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#313 - Into the Nexus: “Bugs Be Gone”

• Garrett • Kyle • NotParadox or Guest

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

 

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BUGS BE GONE! On today’s Into the Nexus Garrett and Kyle run you through all this week’s Heroes of the Storm news including bug fixes, incoming mini-season events and more. While we love that you love Heroes of the Storm with us; be good to each other and yourself during these stressful times. Enjoy competitive gaming responsibly. And for goodness sakes lets update the Heroes pricing structure! Your emails and more make this a complete Into the Nexus.

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

Still early but

Lots of topics this week, plenty of mail too.

Patreon Mention: Patreon.com/ITN

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

Patron Thanks Doc for keeping track

MacIntyre next episode

News

Bug Fixes are in!

 

Oh, and Azmodunk's dunk got fixed too."

Last Week AZ Jackson gave some insight into this bug on reddit.

AZ Jackson: 

Hey all, I just wanted to let you know that we're aware of the bugs with Xul's skeletons not working entirely correctly, and we're looking to push out a fix sometime next week. We were hoping to get one out sooner, but world events have impacted us like they have so many others.

I also want to say that this one was my bad, and I'm a bit bummed that what I'm hoping will be an awesome rework had to ship with these. To give you a little peek into how development works, basically we had a minor animation bug when he spawned his Skeletons with his Scythe and the Jailors talent, and my fix for the bug was to put a birth delay that his normal laner skeletons have onto those ones as well (he has two "different" skeletons that he spawns in the backend because the Jailors have never counted towards his cap, causing them to be mostly the same but a little different). What I didn't know at the time was that this birth delay is actually hooked up to all of the extra "stuff" that happens when he spawns his laner skeletons, which duplicated the effects that the Spectral Scythe and Jailor skeletons gain, including their Corpse Exploding effect when they die (this is why they "die" twice and why they have some weird interactions with his skeleton cap from minions). We tested him for a very long time without any of these bugs occurring, and since this was actually the last bug fix I did before he was pushed Live, there wasn't really an opportunity for QA to catch it, particularly since their check for my fix was whether or not a minor animation was now working correctly (which it was), which has little to do with how the different skeletons spawn and deal damage on a base level.

These kinds of things happen all the time due to how complex and layered interactions are in our game (coding is complicated who knew), but I wanted to give some insight into how these things can come about.

Thanks for your patience. A fix is (hopefully) coming in the near future ™.

“New Bug” inconsistancy:

vs

BlizzAZJackson: Good eye, and no, this is not intended. We know about the bug and a fix is coming soon ™

For more clarification, if a unit gains Armor of any kind it should work on everything unless it's specified in the tooltip that it's only against a specific source, for example "gain x physical armor against enemy Heroes".

Links

Greek Gods Mini Event Incoming

Blizzard-posted an interview with Assistant Art Director and Senior Artist, Andrew Kinabrew, and 24-year Blizzard vet, Trevor Jacobs

My Big Fat Greek Leak

The skins are in the pipeline now; Kinabrew recently finished his “consistency pass,” to make sure the whole pack is visually consistent.

Kinabrew and Jacobs also talked about the overall inspiration for skins and events.

Links

Not_Paradox Ladder Anxiety

Text

Links

Discussion: Heroes are too expensive

Anytime filler really. Reddit has moved on from this discussion.

10k Heroes

7k Heroes

Comments

Strategy:

Links

 

Emails

LifeForms

In a recent episode, you guys were discussing Zarya and how awkward she would be in the solo lane due to her Shield Ally being totally useless with no teammates nearby.

The spell ranks in League perfectly cure this issue, as you will find champions who are typically only good at one role being able to successfully fulfill other roles just by the order that they rank up their abilities in the early levels.  

Example - Soraka is a champ with a point and click heal, but it can only be cast on allies. This renders it totally useless if you take her into the solo lanes. With spell ranks, you completely ignore this ability early on and spend all your rank ups in the other 2 abilities. This shifts the champ from being a heal bot to a poke machine that allows her to bully solo lanes early game.

My question is - what would the addition of spell ranks do to the game of HoTS? Allowing players to decide HOW they scale is a huge lever that could totally shake up the solo lane.

Will

Abathur main here, and I just want to say that it shocks me every time I hear that the xp orbs have made Aba unplayable.  The orbs give me more flexibility with timing, knowing I can place mines/save someone, and not miss a portion of a wave's xp.  Before the changes, I felt like soaking in a bush was actually kind of bad, because sitting in vision tempts opponents to spend time coming out to gank you.  If you time your departure, you cause them to waste a lot of time.  Anyway, I've been getting 30k xp pretty regularly almost always a hat based build, and I love the changes!

Thanks as always for the great show!

Gabe

Hey Gare-bear and Ky-guy (May I call you Gare-bear and Ky-guy?). I just now jumped to gold league for the first time. A bit of context: I began my ranked hits career at the depths of bronze five 3 years ago when i started listening to you guys. The general game and meta knowledge I got from the show got me to silver in two months. Finding notparadox (also through itn), taught me optimized builds and the importance of camp clear and lane clear, which bolstered me to the silver 3-2 range. On last episode when you mentioned that xul was bugged, I knew this was my chance, and I 100% win rated my way up to gold 5 riding his skeleton waves to glory.

My two points are 1. This show is a valuable resource to those trying to get better like myself.

And 2. It is not impossible to climb out of bronze 5. You just have to think of yourself as the main character in a dark souls game: the one hopeless piece of ash, who will learn to destroy gods.

My question is this: what do I need to know to thrive in gold. What do people know how to do in each rank, and what do they not know, that smart itn listeners Can take advantage of.

Thanks for everything!

Gabe

PS. Quick stupid humble brag, because no one in my real life appreciates it, I just starred in a production of it’s a wonderful life opposite the voice actress of lunara/Elise starseeker... Ok toodles!

TaiAshaMan

Hey Kyle and Garrett, I see a lot of BM behaviors at the end of games where people are walking into the enemy's hall of storms over and over and had an idea for discouraging that.  What would yall think if instead of being thrown out (playfully and fun like it is now), players were instantly killed instead? Could be half death timers or something, but still long enough to be meaningful.

Outro

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Personal Stuff

Garrett

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