeah but you're from Manitoba so you and water probably don't really get along anyways.

[darkgreenwax 413]

10 hours ago, Morcalivan said:

Yeah but you're from Manitoba so you and water probably don't really get along anyways.

Zing! ?
I still remember sandbagging as a kid during the "flood of the century" back in '97 ?

[Apologised 20]

18 hours ago, TyZone said:

I hope they do release a change for Blackheart's Bay soon. Whenever we queue for this my friends immediately ask if I'm okay cause they know I'm triggered by its snowbally aspect. I don't even like winning on it ?

This is normal. Blackheart Bay is by far the worst Battleground in the game, and I can't fathom why it's taken as long as it has for a rework, or why it was brought back after being taken out of even QM rotation without changes.

The map structure for the lanes is unequal and poorly designed and 9 times out of 10 you can play the entire game without ever even entering the top two lanes. The entire coin system is incredibly bad and means that in a lot of conditions collecting them if your behind on levels is a bad idea as you will be literally just doing the other teams work for them. At the very least you shouldn't drop 100% of your coins for the other team when you die, it should work more like Spider Queens gems do, and I cannot understand why at the least that minor change hasn't even been made.

It's just awful. Far worse than even Hanamura ever was, but Hanamura was the one that got removed for "rebalancing" instead of this. Meanwhile, Haunted Mines, a map that was actually one of the better ones, remains AWOL for no apparent reason.

[Morcalivan 86]

Haunted Mines is too complex for people. Split levels confuses people too much.

[VegaPl 88]

In many cases it was more effective to ignore the underground objectives and keep laning, especially in the beginning. You could do some nice lane dmg and not lose the exp, while defending the first golem was rather easy to do. 

By default, any map that makes you ignore either the objective or the lanes is flawed by design.