General

Special Event Quest: Two Heads are Better than One

• Players who don’t own Cho’gall can permanently unlock the two-headed ogre by completing a brand new Special Event Quest!
  • Win 2 Games as Cho or Gall while partied with a player who owns Cho’gall to permanently unlock the Hero.
  • Those who do not own Cho’gall may only complete this Quest once. However, they can still help as many other players unlock the hero as they wish.
• PTR Note: While elements of this quest may appear on the Test Realm, quest progress will not count toward the reward until this patch arrives to the live version of Heroes of the Storm next week.  

New Hero: Probius

Since his activation, Probius has always wanted to prove himself. He may be small, but he made a big difference by warping in a critical pylon during the retaking of Aiur. As the bravest of probes, Probius is eager to fulfill his purpose in the Nexus. 

Mount

• Worker Rush (Z)
  • Activate to gain an additional 60% Movement Speed for 5 seconds. Taking damage ends this effect early.
  • Passive: Probius moves 10% faster by hovering over the ground.

Trait

• Warp In Pylon (D)
  • Warp in a Pylon that generates a Power Field and grants vision of the surrounding area. Probius regenerates Mana rapidly while inside the Power Field.
  • Up to 2 Pylons can exist at once.

Basic Abilities

• Disruption Pulse (Q)
  • Fire a burst of energy forward, dealing damage to all enemies it passes through.
  • Firing through the center of a Warp Rift will cause it to explode, dealing additional damage to enemies in an area.
• Warp Rift (W)
  • Open an unstable Warp Rift at the target location that takes 1.25 seconds to arm and then slows enemies within its area of effect by 20%. Lasts 9 seconds.
  • Armed Warp Rifts explode when hit by a Disruption Pulse, dealing damage to nearby enemies.
• Photon Cannon (E)
  • Warp in a Photon Cannon that attacks enemies within its radius once per second. Lasts 11 seconds.
  • Must be placed within a Pylon’s Power Field. Existing Photon Cannons will deactivate if they are no longer powered by a Pylon.

Heroic Abilities

• Pylon Overcharge (R)
  • For the next 10 seconds, Pylon Power Fields increase in size and Pylons will attack enemies within them.
  • Passive: Pylons gain a permanent Shields equal to 50% of their maximum Health.
• Null Gate (R)
  • Project a barrier of negative energy in the target direction that lasts 4 seconds. Enemies who touch the barrier take damage and are slowed by 80% for as long as they remain in contact with it. 

Art

General

• Ability Power debuff effects will now display an effect on Hero health bars. 

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• The following Heroes have received updated icon art to coincide with their reworks:
  • Cho’gall
• The following Heroes, Abilities, and Talents have received updated visual effects:
  • Talent: Cleanse has received updated visual effects
  • Artanis: Basic Attack has received animation adjustments to coincide with his new Basic Attack timing

Shop

PTR Note: Many of the following changes will not take place in the Shop until the Public Test Realm is brought offline and the patch is officially released to the live version of Heroes of the Storm next week.

Bundles

• New Bundles
  • Terran Probius Bundle – Available until March 28, 2017
  • Stars of War Bundle – Available until April 4, 2017
  • Ultimate Stars of War Bundle – Available until April 4, 2017
• Removed Bundles
  • Blades of Destruction Bundle
  • Ultimate Blades of Destruction Bundle

New Hero

• Probius has been added to the in-game Shop

Mounts

• New Mounts
  • Elemental Stag – Awarded for reaching Platinum or above in Hero League or Bronze or above in Team League during Ranked Season 3.
  • Epic Elemental Stag – Awarded for reaching Master League or above in Hero or Team League during Ranked Season 3.
• Returning Mounts
  • Felsaber
  • Spectre Phantom
• Removed Mounts
  • Eye Pad
  • Hellboar

New Skins

• Terran Probius
• Master Probius

User Interface

General

• If a matchmaking queue is interrupted while the Heroes client is minimized, or not the focus window, the player will now be notified in the task bar.
• The color of the ring that appears under the player’s Hero has been changed from yellow to green. 

