#146 - Into the Nexus: “Too Soon Junior”
• Garrett • Kyle
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Intro: Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!
News
Reminder, you can go to ITNcast.reddit.com to submit stories or upvote submissions for the next episode.
Armor
Developer Comments: With today’s patch you will notice that a lot of our tooltips that used to reference the Resistant/Vulnerable system have been changed. Matthew Cooper detailed the changes on our forums last month explaining a bit about the new system.
While the tooltips may have changed, the actual functionality for the system has been in since the Varian patch hit during the week of November 14, so the game itself should not feel any different than what you are currently used to. You will also notice that we have added baseline Armor to three Heroes – Arthas, Anub’arak, and Greymane’s Worgen Form. These are the first of a handful that we are planning to release and would love to hear any feedback you have. We are hoping that the Armor System will open up future design flexibility, increase the depth of strategy (both in game, and in draft), and grant us another knob to help balance the game.
- X% armor = X% dmg reduction, 10 armor means that if something does 100 damage, it will only deal 90 to you and so on
- Vulnerable effects will also stack in the same way
- There is a hard cap of 75% damage reduction, no matter how many things you stack on a hero you will never get more than 75% damage reduction (so no 'completely immune 100% damage reduction shennannigans are possible)
- There is a hard cap for vulnerability effects as well, that one is 25%, so stacking both Tyrande's Hunters Mark and Sylvanas's Shadow dagger with the level 16 talent will still only result in 25% more damage recieved, rather than 50%.
Anub'arak
- Spell armor reduces damage from abilities
- Health decreased from 2226 to 2003
- Health Regeneration decreased from 4.64 to 4.17
Currently up 3.1% - 51.5% total
Arthas
- Now has 15 Physical Armor
- Physical armor reduces damage from auto attacks (both heroes and minions do auto attacks, most likely also including buildings since you can evade/parry those cannonballs too)
- Armor damage reduction will stack with other damage reduction effects. Ex: Arthas only has physical armor. This means that if Arthas gets hit by an auto attack while Safeguarded by Morales, the 25% reduction from Safeguard and Arthas’ baseline 15% Physical Armor combine so that he would receive 40% less damage if he gets hit by an auto attack, but if he gets hit by ability damage, he will only take 25% less damage (since his passive physical armor won't reduce ability damage, so only Safeguard’s resistance works)
- Health decreased from 2582 to 2404
- Health Regeneration decreased from 5.36 to 5.01
Down 0.2% for 47% total
Greymane
- Now has 10 Armor while in Worgen form
- If it's just 'Armor' it means it's both physical and magical so a flat out damage reduction for all damage received
Win Rate Unchanged. 6th from the bottom.
More Armor coming: BlizzClaudio: We have plans to add it to the Character panel, especially once we roll more armor changes out to the wider hero pool. But for this patch we didn't have time to make the change, so we shipped it to start testing the waters and gathering data.
- Li Li’s Elusive Feet: When Fast is triggered, gain 75 Physical Armor against the next 2 hero basic attacks for 10 seconds, reducing the damage taken 75%
Links
Patch
Haunted Mines
- Attack Damage scaling for summoned Grave Golems has been increased at all stages of the game.
Nova
Level 1
- Tactical Espionage (Passive): While Cloaked, Nova gains 4 Mana per second.
- Advanced Cloaking (Passive): Previously only increased movement by 25%
- Now also restores 2 Mana per second while Stealthed
- Functionality changed: After being Stealthed for 5 seconds, Pinning Shot’s slow is increased to 55% and costs no Mana. Bonus is lost after losing Stealth for 1 second.
- Previously: Increases Pinning Shot's slow by 2% and decreases its mana cost by 5 for every second that Nova is Stealthed, to a maximum of a 60% slow and 50 cost reduction. Bonuses are lost after losing Stealth for 1 second.
Developer Comments: The functionality of Covert Ops was overly complex for such a simple concept: Buff your Pinning Shot if you’ve been cloaked for a while. The talent was performing well, so this isn’t an attempt to make it worse or better, but rather make it more clear when you have the bonus and when you don’t. Tactical Espionage, however, was underperforming quite a bit, so we decided to roll some of its components into Advanced Cloaking, since the fantasy and flavor of both talents were so aligned anyways.
