Appropriately sized and filled relevant changes, the latest balance update shows a promising future for Heroes of the Storm patches on a more regular basis.
If you haven't already seen the patch changes for your self, do so here. If you don't have time for that, here is the run down:
Cleanse
One of the biggest changes is reverting Cleanse back to it's former power level. Prior to the patch, Cleanse did the following upon cast:
- Remove all stuns, roots, silences, and slows from the target and reduce the duration of their reapplication by 50% for 2 seconds.
Not very useful, as the only way to save your allies were when they were already getting stunned. This version of cleanse also made "pre-cleansing" impossible and was a nerf to a lot of support heroes that benefited from the talent. With this balance update, support players can go back to making the big defensive (and sometimes offensive) plays for their teams:
- Target ally now becomes Unstoppable for 1 second. 60 second cooldown
Take note that the cool down is now 60 seconds up from 30 seconds, so old cleanse isn't necessarily "back". However, in a stun dominated meta, Cleanse will surely play a huge role moving forward
Hero Balance Changes
The meat of the update are in the Heroes, and all of the changes are things the community has been very vocal in requesting. Tyrande has been significantly nerfed, including cutting the stun duration of Lunar Flare in half and a heavy reduction to her auto attack damage potential.
Raynor has become much squishier to compensate for his high damage while Lunara has been gifted with more HP and more damage: two things she desperately needed. Stitches was given precisely one buff, but it may be the only thing he ever really needed: more damage.
Moving to supports, Malfurion has had his healing numbers changed to make player less reliant on Tranquility. This translate to a solid buff, as Regrowth now heals more upfront and over time. Brightwing's Arcane Flare now cost less mana, has a shorter cool down, and hits for nearly double the damage to targets in the center ring. This change gives Brightwing some serious split pushing potential and increases her ability to help gank a single target.
Balance update vs. content patch
These changes will help the game and is some much needed variety, but perhaps the biggest change players can look forward to is the separation of balance updates and content patches. Community manager Spyrian elaborated on this new schedule in the giant Reddit thread regarding the new update:
"Todays update will be the first of the more frequent balance changes..."
This change along is enough to get the community excited. The need for smaller balance updates on a more frequent basis has been the topic of nearly every Heroes related gripe for the past two months and is undoubtedly the reason why Blizzard has chosen to directly introduce the difference between "Balance update" and "content patches".
Wednesday is the new Tuesday in the Nexus it seems.
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