In-Game User Interface

• General
  • The following stats have been added to the Character Sheet (C):
    • Physical Armor
    • Spell Armor
• Keep an Eye on Allies and Enemies with Party Frames
  • Today’s patch introduces the Party Frames panel to the in-game user interface, which makes a ton of information about your allies and enemies more readily available than ever before.
  • Information displayed to all players:
    • Hero Portrait
    • Respawn Timer
    • Heroic Ability
    • On Fire visual effects
  • Party Frames will display even more information about teammates:
    • Current Health and Mana
    • Heroic Ability Cooldowns
    • Visual effects during Hearthstone channeling
  • The center area of the panel that contains Team Levels, XP, and the game timer, is now more compact and has received additional polish.
    • A Talent tier indicator has been added to each team’s XP bar that blinks on levels that precede the next Talent tier (3, 6, 9, etc.).
    • If one team gains a Talent tier over the other, that team’s level will be engulfed in flames to signify their Talent advantage.
• On Fire Effects Have Returned!
  • The top performing players at any given time during a match will now be considered On Fire, and may be highlighted with fiery visual effects in the in-game user interface:
    • Party Frames: Players who are On Fire will have their Hero Portraits in the Party Frames panel engulfed in fiery visual effects for all to see.
    • Stats Screen: Embers will highlight the individual stats that contribute to a player’s On Fire status in the Stats tab on the in-game Score Screen.
    • Hero Portrait: Players who are On Fire will see their Hero Portrait in the bottom-left catch fire.
  • There are 2 different levels of On Fire effects. The better a player performs compared to all other 9 players in a match, the more intense their flames will become.
  • While only 3 players can be On Fire at any one time, the game is constantly re-evaluating all players in the match.
    • On Fire effects can swap among players regularly based on their current performance.
    • This status will be lost on death, following a period of inactivity, or if another player’s performance surpasses those who are currently On Fire.
• Introducing: The Kill Feed
  • When players score kills a notification will now appear on the left side of the screen along with your team’s kill streak timer.
    • When a player scores additional kills, the Kill Feed notification will stack the portraits of slain enemies and reset the timer.
• Overall In-Game UI Polish
  • Nearly every aspect of the in-game user interface has received an additional level of polish with today’s patch. Some of the most notable changes include:
    • The Hero Portrait in the lower-left corner, as well as Health, Mana, and buff bars, and even Ability hotbars have all received new art.
    • The Stats, Talents, and Death Recap tabs on the in-game Score Screen have received significant visual updates.
    • On-screen Killstreak callouts have received updated visual effects, and will increase in intensity as a player’s takedown count rises.
• You can find more information on the new User Interface changes in our blog.

Design & Gameplay

Body Blocking Improvements

• Improvements have been made to allied body blocking. 

Time-based Scaling

• We now have the ability to scale damage based on game time elapsed, which should help the performance of the game, but also more accurately adjust damage values of certain abilities.
  • We have implemented this on Li Ming’s Arcane Orb & Tyrande's Sentinel and will continue to look for other use-cases.

Hero Descriptions

• Several Heroes have received new descriptions in the Hero Select screen.

Battlegrounds

Heroes Brawl

• Bloodlust Brawl
  • The hero selection pool has been curated to favor non-spell caster heroes since they benefit less from the Bloodlust Buff
• Mage Wars
  • Weekly Brawl quest completion criteria reduced from Play 3 Games to Play 2 Games
• Silver City
  • Now uses Shuffle Pick for hero selection instead of All Random

Developer Comment:  : With the release of Single Lane Brawls, we've always wanted to try various forms of Hero selection to create interesting gameplay. We know there are avid fans of the completely Random Hero selection (aka ARAM), so that's how we initially released these Brawls. However, over time, we've also received feedback that a truly Random Hero selection can lead to widely imbalanced team comps, which can contribute towards a frustrating play experience. For example, we've seen some matches where one team has 4 Warriors and is unable to effectively fight against a heavy Assassin comp. Combined with the potential of longer games, we think Shuffle Pick may offer your team a better play experience by applying some balance options through Role and Hero Selection. As always, our endeavor is to create the best gameplay experiences for our players so please continue to provide feedback to us whether this change improved your Brawl experience or not.

• Waygate Usage Consistency
  • The use of Waygates across all relevant maps (Towers of Doom, Haunted Mines, Blackheart's Revenge) has been unified with a common ruleset:
    • Channels will not be interrupted by taking "normal" damage
    • Channels will be interrupted by Abilities such as stuns and knockbacks
    • Waygates can now be channeled while mounted

