Heroes of the Storm tournaments can finally use an in-game draft! Also, let's find out what this new Armor is.
Zul'Jin
Trait: Berserker
Active: Activate to increase Zul'jin's Basic Attack damage by 25%, but consume 2% maximum health per attack
Passive: Zul'jin attacks 1% faster for every 1% of maximum health missing
Q: Grievous Throw
Zul'jin throws an axe forward, dealing damage to the first two enemies hit and marking them for 8 seconds. Marked enemies take 50% bonus damage from Zul'jin's next 3 basic attacks against them.
W: Twin Cleave
Zul'jin throws two axes in a circular arc, dealing damage and slowing affected enemies by 15% per axe for 2 seconds
E: Regeneration
Zul'jin channels to regenerate 25% of his maximum hitpoints over 4 seconds. Moving or taking damage during this time interrupts the effect.
R1: Taz'dingo
Zul'jin cannot be reduced below 1 health for the next 4 seconds (unkillable)
R2: Guillotine
Zul'jin throws a massive guillotine into the sky that crashes down on enemies in the targeted area. The lower Zul'jin's health, the more damage Guillotine deals.
Tournament Draft Mode
Finally, an in-game draft mode for competitive play!
- All pick and ban timers are set to 60 seconds
- FCFS (First Come First Served) Pick Order, and Mid Bans (Similar to Team League)
- After Pick/Ban Phase is complete, there will be a 20 second Swap Round (players can freely swap heroes with their teammates)
Armor/Damage Mitigation
Blizzard talked about these upcoming changes earlier in this post.
To summarize, all damage mitigation/amplification effects stack additively now - if a hero has Hardened Shield active while affected by a cold embrace Shadow Dagger and Tyrande's Hunter Mark, he has 75%-25%-25%=25% damage resistance. Blizzard plans to add some baseline damage mitigation to some heroes as an additional balancing tool. This baseline damage mitigation will apparently be called armor. 10 armor means 10% damage resistance. Armor can also be either physical or spell varieties - for example, 25 spell armor means 25% damage resistance vs. ability damage while 25 physical armor means 25% damage resistance vs. auto attacks.
Other Notable Changes
Haunted Mines
Grave Golem Attack damage has been increased at all stages of the game. Considering Mercenaries were often better than the Golem, this is good news.
Raynor
Raynor's Hyperion bugs have been fixed. Hooray!
Greymane
Greymane has 10 armor in Worgen Form.
Azmodan
Can now move at 40% movement speed while channelling All Shall Burn. The initial cast range has been reduced by 7% but the tether range has been increased by 6%.
Sylvanas
Paralysis has been removed.
She has a new level 1 talent called Dreadful Wake, which makes her haunting wave disable enemy structures and minions hit for 7 seconds. This will also restore 5 mana per minion hit.
This is probably a good change, as Paralysis certainly amplified her oppressive pushing power on certain maps.
Anub'arak
Anub'arak has 25 spell armor now.
Health reduced from 2226 to 2003 (remember, this scales at 4% per level)
Baseline health regeneration reduced from 4.64 to 4.17
Guess Anub'arak is meant to be great versus mages and not so good versus anything else.
Arthas
Now has 15 physical armor
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