HotS - TL;DR Blizzcon Recap - Day 1

Good evening boys and girls! Our Heroes of the Storm boost team is starting a service to provide you all the hottest HotS news (pun intended). As you all know, the BlizzCon is being hosted right now, and we have a few guys there providing all the latest informations and leaks!

Day 1 Recap And Upcoming Heroes

-Game Designers told us that they have a pool consisting of more than 200 heroes to choose from for the next Heroes of the Storm heroes, and they leaked the upcoming three heroes!

Lunara

First upcoming hero is Lunara, the Dryad from the Warcraft world. She will be a squishy, hypermobile ranged assassin. Here’s a list of her abilities:

Dryad's Swiftness (Z): Lunara doesn’t have a standard mount but hops around the battleground, having extra mobility

Nature's Toxin: (D) With this trait, every ability and basic attack applies a DoT stack

Noxious Blossom: (Q) AoE spell that inflicts her DoT

Crippling Spores: (W) Slows every enemy debuffed by Nature’s Toxin

Wisp: (E) Sends out a wisp to get vision around an area.

Thornwood Vine: (R) Long range skillshot, great for poking

Leaping Strike: (R) Leaps over a targeted unfriendly hero and deals damage to it. Two charges, great for damage and mobility

She is great vs magic damage thanks to a talent that reduces all magic damage by 75%; at lv20 she gains access to a talent that allows her to remove debuffs and DoTs from a teammate and herself.

King Genn Greymane

The idea behind this hero is that he is a shapeshifting Worgen that starts in ranged form to poke and goes into melee range to finish the kill. Everything else comes from this concept

Basic Abilities - Human Form

Gilnean Cocktail (Q) A long range skillshot that deals damage to a target and to those behind him a in a cone.

Inner Beast (W) Attack speed boost, refreshed by basic attacks

Darkflight (E) Turns in Worgen form and jumps to a target dealing damage

Basic Abilities - Worgen Form

Razor Swipe (Q) Greymane dashes in a direction dealing damage

Wolfheart (W) when Inner Beast is on, each basic attack decrease the cool down

Disengage (E) rolls away from a target and turns back into Human Form

Go for the Throat (R): In Human Form, shapeshifts into a Worgen and leaps to an enemy, dealing damage. This ability can be cast again if it kills an enemy.

Marked for the Kill (R): in Worgen form, turns into Human and fires a long range skillshot that deals damage, increase damage done to the target by 25% and tags him. Greymane can re activate the ability to jump to his victim in Worgen form.

Cho’Gall

Very challenging and innovative hero to design: he is composed by two heroes that are controlled by two players!

Cho is the “Ogre” part of the champion, he controls movements and autos.

Gall is the “Caster”, using spells and cooldowns.

Cooperating is essential to use this hero. his two skills, Rune Blast and Rune Bomb, are fired from a player and exploded from another! This will be probably a fun hero to play in the HotS Duo Queue.

Here is a list of their abilities, starting with Cho.

Surging Fist(Q): After 1 second, charge in a direction knocking aside enemies

Consuming Blaze(W): set fire to close enemies, recovering health

Rune Bomb(E): Fires a Bomb that can be activated by Gall

Two-Headed (Trait) - You control half of the champion; Gall controls the other half

Hammer of Twilight(R): Passively increase AA damage; if activated deals

damage, pushes enemies away and stuns them. Upheaval(R): After 1 second push enemy to Cho and slows them.

For Gall’s abilities:

Shadowflame(Q): Standard damage nuke

Dread Orb(W): Fires a bouncing bomb

Runic Blast(E): Detonates Cho’s Fire Blast

Two-Headed (Trait): You control half of the champion; Gall controls the other half. Gall is immune to stuns and silences.

Hurry Up, Oof!(Z): Movement speed buff that allows Cho’Gall to pass through units.

Twisting Nether(R): After 1 second, Gall starts channeling a spell that slows enemies and can be reactivated to deal high damage

Shadow Bolt Volley:(R): Launches 20 shadow bolts during four seconds at your mouse target location.

The Overwatch hero Tracer will be available as a playable hero in HotS! However she will probably released after Overwatch beta ends (mid 2016?)

General information

-Cho’Gall can’t be picked for first or last, instead he is “double picked” (or double banned!). -Every player controlling Cho’Gall will choose a skin and a mount, and the game will decide randomly what to use.

-More races incoming, including gnomes and trolls

-You can expect to see Gul’Dan as one the next HotS upcoming heroes.

New incoming game mode: Arena!

- Each player can choose from a pool of three heroes. Multiple heroes in the same match are allowed.

- Arena will be played on a best of three, in a totally new map built around a single objective.

- This game mode is a non stop five minutes long fight, and is balanced for this: shorter death timers and instant healings from tapping.

- Every round the map will change

New Map incoming: the Towers of Doom! Not a lot of informations yet, but it seems to be Halloween related.



-New Halloween skins for Arthas, Sylvanas, Stitches, Cho’Gall and Greymane. Lunara will have an Armored Night-Elf skin.

-More informations were leaked from the Hero Panel as well. However don’t expect these changes before 2016, as Blizzard is still working on them!

-Improvements on Matchmaking: new formulas to calculate your MMR and provide more balanced games. The maximum queue time is increased from 6 to 10 minutes to provide more satisfying matches as well.

-Minor improvements for MMR: it will be different for each hero, and it won’t simply be affected by win and losses, but also by in game stats.

-Blizzard decided to change their stance about “unlockable talents and heroics”: those who want to try for the first time an hero will not be at a disadvantage anymore because of the missing heroic and talents.

-Hard reset for ranked in the new season. We can expect as well some fixes to the rank fixes, as it is not enough forgiving at the moment.

-Death Recap: after dying, during the death timers you can check what killed your poor hero.

- You will be able to ban even in Hero and Team League.

- New rank implemented: Grandmaster, just like Legend in Hearthstone.

- Free hero rotations increased from 7 to 10

Don’t forget to check our site in the next hours for more news from the BlizzCon Day 2! If you can’t attend the event, we got you covered.