GMarshal Profile Blog Joined March 2010 United States 21994 Posts Last Edited: 2014-12-30 21:13:07 #1 by Oxygen





Abathur • Toxic Nest (W) - Vile Nest (Talent)

- Slow duration increased from 2 to 4 seconds

- Slow amount reduced from 50% to 40%

• Ultimate Evolution (R)

- Cooldown no longer starts immediately after casting, and instead begins once the cloned

Hero expires or is killed.

- Ultimate Evolution now properly applies a 15 second cool-up, rather than 30 seconds, to

Heroic Abilities learned after Ultimate Evolution is cast.



The small buffs to Toxic Nest - aimed at improving Abathur's out-of-ultimate power - are completely overshadowed by the massive changes to Ultimate Evolution and Promote. In a case where one managed to keep a cloned hero alive for the skill's entire duration, we're looking at a flat increase of 45 (!) seconds on the ultimate skill's cooldown. This opens up a very large window of opportunity - much larger than before - to make plays while Abathur is at his weakest. The evolution master should continue to be a niche pick in the larger maps (Blackheart's Bay & Garden of Terror), if not simply for the fact that these games tend to go on for longer, thus opening up more raw opportunities for clone use.





Anub'arak

• Imposing Presence (Talent) has been added to Anub’arak.

• Rewind (Talent) has been removed from Anub’arak.

• Harden Carapace (W)

- Shield amount reduced from 120 (+30 per level) to 90 (+22 per level)

• Locust Swarm (R)

- Heal per tick reduced from 10 (+2 per level) to 10 (+1.5 per level)



Internal data, as well as publicly available data, showed Anub'arak's win/loss ratio to be the current highest in the game, sitting at around 60% across all player levels. This is not to say that these numbers should be entirely relied upon to change characters, but the Crypt Lord was quite the dominating force. Harden Carapace's shielding amount, reduced by an overall 20%, should keep his survivability in line with that of other tanks. It is unclear if the 25% reduction to Locust Swarm's scaling will actually be noticeable. The most notable change, however, was the removal of Rewind. This talent, it seems, is just causing problems all around, and was especially apparent on the crowd control train that was Anub'arak... but this is of no concern anymore. This change alone has made both competitive and casual teams very reluctant to pick our Nerubian friend. Whether this is a knee jerk reaction or legitimate has yet to be established. Who knows, Imposing Presence may breathe new life into him.





Arthas • Frozen Tempest (E)

- Mana cost increased from 10 per second to 12 per second



Arthas has been considered a top-tier pick ever since his rework, with his pick/ban rate hardly ever dipping below... 100%. This change is therefore the most surprising of all because it hardly does anything to significantly alter Arthas' strength: if mana was not an issue for the Lich King before the patch, then this measly increase to Tempest's cost will not change a thing. This is leading me to believe that Blizzard has something else down the pipeline..





Azmodan • Bound Minion (Talent)

- Now heals the target to full Health

- Now has a 15 second duration





This talent change puts Bound Minion in line with Promote. The former remains a strong pick, however, if not simply for its ability to apply map-wide pressure. Azmodan was indirectly nerfed with Abathur's own nerfs, and as such, it is not surprising to see so few changes for him.





Chen • Wandering Keg (R)

- No longer grants a Shield



Given that the American scene has not seen any kind of "barrelboys" play, it is unclear what to make out of this. Blizzard must know something that we don't! In effect, this change should mean that this ultimate choice should no longer be interrupted by breaking the shield (given that it no longer exists); this makes it potentially stronger in situations where more control was needed. On the flip side, it just provides less survivability than it used to. Has Wandering Keg been experimented enough with?