Azmodan
All Shall Burn and a few of his less powerful Talents are also being improved
- Can now move at 40% base Movement Speed while channeling
- Initial cast range of the ability has been decreased by 7%
- Tether range required to cancel the effect has been increased by 6%
- Impact damage reduced from 110 to 104
- Demon Attack damage reduced from 54 to 51
Talents
Level 4
- New Talent: Hellish Hirelings (Trait)
- Doubles the effects of General of Hell on Mercenaries (15 to 30%).
- Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds
- Cooldown reduction from killing Minions increased from 5 to 10 seconds
- Healing increased from 20 to 25% of All Shall Burn damage
Level 7
- Now increases Movement Speed while channeling All Shall Burn from 40 to 80%
- Previously: 75% movement and was the only way to add movement functionality.
- Cooldown reduced from 60 to 45 seconds
Level 16
- Reduced cooldown from 60 to 45 seconds
- Imposing Presence (Active)
- Heroes and Summons that attack you have their Attack Speed slowed by 20% for 2.5 seconds.Activate to slow the Attack Speed by 50% and Movement Speed by 20% of nearby Heroes and Summons for 2.5 seconds.
Sylvanas
- Cast range increased from 10 to 11
- Cooldown decreased from 70 to 60 seconds
Talents
Level 1
- New Talent: Dreadful Wake (E)
- Haunting Wave now disables Minions and Mercenaries for 7 seconds
- Restores 5 Mana per minion hit by Haunting Wave
Level 7
- Cooldown per charge decreased from 12 to 8 seconds
Level 13
- Will of the Forsaken (Active)
- Movement speed increased from 30 to 40%
Developer Comments: With the reintroduction of Haunted Mines, we wanted to take a look at Sylvanas and her ability to disable structures. While we feel this is a very important aspect of who Sylvanas is, the Paralysis talent at level 1 pushed this gameplay a little too far. Beyond that, we introduced a new level 1 talent to fill this spot and made some tuning changes to some of her under-performing talents.
Important Bug Fixes
Alarak: Telekinesis will now correctly interrupt E.T.C.’s Mosh Pit.
Raynor: Fixed an issue causing Hyperion to gain benefits from several of Raynor’s Basic Attack Talents.
Data Mined:
- The next two brawls will be called "Mage Wars" and "Bloodlust Brawl." Not sure which will happen this week.
- A preview of the upcoming Tassadar rework:
- Mental Acuity QUEST COMPLETE! Heroes killed: ? Cooldown reduction: ?
- Mystic Pursuit Quest: Regeneration Globes grant Tassadar an additional 100% Mana. Reward: After collecting ? Regeneration Globes, increase your Basic Attack range by ?%.
- Psi Infusion Mana gained: ? QUEST COMPLETE! Mana gained: ? Psionic Storm Range Increase: 50%
- "TassadarPlasmaShieldRelicBuffLarge" (healing ward gives shields?)
- "TassadarOraclePlasmaShieldBuff" (using oracle buffs shields?)
- Bronze Tiger Kharazim and Dream Genie Chromie are already in the game and look to drop on the 22nd as part of the "Luxorian Nights bundle."
- The Ultimate version of the bundle will contain Serpent King Xul, Desert Queen Zagara, and Crypt King Tassadar, along with the Magic Carpet mount.
Links
Zul’jin First Thoughts
47.1% Win Rate HL. 55.8% winrate quick match
Highest Winrate - Cursed Hollow 53.8%
Above 50% - Dragon Shire and Braxis
Lowest Winrate - Battlefield of Eternity 37.5%
Vs:
- Malfurion - 62% winrate against
- LI Ming - 57%
- Rehgar - 38.8
- ETC - 38.5
- Jaina - 36.7
- Hammer 22%
With:
- Diablo - 63%
- Lt. Morales 59.1
- Zarya - 55%
- Reghar - 53%
- Malfurion - 46%
- ETC - 39.1
- Dehaka - 36.4%
- Auriel - 33%
Trait
Berserker (D)
- Activate to increase Zul’jin’s Basic Attack damage by 25%, but consume 2% maximum Health per attack.
- Passive: Zul’jin attacks 1% faster for every 1% of maximum Health missing.
Basic Abilities
Grievous Throw (Q)
- Zul’jin throws an axe forward, dealing damage to the first 2 enemies hit and marking them for 8 seconds. Marked enemies take 50% bonus damage from Zul’jin’s next 3 Basic Attacks against them.
