#116 - Into the Nexus: “Title”
• Garrett • Kyle
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Intro: Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!
Patrons! Prep your PTR for the aftershow
News
Reminder, you can go to ITNcast.reddit.com to submit stories or upvote submissions for the next episode.
Gul’dan First Impressions
Gul’dan and the patch have been confirmed for Tuesday the 12th
Kyle’s go to build
- Life Tap is Pure Damage
- Drain life’s heal is unrelated to its damage
- Corruption can hit a building all three times. Hitting a hero with all 3 is tough.
- Horrify seems to run in the most direct escape available (slight AI on it)
- 4500 health with Dark Bargain at lvl 20
- Level 20 Demonic Circle is an instant cast teleport
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20164442/heroes-of-the-storm-ptr-patch-notes-july-5-2016-7-5-2016#New_Hero
Buffs
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20164442/heroes-of-the-storm-ptr-patch-notes-july-5-2016-7-5-2016#Heroes
Pages and pages of changes. This is the essential run down. I will respond with specifics where needed. I’ll bold the ones I know I’ll have more to say on.
Saving the biggest topic of all for Strategy
- Cooldowns and talent values buffed
- Cocktail Build Buff
- Marked for the Kill Buffed
- Human loses 5 damage, Worgen form now up to 50% damage from 40%
- Base health increase
- Auto Attack Damage increased
- Clean Kill talent stack will now cost a tiny bit of mana
- Impaling Blades radius increase is now a level 7 talent.
- Values increased across talent tree.
- Leaping Strike damage increase
- Natures Culling Reduced to 150%
- Values increased across talent tree.
- Carapace Build Buffed
- “Pushing” talents increased in value
- Slight nerf to Mine Build
- New Sieging Wrath Quest talent for hitting heroes
- Values increased across talent tree.
- No long dismounted on Salvage
- Percent increases across talents
- Every 3rd Basic Attack restores 14 Mana. After this effect triggers 100 times, every 3rd attack will also reduce the cooldown of all Basic Abilities by 1 second
- Crazy new aggressive build added
- Beacon of Light at Lv.4! (though sadly only heals you for 30%)
- Ult mana cost reduced
- Adaptation Buffed
- Talents Buffed
- Off pick talents increased
- Slight nerf to main build
- Basic Ability Cooldowns and values buffed
- Death does 100 more damage
- Off pick talents buffed
- Lost Battle Momentum
- Undocumented changes
Nerfs
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20164442/heroes-of-the-storm-ptr-patch-notes-july-5-2016-7-5-2016#Heroes
- Gravity lapse cooldown increased by 2 seconds.
- Gravity lapse talents adjusted for this
- “STUCK” text size has been reduced.
- Soothing Mist healing increased
- Hypershift Build overall nerfed
Reworks
http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/20164442/heroes-of-the-storm-ptr-patch-notes-july-5-2016-7-5-2016#Heroes
Jaina
- Three waves of slightly weaker blizzards
- Cone of Cold Buff
Zagara
Doesn’t need a healer anymore: https://gfycat.com/IndelibleThickAfricanjacana
Jump in game and try her out. There are tons of changes and it will just be better to discuss her in a conversation format.
Muradin
- Unstoppable Removed from Dwarf Toss
- Now grants 25% damage reduction for 2 seconds
- Trait Values increased
Stitches
- Shoots fart out rather than leaving it on the ground
- Help Hands has been made standard, togglable on the 1 key.
- Talents based on Vile Gas have been reworked.
Patch Notes Tidbits
- Playing as Auto-Select in Quick Match will now award 100% bonus XP when the matchmaking system detects lengthy queue times for one or more Heroes. A new icon will display over the Auto-Select portrait during Hero Select when bonus XP is available.
- DirectX 11 Support and lots of Processor Optimizations
- The AI has learned to gank
- Relentless no longer reduces Silence effects
- Zerglings have been removed from Kerrigan’s kit, Broodlings Removed from Zagara’s kit.
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Patron Thanks
- Michael Sparks
- Daniel Figucio (Affrae)
- ChameleonLac
- Neverstill
- Marsh Roma
- Justin
- Brian Slover
- Porter
Strategy
The New Laning Game
Regeneration Globes
- Previously: Restore 6.24% of maximum Health over 4 seconds
- Now: Restore 12% of maximum Health over 5 seconds
- Previously: Restore 32 Mana over 4 seconds.
- Now: Restore 8% of maximum Mana over 5 seconds
- Still heavily evaluating but wanted to get this first wave out.
Healing Wells
- Cooldown increased from 100 to 120 seconds
- Health Regeneration
- Previously: Restore 41% of maximum Health over 20 seconds.
- Now: Restore 40% of maximum Health over 20 seconds.
- Previously: Restore 20% of maximum Mana over 20 seconds.
- Now: Restore 30% of maximum Mana over 20 seconds.
- Dev Comments:
- Cleaned up the system a fair bit (hence the ~41% to 40% Health change) and added a larger impact for heavy Mana users.
- Increased cooldown should make the decision of when to tap the Healing Well slightly more interesting.
Minions
- Ranged, Melee, and Wizard Minions
- Now deal double damage to Structures.
- Goal to make escorting Minions to Towns to be more impactful, such that they can really start to do some damage if left unattended.
- Before this change, Minions were primarily XP carriers that absorbed some Ammo shots from Towers. Now the armies of the Nexus are a bit scarier when they march down a lane.
Catapult Minions
- Attack range increased by 20%.
- Sight range increased by 17%.
- Will now fixate on Structures. Catapults will not acquire a new target after fixating until the target is destroyed or the Catapult is killed.
- Dev Comments:
- Catapults would often reach the Core, but have a Minion wave spawn on them, distract them, and allow them to be killed off before doing any significant damage. With increased range and fixation on a Structure once they’ve started attacking, even one Catapult will more consistently punch through a Core’s Shield and do actual damage.
Garden of Terror
- Increased Overgrowth's damage bonus against Structures from 100% to 200%.
- Dev Comments:
- Meant to reduce the game length.
- We’re not quite happy with the way that Garden of Terror is playing at the moment, and will likely be making larger changes if the current tuning adjustments don’t make it more enjoyable.
Links
Emails
Grier
Do you think that, outside of major reworks, is the constant tweaking of heroes bad for the game?
For me I visit HeroesNexus almost every day, watch ITN every week and I still can't keep up with the volume of hero changes made each patch. It almost feels that we are still in Beta and not over a year past launch, what do you think?
Christian
What do you think about a vote system for the maps before the game begins? In unranked and ranked games you would choose between two randomly selected maps, if the vote is tight the map for the game is chosen randomly between that two maps. Something like the Call Of Duty series had. Would you like it? Do you think some maps would be never picked? If yes which one?
Extra question:
What's your favorite map? Mine is probably Tomb of the Spyder Queen because I love to play specialists heores overall.
Joonas
Rotation.
This is by far my weakest area in the game.
Most of the time I'm okay when it comes to positioning, soaking, objectives, etc.
But I feel like rotation is the big, burly bouncer who has decided to keep me out of the higher leagues. I've recently made it to diamond and I feel like sometimes I drag the team as I'm not quite on ball as I should be when it comes to rotation.
Can you give me some good pointers?
Outro
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iTunes Thanks
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Thanks to Brian Griffith, the musician responsible for our intro music. He can be found at briangriffithmusic.com or @briangriffith on twitter..
Personal Stuff
Garrett
Follow Garrett @GarrettArt
NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.
The Angry Chicken: A Hearthstone Podcast
The Angry Nerd
Kyle
A-move Radio
Kylefergusson.com
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