Heroes

Assassin

Gall

• Abilities
  • Shadowflame (Q)
    • Damage reduced from 147 to 118
  • Dread Orb (W)
    • Radius reduced from 2 to 1.6
    • Damage reduced from 148 to 119
  • Runic Blast (E)
    • No longer destroys Cho’s Rune Bomb on activation
    • Damage reduced from 274 to 221
  • Twisting Nether (R)
    • Damage reduced from 415 to 353
  • Shadowbolt Volley (R)
    • Damage reduced from 103 to 82
  • Hurry Up Oaf! (Z)
    • Removed
  • New Trait: Ogre Rage (D)
    • While active Gall deals 25% more damage.
    • 5 Second cooldown.
    • Effect is removed if Cho activates Ogre Hide.
• Talents
  • Level 1
    • Spurred Onward (Z)
      • Removed
    • Shove (Active)
      • Moved to (Z)
        • Cooldown increased from 20 to 30 seconds
        • Now also grants Cho 25% move speed for 2 seconds after using
    • Eye of Kilrogg (Active)
      • Moved to Level 1
        • Charges reduced from 4 to 2
        • Cast range reduced from 16 to 12
    • New Talent: Keep Moving! (Z)
      • Increase the Move Speed duration of Shove by .5 seconds.
      • While active, Basic Attacks from Cho increase the duration of the Movement Speed bonus by an additional 1 second.
    • New Talent: Taskmaster (Z)
      • Reduces the cooldown of Shove by 10 seconds
      • Basic Attacks by Cho reduce the cooldown of Shove by 1 second.
    • New Talent: We See You! (1)
      • Reduces the cooldown of Eye of Kilrogg by 15 seconds
      • Increases the cast range of Eye of Kilrogg by 33%
  • Level 4
    • Bomb’s Away (E)
      • New functionality:
        • Quest: Damaging an enemy Hero with Runic Blast permanently increases its damage by 5.
        • Reward: After damaging 20 enemy Heroes, increase the range and speed of Rune Bomb by 20%.
    • Runic Persistence (E)
      • New functionality:
        • Detonating Runic Blast leaves a damaging field on the ground, dealing 180 damage over 3 seconds.
    • Double Back (W)
      • New functionality:
        • The third bounce of Dread Bomb deals 100% bonus damage to non-Heroic units. You can activate Dread Bomb again to reverse the last bounce.
  • Level 7
    • Edge of Madness (Q)
      • New functionality:
        • Every subsequent hit of Shadowflame on an enemy Hero deals 8% more damage, up to a 40% bonus. These bonuses are lost after 4 seconds.
    • Double Trouble (Q)
      • New functionality:
        • Quest: Hitting enemy Heroes affected by Consuming Blaze with Shadowflame lowers the cooldown of Shadowflame by 1 second.
        • Reward: After doing this 20 times, permanently lower the cooldown of Shadowflame by 1 second.
    • Dark Descent (E)
      • Removed
    • New Talent: Ogre Rampage (Trait)
      • Gall’s Basic Abilities cooldown 75% faster for 5 seconds after Cho activates Ogre Hide.
  • Level 13
    • Rising Dread (W)
      • New functionality:
        • Increase the size and damage of each Dread Orb bounce by 25%.
    • Speed of Twilight (W)
      • Removed
    • Dread Shield (W)
      • Removed
    • New Talent: Searing Shadows (Q)
      • Shadowflame deals additional damage equal to 2% of a Heroes’ Maximum Health.
  • Level 16
    • Twilight Nova (W)
      • Moved to Level 13
    • Giant Scorcher (Q)
      • Removed
    • Shadowflare (Q)
      • Removed
    • New Talent: Shadowsnare (Q)
      • Shadowflame slows enemy Heroes by 10% for 4 seconds. This effect can stack up to 3 times.
    • New Talent: Leaden Orb (W)
      • Enemies hit by Dread Orb are stunned for .5 seconds.
    • New Talent: Deafening Blast (E)
      • Enemy Heroes hit by Runic Blast are silenced for 1.25 seconds.
  • Level 20
    • The Nether Calls (R)
      • Removed
    • Psychotic Break (Passive)
      • New functionality:
        • When Cho dies, you gain the effects of Ogre Rage and can continue casting Basic Abilities for 10 seconds.
    • New Talent: Shifting Nether (R)
      • Twisting Nether can now teleport Cho a short distance before it begins casting.
    • New Talent: The Will of Gall (Trait)
      • Takedowns permanently increase the damage bonus of Ogre Rage by 2%.  

Developer Comment: When we were first told about the new event “Two Heads are Better Than One”, we immediately set to work on giving Cho’gall’s talent trees a much needed face-lift. A lot of our Warriors were getting Armor updates in this patch and originally Cho’gall was no exception. After playing with a generic form of it internally, we realized we had a once-in-a-Nexus opportunity to do something very different and seized the moment. The foundation of the Cho’gall rework revolves around their new Traits, Ogre Hide and Ogre Rage, which are the keys to success with the Hero. The potential of Cho’gall should be greater than ever, but you will have to make sure both heads are working together in order to maximize your damage output while keeping yourself alive long enough to keep doing it.

