heroes Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch Notes: April 6th

[Stan 5,244]

The latest content patch comes with a new Nexus Anomaly, the long-awaited Tassadar rework, AI improvements, matchmaking changes for GM and Masters, and more. Check out the full patch notes for more details!

Patch Highlights

• The new Nexus Anomaly revolves around Structures.
  • Structures will now focus on attacking offenders (enemy Heroes) instead of NPCs until they are dead or leave Tower range.
  • Cannon Towers, Forts, and Keeps reduce Hero Armor by 5/10.
  • Cores received new abilities unique to each Battlegrounds.
• The AI has been updated to resolve conflicts between tactical and goal systems.
• Tier 3 Mastery Rings have been added to the game.
• Players can now create up to three favorite talent builds per Hero and share them via in-game links.
• Master and Grand Master players are no longer restricted to queueing with only 1 player and players who are within 5,000 Ranked Points.
• New Dark Nexus Skins will become available in the game.
• Tassadar has been reworked into a Ranged Assassin.

Blizzard (Source)

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until the week of April 13, PDT. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

Quick Navigation:

• Nexus Anomaly
• General
• Collection
• Heroes
• Bug Fixes

Nexus Anomaly - A Call For Help

We’ve heard feedback over the years that a lot of you would like to feel more protected by nearby friendly structures. Currently, Minions, Summons, and non-Heroic units can hold a structure’s attention for so long that defending players feel that they’re offered no additional protection when taking refuge under their Cannon Towers, Forts, Keeps and Cores. In order to address this issue, we will be making the following changes to structures:

Cannon Towers, Forts, Keeps and Cores

• A beam is now created from these structures to their targets, making it easier to see what is being attacked at a glance.
• Allied Heroes of the structures who are being attacked by enemy Heroes will cause the structure to focus the offender until the offender is dead or leaves tower range.
• A bright beam indicates that the structure is defending an ally Hero and is focusing on the beam target.
• Structures reset targeting when the Call for Help target becomes invalid.
• Structures reset targeting logic when they recover from being disabled.

Cannon Towers, Forts and Keeps

• Damage to Heroes increased by 10%.
• Attacks reduce Hero Armor by up to -40.
• Cannon Tower attacks reduce enemy Hero Armor by 5.
• Forts and Keeps attacks reduce enemy Hero Armor by 10.
• Forts and Keeps no longer slow enemy Heroes.

New Core Abilities

• We want fights around the Core to feel like exciting ends to cap off great games, and we feel like we can do more to deliver on that front. To that end, this Seasonal Nexus Anomaly will introduce themed abilities to non-ARAM Battleground Cores:
  • Battlefield of Eternity
    • Every 8 seconds, the Core will spawn 2 volleys of Frozen Orbs that explode, dealing 5% maximum Health as damage and Rooting enemy Heroes hit for 1.5 seconds.
  • Blackheart’s Bay
    • Every 4 seconds, the Core will shoot a cannonball at 2 nearby enemy Heroes, dealing 5% maximum Health as damage, slowing them by 70% for 1.5 seconds, and knocking them back.
  • Braxis Holdout
    • Every 4 seconds, the Core will shoot 5 missiles at a nearby enemy Hero, dealing 5% maximum Health as damage per missile.
  • Cursed Hollow
    • Every 3 seconds, the Core will spawn a Curse under a nearby enemy Hero. If they are Cursed, they take 5% maximum Health as damage and their Armor is reduced by 75 for 4 seconds.
  • Dragonshire
    • Every 6 seconds, the Core will throw 2 boulders at a nearby enemy Hero. Heroes hit are turned to stone, damaged for 5% of their maximum Health, and Stunned for 1.75 seconds.
  • Garden of Terror
    • Every 5 seconds, the Core shoots a seed under a nearby enemy Hero. When the seed explodes, Heroes inside are Polymorphed for 3 seconds.
  • Hanamura
    • Every 8 seconds, the Core fires 2 volleys of missiles around it, dealing 5% maximum Health to enemy Heroes and slowing them by 70% for 1.25 seconds.
  • Infernal Shrines
    • Every 8 seconds, the Core will spawn 2 volleys of Frozen Orbs that explode, dealing 5% maximum Health as damage and Rooting enemy Heroes hit for 1.5 seconds.
  • Sky Temple
    • Every 23 seconds, the Core will spawn 2 sets of 6 tornadoes which swirl around it, dealing 25 damage to enemy Heroes and knocking them back.
  • Tomb of the Spider Queen
    • Every 5 seconds, the Core will shoot a Death Wave, dealing 5% maximum Health as damage to enemy Heroes and slowing them by 70% for 1.25 seconds.
  • Volskaya
    • Every 6 seconds, the Core shoots 3 Rocket Fists at nearby enemy Heroes, dealing 150 damage and knocking them back.
  • Warhead Junction
    • Every 18 seconds, the Core launches a Nuke at a nearby enemy Hero, dealing 30% maximum health to enemy Heroes hit.

