GMarshal Profile Blog Joined March 2010 United States 21994 Posts #1 by Oxygen "Hell, it’s about damn time!"



It’s finally here, folks! One of the most anticipated patches to date, bringing with it the attractive, Blizzcon-teased, Jaina Proudmoore – our first real "mage/damage dealer" hero – as well as a plethora of balance and quality of life changes. This short article, first of a series, will cover part of the patch notes and seek to provide an almost objective analysis of their ramifications in regards to game balance. Let us dive right into it!





Hearthstone A flat amount of Health and Mana are now restored after using Hearthstone to return to the Hall of Storms.



These changes were aimed towards speeding up the very early stages of the game, where long downtime could translate into a swift (and detrimental) snowball effect. This concern was especially relevant with the latest changes to forts and towers experience yields, where unattended lanes can quickly grant a sizable lead. It has been reflected through both the game’s design and in developer communications that Blizzard did not wish for a poor early game performance to spell doom for an entire match, and this change all but reaffirms their stance.



It should be noted that this does very little to impact the later stages, simply because we’re talking about a small flat amount of health and mana here: All in all, we’re looking at shaving off approximately 10 seconds of early downtime, and a measly 2 seconds later on.





Town Halls

No longer contain all of a town’s experience points. While Town Halls retain a majority of the experience, the surrounding towers protecting the town now yield experience as well.



Despite the recent emergence of the aptly-named "Abathur-Azmodan-cancer-push", the early laning phase had, for non-pathological team compositions, devolved into a state of "stay mounted up and soak experience as safely as possible". This new feature does well to incentivize pushing through more easily accessible tower experience.





Cursed Hollow Tribute channeling time reduced from 7 to 6 seconds



Tribute fights had a tendency to degenerate into a state of who can interrupt the other for the longest amount of time without actually committing to a fight, and as such, this change should do a good job of promoting a more… active game play.





Dragon Shire The Dragon Knight is no longer targetable by allied Abilities or Talents



It was hard to tell which friendly skills one could and couldn't use on our dragonesque friend. This change does well to solve all inconsistencies by simply preventing all friendly casts. To add to this, certain skills proved to be difficult to balance (notably, Rehgar’s Ancestral Healing and Bloodlust) when used in conjunction with the Dragon Knight; this is no longer an issue.





Garden of Terror Spore Queen’s Curse (Q) radius decreased by 10%



Before this change, securing a Garden Terror would make team fights extremely one-sided, simply due to the fact that it was impossible to walk out of a properly positioned Spore Queen’s Curse cast without using a movement skill of sorts. This grossly punished certain hero picks. The area of effect reduction of the pod was just perfect to reinstate the Terror’s power level within reasonable range.





Haunted Mines • Underground Minions

- Starting Health and Health scaling increased by 20%

• Underground Grave Golem

- Starting Health and Health scaling increased by 20%

• Grave Golem (Summoned)

- Damage scaling decreased by 20%

- Health scaling decreased by 20%



Haunted Mines was widely regarded as the most frustrating map to play on because of its extreme tendency to swing, simply due to how punishing it was to even have one teammate die at the wrong (or right) time. Reducing the speed at which one can gather skulls as well as reducing the golem’s power should make the mechanic a bit less punishing to handle.



Conjurer's Pursuit Now also increases Mana regeneration by 0.5 per second in addition to its other effects



Typically, you want your talents to be able to pay off instantly. Conjurer’s Pursuit did not only take a while to get in gear, but could also be denied growth in situations where it was made impossible to collect health orbs. This is no longer the case, thanks to this change.





Imposing Presence Attack speed slow amount increased from 30% to 50%



Anub’arak, Diablo, ETC, Muradin, Sonya and Stitches will solidify their niche role as basic damage dealer disruptors, whereas Azmodan and Uther will become nearly unkillable in their support role when juxtaposed with their healthy… health pools. Now an excellent choice.





Promote • Now heals the target to full Health

• Now has a 15 second duration

• Charge cooldowns have been reduced from 60 to 30 seconds



Promote’s power came from its ability to passively and safely create a lane push advantage. This change completely negates this by requiring players to have already pushed their lanes to fully benefit from the effects of the ability. This is on top of the fact that it doesn't last nearly as long (15 seconds vs. until killed) as before. It is hard to justify the use this anymore despite the halved cooldown. The fact that it now heals its target is also trivial: the old version of the talent, providing a 300% health increase, basically healed anything it was used on to 75% of its life total anyway. No longer going to be used.





Resurgence of the Storm Cooldown increased from 120 to 180 seconds



Allowing one to effectively trade one for one without spending 60 seconds reviving in an end game situation left other choices in the dust; this nerf was therefore warranted. It should be noted that it was stated that the talent was still being internally reviewed. It is likely that we will see more changes, if not the outright removal of Resurgence in the near future.





