Thrall

Thrall : Standard Thrall Build (Live) Rolling Thunder Increases Chain Lightning's range by 30% and attacking enemies recently hit by Chain Lightning restores 10 Mana. Ride The Lightning Chain Lightning can hit 2 additional enemies for 50% damage. Follow Through After using an ability, your next Basic Attack within 6 seconds deals 40% additional damage. Earthquake Summon a massive Earthquake that pulses every 2 seconds. Each pulse slows all enemies in the area by 50%, and deals 290 damage to enemy Heroes. Does 3 pulses. Giant Killer Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes deal bonus damage equal to 1.5% of the Hero's maximum Health. Tempest Fury The final strike of Windfury hits 3 times for 75% normal damage. Bolt of the Storm Activate to teleport to a nearby location.

Sustain Changes

31.4

21

29.66

22.25

29.66

33.375

Talent Analysis

Echo of the Elements

Crash Lightning

Rolling Thunder

Feral Resilience

Frostwolf Pack

Mana Tide

Follow Through

Maelstrom Weapon

Ancestral Wrath

Frostwolf's Grace:

Grace of Air

Spirit Shield:

Alpha Wolf

Tempest Fury

Thunderstorm

Malfurion

Sustain Changes:

Treant (Mr. Broccoli)

PTR Patch Notes: http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20812213/heroes-of-the-storm-ptr-notes-june-5-2017-6-5-2017Hi there, ChaosOS again. Today we're looking at the changes to Thrall and Malfurion in the most recent set of PTR patch notes, so let's dive right in. As a note, all numbers are using the base "Level 0" values. All data used in today's post can be found in the following spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YkSMCzsIGqhigp-tn5Iim4WioZzSvLDKVZs3_1yA-O4/edit?usp=sharing Sustain nerfed, otherwise buffedI mistakenly had Thrall's base damage at 180 instead of 165. Furthermore, I missed that Chain Lightning is bugged on the PTR and has a cooldown of 7 seconds instead of the listed 8. This doesn't change my conclusions too much but is a factor.As a comparison we will be using the following as our "Standard Thrall Build":Thrall got a few changes, so let's break them down in a few categories. First, we have his passive sustain provided by basic Q spam. Second, we have his sustain in a committed fight. Third, we have comparisons between his new 7, 13, and 16 tiers.Scenario 1 (Passive Sustain): These are the relevant changes to Thrall's basic sustain pattern of casting Q on cooldown at the enemy hero in a 1v1 lane, with all bounces bouncing to either the creep wave or structures.Cooldown increased from 6 to 8 secondsNumber of bounces increased from 2 to 3Range of bounces decreased from 7 to 5Mana cost increased from 40 to 45Heal amount decreased from 314 to 210To put in ratio terms, cooldown went up 33% (Casts over extended periods went down 25%), and passive procs per cast went up 33%, cancelling out. Mana consumption went down about 15% (Mana cost change mitigated by cooldown change) from 6.66 per second to 5.625 per second. Finally, healing per passive proc went down 33%.So, for a Thrall with no talents spamming Q at people, if we assume a base level of competency where the Thrall benefits from all bounces of chain lightning hitting a target his sustain has gone down from an effective (314*3/5/6)=HP per second (scaling at 4% per level) to (210*4/5/8)=HP per second. DPS on the enemy hero in a solo lane goes down from (178/6)=to (178/8)=(a 25% decrease). Assuming all bounces hit the minion wave, DPS to the minion wave goes from (178*2/2/6)=to (178*3/2/8)=Now let's factor in talents. On live, Thrall can get a rebate of up to 30 mana per cast from rolling thunder, and at level 4 Thrall's sustain here improves by 66% from the two additional bounces (in addition to increasing the potential rebate to 50 mana per cast). On PTR, two talents are quest talents that take a while to complete and as such can be ignored, as our analysis focuses on early level sustain for 1v1 laning scenarios. However, if we still take rolling thunder at level 1, this will increase our sustain from chain lightning spam by 25%, to 26.25 health per second, while also providing the increased range and potential mana rebate of up to 50. As for level 4 talents, the block on Feral Resilience helps with all-in scenarios, while Frostwolf Pack as a questing talent is unlikely to be ready for the early game and buffs an ability that is used for all-ins. Mana Tide will give 20 mana and reduce the CD of chain lightning by .5 seconds per proc of frostwolf resilience, boosting health sustain and DPS by 6.66% and giving 2.133 mana per second (2.66 with rolling thunder)Further notes on this: The increased cooldown accompanied with increased bounces per cast means that if you are denied the extra bounces your sustain is nerfed