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General

Mastery Rings - Tier 3

• Get ready to show off your dedication to your favorite Heroes with the next level of Hero Mastery Rings! These new rings become purchasable once a Hero reaches level 50 and you already own the first and second rings for that Hero.

A.I.

• A.I. trees have been refactored in order to reduce conflicts between the tactical and goal systems.
• Agents will attempt to stage and wait for backup around objectives before attempting to contest.
• Disconnected players will have their A.I. return to base and remain there unless they are pinged to follow.
  • Follow behavior is the same for disconnected player A.I. and normal A.I.
  • While following, the agent will attempt to fight while remaining close to their follow target, leashing back if they wander too far away.
  • While following, the agent will mount or use their Hearthstone if their follow target uses their mount or Hearthstone.
• Adjusting A.I. Healing Well goal health threshold from 75% to 60%.
• Bringing an A.I. who is on follow close enough to Doubloon turn-in on Blackheart's Bay, Soul Gem turn-in on Tomb of the Spider Queen, or a healing fountain will cause the A.I. to interact with them appropriately if they are able.

Favorite Talents

• Create your favorite talent builds
  • Players can pick their favorite talents on the talent panel from Hero select or draft screen.
  • In order to favorite a talent, simply click the talent. Once it's selected, you can click the talent again to unselect it.
  • Players can create up to 3 builds per each Hero and can activate one build at a time.
  • To switch to a different build, click the build buttons shown on the top of the talent panel.
  • If any significant change happens to a talent tier due to a balance patch, the selection for the tier will be reset.
• Share your favorite builds
  • You can generate a hyperlink for a talent build by clicking the cog menu next to talent build buttons on the Hero select screen.
  • If you paste this link on the chat, it shows as a hyperlink in the chat history.
  • If you left click the link, it shows the preview of the talent build.
  • By right clicking the link, you can copy the link to your clipboard or directly save it to your Hero's corresponding build slots.
  • The format of the talent hyperlink is as follows. [T1231231,Lucio]
• In-Game & End of the match screen
  • A favorited talent will display a favorite icon on top of it.
  • You can switch the build in the middle of the game based on your strategy.
  • For the future tiers, you can adjust your favorites by clicking the talent button in the same way you would do in the Hero select screen.
  • All changes made in game are saved.
  • After game ends, you can use the cog menu on the talent tab to copy other players' talent builds.

Storm League

• Matchmaking Changes for GM & Masters
  • Master and Grand Master players are no longer restricted to queuing with only one other player.
  • Master and Grand Master players are no longer restricted to queuing with players who are within 5000 ranked points.
  • Made some changes to matchmaking rules that should improve the quality of matches for Master and Grand Master players.

Developer Comment: We have been actively monitoring matchmaking throughout the season and are going to be making some changes which will help the player experience. Firstly, we found that our party size restrictions for Masters players didn’t give the experience that we had envisioned, so we are reverting these changes. The limit for queueing as a party will require players to be within 2 leagues of each other, with Diamond players being able to queue up with Master and Grand Master players. Additionally, we have made some changes to all regions so that players who are Masters and above should find games being made with as many high level players as possible, which should result in better matches.

