If you haven't kept up to date on Heroes of the Storm, here's everything important from last week!
Despite once being strong contenders in North America, eLevate has been in the shadows for some time now, not being able to find much success in spring qualifiers or the second North American Enter the Storm. After failing again to qualify for the Summer Regional, the players of eLevate have decided to call it quits.
After a disappointing loss to Gale Force eSports in the second qualifier, four players from Team Blaze’s roster registered with Panda Global for the 3rd and final qualifier of the Summer Regionals. Teams have been shuffling their cards in the North American region as they all want a spot in the Summer Global Championship. Psalm remains as the only player left from the previous Panda Global roster.
The Tracer Spotlight shows just how powerful the new hero will be, but she also might be the hardest to date. She brings a unique kit to the game, unlike anything we've seen so far. She has abilities that let her blink around the battlefield, recall to a previous point in time and melee an enemy hero. Instead of mana she uses an ammo mechanic with her trait being Reload. Unlike every other hero, her ultimate is available from level one and charges as she auto attacks. At level 10 she gets the ability to customize her ultimate. She's joining the nexus Tuesday for fans who have pre-ordered Overwatch: Origins edition and the following Tuesday, April 26th for everyone.
The China gold series started this week and the list of participating teams is bulging with quality. The who's who of Chinese teams are all competing, and leading the way is eStar. Also in the mix (seemingly out of place) is the Korean master team, MVP BLack, still running hot with an undefeated win streak of 23 wins in a row. eStar and MVP Black are the clear favorites in Group A and the first day of matches only cemented this belief.
While Illidan has received changes to make him strong again, Li Ming has been too powerful since her release, but thankfully this patch takes steps toward bringing the two in line with the rest of the cast. Li Ming's Teleport options have been made less appealing, and her ability to clear waves efficiently has taken a hit with 10 seconds added to the cooldown of Disintegration Ray. Illidan was given more options, but as the changes made him difficult to kill his sustain has been toned down.
Tychus and Kael'thas also received a range of talent changes in the prior patch, and here they're given more attention. Even though he had many more options to play with, the problem that Kael'that ran into was that he was easy to dive and kill. In this patch, he has been given more power, with increased base damage numbers and more health to help him survive. Tychus got similar treatment, with base health buffs as well as an increase to his Minigun damage, in order to hone in on him being a tank shredder.
Arizona State University won Heroes of the Dorm in a dominating fashion, not losing a single game throughout the tournament. The students have won free college tuition, and some now even have hopes of becoming pro players. As for the games themselves? It was a total stomp. Team ASU outmatched every team in so many ways and the games weren't ever close. Save for one decision at the end of game three that only appeared dangerous (but actually wasn't) there is no real value in talking about the matches and how ASU won.
