[2019] Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch Notes – February 4, 2019

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting until February 10. 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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Quick Navigation:

• General
• Heroes
• Collection
• Bug Fixes

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General

• Mac
  • Improved compatibility with latest Mac OS versions.
• A.I.
  • Made several improvements to Hero A.I. behavior.

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Heroes

Specialist	Support
Abathur	Ana
	Rehgar
	Whitemane

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Specialist

Abathur

Abilities

• Carapace (E)
  • Cooldown reduced from 12 to 6 seconds
  • Duration reduced from 8 to 6 seconds
  • Additional functionality:
    • Shield now persists after Symbiote ends
  • Additional functionality:
    • Shield now Heals allied Heroes for 22 Health per second while Carapace is active
• Locust Strain (Trait)
  • Duration reduced from 25 to 16 seconds
  • Damage increased from 34 to 40
• Evolve Monstrosity (R)
  • No longer takes 50% reduced damage from non-Heroic enemies
  • Now shows a warning indicator showing where it is going to burrow to
  • Additional Functionality:
    • Now has the ability to Deep Tunnel to a visible location every 80 seconds

Talents

• Level 1
  • Regenerative Microbes (E)
    • Removed
  • New Talent: Reinforced Carapace (E)
    • Increase the Shield amount of Carapace by 40%
  • Survival Instincts (Trait)
    • No longer increases Locust duration
    • Additional functionality:
      • Increase Locust attack damage by 40%
• Level 4
  • Ballistospores (Trait)
    • Removed
  • Sustained Carapace (E)
    • Removed
  • Needlespine (Q)
    • Moved from Level 7
• Level 7
  • Calldown: MULE (Active)
    • Healing per second reduced from 100 to 90
• Level 13
  • Assault Strain (Trait)
    • Removed
  • Bombard Strain (Trait)
    • No longer increases Locust attack damage
    • Additional functionality:
      • Increase the duration of Locusts by 50%
• Level 16
  • Volatile Mutation (R)
    • Additional functionality:
      • Damage dealt by Volatile Mutation against enemy Heroes heals the host for 50% of the damage dealt
• Level 20
  • Evolutionary Link (R)
    • Additional functionality:
      • Increase the duration of Ultimate Evolution by 50%
  • Evolution Complete (R)
    • No longer gives the Monstrosity the ability to Deep Tunnel
    • New functionality:
      • Now increases the Monstrosity’s Basic Attack damage by 100%

Developer Comment: For a long time Abathur has had a unique place in Heroes, being a powerful force at high level play while having a relatively low win-rate across the board. These changes are meant to spruce up his talents while streamlining his gameplay and introducing more counter-play to the hero. Carapace, particularly with the Sustained Carapace talent, created some awkward gameplay where it was much more efficient to use Symbiote on cooldown, even when the desire was to stay on one target, due to the cooldown refresh that it gave Carapace. In order to clean this up, Sustained Carapace is baseline and the cooldown of Carapace has been reduced, so Abathur no longer has to continuously remove Carapace to be efficient. In addition, Abathur’s Locusts are now more potent, but they last for a shorter duration, meaning Abathur players will be more rewarded for positioning themselves aggressively and punished when they overextend too much.

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Support

Ana

Abilities

• Healing Dart (Q)
  • Heal reduced from 205 to 195
• Shrike (Trait/D)
  • New Active - Aim Down Sights
  • No longer grants Sight or Attack Range
  • Cooldown from 3 to 4 seconds
  • Self-slow increased from 20 to 25%
  • New functionality:
    • While active, Sleep and Healing Dart ranges are increased by 25% and pierce one target
• Eye of Horus (R)
  • Heal reduced from 285 to 225
  • Damage reduced from 166 to 135
  • Added functionality:
    • Shots now pierce all targets (but still impact and cease on structures)

Talents

• Level 1
  • Piercing Darts (E)
    • Removed
  • Grenade Calibration (W)
    • Removed
  • Contact Healing (W)
    • Moved from Level 16
  • New Talent – Slumber Shells (E)
    • If an enemy is affected by Sleep Dart, Ana gains 25% movement speed
  • New Talent – Vampiric Rounds (Trait)
    • Quest: Each time you stack max Doses on a target Hero, increase Shrikes self-heal by 1.5%
• Level 4
  • Air Strike (Active)
    • Removed
  • Aim Down Sights (D/Trait)
    • Removed (New Trait Addition)
  • Debilitating Darts (Active)
    • Moved from Level 7
  • New Talent – Biotic Enhancements (W)
    • Increase the bonus healing duration of Biotic Grenade by 50% and reduce its cooldown by 4 seconds
• Level 7
  • Temporary Blindness (E)
    • Removed
  • New Talent – Anti-Healer (W)
    • Biotic Grenades area is increased by 100% and the duration of the Healing debuff is increased by 25%
  • New Talent – Night Terrors (E)
    • Upon waking, enemy Heroes take 8% of their Maximum Health in damage. If a Hero is not woken up early, set the cooldown of Sleep Dart to 6 seconds.
• Level 16
  • New Talent - Active Reload (Active)
    • Activate to gain 3 charges of Healing Dart (60 second CD)
• Level 20
  • Ballistic Advantage (R)
    • Removed
  • Dynamic Shooting (Passive)
    • Removed
  • Somnolent Doses (Trait)
    • Removed
  • Custom Optics (Trait)
    • Removed
  • New Talent – Dead-Eye (R)
    • The healing and damage of Eye of Horus is increased by 4% for every Hero hit. This resets after all shots have been fired.
  • New Talent - Armored Stance (D/Trait)
    • Increase Shrike’s damage by 50%. Gain 25 Armor while Aim Down Sights is active.
  • New Talent – Dynamic Optics (D/Trait)
    • While Aim Down Sights is active, increase the range of your Basic Attacks by 4. Each attack increases your Attack Speed by 10% for 3 seconds (up to 50%)