Experience

• Floating Combat Text for experience earned from killing blows now has a unique purple color and displays at the position of the killed unit. Floating Combat Text from experience earned from Experience Globes remains unchanged.

Experience Globes

• Pickup Radius increased from 1.5 to 1.75.
• Experience Globes that are actively travelling to a Hero will attempt to follow more closely.

Developer Comment: We're making some small improvements to Experience Globes to make them more readable and to improve how they feel to pick up by adding a unique purple text that displays where they are killed. With these changes, players should more clearly see when they gained experience via a killing blow. We also found that sometimes picking up experience globes while mounted could be a bit of a hassle due to the pickup radius of the globes as well as how quickly they travel to players, so we are slightly buffing both of these aspects to make them a little easier to collect in these instances.

US Region Selection

• After looking at the causes for North American players' longer wait times and instances of not queuing together, we are bundling matchmaking for our US regions together. This will only happen for players if they have good pings to both sites, and our simulations have shown that we can create better games faster this way. If you don't experience this, please let us know!

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Collection

Many seasonal items will be returning to the collection, and will be available for crafting and in Loot Chests for a limited time!

New Bundles (Limited Time Only!)

• Fragments of the Dark Nexus Bundle
• Dark Nexus Harbingers Bundle
• Dark Nexus Deathwing Bundle
• Dark Nexus Fenix Bundle
• Dark Nexus Tassadar Bundle
• Dark Nexus Beast Pack
• Caldeum Complex Bundle

New Skins

• The following skins will be available for a limited time:
  • Dark Nexus Deathwing
    • Shattered Dark Nexus Deathwing
    • Forgotten Dark Nexus Deathwing
    • Awakened Dark Nexus Deathwing
    • Astral Dark Nexus Deathwing
  • Dark Nexus Fenix
    • Imperial Dark Nexus Fenix
    • Awakened Dark Nexus Fenix
    • Eldritch Dark Nexus Fenix
    • Astral Dark Nexus Fenix
  • Dark Nexus Tassadar
    • Forgotten Dark Nexus Tassadar
    • Awakened Dark Nexus Tassadar
    • Eldritch Dark Nexus Tassadar
    • Astral Dark Nexus Tassadar
  • Dark Nexus Gul’dan
    • Entropic Dark Nexus Gul’dan
    • Sadistic Dark Nexus Gul’dan
  • Dark Nexus Alarak
    • Astral Dark Nexus Alarak
    • Awakened Dark Nexus Alarak

New Mounts

• The following mounts will be available for a limited time:
  • Dark Nexus Beast
    • Shattered Dark Nexus Beast
    • Forgotten Dark Nexus Beast
    • Wild Dark Nexus Beast
    • Awakened Dark Nexus Beast
    • Astral Dark Nexus Beast
  • Astral Dark Nexus Hound
  • Awakened Dark Nexus Hound
  • Astral Dark Nexus Manta
  • Awakened Dark Nexus Manta

New Content

• Several new portraits, sprays and other items have been added to the collection for a limited time!

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Heroes

Tassadar Rework

Trait

• Resonance Beam
  • Tassadar’s Basic Attack is a long range channeled beam that deals 14 damage every .25 seconds and Slows its target for 10%. While channeling, your Basic Attack damage and Mana Regeneration increase by 25% a second, to a maximum of 100% bonus. While fully charged, gain an additional 3 mana per second. This bonus is lost after 6 seconds of not channeling.

