#221 - Into the Nexus: “Charging Up”

• Garrett • Kyle • Jeff or Dunk

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

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• Patreon.com/ITN

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

News

Yrel is out!

Basic Attack damage increased from 140 to 155.

Vindication (Q)

• Charged up damage increased from 125 to 140.

YREL is the first hero since March of 2016 to not have any quests in her kit.

I think she’s fantastic fun like Tyrael.

• Take the solo lane
• Knock your orb back to your side

Yrel Release Stats

39.3% release winrate in and falling

Links

• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/21849060/heroes-of-the-storm-patch-notes-june-12-2018-2018-6-12/
• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/8qiy32/math_of_the_storm_yrel/
• https://esports.heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/articles/21877955/yrel-tips-from-zarmony-and-robadobah

June 12th Patch Notes

Please Note: Alterac Pass will become available for play in two stages during the coming weeks:

• Non-Ranked Modes: During the week of June 19, Alterac Pass will enter Quick Match, Unranked, and Versus A.I. matchmaking queues, as well as Custom Games.
• Ranked Play: During the week of July 10, Alterac Pass will enter the Ranked Battleground Rotation.

Vehicles

• Vehicle Exit hotkey has been moved to the Trait key (default: “D”), and Vehicle Trait hotkeys have been moved to the Heroic key (default: “R”). This includes:

• Dragon Knight
• Garden Terror
• Triglav Protector
• Blaze's Bunker Drop

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Ragnaros: Empower Sulfuras will now miss when Ragnaros is Blinded, and the Ability’s cooldown will be consumed.
• Abathur: Allied and enemy Symbiote hosts will now display a crown icon above their portraits on the Minimap.

Warhead Junction

• Nuke (F)

• Bonus damage has been removed and Nukes now deal a flat amount of damage across the entire area of impact.
• Note: This change was originally made in the Nexomania patch on May 22, but did not make it into that set of patch notes. We apologize for any confusion this caused in the meantime.

Developer Comment: The bonus damage dealt by Warheads had very little counterplay in late-game situations. Teams could hoard Warheads and kill any Structure—including the Core—very quickly. Although this center bonus damage presented players with interesting decision points, the mechanic’s problems outweighed its positives. We feel encouraging players to hit as many structures as possible is a similarly fun mechanic that is healthier for the game.

That Rag bug

Ragnaros “suffered” from a brief bug that would cause the lava wave to infinitely farm the enemy lanes on Towers of Doom.

Links

• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/8qiy32/math_of_the_storm_yrel/

Free Heroes

Warcraft Reinforcement chest gives guaranteed warcraft heroes.

Links

• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/8ql0zt/alexstrasza_for_254_gems_best_day_ever_blizzard/
• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/game/events/echoes-of-alterac/

Stepping-Up Abusive Chat Penalties

• Tolling out improvements to our reporting system for abusive chat.
• Specifically, we’re changing the ways we penalize repeat offenders by increasing the severity of the actions we take against their accounts.

Previously

• Players who are regularly reported for abusive chat incur a silence penalty, which restricts them from chatting in-game and prevents them from playing Hero League for the penalty’s duration.
• Subsequent offenses result in increasingly longer silence penalty durations.

Now

• They’re greatly reducing the number of silence penalties we apply to repeat offenders’ accounts.
• Players who return to abusive behavior after their initial silences expire will begin incurring account suspensions.
• Suspensions will quickly ramp-up in duration and prevent them from playing Heroes of the Storm entirely.
• Players who prove they are incapable of—or unwilling to—improve their behavior after being warned, silenced, and suspended enough times will be permanently banned from the game.

We’re also aware that some players are concerned that they may be penalized after being falsely reported for abusive chat or abusive voice. This is not the case. Here’s how we handle false reports in these instances:

• Abusive chat or spam reports are ignored if they are issued against a player who hasn’t participated in in-game chat or public chat channels.
• Abusive voice reports are ignored if they are issued against a player who hasn’t participated in voice chat.
• Abusive chat and abusive voice reports issued by players on an enemy team are also ignored.

Furthermore, we have already begun implementing machine learning technology that further enhances our ability to validate and empower accurate player reports. This has proven very successful so far, and we plan to continue leveling-up and expanding our report validation processes going forward

Links

• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/21849058/stepping-up-abusive-chat-penalties-2018-6-11/

Mid Season Brawl

• Just finished group stages

• Each group's top two finishers in points are seeded into the upper bracket of the modified double-elimination stage
• The third- and fourth-place finishers from each group are seeded into the lower bracket
• The bottom two finishers from each group are eliminated

• Mindfreak, The One, Chall Enge and Luna Meow

• Currently battling on the Nexo’mania patch
• The Bracket Stage starts at 7:30 am pacific this Saturday the 16th.

