#247 - Into the Nexus: “Experience the Experience”

• Garrett • Kyle • Jeff or Guest

#Heroes #of #the #Storm #HotS #Blizzard #Entertainment #Warcraft #Diablo #StarCraft #Overwatch #Hearthstone #WoW #Garrett #Kyle #Weinzierl #Fergusson #Video #Games #2019 #update #experience #changes #xp

http://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/

It’s holiday patch time and this one packed a surprise. Garrett and Kyle grab you by the hand and take you through our newest active resource “Passive Experience”. Experience the experience while we dive deep on experience. Follow that up with a holiday helping of balance updates, HGC humors and emails from the community.

https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/events/toys-2018/

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Intro:  Welcome to Into the Nexus! The Heroes of the Storm podcast!

We introduce all the changes in one big general pile, then move into the Deep Dive. That will be our strategy section for the day. Afterwards we’ll talk about our general games and personal experiences.

News
Experience Change Changes

Developer Comment: Thank you so much for all of the feedback regarding the 2019 Gameplay Updates. While there is still a lot of community speculation about the outcome of these changes, there has been a resounding amount of concern about the loss of Fort and Keep XP. We agree that the complete loss of XP from Forts and Keeps may reduce the incentive to kill them to unhealthy levels, especially at higher levels of play. In response, we have reintroduced XP to the structures in a way that will reward players for taking them early while granting a gradual increase in power instead of large bursts. This should reinforce our goal of making matches closer while also rewarding teams for destroying enemy structures as quick as possible.

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep

• Destroying a Fort or Keep will now provide your team with a stacking 20% increase in Passively-earned Experience
• NOTE: Towers of Doom is exempt from all Experience and Catapult changes.

• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50%
• Passive Experience gain increased by 15%
• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%

• ​Hanamura Temple and Volskaya Foundry Item Camps are excluded from this change.

Laning Mercenary Experience

• Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience.

To put in simply, they have staggered the experience you get from a fort or keep over the course of the game rather than a sudden jump.

Experience Change Deep Dive

Reference and Perspective

Forts and Keeps

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep
• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50%
• Fort, Keep and Tower experience has always been static
• XP awarded for destroying Fort and Keep Tower has been halved.

• Keep Towers are still worth more than Fort towers

Passive Experience

• Passive Experience gain increased by 15%
• Destroying a Fort or Keep will now provide your team with a stacking 20% increase in Passively-earned Experience
• On this show we have referred to passive experience as “trickle XP”
• Passive Experience does not scale and is also static
• Three lane and 2 lane maps receive the same amount of passive experience
• The Passive XP shifts comebacks. (courtesy of ChaosOS’s latest Math of the Storm)

• Fort behind? Two basic options:

• 1.) Get ahead on Forts
• 2.) Win a fight

• 2 is a lot more realistic than in the past because even though you’re behind on Forts in this scenario, the opposing team didn’t jump ahead in XP. They’re just passively gaining XP faster.

Catapults

• When a team destroys a Fort, they’ll now gain a Catapult in every 3rd Minion wave.
• NOTE: In order to keep early-game Catapults from being too devastating to defending teams, Catapult attack splash size, attack range, and damage/health will gradually increase as the game progresses.

Mercenaries

• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%
• Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience.

Mercenary Experience is not static

Links

• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/a5de7u/math_of_the_storm_2019_xp_and_catapult_update/
• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/22821338/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-december-11-2018-2018-12-11/
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSN0J-9jF7MCOHCqpGuOWu_QT62Mr2RwZ_GHarXzq1TYZ-w5QRvh51lU1x96g4wXijYYZ3m3e4kOn6I/pubhtml#

Experience Change Reactions

• 3 level leads only appear in dominate games
• Less games end do to Keep experience level spikes
• “Siege” Heroes are amazing
• “Banked Experience” is no longer a comeback mechanic
• Had trouble hitting Cassia Skill Shots
• Artanis the Manis

Live with Dev Comments

Unit Radii

• The unit radius values for most Heroes has been reduced by 5-15%

Devs: In an effort to improve visual clarity when many heroes are on-screen, we’ve updated the art for the Hero Ring displayed underneath heroes. To reinforce this effort, we’ve also done a pass on the Unit Radii for all heroes. We understand that these radius adjustments will have a minor but intended impact on landing and dodging abilities, and as a result, felt that the 2019 Gameplay Updates were the best time to make these changes.

Sylvanas Rework - Currently sporting lowest win-rate HL/TL at 41.9%

Devs: Hail your Warchief! We hope you enjoy our changes to Sylvanas as much as we have. Sylvanas now boasts impressive skirmishing power while retaining her unique ability to shut down enemy fortifications. In exchange for this power, she now has a fair amount of counter-play with her abilities, which should make her interactions with other heroes more interesting. We're also experimenting with putting a uniquely large portion of her power into talents, which we would love to hear your feedback on once you get a chance to try her out! (lol)

New Changes From PTR

Previously Undocumented Volskaya Foundry Change

• Channelling to enter the Triglav Protector is no longer interrupted by damage.
• NOTE: This change has been live as of the week of November 19

Devs: While not a bug, the interaction between Orphea’s Eternal Feast and the Triglav Protector was too strong and could negate an entire objective without any opportunities for counter-play attached to it. This also highlighted an inconsistency with the battleground where a team could spend all their resources winning the objective but find themselves unable to actually use it under certain circumstances so with this change, we’ve addressed both issues.