Basic Abilities

• Shock Ray [Q]
  • After a .375 second cast, channel a fast moving electric beam that deals 280 damage and slows all enemies in a line by 25% for 2 seconds.
  • Mana: 55 Mana.
  • Cooldown: 7 seconds.
• Psionic Storm [W]
  • Create a storm of psionic energy at the targeted location, dealing 38 damage every .5 seconds to enemies within its area for 3 seconds. This damage increases by 10% for each consecutive hit, to a maximum of 50% increased damage.
  • Mana: 60 Mana.
  • Cooldown: 8 seconds.
• Force Wall [E]
  • After a .5 second delay, create a wall that blocks all units from moving through it for 2 seconds.
  • Mana: 70 Mana.
  • Cooldown: 21 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

• Archon [R1]
  • Transform into a powerful Archon, gaining 40% of your maximum health as a shield and empowering Basic Attacks for 12 seconds. Empowered Basic Attacks deal more damage, splash in a small area, and reduce the Spell Armor of Heroes by 20 for 2 seconds. While in Archon form, Resonance Beam is fully charged.
  • Mana: 100 Mana.
  • Cooldown: 90 seconds.
• Black Hole [R2]
  • After a .5 second cast, launch a Black Hole that travels in a long line. While travelling, the Black Hole quickly pulls enemy Heroes towards its center. Touching the center deals 310 damage and stuns for 1.25 seconds.
  • Mana: 80 Mana.
  • Cooldown: 70 seconds.

Talent

• Level 1
  • Static Charge [Q]
    • Quest: Heroes hit by Shock Ray permanently increase its damage by 4 and grant 33% Resonance Beam charge.
    • Maximum of 200 additional damage.
  • Psi-Infusion [W]
    • Increase Psionic Storm’s range by 33%. Each non-structure enemy hit by Psionic Storm restores .5 mana, increased to 5 against Heroes.
  • Khaydarin Amulet [Trait]
    • Quest: Resonance Beam charges 50% faster.
    • Reward: After remaining at full charge for 80 seconds, Resonance Beam bounces to hit 1 additional target for 50% damage.
    • Reward: After remaining at full charge for 160 seconds, Resonance Beam bounces to hit 2 additional targets for 50% damage.
• Level 4
  • Induction [Q]
    • Casting Shock Ray increases Tassadar’s move speed by 15% for 3 seconds. If an enemy Hero is hit, increase this bonus by 10%.
  • Electric Fence [E]
    • Enemies near Force Wall take 46 damage every .5 seconds and are slowed by 35%.
  • Plasma Shield [Trait]
    • While Resonance Beam is fully charged, gain a shield equal to 3% of max health every second. Stacking up to 15% maximum health.
• Level 7
  • Beam Alignment [Q]
    • When Resonance Beam is fully charged, your Basic Attack range is increased by 1 and the cooldown of Shock Ray refreshes 100% faster.
  • Psionic Echo [Q/E]
    • Casting Psionic Storm causes your next Shock Ray within 3 seconds to cost 30 mana and create a Psionic Storm on the first Hero it hits.
  • Arc Discharge [Trait]
    • After reaching full charge, the next instance of Resonance Beam damage creates a Psionic Storm at the target’s location. This effect has a 20 second cooldown that decays twice as fast while Resonance Beam is at full charge.
• Level 13
  • Feedback [W/Trait]
    • On targets afflicted with Psionic Storm, Resonance Beam’s slow is increased to 60% and it also reduces Physical Armor by 25.
  • Shadow Walk [Active]
    • Activate to gain unrevealable Stealth, 40% movement speed and 25 Armor for 1.5 seconds. 60 second cooldown. Can be cast while channeling Shock Ray or Black Hole.
  • Oracle [Active]
    • While stationary, gain 30 Spell Armor for .75 seconds and heal for 12 health each second. Activate to channel for up to 4 seconds, revealing a gradually increasing area anywhere on the map. 45 second cooldown.
• Level 16
  • Thermal Lance [Q]
    • The first enemy Hero hit by Shock Ray takes 8% of their maximum health as damage.
  • Psychic Shock [W]
    • Psionic Storm deals damage 25% faster.
  • Executor’s Will [Active]
    • Activate to gain full Resonance Beam charge, 15 Spell Power, and cause Ability cooldowns to refresh 25% faster. This effect lasts as long as Resonance Beam is fully charged. 60 sec cooldown.
• Level 20
  • Twilight Archon [R1]
    • Basic Attacks while in Archon form increase its duration by 2 seconds.
  • Kugelblitz [R2]
    • Each Hero hit by Black Hole creates a Psionic Storm at their location.
  • Force Barrier [E]
    • Increases the range of Force Wall by 50%, its duration by .5 seconds, and reduces its cooldown by 10 seconds.
  • Khala’s Gift [Passive]
    • Gain 4 spell power for yourself and each nearby ally Hero, up to 20. Your total bonus is shared with all contributing allies.

