(Note: We will be relesing separate impressions on Sylvannas and the new Battleground)
1. Battlegrounds were nerfed AND buffed
It's strange to think of map nerfs, but for Haunted Mines and Sky Temple, that's exactly what Blizzard did. Haunted Mines was given the biggest change with a nerf to both the initial health of the golem, and the power of high skull-count to low skull-count golems. Sky Temple saw a simple 10% reduction in temple damage. On the flipside, Blizzard slightly buffed the player controlled Dragon Knight and Garden Terror, a good change to help teams utilize those characters.
Essentially Blizzard has lowered the penalty of timing-based objectives. The Mines only open at certain times, and the penalty of one team getting significantly fewer skulls than the other team is reduced. Same thing for Sky Temple. These were also good changes. Too often teams would lose a team fight before the objectives opened and were severely punished as a result. It encourages teams to not be as timid before objectives open.
2. Uther is a new hero (and not in a good way)
Uther, one of the most popular hero picks, was given a rather massive nerf in the patch. The major change was to his combat trait being completely retooled, but the changes to his talents also hurt him. We'll start with his combat trait. They've re-worked his old passive; he remains on the battleground for 10 seconds but without his set of abilities, he now pops a low cooldown heal when in Eternal Devotion form. This is a significant change to Uther.
The original trait was probably too strong, but the new trait is near useless. The heal has a low cooldown (1.5 seconds) but it's an insignificant amount and as Uther only remains for 10 seconds, you have to spam it with little consideration to who. As someone who has written about Uther's value as a high single target healer (shameless plug here) this is particularly painful.
And then, his heal and nuke ranges were reduced, and the level 20 ultimate talents were both nerfed. His talents were re-organized but in a negative way. The only positive change is his new (sweet) Level 20 talent, but if it's to make up for his new combat trait, it leaves much to be desired.
(And of course all Stitches players can commiserate with his newest downward nerfdom)
3. New interface and Money for all!
Wow, when I first went into the game, it took me a second to figure out where to go. Blizzard has changed the interface, adding a slick new background and re-organizing the different menus. It looks good and makes for an easier experience. A wealth of graphical and glitch clean-ups should help produce a smoother product.
But really, people care about is Gold. And lots of gold was released. 2,000 gold was released at every 5 level increments from 20 to 40. It's 10,000 more gold: basically a free hero... except Sylvanas. Listed at 15,000 gold there was a slight inflation of hero prices. Hopefully this won't be a recurring theme.
