We just released a new patch for Heroes of the Storm, which brings a new Hero, User Interface improvements, balance changes, and much more to the game. Check out the patch notes below.

New Hero: Chromie

Chromie, Keeper of Time, has been added to Heroes of the Storm and is now available for play! Read on for a brief overview of her Abilities.

Trait

• Timewalker
  • You’ve traveled into the future, and as such, will learn your Talents 1 level earlier than your teammates.

Basic Abilities

• Sand Blast (Q)
  • After 1 second, fire a long-range blast that damages the first enemy Hero it hits.
• Dragon’s Breath (W)
  • Fire a blast into the air that lands after 1.5 seconds, dealing damage to enemies in an area. Enemies cannot see where the blast will land.
• Time Trap (E)
  • Place a Time Trap that arms and Stealths after 2 seconds. The first enemy Hero to touch it will be placed into Stasis for 2 seconds. Only 1 Trap can exist at once.

Heroic Abilities

• Slowing Sands (R)
  • Create a swirling vortex of sand which greatly slows enemies caught within its area of effect. The longer Slowing Sands is active, the greater its slow becomes.
• Temporal Loop (R)
  • Target enemy Hero will be teleported 3 seconds back in time to the position they were in when you initially cast Temporal Loop.

System Changes

Hero League Matchmaking

The top few hundred players in the world have extremely high matchmaking ratings (MMR), and the MMR gap between these players and the general population can be dramatic. At times, only a few of these extremely talented players are in the queue waiting for a match. In these cases, a highly-skilled player could previously be matched with several of the best available allies in queue, along with one lower-rated player in order to help balance out the team’s average MMR and find a match more quickly.

A new change has been implemented with today’s patch in which the matchmaking system will prefer to create a game that’s a little less even, using the highest-rated players available, rather than create an even game that includes lesser-skilled players.

In the overwhelming majority of the games it creates, the matchmaking system prefers very even matches. However, in cases like those described above, the matchmaking system will prefer to create games where the high-level player has a slight advantage, but all players are closer in skill, rather than set up a match where the high-level player has to work harder to “carry” a lesser-skilled teammate. In essence, today’s change will help to maintain the overall fairness and integrity of the league over the fairness of that specific match. Additionally, this should only occur after a relatively lengthy wait in the Hero League queue.

Art

General

• The Specialist role icon has received updated artwork to better reflect Specialists as masters of unconventional warfare.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Many Heroes have received updated Ability and Talent button art.
• The Dragon Knight and Garden Terror have received updated Ability button art.
• Heroes with unique Mount Abilities have received updated Mount button art.
  • Abathur – Deep Tunnel
  • Brightwing – Phase Shift
  • Dehaka – Brushstalker
  • Falstad – Flight
  • Gall – Hurry Up, Oaf!
  • Lunara – Dryad’s Swiftness
  • Rehgar – Ghost Wolf
  • Sgt. Hammer – Thrusters
  • The Lost Vikings – Go, go, go!
• A new visual overlay has been added to better indicate when the player is affected by Stasis.
  • Ice Block (Talent)
  • Cho — Molten Block (Talent)
  • Chromie — Time Trap (E), Time Out (Talent)
  • Jaina — Improved Ice Block (Talent)
  • Rexxar — Feign Death (Talent)
  • Zagara — Devouring Maw (R)
  • Zeratul — Void Prison (R)
• Arthas
  • Arthas has received updated visual effects to coincide with his Talent rework.
  • Visual effects for Arthas’ Rune Tap Talent will now display closer to the center of his model rather than appear overhead.

Shop

Bundles

• New Bundles have been added!
  • Fel Queen Chromie Bundle – Available until May 31, 2016.
  • Battle Beasts Bundle – Available until June 7, 2016.
  • Ultimate Battle Beasts Bundle – Available until June 7, 2016.
  • Triumph Bundle
• The Storm Bundle has been removed from the in-game Shop.

New Hero

• Chromie has been added to the in-game Shop.

Skins

• Master Chromie
• Fel Queen Chromie

Price Reductions

• Nazeebo’s prices have been reduced to $6.49 USD and 4,000 Gold.
• Nova’s prices have been reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold.

Sound

Questing Talents

• New sound effects have been added that will play when making progress with a Questing Talent.

User Interface

General

• After a match is found for an unranked game, a new “Connecting…” message will appear if there is delay in connecting to the server, and a new “Waiting for Players…” message will appear when waiting for other players to connect.

Draft Mode

• Hero Bans
  • The first round Ban timer has been increased from 45 to 60 seconds.

In-Game UI

• Questing Talents
  • Questing Talents have received visual polish that should help players better distinguish them from other Talents, and more easily track progress toward quest completion.
    • Questing Talent progress will now be more clearly indicated in Ability tooltips, Talent tooltips, and on the Buff bar.
    • Questing Talent icons on the in-game Score Screen (TAB) will now display progress toward completion for all players in a game.
    • A Quest icon will briefly appear and float next to the Hero or the Hero’s target when making progress toward an unfinished Questing Talent.
    • Visual effects will briefly appear around a Hero when they complete a Questing Talent.
• Ability Buttons
  • Ability button borders will now be greyed out borders when the associated Ability cannot be used.
• Floating Combat Text
  • Many additional Hero Abilities have received the new critical strike floating combat text style to better inform players when critical strikes are triggered from Ability and Talent effects.