Illidan • Sweeping Strike (W)

- Basic Attack damage bonus increased from 25% to 35%

• Immolation (Talent)

- Duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds

- Damage reduced from 17 (+3 per level) to 13 (+2.5 per level)



Illidan is making a competitive comeback. A small increase to Sweeping Strike's damage bonus promotes aggressive use of the skill, whereas this rather strange change to Immolation reduces its "burst" damage but improves its overall damage, to be dealt over a longer duration. Already a strong contender for this talent tier, Immolation might just become the go-to choice now.



Li Li • Healing Brew (Q)

- Initial heal decreased from 100 to 70

- Heal scaling increased from 13 to 20

• Jug of 1,000 Cups (R)

- Cooldown decreased from 70 to 60 seconds

- Heal scaling increased from 3 to 4

- Initial heal increased from 25 to 35

- Search range increased to 10



Li Li has been a balance roller coaster ever since her release due to the very simple nature of her skills; she either just seems too good to skip or unplayable. Before this patch, Li Li was in her "down" cycle; however, these changes are too little to have her see any serious competitive play. It's probably time for our devs to embrace the redesign they've been alluding to.





Muradin • Second Wind (Trait)

- Threshold for improved Health regeneration increased from 30% to 40% Health

• Third Wind (Talent)

- Threshold for improved Health regeneration increased from 40% to 50% Health

• Stoneform (Talent)

- Heal amount increased from 40% to 50% of Muradin’s Health

- Potential bug: Muradin's base Health regeneration increased from 2.1 to 21



The resurgence of Muradin players as of late certainly is not due to the meek improvements to Second Wind, but rather, to the godlike decimal mistake (ten times the intended amount, from 2.1 to 21 (!)) to his health regeneration. This is surely interesting because he actually feels like he's in a viable state - which goes to say a lot about his pre-patch state. If the regeneration is to go, he'll need more than what we see here.





Nazeebo • Voodoo Ritual (Trait) - Death Ritual (Talent)

- Units other than lane Minions no longer grant permanent Health/Mana when killed while under the effects of Voodoo Ritual.

- Permanent Health/Mana gains increased from 4/2 to 5/3



An interesting yet necessary change that is aiming to normalize Nazeebo's stats growth. Prior to this, certain units which were not intended to provide Ritual stacks (notably, summons) could cause his health and mana to bloom disproportionately. An unfortunate side effect of this change, however, is that Nazeebo will now feel punished for gathering skulls on the Haunted Mines map.





Nova • Booster Shot has been renamed to Perfect Shot

• Hot Shots (Talent)

- Has been renamed to Anti-Armor Shells

- Damage bonus reduced from 330% to 300%

• Rewind (Talent) has been removed from Nova

• Snipe (Q)

- Damage reduced from 120 (+34 per level) to 115 (+31 per level)



And may she rest in peace, for we shall ourselves. The removal of Rewind is a colossal blow (albeit deserved) to her burst. The competitive scene has had a knee jerk reaction with her pick rate plummeting towards that of Murky, but as with all nerfs, she'll need a bit of time to, hopefully, be rediscovered.





Sonya • Whirlwind (E)

- Lifesteal amount increased from 30% to 40%

• Leap (R)

- Cooldown increased from 50 to 70 seconds



Since Sonya has not seen serious play since last July, this severe Leap nerf is perplexing. It was announced, however, that she was on top the redesign list, so, this might have something to do with this. The increased Lifesteal is insignificant at best.





Stitches • Vile Gas (Trait)

- Damage per second decreased from 14 (+2 per level) to 10 (+2 per level)



Our damage-charts-topping-tank is getting a small nerf to the early game damage of his strongest skill. Not much to say here; this is reasonable, and should not affect his picking rate in any way.