Developer Comment: We’ve been teasing the Tassadar rework for a long time and it’s finally here! Tassadar was previously considered a support Hero, but we felt there was a disconnect between his kit/playstyle and the core fantasy of a High Templar or the other Protoss magic users. Because of this, we’ve re-imagined Tassadar from the ground up as an ability based Ranged Assassin, similar to characters like Kael’thas and Gul’dan. He retains his Psionic Storm, Force Wall and Archon abilities and has gained two new abilities: Shock Ray and Black Hole. His talent tree has also been radically transformed, giving him a slew of powerful new ways to play. We’re very excited to finally get Tassadar into your hands and hope you all enjoy the rework as much as we have!

Xul

Base

• Health reduced from 2200 to 2080.
• Health Regeneration reduced from 4.58 to 4.33.

Developer Comment: We’re happy with how Xul’s rework has gone overall in improving his gameplay and talent diversity. He is, however, overperforming, so while we wait for more data, we’re doing a reduction in the Health he gained to bring him more in line.

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Bug Fixes

General

• Toy Train Mount
  • Worgen Greymane, Metamorphosis Illidan, Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, Odin Tychus, and Archon Tassadar can no longer mount as a caboose on the Toy Train.

Heroes

• Fixed an issue where various Physical Armor buffs were not appropriately reducing damage from non-Heroic targets.
• Arthas
  • Army of the Dead Ghouls no longer stop following Arthas when affected by certain abilities.
• Deathwing
  • Deathwing's Energy tooltip while in Dragonflight now is correctly called Energy instead of Mana.
• Garrosh
  • Fixed an issue where Garrosh would fail to throw moving targets.
• Imperius
  • Imperius' Flash of Anger will now properly trigger if it kills a target.
  • Clarified Flash of Anger's tooltip to reflect that it deals damage to the target as well as all targets around them.
  • Fixed an issue where players were unable to issue attack commands while using Celestial Charge, causing them to auto-acquire nearby targets.
• Nazeebo
  • Crowd Control effects on Nazeebo's Zombie Wall with Dead Rush no longer causes Zombie Wall to become unresponsive.
• Stukov
  • Fixed an issue where Weighted Pustule was removed by Unstoppable.
• Tracer
  • Fixed an issue where Tracer's A.I. would sometimes stop using her weapons to auto-attack targets.
• Xul
  • Fixed an issue where Corpse Explosion did not link to an ability in the Death Recap.
• Zarya
  • Zarya's To the Limit no longer causes Zarya's weapon beam to appear shorter at certain energy levels.

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Tassadar has been reworked and there's a new Nexus Anomaly coming in the latest patch.

[Cammykins 6]

I hope that the Tassadar rework has him stay competent in between ccs and damage.

[Valhalen 1,484]

1 hour ago, Stan said:

Toy Train Mount

• Worgen Greymane, Metamorphosis Illidan, Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, Odin Tychus, and Archon Tassadar can no longer mount as a caboose on the Toy Train.

I had no idea this was even possible. I need to see that.

[Morcalivan 86]

2 hours ago, Cammykins said:

I hope that the Tassadar rework has him stay competent in between ccs and damage.

He gets an 11 second Force Wall with 92 damage per second and a 35% slow to nearby targets.

That doesn't even count his Psionic Storm and Beam slow, damage, % health and -armour. So I think he'll be fine.

Those numbers are going to be pretty painful on release.

[kurdi 20]

So, I've trying out Tass, and his Archon sometimes has lifesteal (and you heal a LOT hitting minions with the AoE), and can't find out why he has it.