Hero Select

• Role description tooltips have been added to Role sorting buttons on Hero Select.
• Queue Time Estimates
  • A “High Estimated Wait Time” notification will now display above the Ready button during times when the selected Hero is a very popular choice in matchmaking queues.
    • This will most often occur on days when a new Hero is released.
    • This notification will prompt players to try another Hero while wait times are very high, but will not prevent them from queuing with the high-traffic Hero.

Battlegrounds

Healing Well

• 25% of a Healing Well’s maximum Health has been converted into a Shield. Shield Regeneration delay of 8 seconds.

Developer Comments: We’ve noticed some rather un-fun behavior in the form of sniping Healing Wells over time using very long range Abilities. While we’re okay with players doing this to a degree, we found it was too effective given how little counterplay there was. To help solve this, turned a sizable portion of Healing Well Health into a Shield. This means that if you offer your Healing Well some respite from enemy attacks by chasing opponents away every now and then, it will start to regenerate some of that Shield. Only you can protect Healing Wells from those pesky Arcane Orbs!

Talents

Battle Momentum

• Battle Momentum has been made Hero-specific, and now only applies to Basic Ability cooldowns.
• Diablo
  • Diabolical Momentum
    • Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
    • No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
• Johanna
  • Blessed Momentum
    • No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
• Kerrigan
  • Bladed Momentum
    • Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
    • No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
• Tyrael
  • Angelic Momentum
    • Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
    • No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
• Tyrande
  • Lunar Momentum
    • Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.6 seconds instead of 0.5.
    • No longer reduces Heroic Ability cooldowns.
• Zagara
  • Swarm Momentum
    • Basic Attacks now reduce Basic Ability cooldowns by 0.75 seconds instead of 0.5.
    • No longer reduces Heroic Ability or Trait cooldowns.

Developer Comments: Our intention for Battle Momentum was to create more active gameplay by using your Basic Abilities more often, but we found that a lot of this Talent’s power lied in its ability to reduce your Heroic cooldowns. We wanted to increase the cooldown reduction granted by the Talent, but didn’t want Heroic Ability cooldowns to drop to absurdly low levels. By making it only reduce the cooldowns of Basic Abilities (Q, W, E), it allowed us to increase this cooldown reduction without making it overpowered. We’ve also made Battle Momentum Hero-specific, so that we can tune each one without affecting all the rest, since Attack Speed, melee versus range, and the nature of your Basic Abilities can all drastically change what is balanced.

Conjurer’s Pursuit

• A reward has been added to this Questing Talent.
  • Quest: Gather Regeneration Globes to permanently increase Mana Regeneration by 0.10 per second, up to a maximum of 2.5 per second.
  • Reward: After gathering 25 Regeneration Globes, also increases maximum Mana by 100.

Developer Comments: We’ve added a completion point to this Talent. Upon completing its quest, players will be provided with some additional power. This allows us to offer spikes of power in-between Talent levels, or even for a single player on a team. Now, simply picking the Talent and only partially completing it is worse, but finishing the quest will return a larger reward. Choosing the right Talents on the right Battleground or with the right team composition has always been an important goal for us, and this change pushes this Talent to closer align with that goal.

Executioner

• This Talent has been reworked.
  • Increases Basic Attack damage by 30% for 3 seconds after hitting a Stunned, Slowed, or Rooted target with a Basic Attack. Using Basic Attacks against a Slowed, Rooted, or Stunned target during this time will refresh the buff duration.

Developer Comments: We like the punishing nature of Executioner, but have found over time that its benefit to the player is too narrowly scoped. We’re changing the Talent to be more consistently useful by giving the player a temporary Attack Damage buff that procs when they first hit a crowd controlled target.

Hardened Focus

• The Health bar next to the Hero Portrait will now display a marker that indicates whether the Hero is above or below 80% Health.
• Will now display an icon in the Buff bar next to the Hero Portrait while its effects are active.

Regeneration Master

• A reward has been added to this Questing Talent.
  • Quest: Regeneration Globes now grant 1.0 Health per second, stacking up to 30
  • Reward: Upon gathering 30 Globes, also increases Health by 500

Developer Comments: Please see the Developer Comment for Conjurer’s Pursuit.

Seasoned Marksman

• A reward has been added to this Questing Talent.
  • Quest: Increases Attack Damage by 0.2 for each enemy Minion killed nearby, and 0.5 for each Hero Takedown, up to a maximum of 40.
  • Reward: After gaining 40 bonus Attack Damage, Seasoned Marksman can be activated to increase Attack Speed by 30% for 3 seconds. 60 second cooldown.

Developer Comments: Please see the Developer Comment for Conjurer’s Pursuit.

Via [us.battle.net]