Heroes of the Storm Dev Tracker

From battling on the frontlines of the Omnic Crisis, to teaming up with a mega-sized murloc looking to sway an eternal conflict between two towering celestial beings--the realm-shattering magics of the Nexus causes Blizzard characters to often end up transplanted from their earthly homes to some new and surprising territory. One such journey was that of Aleksandra Zaryanova, aka Zarya.

With our 30th anniversary around the corner, now seems like a great time to track down the designers who brought Zarya to life in Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm and find out what goes into creating an iconic Hero that spans two worlds.

The Defender of Russia’s Intro to Overwatch

Zarya’s voyage from early concept to the destructive wielder-of-weaponry was a surprisingly smooth process for the Overwatc...

Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with Hero balance changes! Read on for details.

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“By the time you realize you’re no match, Hogger is thinking how best to eat you.” – Senior Game Designer David Warner

Strap on your [Studded Leather Belt of the Wolf], sharpen your shiniest common dagger, and abandon all hope, ye Elwynn adventurers who dare enter here. Armed with lobbable loot hoards, flailing strikes, and some devilishly-deadly spins, Hogger has abandoned his hill and headed straight for the Nexus!

Ability Breakdown: 

This leveler of low-levels is primed and ready to pounce! When taking advantage of the Rage mechanic, which lowers the cooldown on his abilities as he gets deeper into the fray, Hogger becomes a rampaging monster. With the ability to dish out tons of area damage and by generating pathing blockers with his ...

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch is live and brings a new Hero Hogger! Read on for more information.

NOTE: Orange text indicates a change between PTR and Live notes.

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• New Hero: Hogger
• Nexus Anomaly
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Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until November 30, PST. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

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• New Hero: Hogger
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Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with Hero balance changes! Read on for details.

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Heroes

Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with Hero balance changes! Read on for details.

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• Bug Fixes

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• Both The Lost Vikings and Leoric are flooding our RISK team with intentional feeding false positives. To keep ARAM as healthy as possible we...

There’s a war on in the Korprulu Sector: Battlecruisers are meeting Leviathans, and the asteroid fields are littered with the glowing husks of capital ships. The throne of the Zerg has been usurped by the invading Betrayer King of the Alliance, but there is a force that stands to oppose him. Who will emerge victorious? The newly crowned King of Blades, Arthas, or the resistance led by the Emperor of the Dominion, Anduin?

Starting today, you can see the fight play out for yourself in the newly dropped CraftWars patch, with new skins, mounts, and more. To take in the creation tale of this mighty patch, we sat down with Assistant Art Director Trevor Jacobs and Senior Artist Andrew Kinabrew.

King of Blades Arthas

...

What if we told you it was time to settle who’d win a fight between your favorite Warcraft and StarCraft heroes? Now, what if we told you that you’d be the one to settle that grudge? No more time for hypotheticals—the CraftWars Event has arrived in-game today, and worlds are colliding!

Take a look below for details on the new Event, the next Nexus Anomaly, the latest round of Hero reworks, and more!

New Event: CraftWars

The reemergence of the Dark Nexus has led to fiercer competition for Singularities than ever before—but a small group of Heroes is transforming the conflict. The Realm Crafter they’ve developed doesn’t just bring Heroes from multiple dimensions together in the Nexus—it actually fuses them, along with their friendships, rivalries, and powers.

Does Mei have it in her to be a Death Knight? What are t...

“This anomaly is putting the power directly into your hands, giving you the choice of when to utilize it.” 

The thundering drumbeats that sound from Azeroth’s arenas now echo throughout the Nexus. Fingers, claws, and tendrils clutch trinkets suddenly imbued with the unstoppable force of a rampaging war machine. This power can be yours. You need only claim your Gladiator’s Medallion and let nothing stand in your way.

The Gladiator’s Medallion is our 4^th and newest experiment in Nexus Anomalies: the limited-time gameplay shake-ups that temporarily grace the Battlegrounds before heading back into the space between realms. During this new anomaly, every Hero will be equipped with an activated ability that instantly clears most disabling effects and grants a brief Unstoppable buff, though with a hefty 5-minute cooldown. Consider it your new “I’ve made a huge mistake” undo button, or a tool to help you pull of...

