Balance Update for February 17th, 2016
by JR Cook - 8 years ago show comments
It’s Wednesday, which means another round of Balance Updates.
Earlier this year, Blizzard promised to update the game more regularly and they have kept that promise by releasing a balance update or a full patch each of the last six weeks. At the center of this week’s changes is Li-Ming.
At first glance the changes appear to be quite heavy handed. Several of her primary talent choices including Astral Presence, Diamond Skin, and Tal Rasha’s Elements have been significantly nerfed, or in the case of Ess of Johan completely removed. Triumvirate did receive a slight buff and may become the go to pick now that Ess of Johan is no longer an option. The scaling bonus on her Magic Missiles ability has also been reduced to 3% per level, which will make this ability less strong in the late game. According to the Developer Comments, these changes were made in an attempt to emphasize what should be her core weaknesses, mana tension and fragility. It remains to be seen where she will fit into the meta after all of these changes, but expect to see quite a few people jump off the Li-Ming bandwagon.
Rehgar, another popular Hero at the moment, also received a nerf, but it was fairly minor. His Rising Storm talent will now provide a 10% damage bonus per stack, up to a maximum of 20 stacks.
Anub’arak has had his survivability improved thanks to an increase in the amount of shield provided by his Hardened Carapace talent.
Stitches received a slight nerf to the cooldown reduction from his Last Bite talent, which was providing too much benefit in certain situations.
As always, continue scrolling down to read the official balance update in full.
We’ve just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm that applies a few Hero and Talent balance changes. Check out the patch notes below.
HEROES
| ASSASSIN | SUPPORT | WARRIOR |
|---|---|---|
| Li-Ming | Rehgar | Anub’arak |
| Stitches |
ASSASSIN
LI-MING
- Astral Presence (Talent)
- Mana Regeneration bonus now only triggers while below 25% Mana, rather than 50%
- Diamond Skin (Talent)
- Shield amount decreased from 25% to 20% of maximum Health
- Tal Rasha’s Elements (Talent)
- Ability Power bonus decreased from 20% to 10%
- Magic Missiles (Q)
- Damage reduced from 147 (+3.5% per level) to 147 (+3% per level)
- Arcane Orb (W)
- Ess of Johan (Talent) removed
- Triumvirate (Talent)
- Distance traveled requirement reduced from 80% to 65% of maximum distance
Developer Comments: Li-Ming is a little too strong right now. Her ability to deal incredible damage is awesome, it was just happening too often, too easily. We’ve nerfed Astral Presence and Diamond Skin to preserve a couple of her core weaknesses: Mana tension and fragility. We’ve also removed Ess of Johan, because we found that it made landing Magic Missiles too easy. While we know that a lot of players really enjoy Ess of Johan, we think that it will be better for Li-Ming in the long run to preserve her high skill cap.
SUPPORT
REHGAR
- Lightning Shield (W)
- Rising Storm (Talent)
- Damage bonus reduced from 20% to 10% per stack
- Maximum stacks increased from 10 to 20
- Rising Storm (Talent)
Developer Comments: Rehgar is still doing too much damage with his Lightning Shield. We like the high potential for damage output in this Talent, as chasing the dream is fun! However, we found that Rehgar players were reaching high damage values too fast, and reaching maximum stacks early became the rule rather than the exception.
WARRIOR
ANUB’ARAK
- Hardened Carapace (W)
- Shield amount increased from 242 (+4% per level) to 260 (+4% per level)
Developer Comments: Anub’arak’s survivability is a little low right now, though not by much. We think that increasing it by buffing his low cooldown Shield helps him feel unique, and will give him a slight nudge toward becoming another enticing Warrior option at all levels of play.
STITCHES
- Devour (E)
- Last Bite (Talent)
- Cooldown reduction on kill decreased from 15 to 12 seconds
- Last Bite (Talent)
Developer Comments: We started to notice a few situations where Stitches, after selecting Last Bite, would feel nigh unkillable when fighting near Minion waves or around Battleground Events that featured lots of small Monsters, like Infernal Shrines. We think this smaller nerf will embrace those situations without allowing them get out of control.
