#298 - Into the Nexus: “Deathwing Rises”

• Garrett • Kyle • NotParadox or Guest

Tracking Link: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/

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Image for the episode : https://t.co/UqEoG01Uw8

Deathwing is here! Hes fun, Garrett and Kyle are enjoying being him and killing him. We have concerns however about the XP change, but there is still much to explore and discover. We speed through abit of drama and get straight to a piping hot fresh AMA that came out today. Your emails and more to follow. Stick around for an update on Hotslogs and future benefits for our Patreon supports.

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

• Placements Complete, Diamond 1
• Zagara Giant Killer doesn’t really bring home the bacon vs. Deathwing

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

Thanks to our Patreon producers Declan H, CheezyBob, Chris K, and Robert M.

Patron Thanks Doc for keeping track

• Clint Driskill
• Kellen Franklin Sheppard
• SirCharlez
• Jack Taormino

News

Deathwing is Live!

Trait - The Aspect of Death

40 Armor total in Plates which grant 10 Armor each. Every 25% Health lost causes Deathwing to lose a plate. Plates are only restored when Dragonflight (his unique mount) is used, based on the amount of Health Deathwing has when landing.

Deathwing is permanently Unstoppable and deals 100% additional Spell Damage to Heroes, but is unable to be affected by allied abilities.

Mount - Dragonflight [Z]
Energy: No Energy cost.

Cooldown: 45 seconds.

After 3 seconds, fly into the air becoming immune to all effects and heal for 2.5% of your maximum Health per second. Once cast, this ability cannot be interrupted. Cannot be cast 4 seconds after taking damage, Basic Attacking or casting an Ability.

After remaining in the air for at least 8 seconds, Deathwing can channel for 1.75 seconds and land anywhere that his team has vision of in either Destroyer or Worldbreaker forms, dealing 75 damage to enemies. His abilities are put on a 3 second cooldown upon landing.

Basic Abilities

• Molten Flame [Q]

• After 1.5 seconds, Deathwing breathes a stream of flame, dealing 21 damage every 0.125 seconds. Molten Flame has an initial cost of 10 Energy, then drains 30 Energy per second.
• Cooldown: 3 seconds.

• Incinerate [W - Destroyer]

• After 0.75 seconds, Deathwing flaps his wings, dealing 85 damage to nearby enemies.
• Energy: 15 Energy.
• Cooldown: 4 seconds.

• Lava Burst [W - Worldbreaker]

• After a 1 second delay, create a pool of magma (at range) that deals 16 damage per second and slows enemies by 35%. Lasts 6 seconds.
• Energy: 20 Energy.
• Cooldown: 6 seconds.

• Onslaught [E - Destroyer]

• After 0.5 seconds, lunge in a targeted direction, dealing 42 damage and slowing enemies by 35% for 2 seconds.
• At the end of the lunge, Deathwing bites enemies for an additional 80 damage.
• Energy: 20 Energy.
• Cooldown: 5 seconds.

• Earth Shatter [E - Worldbreaker]

• Fire two straight line fissures in a V-shape that deal 80 damage to enemies and stun them for .75 seconds.
• Energy: 25 Energy.
• Cooldown: 12 seconds.

Heroic Ability

• Cataclysm [R]

• After 2 seconds, fly in the targeted direction, dealing 90 damage on impact and leave scorched ground that deals an additional 48 damage per second for 6 seconds.
• Energy: No Energy cost.
• Cooldown: 90 seconds.

• Zagara Maw do not work
• Maiev’s Containment Disc Works, Void Prison and Chromie Time Trap
• Deckard Cain Announcer is best
• Catching Giant Killers:

• Draconic Might
• Deathwing's Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes heal him for 40% of the damage dealt. Upon losing an Armor Plate, Deathwing becomes Protected for 0.75 seconds.

• My Main Build : https://heroeshearth.com/builds/hash/16M-16P-16S-16I-16V-16Z-171/
• The Incineration Dream: https://heroeshearth.com/builds/hash/16K-16O-16R-16T-16V-16X-171/

Links

• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/23239990/heroes-of-the-storm-live-patch-notes-december-3-2019-2019-12-3/
• https://heroeshearth.com/hero/deathwing/

XP Orbs are Here

Quotes vias Senior game designer Alex Neyman

“It used to be a little bit of a chore. But now, you’re like, oh! Honestly, psychologically, it feels so good to see all those minions die and all the globes go—”

• 9 months in the making
• “with a generous pickup radius” HA!
• These experimental mechanics will typically only last for the season in which they’re introduced. But if a Nexus Anomaly works really well, and players like it, the team may make it a permanent part of the game. Neyman believes this will probably be the case with Experience Globes, which have felt highly rewarding in testing.
• Neyman cites internal statistics about split-push or side-lane Heroes tending to have a higher-than-average winrate because their mechanics encourage what he calls “macro gameplay.”