Tassadar • Basic Attack - Distortion Beam (Talent)

- Slow amount reduced from 25% to 20%

• Oracle (Trait)

- Duration reduced from 7 to 5 seconds

• Mental Acuity (Talent)

- Now reduces cooldown by 15 seconds, up from 10

• Scryer (Talent)

- Movement Speed bonus increased from 15% to 20%

• Psionic Storm (W)

- Cast range reduced from 10 to 9

• Overload (Talent)

- No longer increases Psionic Storm damage

- Now increases Psionic Storm cast range by 33%

• Psi-Infusion (Talent)

- Mana restored increased from 5 to 7 per target struck by Psionic Storm

• Static Charge (Talent)

- Critical Strike damage reduced from 100% to 75% of Tassadar’s Basic Attack damage

• Second Strike (Talent)

- Time between casts reduced from 3 to 2 seconds

• Void Shift (E) - Deep Shift (Talent)

- Duration increased from 0.75 to 1.5 seconds

• Prescience (Talent)

- Effect cooldown reduced from 60 to 45 seconds

• Archon (R)

- Duration reduced from 15 to 12 seconds



Tassadar is being shifted back to his support role, with sweeping nerfs to all of his basic attack modifiers as well as Psi-Storm's damage. Already hard to kill pre-patch, however, some of his defensive talent choices are to even further improve his survivability! Additionally, his stealth detection has been buffed, in that it has the potential of becoming better on a relatively weak talent tier; dealing with Oracle every 15 seconds would be very difficult for any stealther.





Tychus Corrected an issue which applied Tychus’ attack speed scaling to his Odin form



While this translates to a reduction in Odin damage potential, we're not sure of the full extent of the change. Regardless, Tychus remains a top tier pick"





Tyrael Judgment (R)

- Damage reduced from 125 (+10 per level) to 60 (+8 per level)



The blows to Tyrael's damage just keep on accumulating, with the clear intent of straying away from his bruiseriness. As expected, competitive teams are beginning to shy away from picking him.





Tyrande • Empower (Talent)

- Now instantly reduces cooldowns by 2 seconds, rather than cooling down by 4 seconds over

a 2 second period

• Shadowstalk (R)

- Cooldown increased from 50 to 70 seconds



Shadowstalk's low cooldown left very little room for counterplay whereas Empower could make chained Sentinel casts frustrating to deal with, notably when attempting to capture objectives. Overall, Tyrande's niche of mapwide presence has been reduced. This is in line with other design changes to Abathur and Promote.





Uther • Holy Light (Q)

- Heal amount reduced from 150 (+44 per level) to 135 (+40 per level)

• Holy Radiance (W) - Gathering Radiance (Talent)

- The damage and healing bonuses for each target hit are no longer separate.

- Now increases damage and healing by 5% for each target hit, retaining its previous 50%

maximum.



Despite this small nerf, Uther's burst healing remains the strongest to date. In fact, picking up the newly updated Gathering Radiance talent could make burst healing even stronger with a trade off.





Zagara • Infest (Talent)

- Now heals the target to full Health

- Now has a 15 second duration

• Creep Tumor (Trait)

- Zagara now regenerates a flat 1.5 Health per second while on Creep.

- Reconstitution (Talent) still increases Health regeneration on Creep by 300% (4.5 Health per

second.)



Infest has been put in line with Promote. As for the Creep Tumor trait... this information is actually incorrect. Zagara's health regeneration while on creep actually scales at the rate of 1.5 + (0.3 × hero level). Which also means that Reconstitution doesn't provide an extra 3 Health per second, but rather, an extra 200% of the value stated above. It should be noted that this is on top of Zagara's natural Health regeneration.





Zeratul Zeratul’s Void Prison now pauses, rather than cancels, channeled abilities



For consistency's sake, this change is more than reasonable. Void Prison was probably initially never meant to act as an interrupt.



Bonus Hidden changes!



As a direct response of the very anti-climactic "core defense" metagame that had developed due to the Core's trivial Health pool, we have seen the main structure's Hit points increase substantially, in accordance to the following chart:







(special thanks to Aphoristic for the chart)





What this means is that, in a nutshell, the Core is significantly tougher early on than it was prior to this patch. To put it in perspective, a typical level 10 rush could spell the structure's destruction in approximately 10 seconds, making it very hard to respond to. Today, you'd be looking at the very least doubling that amount of time. This gives your opponent more leeway to react, all while making it nearly impossible to go toe to toe with the Core without the outside help of lane Minions or other game mechanics.