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch is live and brings a new Nexus Anomaly, ARAM mode, new skins and mounts, along with D.Va and Gazlowe reworks and more! Read on for more information.

NOTE: Orange text indicates a change between PTR and Live notes.

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• Nexus Anomaly
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What do you get when you mix a professional gamer from the future, energy drinks, a huge mech, and tabletop roleplaying game archetypes? According to David Warner, senior game designer on the Heroes of the Storm team, the outcome of this amalgamation is the brand-new D.Va rework, releasing with Heroes of the Storm’s upcoming patch.

We caught up with Warner to hear more about everyone’s favorite MEKA pilot and what it’s like to rework heroes.

For Warner, game design is like a constantly-changing jigsaw puzzle with an unknown number of parts. Trying to suss out the best direction to take a design is a point of frustration, but when all of the pieces seamlessly connect, it brings him an unparalleled feeling of fulfillment.

“Personally,” Warner says, “the best feeling is when you finally get all the segments of a particular build in place and you start getting feedback about ...

You’re going to want to take a look at this Gazlowe hero rework . . . he’s a miracle of Goblin engineering!

Our favorite scrapper has gotten a mechanical and quality-of-life upgrade just in time for the upcoming CraftWars patch dropping on September 8. With these changes, Gazlowe—the Nexus’s very own demolition man—has been fully realized as a frontline Bruiser specializing in disruption and zone control.

Learn about the changes to Gazlowe’s abilities, talents, and more below!

The Demolition Plans

The Heroes team had very clear goals with Gazlowe’s rework: on the gameplay side, the devs saw an opportunity to make him more effective in team fights and solo laning. On the thematic end, they knew they wanted to play up the Goblin engineering fantasy and used this as a pillar for the changes to Gazlowe’s kit.

A Peek at the Results

Gazlowe now comes with a new resource system called Scrap to replace and reinvent ...

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until the week of September 7, PDT. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

Quick Navigation:

• Nexus Anomaly
• ...

Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with Hero balance changes! Read on for details.

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• Heroes
• Bug Fixes

Heroes

Heroes of the Storm has just been updated with Hero balance changes! Read on for details.

Quick Navigation:

• General
• Heroes
• Bug Fixes

General

• Nexus Anomaly - Climate Phenomena
  • The Climate Phenomena Anomaly h...

When a swaggering wrestler in a tight pink singlet grabs a hot dog out of your hand en route to deliver a folding chair to the face of an unsuspecting sucker down in the ring—That’s Nexxxx-oooo-mania!

For our latest wrestling-themed event, we’re taking Heroes of the Storm to the Intermultiversal Nexoweight Championship, where there are no rules and no mercy, just nonstop bicep-busting carnage. Gird your girdles for new Skins, Mounts, the bellowing Announcer MC Tombstone, special Quests, and more. All Loot Chests you obtain during Nexomania II have a higher chance to contain event-themed loot (except for Hero-specific chests). The action starts this week and won’t let up until our next major update!

New Skins: Meet your contenders

We have three new contenders entering the Intermultiversal Nexoweight Championship! These masters of mayhem have trained for years and their skills in the ring are only matched by the style they bring.

...

“Our world is worth fighting for.” – Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou 

Despite her sunny demeanor, Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou has always had a knack for manipulating the colder elements to aid in her fight against the enemies of Overwatch. Now, utilizing the latest in temperature-dropping technologies, Mei has stepped out of the lab and into the Nexus to give her opponents a thorough thermal thrashing. 

Ability Breakdown: 

Thanks to the disruptive, protective, and surprisingly restorative properties of Mei’s icy engineering, this bone-chilling bruiser can get in the opponent’s face with her Endothermic Blaster, disrupt and devastate teamfights, then slide out of the skirmish unscathed. 

Basic Abilities

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch is live and brings a new Hero - Mei, the Nexomania II event, a new Nexus Anomaly - Climate Phenomena, along with a Mal'Ganis rework and more! Read on for more information.

NOTE: Orange text indicates a change between PTR and Live notes.

Quick Navigation:

• New Hero: Mei
• Nexus Anomaly
• General
• ...

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until the week of June 22, PDT. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

Quick Navigation:

• New Hero: Mei
• ...