even more. However, if your opponent is only available for 1 or 2 casts per wave in such a way that the increased cooldown is not particularly relevant, then the new chain lightning will not be as nerfed.For this model we are assuming a 5 second engagement window. This only allows for 1 cast of each of Thrall's abilities, but does have the opportunity to weave in auto attacks.Live: Chain Lightning enemy, Feral Spirit them, Windfury, then 2 more autoattacks.Total damage: (178+153+5*165)=1156 damage.Passive stacks: 3 from chain lightning (5 at level 4), 1+N from Feral Spirit, 3 from Windfury=7+N. Currently on live you maximise your passive stacks if the wolf runs through the entire minion wave before impacting your opponent, as the wolf does grant stacks for each minion it passes through but will not grant stacks for any minions behind your opponent. Every 5 stacks will heal for 314. If we add in later talents windfury grants 5 stacks, increasing the the total to 9+N, and ultimates add X, where X is how many enemies you hit with sunder or earthquake.PTR: Damage remains the samePassive stacks: 4 from chain lightning (5 if rolling thunder), 1+N from Feral Spirit, 3 from Windfury=8+N. N is where the Feral Spirit change is interesting. With the feral spirit change so long as your opponent is in line with the minion wave, no matter how close, you will get those extra stacks of Frostwolf Resilience. However, the value of the stacks is reduced to 210 per stack, so the net healing is assuredly worse. Talent-wise there's more in the new Thrall that affect his passive generation. Echo of the Elements gives you two charges of Chain Lightning, meaning 4 more stacks of your passive. Frostwolf Pack remains outside my chosen window of 5 seconds, but can help you get more opportunities to engage once the quest is complete. Mana Tide does not give enough cooldown reduction to be relevant in my chosen 5 second window but again can help you if the fight extends longer. At level 7 Ancestral Wrath can provide a seperate source of healing (More on that below). At level 13 the whole tier helps defensively, but Frostwolf's Grace and Grace of Air can provide their own full passive proc. Finally the level 16 windfury talent still gives additional stacks, as can the new level 20 wind rush.Thrall's in-fight sustain should remain mostly similar in terms of how many passive stacks he's generating, but the nerf to the heal amount from Frostwolf Resilience will be more noticeable.If we assume that chain lightning cooldown should be 7 seconds instead of 8, that is a 12.5% boost to Thrall's passive sustain while a mostly negligible change to his in-fight power.Thrall's talents were buffed from the currently anemic and uninspiring talent tree to a modern one full of quests.Each of these talents offers something completely different.will provide more procs of Frostwolf Resilience in fights by giving you a second cast of Chain Lightning.provides a bonus to indirect hits and increases the reliability of your Q, making it a strong choice for additional poke harass. Finallyis the current standard and has gained the benefits of the current level 4 talent, making it the optimal choice if you're looking to sustain.The physical armor granted byis not to be underestimated, as it gives you block stacks exactly when you want them most during an engagement. Furthermore, in a 1v1 scenario you can have 2 stacks of block from feral resilience, engage and get both charges used, then use feral spirit to get two more charges. How good is a block charge? That's a very complicated question I'm going to leave for some later article, but suffice to say it's quite good in many solo lane matchups. For a more offensive take,gives a strong quest reward by halving the cooldown of Feral Spirit to 6 seconds. This talent has strong synergy with a level 16 talent we'll look at later, Alpha Wolf, but even on its own you're getting the opportunity to reuse a strong passive stack generator multiple times in a fight. Finally,can give a lot of cooldown reduction and synergizes well with the later windfury talents while keeping up your mana pool if you chose Crash Lightning at level 1, foregoing the mana management of the other two talents. In a regular fight later in the game you're looking at somewhere between 3 and 5 full procs of your passive, translating to 1.5 to 2.5 seconds off all your basic ability cooldowns. If we average this out to a 2 second reduction then we're looking at cooldowns of 6, 10, and 10 seconds for QWE respectively.This is one of those designated "Damage tiers" where all the talents provide damage in a slightly different way. Because of this similarity, our analysis can be more thorough.: The current choice and