[Pho 0]

I really like the look of the new Tass skins, and his reworks looks like fun. Looking forward to this

[Valhalen 1,484]

2 hours ago, kurdi said:

So, I've trying out Tass, and his Archon sometimes has lifesteal (and you heal a LOT hitting minions with the AoE), and can't find out why he has it.

Maybe because of this?

5 hours ago, Stan said:

Oracle [Active]

• While stationary, gain 30 Spell Armor for .75 seconds and heal for 12 health each second. Activate to channel for up to 4 seconds, revealing a gradually increasing area anywhere on the map. 45 second cooldown.

[kurdi 20]

32 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

Maybe because of this?

Nope, it doesn't seem to be related to any talent, (and set my lvl to 10 to check it wasn't that talent in particular) and I'm 100% sure is lifesteal, no hp regen. But can't find exactly what makes it happen. Tomorrow I'll test it more thoughroughly.

[lChronosl 182]

OMG, this might be my favourite patch so far. The skins look amazing, those gameplay changes were completely unexpected but sound awesome, and Tass rework is finally here! Can't wait to test them up on PTR (as soon as it finishes loading...).

[Avataris 10]

For some time I wanted to play Tassadar because I really liked the beam and the archon form but damn his skins were not my taste. The new skins are really good and the rework is phenomenal. Gonna need some Gems for all the skins so WP HotS team, WP.

[Morcalivan 86]

11 hours ago, kurdi said:

Nope, it doesn't seem to be related to any talent, (and set my lvl to 10 to check it wasn't that talent in particular) and I'm 100% sure is lifesteal, no hp regen. But can't find exactly what makes it happen. Tomorrow I'll test it more thoughroughly.

Were you using his lvl 4 shield talent? It's suppose to only give a shield based on max health and not a heal but maybe they messed up?

[Arcling 898]

Those skins are looking good, especially Fenix. Thought for a moment that mount from art was Dehaka's skin. ? Expected him to be in next batch. Btw, now support category is going to have only 4 heroes, and it's unlikely we will see any more of them. Perhaps they should remove it? Wonder for how long we have to wait now for that "Greek Gods" event.

 

[Morcalivan 86]

24 minutes ago, Arcling said:

Those skins are looking good, especially Fenix. Thought for a moment that mount from art was Dehaka's skin. ? Expected him to be in next batch. Btw, now support category is going to have only 4 heroes, and it's unlikely we will see any more of them. Perhaps they should remove it? Wonder for how long we have to wait now for that "Greek Gods" event.

 

Yeah, they should make Abathur a melee assassin already. We all know he's basically already there.

[darkinchworm 20]

14 hours ago, Arcling said:

Those skins are looking good, especially Fenix. Thought for a moment that mount from art was Dehaka's skin. ? Expected him to be in next batch. Btw, now support category is going to have only 4 heroes, and it's unlikely we will see any more of them. Perhaps they should remove it? Wonder for how long we have to wait now for that "Greek Gods" event.

 

They could really cut to the chase and reduce everything to two categories: "assassins" and "everything else"

[Twych 24]

After some testing with Tass, his talents are probably the most confusing of any character on which to pick barring 10, 13, and 20. It just seems like you can't really harness everything for Shock Ray, Resonance Beam, or Psionic Storm without gaining a reliance on one of the others. Building him seems a lot more difficult than before.

[Timotheaus 5]

7 hours ago, Twych said:

After some testing with Tass, his talents are probably the most confusing of any character on which to pick barring 10, 13, and 20. It just seems like you can't really harness everything for Shock Ray, Resonance Beam, or Psionic Storm without gaining a reliance on one of the others. Building him seems a lot more difficult than before.

I feel like that is how they want the heroes to be designed now, so you use there whole kit instead of overpowering just one part of it. They did that in the Xul rework also with mixing the skeleton build with the scythe build. And having a good hybrid W build with scythe build. They tried to do it with Azmodan, but everyone just takes the Q talents and forgets the interactions with his laser and minions. Also i noticed that pretty much every "mage" has an AA build that nobody uses. So Tass is an AA mage. I wonder how that is going to go over.