Greetings Raiders, Tinkerers, Harbingers, and Wardens,

We’ve got some balance updates and bug fixes for your enjoyment over the holiday.

GAME INSTALLATION

https://us.battle.net/account/download/

Ensure you are logged in, and browse to Classic Games

Download and run the Reign of Chaos or The Frozen Throne installers

Enter your legacy keys or login to Battle.net if you own Reforged

BUG FIXES

Damage mitigated by Hardened Skin will now correctly be reduced to 3 at a minimum, up from 1

The second pulse from the Taunt ability will no longer fire if the Mountain Giant is dead or affected by ability disabling effects

BALANCE UPDATES

Hero Balance Changes

Keeper of the Grove

Entangling Roots

Cast range decreased from 800 to 600

Developer Notes

Entangling Roots is of high utility to the Keeper’s kit. This change is intended to add a bit more risk to its use without reducing its effectiveness. The spell now has the same range as the Keepers auto attack, which should increase the opportunity for counterplay.

Alchemist

Acid Bomb

Level 1: Decrease primary damage from 8 to 6 per second (Total damage 120 to 90; Secondary damage 5 to 4 per second)

Level 2: Decrease primary damage from 13 to 11 per second (Total damage 195 to 165; Secondary damage 8.5 to 7 per second)

Level 3: Decrease primary damage from 18 to 17 per second (Total damage 270 to 255; Secondary damage 12 to 11 per second)

Developer Notes

Alchemist provides awesome AoE healing, has high hit points, is powerful enough to pick off units, and debuffs opponents effectively. Heroes generally shouldn’t check every box for potential roles… Reducing Acid Bomb’s single target damage better focuses him in a support role - recent tweaks to Healing Spray cemented him as a great alternative healer for any race, and those effects have been positive to gameplay.

Human Balance Changes

Defend

Piercing damage reduction increased from 50% to 65%. The in game tooltip will show this as 50% damage taken to 35%.

Developer Notes

There has been a drop off in the use of Defend after changes with the 1.30 balance update. This change is intended to restore usage. Its original behavior relied on RNG rather than a flat damage modifier. We anticipate there may need to be adjustments to the percentage, so we will be keeping an active eye on how the new Defend performs.

Night Elf Balance Changes

Mountain Giant

Base Stats

Food cost increased from 6 to 7

Cargo size increased from 2 to 4

Developer Notes

Mountain Giants are imposing, disruptive, heavy tanks with great siege potential. That potential becomes absolute in large packs. They were never intended to be a massed unit. Increasing food cost will make adding additional giants past the first few cut more heavily into a player’s army makeup as well as push them into higher upkeep faster. Additionally by increasing cargo size they will match the Siege Engine, a fellow high durability siege damage unit.

Glaive Thrower

Vorpal Glaive

Developer Notes

The Vorpal Glaive upgrade has been bugged for some time:

The main target of the Glaive Thrower always takes full damage

The area of effect from the Glaives changes from a circle into a line

Glaives can kill trees

The main target takes full damage, as if the projectile were a homing shot, but the Glaive doesn’t follow said target. Instead it hits the ground like it missed, and does line damage where it impacts. If we fix Vorpal Glaive to adhere to reduced damage of siege weapons to units, then researching the upgrade feels like a nerf when it exchanges radial damage for line damage.

We want to address these issues by having the projectile correctly track and impact the main target of the Glaive Thrower. This embraces a distinctive behavior from other siege weapons, helping with our goal of pushing each race to have their own identity. We hope to have Glaives tracking their targets and ready for the next balance patch – though the updates are not included in this PTR.