only level 7 talent to survive from Live to the PTR, with Thrall's base damage of 165 Follow Through provides 66 bonus damage per instance. In an ideal fight you get 4 procs for QWE and R, while real usage will vary due to fights being long enough for a second rotation while you may not get to use every proc of follow through.: This talent is weird and hard to evaluate. Much of the strength of the talent has clearly been put in the movespeed bonuses, as 40% windfury plus 15% base movespeed bonus is nothing to sneeze at. The value of the damage bonus varies based on level (The other talents naturally scale, Maelstrom Weapon stacks do not) and how many auto attacks you think you will be able to work into an engagement. In a typical 5 hit combo with the windfury talent (Windfury+2 hits after) at 16 you do 625% of your AA damage, so with 40 bonus damage you deal an additional 250 damage. At level 16 follow through deals ~123 damage per proc, so unless I'm vastly underestimating how easy this quest is to stack it's safe to say that this is purely the anti-kite talent. Note on stacking: This talent stacks from all autoattacks made in the 4 second window of the MS buff, so if you use it while in melee range you can get 5, 6, or even 8 stacks with the level 16 triple hit talent.: For the per-character calculations look to the spreadsheet. Just from a quick glance at the spreadsheet it's evident that Ancestral Wrath provides a lot of value and is stronger than follow through in any fight it is available just from the damage it provides, let alone the healing. The better question is how often it is available. 8 stacks of frostwolf resilience is 40 hits on enemies with your spells, which honestly is unlikely to happen in any but the most ideal or drawn out fights. As to availability from skirmish to skirmish, any minion wave can provide 7 spell hits with a feral spirit down the line, and chain lightning gives 4 or 5 stacks per cast. The most passive is getting 4 bounces off of chain lightnings, which will restore use in (8*8*5/4)=80 seconds, comparable to blood for blood. In an idealized scenario with multi-hit wolves and appropriate level 13 talents you could get Ancestral Wrath back off of your second windfury, within 10-15 seconds. One downside is that unlike the other talents present here, Ancestral Wrath does not help your PvE dps. Additionally, Ancestral Wrath scales with your opponents levels, not your own, so if you are behind/ahead on levels the relative value will change for characters near thresholds.Credits to McIntyre's stream ( https://www.twitch.tv/mcintyrelol ) last night where I was able to ask him about these talents and get some better feedback on the use pattern of follow through. Follow Through has an advantage in laning (Which happens on maps such as Dragon Shire or Braxis Holdout) for when Thrall is in the solo lane, as he can easily get more procs of follow through to enhance his harass patterns than Ancestral Wrath could ever provide. However, Follow Through's damage can be mitigated by block and other sources of physical armor. In these scenarios the number of follow through procs you need to compete with Ancestral Wrath is simply too high relative to the teamfight and all-in power of Ancestral Wrath.If you are solo laning and your opponent does not have physical armor pick, otherwise I would chooseAll 3 talents here provide additional healing and defensive options.A free passive proc on a 15 second cooldown that heals you for 315 (+4% per level), this does synergize with the level 4 Mana Tide by giving back 20 mana and reducing your cooldowns by .5 seconds.: Doubling the stacks of your passive granted by Windfury, in a isolation this only gives 3/5 of a passive proc. If you get the level 16 windfury talent this potentially is equivalent to a full passive proc, but only actually pulls ahead of Frostwolf's Grace at level 20 when comboed with both the last hit is a triple hit and Wind Rush's free Windfury.Thrall's special version of spell shield, this one has a lower duration and longer cooldown but can be reduced by activating his trait. Given that you'll be missing the other two talents at this tier that give more passive stacks, I find it unlikely you'll be getting 6 procs in a fight to bring it down to a potentially relevant 15 seconds. I'd really only suggest this talent if your opponents are heavy on burst (EG Nova, Chromie, KT) and you need to not get popped.pulls ahead by a mile unless you're going full windfury build, even then Grace of Air won't pull ahead until level 20 (by which point most games are decided). Spell Shield is more situational than even regular spell shield.Another tier dedicated to more damage: A very strong talent, Alpha