There has been a lot of conversation about two big changes announced at Blizzcon. The first: structures no longer have ammo, the “lone towers” near each Fort and Keep have been removed and their power (HP, damage, and I assume experience) redistributed to the adjacent buildings. People who have paid careful attention to the design of Volskaya may have seen that one coming. Also all buildings now have True Sight just like the core. The second: regeneration globes now last four seconds, instead of six, for your team only, after which they become neutral regeneration globes that either team can pick up for four seconds.

At first glance these may not seem like big changes, but they are actually the largest changes the game has gotten since the scaling changes in 2015. The scaling changes fundamentally altered the game for nearly all heroes: it changed wave clear timings, merc timings, power spikes, etc. Every map, every hero, everything we knew about the game was impacted in some way.

At the highest levels of play on Heroes of the Storm there is a huge focus on how to lane well. There is an entire vocabulary around it that a huge portion of the playerbase isn’t even aware of. I’m going to cover a few of those terms so we can all be on the same page while I talk about the potential implications of these changes.



Freezing: To maintain the enemy team’s minion wave in a static position, preferably (but not always) on your side of the map, and let the minion vs minion combat happen naturally while you pressure the enemy in lane with you, such that they cannot stay in range and pick up the experience as the minions die. This is the primary way Thrall plays the solo lane, poking and threatening kill pressure while not touching the wave itself.



Wave manipulation: A general category of techniques to alter how minion waves behave in lane. Some well known examples are the 5-man body block at the start of a game to cause minion waves to meet on your side of the map instead of in the middle, specifically NOT killing a Fort on Cursed Hollow during curse to allow a large minion wave to stack up on the far side of the map from your follow up boss call, killing only the ranged minions in a wave as they do the most damage, while the melee minions are left alive to delay your own wave until the next wave shows up to stack a double wave that allows a natural push to happen (usually but not always with a mercenary camp) to increase pressure during objective splits. There are many, many others that are more situational or even hero specific but suffice to say that, at least in pro play, wave manipulation is a huge aspect of winning lanes and that is largely because of the ammo mechanic.



Wave clear and rotations: While most people know these terms, many are not aware of how they interact. Wave clear enables rotations. On Dragon Shire it is approximately eight seconds between when the middle wave meets and the bottom wave meets. It takes a further four to six seconds, depending on semi-random minion aggro, before a minion will naturally die in lane. This means that in order to not miss any soak in a four man rotation, you must be able to clear the wave, mount, and rotate from mid to bottom within twelve seconds at most. If you do not have both the wave clear and the tools to control the “Triangle of Death” and prevent your team from getting dismounted or even killed during the rotation, you cannot do a four man rotation and instead must do some other laning arrangement. Each map has its own timings from lane to lane and can vary by hero for various reasons. If a team ever falls behind in the rotation they will lose soak due to minion tower deaths. This has always been part of the goal of pick compositions which - and this is critical - tended to be low on siege damage so denying experience and draining towers of ammo was critical as part of their win condition. While the missed experience rule still works, perhaps even more so, pick compositions will no longer be able to siege buildings safely eventually just by draining ammo.



Tower safety: Many many heroes are considered specifically strong in the early game because of a strange combination of zone control and wave clear that is balanced by relative fragility. Probius, Zagara, and Rexxar are some prime examples. These heroes essentially fall off so hard in the mid game once walls and forts die that they are not considered largely viable in pro play, with few exceptions. The infinite ammo mechanic will make it much harder to kill towers early on for most compositions, lengthening the periods of strength for these heroes.



The solo lane: Contrary to popular belief, solo laning is not about wave clear. As mentioned, wave clear enables rotations and the solo lane usually does not rotate. Being the solo laner is about managing the minion wave (many wave manipulation techniques apply here) and managing your opponent in the lane. Prior to the changes, the consequence for losing the solo lane was losing experience, ammo, and eventually structures. Both changes directly impact the solo lane: a wave clear hero will now be able to sit at their towers and clear the wave while very little damage is done to structures unless the wave is frozen correctly by the opposing solo laner. Because no ammo is lost there is no subtle, stacking over time advantage to pushing the lane in. Certain heroes, particular Zagara with Volatile Acid at one, will still have the ability to win the lane by direct siege damage from range. Additionally, because of the globe change, ranged heroes who have favorable matchups in the solo lane into melee heroes will be under far more pressure. The melee hero will be able to secure both globes consistently unless the ranged hero steps into the wave, but then they will take some free damage no matter what. This all but eliminates the poke advantage ranged heroes had in trading damage.



Late game rule of thumb: There is a rule of thumb in high level HotS that if your comp wins at 20, you win if you have not lost more than one keep at most. Defensive comps will be far, far stronger with infinite ammo meaning Nazeebo style compositions with level 20 win conditions may end up being even stronger.



There are more things I could go into; I have been told that minions are getting health and damage buffs to compensate for these changes and obviously all of these changes have been promised to us on a longer than average PTR for extensive community testing so I will hold off until we know more, Blizzard always seems to leave things out (Update: side walls now auto die when their towers and gate die. See?). The 2015 scaling changes ended up dramatically improving the game once people had adjusted to them. Currently we have no real reason to believe that this isn’t a similar bold move on Blizzard’s part that will also be an improvement to the game.

The potential downsides - that optimal solo lane play will become largely about freezing lanes or even mounted soaking without ever actively pushing a lane, that it will extend the average game length (which Blizzard has said has not been true in testing), that the changes weakens specific heroes like Xul, Azmodan, Zagara, Chen, Anub’Arak, while buffing other heroes like Thrall, Rexxar, Sonya, Malthael, Abathur (in the early game, his late game push builds are arguably nerfed), The Lost Vikings - will require a lot of testing to confirm. Having spent hundreds of hours observing and testing solo lane match ups, I am confident most of them will be substantially different from what they are now. I don’t know if they will be better or worse, but they will be different.

Given how subtle laning is and how interesting the small advantages you can get from laning well can build up, it is scary for me that Blizzard is making these changes because I can see how we will lose some tactical and strategic depth from the laning phase of the game. This will strongly encourage a more team fight oriented meta, which includes double warrior and double support - something Blizzard has said they are actively trying to discourage. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions without testing the changes so I look forward to PTR coming out soon. I will give everyone an update of my thoughts when that happens, but if you have any interest in the strategic and tactical depth of the laning phase of Heroes of the Storm this is something you as a player should be thinking about as well.