On the Dragon Shire map, the bottom Easy ogre mercenary camp has been replaced with Hard bruisers. It was potentially considered that 6 ogres were too hard to stop, whereas bruisers are easier to attack while on the defensive.



Another very notable change regards "turn rates", the speed at which Heroes can spin on themselves, which have been normalized. While hard to notice on the already nimble character such as Illidan, the heavier guys such as Diablo and Sgt. Hammer definitely have a slicker feel to them.



What a month it's been! Sweeping changes, for the better and for the worse, have reshaped the metagame in an unprecedented manner. Now that the dust has settled, it is time to take a look at hero-specific adjustments.The small buffs to Toxic Nest - aimed at improving Abathur's out-of-ultimate power - are completely overshadowed by the massive changes to Ultimate Evolution and Promote. In a case where one managed to keep a cloned hero alive for the skill's entire duration, we're looking at a flat increase of 45 (!) seconds on the ultimate skill's cooldown. This opens up a very large window of opportunity - much larger than before - to make plays while Abathur is at his weakest. The evolution master should continue to be a niche pick in the larger maps (Blackheart's Bay & Garden of Terror), if not simply for the fact that these games tend to go on for longer, thus opening up more raw opportunities for clone use.Internal data, as well as publicly available data, showed Anub'arak's win/loss ratio to be the current highest in the game, sitting at around 60% across all player levels. This is not to say that these numbers should be entirely relied upon to change characters, but the Crypt Lord was quite the dominating force. Harden Carapace's shielding amount, reduced by an overall 20%, should keep his survivability in line with that of other tanks. It is unclear if the 25% reduction to Locust Swarm's scaling will actually be noticeable. The most notable change, however, was the removal of Rewind. This talent, it seems, is just causing problems all around, and was especially apparent on the crowd control train that was Anub'arak... but this is of no concern anymore. This change alone has made both competitive and casual teams very reluctant to pick our Nerubian friend. Whether this is a knee jerk reaction or legitimate has yet to be established. Who knows, Imposing Presence may breathe new life into him.Arthas has been considered a top-tier pick ever since his rework, with his pick/ban rate hardly ever dipping below... 100%. This change is therefore the most surprising of all because it hardly does anything to significantly alter Arthas' strength: if mana was not an issue for the Lich King before the patch, then this measly increase to Tempest's cost will not change a thing. This is leading me to believe that Blizzard has something else down the pipeline..This talent change puts Bound Minion in line with Promote. The former remains a strong pick, however, if not simply for its ability to apply map-wide pressure. Azmodan was indirectly nerfed with Abathur's own nerfs, and as such, it is not surprising to see so few changes for him.Given that the American scene has not seen any kind of "barrelboys" play, it is unclear what to make out of this. Blizzard must know something that we don't! In effect, this change should mean that this ultimate choice should no longer be interrupted by breaking the shield (given that it no longer exists); this makes it potentially stronger in situations where more control was needed. On the flip side, it just provides less survivability than it used to. Has Wandering Keg been experimented enough with?Illidan is making a competitive comeback. A small increase to Sweeping Strike's damage bonus promotes aggressive use of the skill, whereas this rather strange change to Immolation reduces its "burst" damage but improves its overall damage, to be dealt over a longer duration. Already a strong contender for this talent tier, Immolation might just become the go-to choice now.Li Li has been a balance roller coaster ever since her release due to the very simple nature of her skills; she either just seems too good to skip or unplayable. Before this patch, Li Li was in her "down" cycle; however, these changes are too little to have her see any serious competitive play. It's probably time for our devs to embrace the redesign they've been alluding to.The resurgence of Muradin players as of late certainly is not due to the meek improvements to Second Wind, but rather, to the godlike decimal mistake (ten times the intended