• (!) indicates a Questing Talent.
• Italic text indicates a NEW Talent.
• Bold text indicates a MOVED Talent.

Illidan

Abilities

• Metamorphosis (R)
  • Will now clamp the cast to the maximum range of the Ability

Kerrigan

Abilities

• Summon Ultralisk (R)
  • Cooldown increased from 70 to 80 seconds
  • Cooldown now also counts down while the Ultralisk is alive

Raynor

Abilities

• Raynor's Raiders (R)
  • Health increased from 639 to 766
  • Damage increased from 27 to 31

Zul'jin

Talents

• Level 1
  • You Want Axe? (Q)
    • The buff tracker (located next to the portrait) now shows a specific number for Heroes hit, and how many hits are required to complete the Quest reward

Multi-class

Varian

Abilities

• Taunt (R)
  • Health gain reduced from +60% to +40%
  • Now also grants 15 Armor

Talents

• Level 13
  • Banner of Ironforge (Active)
    • Armor granted reduced from 25 to 20

Specialist

Azmodan

Abilities

• Demonic Invasion (R)
  • Casting Demonic Invasion will now remove/clear minions lingering from the previous cast

Talents

• Level 1
  • Taste for Blood (Q)
    • Killing a Hero with Globe of Annihilation will now increase its damage by 10

Gazlowe

Abilities

• New Ability: Focus Turrets! (1)
  • Activate Focus Turrets! to order nearby Turrets to focus a specific enemy. 1 second cooldown.
• Rock-it! Turret (Q)
  • Vision range increased by 1
  • Damage decreased from 68 to 62
• Deth Lazor (W)
  • Can now be channeled indefinitely.
  • Can now be cancelled with a full refund by right-clicking.
•  Xplodium Charge (E)
  • Increase cast range from 6.5 to 10
• Robo-Goblin (R)
  • Removed functionality:
    • No longer grants Focus Turrets!
    • No longer grants PvE bonus damage
  • New functionality:
    • Now grants 100% Basic Attack damage.
    • New active:
      • Activate to gain 30 Armor and 30 Movement Speed for 4 seconds. 60 second cooldown.

Talents

• Level 1
  • Regeneration Master (Passive)
    • Removed
  • New talent: Goblin Repairs (Passive)
    • Quest: Gather regeneration globe to permanently gain +1 health per second, up to a maximum of 25
    • Reward: Gain an additional 15 health per second
• Level 4
  • Mercenary Lord (Passive)
    • Removed
  • New talent: Hired Goons (Passive)
    • Non-boss mercenaries near you do 50% more damage. Your turrets gain 50 Armor from Mercs and Minions, taking 50% reduced damage from them.
  • Clockwerk Steamfists (Q)
    • Duration bonus per attack decreased from 2 to 1.5 seconds
• Level 7
  • Engine Gunk (Q)
    • Slow amount from 25 to 20%
  • Rock-it Turret XL (Q)
    • Search arc increased from 65° to 80°
  • Hyperfocus Coils (W)
    • Added functionality:
      • Also lowers the Mana cost of Deth Lazor by 50%
• Level 13
  • Turret Storage (Q)
    • Moved to Level 16
  • EZ PZ Dimensional Ripper (W)
    • Slow increased from 40 to 50%
  • X-Tra Large Bombs (E)
    • No longer increases cast range
    • Added functionality:
      • Whenever Gazlowe is stunned or rooted, he drops a Xplodium charge at his feet.
• Level 16
  • Goblin Fusion (W)
    • Moved to Level 13
  • Superior Schematics (Q)
    • New functionality:
      • Nearby Turrets gain 25% additional range
        • These stay that way until you leave the new longer range             
• Level 20
  • Mecha-lord (R)
    • Grants 25 Armor
    • Increases Basic Attack damage by an additional 100%
  • Firin’ Mah Lazors (W)
    • Lazor centerpoints now track mouse cursor (Like Li Ming’s Magic Missiles)

Developer Comment: I’m not exactly sure where this Goblin keeps getting the hoards of gold he needs to bribe the Design team, but sure enough he has done it again. The changes to him started off as quality-of-life fixes but eventually evolved into something of a minor rework. Overall, we tried to even out the power level of a couple talent tiers (including his Heroics), while bringing in a swash of baseline changes in order to make him feel a bit more user-friendly. We realize his win rate is above average in certain MMR brackets (and game modes) and that this may be viewed as a substantial buff to him. However, we felt it was important to bring these changes to our players and are prepared to act quickly if any tweaks are needed.

• (!) indicates a Questing Talent.
• Italic text indicates a NEW Talent.
• Bold text indicates a MOVED Talent.