Rewind • Now refreshes all Basic Ability cooldowns rather than reducing them by 10 seconds

• Cooldown increased from 60 to 90 seconds



Heroes with high impact skills, such as crowd control and burst damage or healing benefit a lot from Rewind. On the other hand, heroes with short cooldowns or over-time effects (Malfurion, Nazeebo) will find the choice highly underwhelming. With the patch, two heroes, Anub’arak and Nova, lost Rewind as a potential talent choice for the reasons stated above. The new feature of fully recharging cooldowns, as opposed to only shaving off 10 seconds is a definite buff to the skill, but at the same time, the longer cooldown makes it a lot more punishing to misuse. Rewind will remain a top pick for Falstad, solid for Brightwing, Kerrigan and Tyrande, and completely underused for everyone else.



Stay tuned for part 2, which will cover hero-specific changes

It’s finally here, folks! One of the most anticipated patches to date, bringing with it the attractive, Blizzcon-teased, Jaina Proudmoore – our first real "mage/damage dealer" hero – as well as a plethora of balance and quality of life changes. This short article, first of a series, will cover part of the patch notes and seek to provide an almost objective analysis of their ramifications in regards to game balance. Let us dive right into it!These changes were aimed towards speeding up the very early stages of the game, where long downtime could translate into a swift (and detrimental) snowball effect. This concern was especially relevant with the latest changes to forts and towers experience yields, where unattended lanes can quickly grant a sizable lead. It has been reflected through both the game’s design and in developer communications that Blizzard did not wish for a poor early game performance to spell doom for an entire match, and this change all but reaffirms their stance.It should be noted that this does very little to impact the later stages, simply because we’re talking about a small flat amount of health and mana here: All in all, we’re looking at shaving off approximately 10 seconds of early downtime, and a measly 2 seconds later on.Despite the recent emergence of the aptly-named "Abathur-Azmodan-cancer-push", the early laning phase had, for non-pathological team compositions, devolved into a state of "stay mounted up and soak experience as safely as possible". This new feature does well to incentivize pushing through more easily accessible tower experience.Tribute fights had a tendency to degenerate into a state of who can interrupt the other for the longest amount of time without actually committing to a fight, and as such, this change should do a good job of promoting a more… active game play.It was hard to tell which friendly skills one could and couldn't use on our dragonesque friend. This change does well to solve all inconsistencies by simply preventing all friendly casts. To add to this, certain skills proved to be difficult to balance (notably, Rehgar’s Ancestral Healing and Bloodlust) when used in conjunction with the Dragon Knight; this is no longer an issue.Before this change, securing a Garden Terror would make team fights extremely one-sided, simply due to the fact that it was impossible to walk out of a properly positioned Spore Queen’s Curse cast without using a movement skill of sorts. This grossly punished certain hero picks. The area of effect reduction of the pod was just perfect to reinstate the Terror’s power level within reasonable range.Haunted Mines was widely regarded as the most frustrating map to play on because of its extreme tendency to swing, simply due to how punishing it was to even have one teammate die at the wrong (or right) time. Reducing the speed at which one can gather skulls as well as reducing the golem’s power should make the mechanic a bit less punishing to handle.Typically, you want your talents to be able to pay off instantly. Conjurer’s Pursuit did not only take a while to get in gear, but could also be denied growth in situations where it was made impossible to collect health orbs. This is no longer the case, thanks to this change.Anub’arak, Diablo, ETC, Muradin, Sonya and Stitches will solidify their niche role as basic damage dealer disruptors, whereas Azmodan and Uther will become nearly unkillable in their support role when juxtaposed with their healthy… health pools. Now an excellent choice.Promote’s power came from its ability to passively and safely create a lane push advantage. This change completely negates this by requiring players to have already pushed their lanes to fully benefit from the effects of the ability. This is on top of the fact that it doesn't last nearly as long (15 seconds vs. until killed) as before. It is hard to justify the use this anymore despite the halved cooldown. The fact that it now heals its target is also trivial: the old version of the talent, providing a 300% health increase, basically healed anything it was used on to 75% of its life total anyway. No longer going to be used.Allowing one to effectively trade one for one without spending 60 seconds reviving in an end game situation left other choices in the dust; this nerf was therefore warranted. It should be noted that it was stated that the talent was still being internally reviewed. It is likely that we will see more changes, if not the outright removal of Resurgence in the near future.Heroes with high impact skills, such as crowd control and burst damage or healing benefit a lot from Rewind. On the other hand, heroes with short cooldowns or over-time effects (Malfurion, Nazeebo) will find the choice highly underwhelming. With the patch, two heroes, Anub’arak and Nova, lost Rewind as a potential talent choice for the reasons stated above. The new feature of fully recharging cooldowns, as opposed to only shaving off 10 seconds is a definite buff to the skill, but at the same time, the longer cooldown makes it a lot more punishing to misuse. Rewind will remain a top pick for Falstad, solid for Brightwing, Kerrigan and Tyrande, and completely underused for everyone else.Stay tuned for part 2, which will cover hero-specific changes Moderator "life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery" The measure of a terrible day is when you go to bed thinking "man, I wish the zombie apocalypse would start already"