Stitches - 47.2% HL/TL

Slam (W)

• Cast time increased from .25 to .313 [+25.2%]
• Cooldown increased from 6 to 7 seconds
• Range increased from 8 to 9.5 [+18.75%]
• Mana cost increased from 30 to 35

Other Noteworthy Stitches Change

• Nerfs to several survivability talents.
• Stitches: Slam will now reveal its impact area and targets.
• Stitches: Serrated Edge no longer deals bonus damage to friendly targets when using Helping Hand.

Armor went Live

• Great visuals, some are unclear
• Garrosh, because his armor is passive, has stackable armor

• Same with Cassia

Live Balance

Fenix

Purification Salvo (R)

• Damage reduced from 86 to 79

Some talent incentivisation. Combining Warp talents together

Level 4 - Inhibiting Energy (W)

• Now applies to all slows (except itself), and not just Plasma Cutter’s slows

• Basically splashes slows to nearby targets when in Phase Bomb firing mode

• Slow duration reduced from 4 to 3 seconds
• Slow amount reduced from 35 to 30%

Level 4 - Warp Conduit (E)

• Removed
• Baked into War Warfare at 7

Level 7 - Warp Warfare (E)

• Added functionality:
• Now also resets the cooldown of Warp when Fenix gets a Hero takedown

Level 7 - Divert Power: Weapons (Active)

• New functionality:
• Activate to gain 40% Basic Attack damage for 5 seconds. Basic Attacks against Heroes refresh this duration. When this damage bonus falls off, remove all of Fenix's Shields. 40 second cooldown.
• Previously : Activate to instantly drain Shield Capacitor's Shield, but increase Basic Attack damage by 80% of the Shield drained for 5 seconds.

Level 13 - Dampening Field (Trait)

• Spell Armor increased from 20 to 25

Level 13 - Auxiliary Shields (Trait)

• Shield amount increased from 20 to 40%
• Health loss increased from 10 to 30%

Time for Toys Event

Toys Event Quest

Roll dice, complete quests, and join “The Kid” on a board game adventure in the Nexus for awesome rewards!

The quests have two statements:

The first requirement (some amount of kills, damage or what-have-you) can be completed in any mode including AI with winning games

The OR statement is for Quick Match, Unranked or Ranked and can be completed on the MVP screens

Links

• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/22821338/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-december-11-2018-2018-12-11/

One Year without an Overwatch Hero

Text

Links

• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/a5fukz/its_now_exactly_1_year_without_any_new_overwatch/

Heroes Departures Continue

Psi Storm (Deadly Kittens) Gaming Leaves for Dota 2

Trikslyr leaves HGC casting, considering quitting Heroes streams all together

Pros threaten to stream and play other games until something is announced

Many Hots streamers announce they are going variety streaming

Kala: “I heard through word of mouth at BlizzCon that HGC will be very real in 2019, and that it may receive greater funding. I also heard that it will be starting late, perhaps into February.”

Links

• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/a5j5yv/lack_of_hgc_news_forces_psistorm_to_move_from/

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

Thanks to our Patreon producers Declan H, CheezyBob, and Pythagos.

Patron Thanks Doc for keeping track

• Steven J
• Brian
• George Henehan

Emails

Unpronounceable via the Patreon Discord

Something that gets mentioned about a number of heroes is how it's hard to mount a comeback with them. Butcher and Alarak are a couple I can think of offhand. Obviously every hero will have a hard time coming back from behind, but who are some better heroes at this?

Comeback through soaking

• This is why I like specialists like Nazeebo and Zagara. They’re good at continuing to soak lanes safely with their abilities.

Comeback through securing structures

• Escaping after getting the structure

• Solo Heroes: Junkrat, Zagara
• Help get the team out: Lucio, Tyrael, Muradin

Comeback through getting kills

• I don’t really have a head for coming back this way.

Lord Commander

How you guys usually go "roster shopping" always when I hear you guys talk about that I get inspired to do the same but I'm not sure what the best way to go about it, should I check out the tier lists and try out the best heroes in quick match, or do you just keep trying heroes you've played before and try them out in Team League, anyways just curious how you guys go about your roster shopping.

Outro

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Catch the live show Thursday at 5pm Eastern / 2pm Pacific on Twitch.tv/Amovetv. Mobile live stream provided by Alpha Geek Radio.

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Thanks to Gorath for our intro music and briangriffithmusic.com (@briangriffith) for our outro..

Personal Stuff

Garrett

Follow Garrett @GarrettArt

NOMOONart.com for Garrett’s stream designs.

The Angry Chicken: A Hearthstone Podcast

The Angry Nerd

Kyle

Kylefergusson.com

For future episodes

John Branon

I would welcome some advice against Whitemane

1. What heroes should one draft against her?
2. How do you best teamfight against her?

1. Dive her?
2. Switch targets?
3. Fake engages?

Lanthal (Noob of the Storm)

Who would you like to see come in as a slightly left-field hero? I'd love to see Hogger make a showing or perhaps Hemet Nesingwary.

Lupus64

I've found that, with some heroes I have struggled feeling impactful with in the past, taking off meta builds has helped improve my performance.

For example: building anub with regeneration master and then all W talents, building dehaka with regenerative tissue and then all dark swarm talents.

What off meta builds can you give examples of that might help players see hero functionality in a different light? I know Garret loves him some chrysalis kerrigan