The Mid-Season Brawl is the first global competition on the HGC calendar. Showcasing 12 teams from around the world, it brings the first phase to a close by crowning a champion and establishing the pecking order for the second half of the year. As the home regions for the teams that won the Eastern Clash and Western Clash, respectively, HGC Korea and HGC Europe each send a third team to the tournament.

Everything so far has been the group stages to set up for the main event this weekend.

Each group's top two finishers in points are seeded into the upper bracket of the modified double-elimination stage

The third- and fourth-place finishers from each group are seeded into the lower bracket

The bottom two finishers from each group are eliminated

Big Players

• Hanzo - 73% winrate / 42% popularity
• Maiev - 66% win / 80% popularity
• Malfurion - 64% / 96%
• Tracer - 61% win / 70% pop
• Garrosh - 46% win / 95% pop
• Sonya - 44% / 60%
• Genji - 37% / 95%

Not Picked

• Ana
• Artanis
• Azmodan
• Brightwing
• Chen
• Cho’gall
• D’va
• Gazlowe
• Kelthuzad
• Medic
• Murky
• Nazeebo
• Nova
• Ragnaros
• Raynor
• Rexxar
• Samuro
• Sylvanas
• Butcher
• Lost Vikings
• Tyrande
• Zagara
• Zul’jin

Notable performances

• NA Tempo Storm impressed with a 2/0 win over Ballistix, and eventually earned an upper bracket spot.
• NA Heroes Hearth also performed well, making it from the open division
• Gen.G Korea went 10-0 (100% winrate) in the tournament, even pulling out Sgt. Hammer at times. (dragonshire and volskya)
• There were only two games of Cursed Hollow and they were both under 14 minutes
• Most compositions wer double tank double assassin
• Valeera had two games and won them both
• Falstad won 5 games and lost 5 games, but his appearance caused a large spike in Hero League drafts

Links

• https://masterleague.net/tournament/68/
• https://liquipedia.net/heroes/2018_Heroes_of_the_Storm_Global_Championship/Phase_1/Mid-Season_Brawl
• https://esports.heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/schedule
• https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/8qu4tf/hgc_midseason_brawl_group_stage_tiebreaker_match/
• https://esports.heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/news/21867377

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

Thanks to our Patreon producers Declan H and CheezyBob.

Patron Thanks

• planetxerox        
• Andrew        Wilson

Strategy

New Tool : HotsDraft

Great for checking map picks and first picks

R_coup on twitter

Links

• https://hotsdraft.com/

Emails

Chillrogg

We are having a viewing party in downtown NYC for the mid season brawl and I was hoping you could mention it on the show (to help turnout).

This Saturday at 1pm at Way Point Cafe (the premiere NYC gaming cafe).

Love the show! Keep up the great work.

Reminisce on old meetups

Jim

I have a short question about something in heroes that has been bothering me for a while now. Whenever i play heroes, there is always a chance i’m put up against any of the available heroes..but some heroes are more difficult to face than others.

For me, i’m experiencing real life stress when i’m going up against chromie in any of my games. With the heroic that pulls me back for her oneshot and being blown away instantly, i feel like i can’t escape from her hitting me from the shadows. Every time i go up against a chromie i feel so stressed, i just want to move on to the next match instead.

What should i do?

Thanks in advance and greetings from the Netherlands,

Jim

Kadzin

“Enhancement never made sense.” - Kyle Ferguson 2018

As an Enhancement Shaman, how dare you. It makes perfect sense, you enhance your attacks with elements, Thrall in Hots is an Enhancement Shaman, while Rehgar is Resto.

That being said, sad to see multiclass go, I think a lot of characters had the potential to be multiclass or be converted to multiclass like Tassadar or Tyrande. Who do you think would have made a great multiclass hero?

Thanks and keep up the great work!

Arandomguy

I have been listening to you two for almost two years and have learned a TON from the insite you share. Recently, my friends and i have lost several games where it seems like I was the obvious weak link. I typically play support but have been trying my hand at the assassin role and notice my damage is usually 10-20k less than my opponents that ive seen in similar roles. Ive been watching my KD ratio and usually i break even or come out ahead.

Assassins i typically play, greymane, butcher, lunara, and chromie.

Supports i normally play, Malfurion, Morales, Brightwing, and LiLi

Thanks for all you do!

Outro

Patreon Shout Out

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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