As announced earlier, Blizzard released another small, but significant, balance update. Main foci: rebalancing of mage damage sources and initial nerfs to Kael'thas and Rehgar.?
In another update, that is continuing the new line of more regular balance tweaks, Blizzard has again reconsidered some of the numbers. Besides a small change to Diablo, and slight promising nerfs to Rehgod, the patch focused mostly on Assassins and the way their damage outputs are balanced.
Falstad
- Hammerang (Q)
- BOOMerang (Talent)
- Damage increased from 121 (+4% per level) to 150 (+4% per level)
- BOOMerang (Talent)
- Hinterland Blast (R)
- Base damage increased from 411 (+4.75% per level) to 475 (+4.75% per level)
”We’re primarily seeing players run Basic Attack builds as Falstad, and would like to make ‘mage’ Falstad a bit more powerful. We also felt that Hinterland Blast isn’t doing enough damage with its higher cooldown, so we’re further increasing that damage.”
Jaina
- Basic Attack damage reduced from 89 (+4% per level) to 60 (+4% per level)
- Frostbolt (Q)
- Damage increased from 160 (+4% per level) to 190 (+4% per level)
- Cone of Cold (E)
- Damage increased from 189 (+4% per level) to 200 (+4% per level)
”We’re starting to pull Basic Attack damage out of characters who don’t rely upon it, namely Jaina and Kael’thas. For Jaina, this will make less of her damage guaranteed and allow for more advanced plays. Jaina’s win rate is also a little on the low end, so we want to offset the Basic Attack nerf and add to her overall power by buffing Frostbolt and Cone of Cold.”
Kael'Thas
- Basic Attack damage reduced from 87 (+4% per level) to 65 (+4% per level)
- Arcane Barrier (Talent)
- Shield amount decreased from 200% to 150%
- Duration reduced from 6 to 4 seconds
- Gravity Lapse (E)
- Stun duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.0 seconds
- Phoenix (R)
- Cooldown increased from 40 to 60 seconds
- Pyroblast (R)
- Damage increased from 730 (+4% per level) to 810 (+5% per level)
- Cooldown increased from 50 to 100 seconds
”Kael’thas is a powerful hero with too few downsides. We’re nerfing several aspects of his kit, and are still planning a Talent overhaul coming soon™”
Nova
- Snipe (Q)
- Damage increased from 268 (+4% per level) to 295 (+4% per level)
- Snipe Master (Talent)
- Damage bonus increased from 5% to 12% per stack
- Maximum stack bonus increased from 50% to 60%
”While we are happy with the variety of Talent options Nova has after the rework, her overall damage is too low. We like Snipe Master, and it encourages a different playstyle, but a single miss resets a ton of progress toward the Talent’s reward. With these changes, players will get more out of Snipe Master without having to rebuild so many stacks after a miss. We’ve heard a lot of community feedback and suggestions about not removing stacks as long as your Snipe hits something. We’ve discussed this, but feel that even if Snipe misses the intended target, it still hits something the majority of the time. By making this Talent sharp, with an obvious downside, it allows us to crank up the tuning and really celebrate flawless Nova play.”
Thrall
- Basic Attack damage reduced from 173 (+4% per level) to 165 (+4% per level)
- Sundering (R)
- Cooldown increased from 70 to 80 seconds
”Thrall sits near the top of our win charts, so we feel that small nerfs to his damage and most-picked Heroic Ability are necessary. We expect this to only slightly nudge Thrall down, as we’re otherwise happy with how he is currently being played.”
Rehgar
- Ghost Wolf (Trait) (D)
- Basic Attack damage bonus reduced from 100% to 75%
- Lightning Shield (W)
- Damage reduced from 36 (+4% per level) to 30 (+4% per level)
”Rehgar’s new Talents have opened up a number of different strategies and builds, which has been exciting to see. We like this more aggressive playstyle, but noticed that the majority of Lightning Shield Talents are now clear winners. Focusing nerfs primarily on Lightning Shield’s damage will help to reduce Rehgar’s win rate and open up even more Talent options.”
Diablo
- Fire Stomp (W)
- Fire Devil (Talent)
- Damage reduced from 23 (+4% per level) to 17 (+4% per level)
- Fire Devil (Talent)
”Diablo has hovered near the top of our win rate charts for a while. We wanted to see how the Tyrande nerfs would impact him first, as we know those characters have very strong synergy together. We haven’t seen much of a dip in Diablo’s win rate, so we’re targeting a ‘must pick’ Talent with this nerf.”
On top of these changes, Greymane's Gilnean Cocktail was also fixed so that it no longer occasionally deals double damage. This means that Greymane will once again be allowed in Enter the Storm, and his level 1 talent Perfect Aim is also now allowed in the Spring Championship Qualifiers yet again.
With quite significant changes coming to the Nexus yet again, and with the timing of the patch being less than ideal (right in the middle of the third Spring Championship Qualifiers for NA), responses on Twitter were quite diverse:
The patch notes can also be found on the Heroes of the Storm site here.
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