Twin Cleave (W)
- Throw 2 axes in a large circular arc, dealing damage and slowing affected enemies by 15% per axe for 2 seconds.
Regeneration (E)
- Zul’jin channels to regenerate 25% of his maximum Health over 4 seconds. Moving or taking damage while channeling will interrupt this effect.
Heroic Abilities
Taz’dingo (R)
- Zul’jin is Unkillable for the next 4 seconds, and cannot be reduced to less than 1 Health. Taz’dingo!
Guillotine (R)
- Zul’jin throws a massive guillotine blade into the sky that crashes down on enemies in the targeted area. The lower Zul’jin’s Health, the more damage it deals.
Links
Tournament Draft
Tournament Draft is a new draft mode added to Custom Games which allows players to swap their Hero Picks at-will at the end of a draft.
- All pick and ban timers have been set to 60 seconds during Tournament Draft mode.
- Tournament Draft uses First Come, First Served (FCFS) pick order, and Mid Bans.
- Once all picks and bans are complete, a 20-second Swap Round will begin.
- During this time, players can freely swap Hero picks with their teammates to help ensure that everyone is playing their strongest Heroes.
- After swapping Heroes with a teammate, the swap button next to that player’s name will go on a brief cooldown in order to prevent repeated or accidental swaps.
- During a Tournament Draft, player names will not be visible to Referees or Spectators and picks will appear from top to bottom.
- Chat will not be visible to spectators in the Draft screen.
Please Note: This is our first implementation of Tournament Draft mode, and we plan to bring additional improvements and adjustments to it with future patches.
Jlarky asks: Why do you need this? I think it makes much more sense to just be able to swap places in the queue before we pick heroes.Why in the hell you want to swap and give your hero to someone who doesn't even own the hero?
Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN
Patron Thanks
- Grant Smith
- Trey suiter
- Jason
- Tintron
- Joseph Hager
- Alexander Pollock
- PunkRKpirate
- Matthew Burt
Strategy
Map Picks
A quick and dirty guide to finding your first reason to take a hero.
- The second reason is for Wombo, damage type, Tank or Support factors.
- In this meta you need a response to Bloodlust and/or Earthquake.
- Sanctification
- Your own Earthquake
- Void Prison
- Mighty Gust
- Graviton Surge
- Most Pit
Objective Type:
Alarak: Solo Lanes
- Blackheart’s Bay
- Braxis Holdout
- And Many Others (Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Garden Terror, Infernal Shrines, Sky Temple, Tomb of the Spider Queen, Towers of Doom, Warhead Junction)
Brightwing: Soak it out, join later globals
- Warhead Junction
- Infernal Shrines
- Sky Temple
Chromie: Stand Still and Channel
- Cursed Hollow
- Blackheart’s Bay
- Dragon Shire
- Towers of Doom
Leoric: Hero Controlled Vehicles
- Dragon Shire
- Garden of Terror
Murky: Collect the Things Permanently
- Garden Terror
- Haunted Mines
- Infernal Shrines
Rexxar: Don’t Drop the Things
- Blackheart’s Bay
- Tomb of the Spider Queen
Gul’dan: Hold the Point
- Braxis Holdout
- Sky Temple
- Dragon Shire
Greymane: Kill the Thing
- Battlefield of Eternity
- Garden Terror
Closing Thought: Now that we’ve talked about all this. When do you pick for the map versus picking for your own strengths?
Emails
Fenier
Hi there again guys!
I found Kyle's talking about his learning of Zeratul on Episode #145 interesting. I recently invested a lot of time into Medivh, finally getting to level 10 with him - playing entirely in Quick Match, and averaged a 30~ win ratio with him, likely I think due to his unique playstyle and teammates not fully leveraging his Portals and Vision (again, Quickmatch).
Now, due to the 70% loss ratio, I dropped some 600 MMR (according to Hotslogs), and now that I am actually playing characters which fit better into comps, I am finding the matches quite a bit easier then I am used to.
I was wondering if Kyle has seen anything like that in his own play, while learning Zeratul (or other heroes), and if either of you had suggestions on things Blizzard could do about this? I think Hero-specific MMR would be a good system to have.
Outro
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Personal Stuff
Garrett
Follow Garrett @GarrettArt
NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.
The Angry Chicken: A Hearthstone Podcast
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Kyle
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