Nexus Anomalies

Nexus Anomalies are periodic changes meant to improve the game and/or to make the game more interesting to play.

While we know that Blizzard will eventually stop releasing them, they are currently organized in the following way.

• When a Season starts, Blizzard releases a new Nexus Anomaly for Heroes of the Storm.
• During the Season, Blizzard gets feedback by the community and tries to improve the active Nexus Anomaly.
• When the Season ends, Blizzard decides to either remove the Nexus Anomaly from the game or keep it forever, based on how the community reacted to it.

The current Season does not feature any Nexus Anomaly as Blizzard decided to stop periodically releasing them.

The fourth Nexus Anomaly, Gladiator's Medallion, adds a new Ability to every Hero. Once activated, it makes your Hero immune to any crowd control effect for 1 second. As it provides a powerful effect, it has 5 minutes of cooldown. Blizzard will keep it during the whole Season 4 of 2020, so until December, and then decide whether to remove it or keep it forever.

As many players predicted, Gladiator's Medallion has been removed from the game after a Season.

Considering that you have to cast it in order to benefit from its effect, you cannot use it to remove any Stun or Silence that is already affecting you because they prevent you from casting any Ability for the duration. On the other hand, you can easily remove any Root, Slow, or even Blind when necessary.

The short but powerful Unstoppable effect provided by this Ability allows you to ensure that Abilities with 1-second cast or less go off even when the enemy team is trying to interrupt you.

There are even some Heroes that can use Gladiator's Medallion while channeling an Ability without canceling it!

• Azmodan: All Shall Burn.
• Blaze: Combustion.
• Cho: Surging Fist.
• D.Va: Boosters, Micro Missiles.
• Genji: Deflect.
• Li Li: Jug of 1,000 Cups, Water Dragon.
• Qhira: Unrelenting Strikes.
• Samuro: Bladestorm.
• Sonya: Whirlwind.

Do not try to use it while channeling an Ability that is not listed above as, in the majority of the cases, it will only make Gladiator's Medallion go in queue and automatically cast when your Hero is done with their channeling.

A more advanced move that you can execute with this Ability is to make the animation of one of your Abilities impossible to stop by activating Gladiator's Medallion right before casting it to ensure that your Hero reaches the desired position (for example Shadow Charge by Diablo).

Be aware that not having your Gladiator's Medallion available for 5 minutes during the mid and late game could make the difference between dying or surviving during an important team fight, especially if someone in the enemy team remembers who already used it on your team.

Feel free to use it during the early game as you will eventually have it again for the following and more important game phases, but you should try to keep it available for the first Objective rather than using it while clearing the first Minion wave.

In case a team has the Talents lead during the mid game and after, the winning team will not have any issue at managing the long cooldown of Gladiator's Medallion because the losing team will rarely find a good opportunity to force a team fight to try to get a comeback.

Due to being permanently Unstoppable, Deathwing does not have a Gladiator's Medallion at his disposal. The same is true for Gall because he does not have a body, but Cho can still use it.

In case you are wondering what happens for Heroes who have multiple bodies, using it as The Lost Vikings grants the effect to all three Vikings and using it as Rexxar grants it to himself and Misha.

Gladiator's Medallion has interesting interactions with Clones:

• Samuro can grant its effect to himself and any active Clone created by Mirror Image, regardless of his Heroic Ability.
• Nova cannot use it for her Clones created by Holo Decoy.
• Abathur will rarely find it useful for himself, but he can use it during Ultimate Evolution as well.
• Chen cannot use it during Storm, Earth, Fire.

Keep in mind that it is possible to create a custom keybind for this Ability so that you will be able to use it quickly: open the Hotkeys page in the Menu on the Basics tab, then click on the first hexagon on the right that has the 6 key as default and change it to any other key you like.

You can also click and drag the Gladiator's Medallion like any other Active Ability to temporarily change its keybind while playing, however, its position will reset at the end of every game.

Below, we list all previous Nexus Anomalies and provide information about whether they ended up being a permanent part of the game or not.

The first Nexus Anomaly, Experience Globes, changed how the players collect Experience from enemy Minions. After improving it, Blizzard decided to keep it forever.

The previous way to soak Experience just required any Hero to be within about 12 range from dying Minions. With the addition and later tuning of this Nexus Anomaly, Footman and Archer Minions drop an Experience Globe that Heroes can magnetize by walking in their range for a moment. Wizard Minions do not drop an Experience Globe because they already drop a Regeneration Globe instead.

The second Nexus Anomaly, A Call For Help, consisted of a few changes to Structures in order to help the defending team. After changing it, Blizzard decided to keep it forever.

Forts and Keeps will now prioritize enemy Heroes who deal damage to allied Heroes, but only if both of them are within their range. Each shot coming from a Fort or a Keep reduces the Armor of the enemy Hero hit by 10, up to 20. The debuff lasts 4 seconds and gets refreshed by consecutive shots. Towers do not have this effect.

As this Nexus Anomaly makes more important to see who is being focused by Structures, Blizzard made another small change: Towers, Forts, and Keeps now have a red beam that shows who they are attacking.

The third Nexus Anomaly, Climate Phenomena, featured Weather Events that happened for a few minutes during the game and buffed all Heroes alive. As it was not well-received by the community and it caused performance issues, Blizzard decided to remove it forever.

The main Battlegrounds were divided into 3 groups, each of them featuring a different Weather Event: Rain Storms, Snow Flurries, or Foggy Mists. All other Battlegrounds used a random Weather Event, including ARAM-dedicated Maps.