Wolf increases the root duration of Feral Spirit by 50% (1->1.5) and gives an improved giant killer for 3 seconds. The 3 second duration allows for 4 attacks using windfury. Thrall's attack CD with windfury is .55 and 1.1 without, so the attacks go root-> attack 1 at 0s -> attack 2 at .55s -> attack 3 at 1.1s -> attack 4 at 2.2s. This totals to 12% of the target's maximum HP, making Thrall quite the tank buster if combined with Ancestral Wrath at 7. If you are in melee range as you windfury you can melee->windfury to squeeze in a fifth attack for 15% damage, but many teamfights require you to windfury in so you won't get the fifth hit. As for the CC, if combined with the CD reduction on Frostwolf Pack at 4 you can root your foes 1.5s out of every 6, making Thrall truly inescapable.: The current choice and sole level 16 talent to survive from Live to PTR, Tempest Fury makes the final hit of windfury do an additional 125% damage and give an additional 2 (4 with Grace of Air) stacks of Frostwolf Resilience. This translates to 225 extra damage.: Providing a slow that becomes quite potent so long as you alternate your Chain Lightning targets, the 25% damage boost is mostly a consolation prize so you don't fall too far behind (46.5 damage). I would pick this talent because I'm looking for the additional CC and didn't take Frostwolf Pack at 4.Baseline Feral Spirit and Windfury have the same cooldown, so without Frostwolf Pack at 4 you're looking at 206.25 damage (scaling) vs. 12% of your target's HP every 12 seconds. The break even point for this is 1718.75 HP. If you picked Maelstrom weapon at level 1 this threshold goes up based on the number of stacks you have accumulated. For reference Rexxar, Misha, and Thrall are just above this threshold, while Gul'dan, Malfurion, and Kerrigan are just below.If you're looking purely to blow squishy backliners up I would go the windfury build and pick Tempest Fury, but in most situations the Feral Spirit talents look stronger so I would pick. If you pick Frostwolf Pack at 4 Alpha Wolf blows Tempest Fury out of the water. Thunderstroke just seems to lack enough damage to be relevant, even with the level 1 talents.Thus, my recommended buildRolling Thunder (Other talents may also be viable, each is too different to easily compare)Frostwolf PackAncestral WrathPreferenceFrostwolf's GraceAlpha WolfPreference (Both ult upgrades look quite strong now, while4 changes are relevant hereMana cost reduced from 20 to 15Mana cost increased from 40 to 45Heal over time ticks reduced from 31 to 28Passive Mana Regen functionality removedFor the last change and details see the spreadsheet, but for most of the game the mana regen nerf ranges from 25% to 18% (Effect is reduced as levels are gained).(Passive Sustain)Regrowth is used on cooldown, each time on a different target so the HPS is maximisedLive HPS: (150/5 seconds + 31 HOT * 3 targets) = 123 HPSLive MPS: (40/5 seconds) = 8 mana per secondPTR HPS: (150/5 seconds + 28 HOT * 3 targets) = 114 HPSPTR MPS: (45/5 seconds) = 9 mana per second.Overall not a big nerf but it is one.(Minor skirmish mana usage)Assuming all spells are used on cooldown for 5 seconds, we are assuming 1 cast of regrowth, 2 casts of Moonfire, and 1 cast of entangling roots.Live: (40+20*2+75)=155 manaPTR: (45+15*2+75)=150 manaA very minor change to small skirmishesHealing change for spamming regrowth on 1 target:Live: (150+31*5)/5= 61 HPSPTR: (150+28*5)/5=58 HPSA relatively minor nerf to his direct HPS when trying to focus heal a target.(Extended fight)Live: (8 Regrowth + 6.66 Moonfire + 5.35 Entangling Roots) approximates to 20 mana per second consumedPTR: (9 Regrowth + 5 Moonfire + 5.35 Entangling Roots) is 19.35 mana per second consumed.A small buff that is mostly subsumed by the loss of mana regen on twilight dream.Malf's mana sustain is worse, but if you were actively moonfiring the nerf is not as noticeable (You will still go through mana quickly).From the spreadsheet, the Treant is pretty majorly buffed. For most of the game you need to root one person per two levels gained to make up for the lack of damage scaling on the treant, which means anything above that is a significant increase in the treant's damage output. However, the treant still has shitty HP and will be prioritized by structures, so don't expect the treant to solo carry you in Hero League.While what I calculated above show to be a minor nerf, the major loss for Malfurion was cleanse. In place of it he can pick up a 30% healing reduction on targets hit by entangling roots, a spammable slow on moonfire, or a 45% damage boost to moonfire. Given how powerful cleanse is, I would rate these changes a considerable nerf to Malfurion, which is not entirely undeserved.