amount, from 2.1 to 21 (!)) to his health regeneration. This is surely interesting because he actually feels like he's in a viable state - which goes to say a lot about his pre-patch state. If the regeneration is to go, he'll need more than what we see here.An interesting yet necessary change that is aiming to normalize Nazeebo's stats growth. Prior to this, certain units which were not intended to provide Ritual stacks (notably, summons) could cause his health and mana to bloom disproportionately. An unfortunate side effect of this change, however, is that Nazeebo will now feel punished for gathering skulls on the Haunted Mines map.And may she rest in peace, for we shall ourselves. The removal of Rewind is a colossal blow (albeit deserved) to her burst. The competitive scene has had a knee jerk reaction with her pick rate plummeting towards that of Murky, but as with all nerfs, she'll need a bit of time to, hopefully, be rediscovered.Since Sonya has not seen serious play since last July, this severe Leap nerf is perplexing. It was announced, however, that she was on top the redesign list, so, this might have something to do with this. The increased Lifesteal is insignificant at best.Our damage-charts-topping-tank is getting a small nerf to the early game damage of his strongest skill. Not much to say here; this is reasonable, and should not affect his picking rate in any way.Tassadar is being shifted back to his support role, with sweeping nerfs to all of his basic attack modifiers as well as Psi-Storm's damage. Already hard to kill pre-patch, however, some of his defensive talent choices are to even further improve his survivability! Additionally, his stealth detection has been buffed, in that it has the potential of becoming better on a relatively weak talent tier; dealing with Oracle every 15 seconds would be very difficult for any stealther.While this translates to a reduction in Odin damage potential, we're not sure of the full extent of the change. Regardless, Tychus remains a top tier pick"The blows to Tyrael's damage just keep on accumulating, with the clear intent of straying away from his bruiseriness. As expected, competitive teams are beginning to shy away from picking him.Shadowstalk's low cooldown left very little room for counterplay whereas Empower could make chained Sentinel casts frustrating to deal with, notably when attempting to capture objectives. Overall, Tyrande's niche of mapwide presence has been reduced. This is in line with other design changes to Abathur and Promote.Despite this small nerf, Uther's burst healing remains the strongest to date. In fact, picking up the newly updated Gathering Radiance talent could make burst healing even stronger with a trade off.Infest has been put in line with Promote. As for the Creep Tumor trait... this information is actually incorrect. Zagara's health regeneration while on creep actually scales at the rate of 1.5 + (0.3 × hero level). Which also means that Reconstitution doesn't provide an extra 3 Health per second, but rather, an extra 200% of the value stated above. It should be noted that this is on top of Zagara's natural Health regeneration.For consistency's sake, this change is more than reasonable. Void Prison was probably initially never meant to act as an interrupt.As a direct response of the very anti-climactic "core defense" metagame that had developed due to the Core's trivial Health pool, we have seen the main structure's Hit points increase substantially, in accordance to the following chart:What this means is that, in a nutshell, the Core is significantly tougher early on than it was prior to this patch. To put it in perspective, a typical level 10 rush could spell the structure's destruction in approximately 10 seconds, making it very hard to respond to. Today, you'd be looking at the very least doubling that amount of time. This gives your opponent more leeway to react, all while making it nearly impossible to go toe to toe with the Core without the outside help of lane Minions or other game mechanics.On the Dragon Shire map, the bottom Easy ogre mercenary camp has been replaced with Hard bruisers. It was potentially considered that 6 ogres were too hard to stop, whereas bruisers are easier to attack while on the defensive.Another very notable change regards "turn rates", the speed at which Heroes can spin on themselves, which have been normalized. While hard to notice on the already nimble character such as Illidan, the heavier guys such as Diablo and Sgt. Hammer definitely have a slicker feel to them. 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"