by JR Cook - 6 years ago     show comments

This panel was made up of four guests Andrew Kinabrew senior 3D artist, Matt Villers Senior game Designer, Kent-Erik Hagman Lead Hero Designer, and Alex Neyman Live Game Designer. They opened the panel by discussing the newly announced heroes Hanzo and Alexstrasza. The opened up by talking about Alexstraza’s origin story and showed off some of her concept art. They also talked about a new Turn Tech that will be implemented upon Alexstraza’s arrival that will allow for more realistic and fluid looking movement when changing directions.

They then moved onto her basic abilities. Her Q, Gift of Life, shares health with allies. The strength of the heal will scale higher the healthier Alexstraza is.

Her W, Abundance, will be her main source of self-sustain. It is a powerful area of effect heal designed to give her a chance to keep the power of her Q strong.

Her E, Flame Buffet, will burn enemies repeatedly. Its a single line skill shot that leaves the target on fire for a low amount of damage but it has a short cooldown and if you hit someone again that is already on fire the damage ramps up significantly and applies a powerful slow effect.

Her trait(D), Dragonqueen, allows her to transform into a dragon.  It will empower her health, damage, and healing. Her Gift of Life will become Breath of Life with a higher healing output and no health cost.  Her Abundance becomes Preservation healing a larger area for a higher amount. Her Flame Buffet is replaced with Wing Buffet which allows her to flap her wings to push her enemies away.

Her first heroic(R) Life-Bider was inspired by her Hearthstone card. After you cast it on an allied hero and after a short delay it sets both heroes health totals to whoever had the highest health.

Her second Heroic Ability(R) is Cleansing Flame which reigns fire down from the sky. The fires that reign down will deal damage to enemies and heal allies. She will float up into the sky off screen and you will get a target cursor displaying ammo and the amount of time you have left in the sky. Once the timer runs out Alexstraza will return to the map wherever the cursor is placed allowing for some strategic map positioning.

The panel then switched focus to the other hero coming to the nexus soon, Hanzo.  They talked for a bit about the character design and making sure that the character felt like he was fulfilling the expectations players would have when using Hanzo. They then moved onto the abilities

His Q, Storm Bow, is a charged move. Hanzo can move while charging Storm Bow allowing for some dynamic play.

His W, Scatter Arrow, will employ a new ricochet technology that will allow the arrows fired to bounce off of walls.

E Sonic Arrow, Trait(D) Natural Agility, Heroic 1(R) Dragonstrike, and Heroic 2(R) Dragon’s Arrow were shown in a graphic but not discussed in detail

Alex then came up to discuss changes to heroes currently in the game. The first topic was the changes to stealth. They are going to make stealth heroes easier to see in an effort to make the reward less about an eye test for the enemies and more in line with the character’s fantasy.

Nova’s snipe master will be moved to a baseline talent and she will have +15% movement speed while in stealth mode. They are also adding an activatable ability that allows her to instantly stealth again.

Valeera will have her disabling openers enhanced to have more strength. They also added a short-range teleport behind her targets that will activate if she remains in stealth for 3 seconds on all of her vanish abilities.

Samuro will be able to swap images with his D button and there will be no more random placement when he uses his clones. The illusions will do less damage and that damage taken from them was put into the non-clone version of Samuro to compensate.

Zeratul will have vorpal blade baselined and his heroic Shadow Assault will be replaced with a brand new heroic called Might of the Nerazim. Might of the Narazim will have a short cooldown of about 15 seconds and when activated it will replicate your last ability used.

The coming changes to stealth and the brand new heroes promise us some exciting changes to the Nexus.