• “If one or two players do this on your team, you have a huge advantage, because your team is getting more powerful,” Neyman says. “You’re getting more experience. You’re keeping your lanes pushed.”

• Another nice effect of Experience Globes is that leveling up finally makes sense from a narrative perspective.

• “Why is it that I kill this random soldier and I suddenly get stronger?” Neyman says. “The idea now is that there’s this Nexus energy that you go and pick up, and that makes you more powerful.”
• That’s right: by defeating enemy Heroes and clearing minion waves, you’re tapping into the boundless energies that roil and thunder within the Nexus, multidimensional currents that wrest realms in and out of existence like a deranged swarm of cosmic fireflies. As you extract the very life essence from the corpses of your foes, your powers grow, until they become so vast that none can stand against you. . . .

Links

• https://heroesofthestorm.com/en-us/blog/23227977/introducing-experience-globes-the-first-seasonal-nexus-anomaly-2019-11-25/

The Oddly Missing Things

• Toy Event starts December 16th
• No mount reward for 50 wins Storm League

December 5th AMA

Freezing Lanes

AZ Jackson: I’ll start with a few declarative statements. I’ll clarify that these are just my point of view, and not necessarily those of everyone on the team, so I wouldn’t take this as gospel:

1. I think lane manipulation is and always has been a part of our game, particularly at the higher levels. There are micro instances where it’s a good idea to let enemy minions hit you in front of your tower to make the waves crash near your tower in order to gain advantages like enabling a gank by a nearby teammate or to soak safely in a bad match up.
2. I don’t believe that being encouraged to freeze a lane ever is a terrible thing for the game. However, I do believe that if this is happening all the time at all stages of the game that it is a problem, largely due to encouraging too much passive play when we want our game to be about aggression.
3. In our experience, the experience globes haven’t universally motivated passive play. In general, they have motivated more aggressive play and more interesting combat, as both sides are trying to get a better position so that they can collect the experience globes for themselves.

Overall I would say that yes, this is a big change to the game, and it’s something that we are going to iterate on, and, like all changes to our game, it’s something that we can remove, keep, or only keep the best parts depending on how it pans out.

Exposing Official Win-rates

KaeoMilker: We’ve been talking about a data API for Heroes for YEARS and at times have even made strides on bringing it to you. Unfortunately, those initiatives hit hurdles with everything from data compliance complexities (GDPR has been fun!) to prioritization against other game features and have lost steam over the years.

In the absence of the actual API, we’ve discussed exposing official winrates and stats alongside updates that are more balance- and gameplay-centric, and that is something I’d still be open to exploring if you think it gives you a portion of what you’re looking for?

Deathwing Release Skin Next Year

Blizz_KinaBREW: His skin wasn't ready for this year. We have something really cool planed for him though. This is what I'm personally working on at the moment. Please accept The Destroyer Brightwing skin in the meantime as a peace offering.

How has Balancing the game changed

BlizzAZJackson: This has been a change from how we used to do things. We didn’t really used to do this due to the fear of making something incredibly unbalanced, but nowadays we have more embraced the view that it’s better to create more exciting changes to the game than to never try, and if we mess up then we’ll fix it down the road. So far this has worked very well, as we haven’t had any huge blowouts due to changes in balance patches over the last year.

Alpha Heroes Allowed for Hero Changes mid game

BlizzAZJackson: My favorite was when we had the Hero Buyback system.

This was wayyyyyyyyy back in the day, pre Alpha, when we had Gold, before the talent system that we have today.

Basically you could spend a relatively small amount of Gold, and at any time during the game you could completely switch your hero.

Entire metas were based around this, where, for example, you could play as Zagara in the beginning stages of the game to bully your opponent, then switch to Valla or Zeratul midway through for a power spike, then in the end game go to someone tanky like Arthas for the final few teamfights.

Entire metas were developed around this, and we actually had it in for a long time. It was wild.

Mini-Tidbits:

• Distant Future Update to Tracer
• Arthas could take up to 20 weeks to rebuild. Not happening.
• KaeoMilker is going to see if he can get more cross game promotions
• Blog post on the State of AI is incoming
• Locust Removal for Abathur? Thinking about it
• There will be more overwatch heroes

Links

• https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/e5lv41/heroes_of_the_storm_ama_december_5_2019/

Emails

Valkamer

Reposting:

Time Machine Question: If you could go back and teach Kyle/Garrett Day One Heroes something, what would it be?

Name

Text

Name

Text

Outro

Patreon Shout Out

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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
• R2-T2

Kyle

• Twitch.tv/kylefergusson
• Kylefergusson.com