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Heroes10 years agoRadoslav "Nydra" Kolev

Four new heroes announced for Heroes of the Storm. Sylvanas, Kael'Thas coming next

  


 

 

Table of contents
 

Panel and trailers
New heroes

Developer showmatch
New skins
Q&A

 

For the growing fanbase of Heroes of the Storm and for those eagerly expecting Blizzard's MOBA venture, PAX East was a big slice of exciting news. Four new heroes, new features trailer, another dev showmatch and hints for other upcoming developments made for one very interesting panel.

Heroes of the Storm's beta is still far away (we assume since there isn't even a "Soon" from Blizzard) but we're keeping a close eye on the development process nonetheless. Sadly, we couldn't quite make it to PAX East, but a lot of other community sites did, bringing some interesting information back. 

Below is a summary of the entire PAX East for Heroes of the Storm, from the four new heroes to the developer showmatch featuring the previously unseen Zagara, Lili and Brightwing. Images courtesy of Blizzard, Heroes Nexus and BlizzPro.

 

Panel and trailers

 

A total of three trailers were presented at PAX East: one for Kerrigan, a hero already in the alpha, one for Brightwing, an upcoming hero, and a general teaser. The panel up to the dev showmatch can also be found below.
 




 

The new heroes + Brightwing skillset + In development

 

A total of four new heroes were shown on PAX East, three of which were demonstrated during the devleoper showmatch (seen below). 

Lili is described as a new support which has the ability to "effectively aid her teammates throughout the game". Contrary to most supports, Lili's skillset allow her to protect herself well, so no babysitting will be needed.

Dustin Browder's commentary during the developer showmatch painted her as a mix of League of Legends' Lulu and Sona, being a support which has a familiar that shares her attacks and one whose skills do not require targeting but rather activating them to apply their effect in a certain radius.

Zagara, who appears in the Heart of the Swarm campaign, is a new Zerg specialist hero, whose powers allow her to travel across the map through Nydus worms and push lanes with summoned units like banelings or Hydralisks. Fans of the genre will associate her skillset to Dota heroes like Tinker or Furion.

Zagara is the second new hero featured in the developer showmatch where her playstyle is clearly displayed. Spreading creep tumors and conjuring waves of units allowed Zagara to chew through the enemy fortresses and pressure the opposing team into defensive position.

Murky the Murloc is the only new champion that wasn't showcased in the dev showmatch so his skillset is not really well known. According to Blizzard's description, Murky will be a fragile hero that will die a lot but will be able to respawn quickly through an egg he lays somewhere on the map.

His goal will be to eventually overwhelm enemies over multiple battles as he constantly respawns. Although Blizzard has not given details on how said overwhelming will occur, screenshots show hordes of Murlocs on the battlefield, hinting this will be another summoner hero or something similar to Dota's Meepo.

Brightwing the Faerie Dragon - a creature very similar to Dota's own Puck - is another support hero. Brightwing is gifted with the ability to teleport from ally to ally and provide healing or other forms of assistance. Although this describes him as a sort of a cute Abathur, unlike the Zerg engineer Brightwing will actively take participation in the laning phase and not just hide in the base and provide assistance from behind the walls.

Brightwing also has a hex spell, which transforms enemies to animals, similar to Dota's Lion or LoL's Lulu. He trait (passive) allows her to also phase out after taking non-ability damage, further making her similar to Puck. Additionally, Brightwing will also be able two switch between land for and fly form, the latter allowing her to move over any terrain at the cost of some mana per second.

Brightwing is the only hero for which there is some description on what her skills will do exactly. Texts and pictures below courtesy of Heroes Wiki:
 

Faerie Dragon Passive

When Brightwing is damaged by non-ability damage, she phases out of the physical plane for 1 second preventing further non-ability damage.

This effect has a 10 second cooldown.

Mystic Spores

50 Mana
Cooldown: 4 seconds

Allies in an area are healed for 100. Enemies take 60 damage. For 6 seconds, subsequent casts are 50% stronger to a max of 100%.

Land

Orders your Hero to land.

Landing on unpathable terrain will stun you and move you to the nearest pathable area.

Fly

30 Mana

Commands your Hero to fly, allowing them to pass over terrain. Drains 5 mana per second.

 

Three additional heroes were said to also be in development: Chen Stormtout, Sylvanas Windrunner and kael'Thas Sunstrider.

  

 

Developer showmatch

 

 

New skins

 

Pajamathur

Explorer Lili

Harlequin Witch Doctor

Countess Kerrigan

Candy King Murradin

Spectre Illidan

Monarch Brightwing

Ultimate Barbarian

Ultimate Uther

 

 

...and finally Bikini Stitches

 

 

Q&A

 

Q: Is there any opportunity to see Heroes on other platforms, such as mobile or console?

A: We haven’t really worked on that and it could be a lot of work considering we’d have to take controls into account. At one point Kaeo did manage to hook up an Xbox controller to his home computer and play using that.

Q: Balance aside, which hero would you like to see in the game?

A: The hardest heroes for us to do are the really huge ones. We’ve talked about Deathwing as a hero we’d really like to put in, but he’d have to be very big. We’ve found heroes like this to be really challenging to make so far.

Q: Do you think you’ll eventually run out of existing Blizzard characters to use as heroes?

A: Our library of Blizzard characters is pretty massive. We’ve got a very long list of potential heroes that we’d like to implement, and we do want to add many more heroes to the game than are present right now. We’re ready to do more. There may be a few heroes who you might not entirely familiar with if you haven’t played the game they’re from (Stitches from World of Warcraft, for example,) but we can dip into all of our universes to continually create new heroes.

Q: Will there be more high-risk, high-reward Talents added to the game?

A: We’re constantly talking about Talents -- what to add, and what to change. For example, Zagara’s talents are kind of insane right now. One idea, which Matt Cooper proposed, was to double the range of her Baneling ability, and I really hope that one will stick around. We’re continuing to evolve the Talent system to add more customization, more options, and more ways for you to play your favorite heroes how you’d like.

Q: Originally Heroes was going to be part of the StarCraft II Arcade. Is Heroes still based off the StarCraft II Editor, or has it changed?

A: Yes, it’s still based on the StarCraft II Editor, but it has changed a bit. We want to get to a place where we can make the map editor available for Heroes, as well.

Q: With regard to new characters, are there any hopes for seeing heroes from older blizzard games?

A: You mean like Rock N’ Roll Racing, or the Lost Vikings? Yes, we’d definitely love to look into creating Heroes from our older titles. I can’t make any promises right now, but we will certainly work on it.

Q: With so many unique characters and ways to play, how do you balance the game?

A: We get this question a lot. It’s going to be a lot of work for us, but we have a team of balance guys working on this night and day, and we’re pretty confident at the moment. We’re not afraid to admit when we’re wrong, see what the community has to say, and make changes. The editor also lets us make changes on a hero by hero basis. For example, the way Sgt. Hammer roots herself basically attracts skillshots from her enemies. If we need to fix something about that, we can adjust her talents to give her more survivability while she’s sieged up.

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