Heroes of the Storm

[Alan]

China vs Taiwan right now at Blizzcon

[Dave]

So many hoverboards!

[Jonathan]

Whatever, Cho'Gall on the 17th!

Really all three heroes look really interesting to me. I am disappoint in the lack of specialist, but oh well.

[Jonathan]

OMG this fucking production team

[Alan]

Have the games started yet? Wasn't it supposed to start like 3 hours ago?

[Jonathan]

Was supposed to start at 11. First game finished finally at 1:30.

[Jonathan]

Won my first QM as Murky 41-4 stomp. If the enemy team is not anticipating the Octograb, they get rekt.

That 8s slow on slime was crucial for the first tribute.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/11/7/968865 ... lease-date
The queue will change soon. They also talked about taking in-game per-hero performance into account when determining MMR, but there's no release date for that.

[Jonathan]

Uther nerfs incoming. And I would imagine a few more heroes, too. Lili and Murky are prime suspects. Tychus will get buffs. No buffs for Stitches?

http://www.gosugamers.net/heroesofthest ... ign-a-hero
http://www.wowhead.com/news=249820/bliz ... game-panel

[Jonathan]

Oh, and QM is going to change comp heuristics so it's always a mirror match by role (not hero). So 4 specialist one assassin will pop, but you'll fight the a 4 specialist 1 assassin team. No idea if that is relaxed for 4 stacks.

All three new heroes look like they put out a ton of damage, but not burst. Hopefully with that and moving Problem Solver to a pre-10 talent tier, the multi-warrior meta will get a kick in the pants before it becomes as entrenched as multi-mage was.

[Jonathan]

No announcement of guilds or anything that would help you put a team together.

I played Kerrigan against bots and lost earlier today. I just cannot play her enough to keep the muscle memory of her combo fresh unless I main her. I'm going to main the heroes I am good at, instead.

It would be nice to play a draft mode where I can anticipate playing a role I am good at (off-tank or specialist). Guess I'll keep waiting.

[Jonathan]

The implication/announcement is that the Cho'Gall patch will shift to the Scaling Test stats and death timer. The demo games they had at BlizzCon were using the Scaling Test balance.

[Alan]

Just finished watching all the matches.

Cloud9 - DK game 2 was epic.

[Alan]

Meanwhile I had a pretty bad Heroes weekend. Went 1-6, losses were all stomps. Not sure I learned anything from them either haha.

[Jonathan]

Oh, and QM is going to change comp heuristics so it's always a mirror match by role (not hero). So 4 specialist one assassin will pop, but you'll fight the a 4 specialist 1 assassin team.

This change is coming later next year. The queue for matchmaking is the only thing that will launch this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SSRjZM ... e&t=29m46s

[Alan]

Uther nerfs incoming. And I would imagine a few more heroes, too. Lili and Murky are prime suspects. Tychus will get buffs. No buffs for Stitches?

http://www.gosugamers.net/heroesofthest ... ign-a-hero
http://www.wowhead.com/news=249820/bliz ... game-panel

I think Uther nerf will hurt the melee assassins. Right now for melee assassin dependent comps you need one of two things:

1. Uther
2. Multiple shielding heroes (some combo of Tass, BW, Aba)

Without one of the above, Illidan is unplayable in HL (if the other team has CC/Silence), and Kerrigan/Butcher are also significantly weaker.

[Dave]

Just realized you could use the Hoverboard (same with the gold coin) on any character, even those that usually have their own special mount like Zagara. It looks really stupid! haha

Wonder how annoying it will be to pickup Chogal without using some forum like reddit.

[Jonathan]

http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/blog/199 ... 11-11-2015

Hearthstone auto-tells your team that you're going back! Hooray!

Fixed an issue which could cause a team with no Support Heroes to be matched against a team with Support Heroes in the Quick Match queue.

Praise the lord!

Kharazim gets both his non-healing traits buffed. The Gathering Power talent gets reworked, again!

Major change to Drain Hope:

Drain Hope (W)
Cooldown decreased from 12 to 11 seconds
If Leoric is stunned while casting Drain Hope, the stun will no longer cancel the Ability and the missile will continue to travel
Damage dealt and Health gained reduced from 25% to 20%
Damage and healing now increase over time as a flat value

Not sure if nerf or buff.

[Jonathan]

Wonder how annoying it will be to pickup Chogal without using some forum like reddit.

It'll be easy. I'm just going to wait for Vinny to figure out out!

[Jonathan]

Fun fact! Alan is the only one of us with a support character with a positive win rate, and he has three (Uther, Tyrande, Rehgar). Zef on Uther is the only one who is even close, at 50%.

[Jonathan]

2. AI will push straight up into your towers and drain them at level 1.

According to Reddit, minion HP was buffed by 50% but tower damage was only buffed 25%. I have been so focused on the AA changes it did not occur to me that Azmodan, though his talents will not feel significantly different, will have 2x the HP of a squishy. He could definitely knock a tower down in 30s.