Developer Comment: Ana came to the Nexus during the ‘Quest Revolution’ where we were adding them in as many places as we could. We have learned a lot since that time, so we spent some time re-designing and re-organizing Ana’s talent tree. Bringing Aim Down Sights into her base Shrike functionality gives us a design solve for the powerful yet flawed Piercing Darts quest. The rest of the talent changes and shuffles were directed at opening up some new builds while keeping all of her current beloved capabilities!

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Rehgar

Abilities

• Ancestral Healing (R)
  • Rehgar can now self-cast Ancestral Healing

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Whitemane

Talents

• Level 4
  • High Inquisitor (W)
    • Mana return per stack reduced from 75 to 50

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Collection

New Bundles

• The following new bundles are only available for a limited time!
  • Join the Resistance Bundle
  • Viper Returns Bundle
  • Firestorm Blaze Skin Pack
  • Deckard Pain Skin Pack
  • Delta Hanzo Skin Pack

New Skins

• Firestorm Blaze
• Red Hot Firestorm Blaze
• Atomic Firestorm Blaze
• Deckard Pain
• Infiltrator Deckard Pain
• Desert Ops Deckard Pain
• Delta Hanzo
• Blackout Delta Hanzo
• Veteran Delta Hanzo
• Badlands Imperator Stukov
• Badlands Sidewinder Ana
• Badlands Deathfang Genji
• Cryo Imperator Stukov
• Cryo Sidewinder Ana
• Cryo Deathfang Genji
• Paramour Pajamathur Abathur

New Mounts

• D.E.R.P.A.
• Commando D.E.R.P.A.
• Desert D.E.R.P.A.
• Badlands Viper Dominator
• Flirty Cloud

New Portraits, Sprays, and Emojis

• Several new emoji packs and portraits have also been added to the game.

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Bug Fixes

General

• Fixed an issue causing Shields applied to non-Heroes to be applies towards Healing Score.
• Super Cleanse effects (Abolish Magic) will no longer remove delayed damaging effects (Consume Souls, Last Rites)
• Fixed an issue causing Time Stop and Stasis effects to remove Armor Vulnerability effects.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a player’s ready state to become locked if Ready and Cancel were pressed in rapid succession.
• Fixed an issue that could occasionally prevent players from pressing the ready button when using the Call of the Nexus Quick Match system.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

• Ana: Fixed an issue allowing cooldowns to tick down during Time Stop if the Hero is affected by Nano Boost.
• Cassia: Fixed an issue causing Lightning Fury to be invisible if it pierced a Hero at melee range.
• Cassia: Fixed an issue causing Fend to immediately cancel if cast immediately after Lightning Fury.
• Chromie: Slowing Sands will no longer slow Battleground vehicles (Dragon Knight, Triglav Protector).
• Deckard: Fortitude of the Faithful’s range indicator now matches the actual range of the ability.
• Deckard: Fixed an issue with how Portion of Revival benefits from spell power. (should now heal for more)
• Kerrigan: Fixed an issue preventing Sharpened Blades from granting kill credit against Heroes with post-death effects.
• Li Li: Fixed an issue that caused healing from Cloud Serpent to temporarily fail if the Blessing of Yu’lon talent was chosen while a Cloud Serpent was active.
• Maiev: Fan of Knives will now refund the correct amount of Mana.
• Maiev: Fixed an issue with Blade Dance’s visual effects blocking command inputs.
• Muradin: Fixed an issue preventing Thunder Burn from creating the secondary thunder clap if it lands the killing blow on the affected Hero.
• Nova: Fixed an issue causing Holo Decoy’s Snipe projectile to be destroyed mid-flight if the Decoy died.
• Nova: Triple Tap will now immediately cancel if the target becomes invalid immediately after starting the Triple Tap cast.
• Ragnaros: Fixed an issue allowing Ragnaros to immediately complete the Catching Fire quest if it was chosen during Molten Core.
• Rexxar: Fixed an issue preventing Rexxar from controlling Misha while silenced.
• Stitches: Fixed a number of issues caused by using Helping Hand on an allied Hero using a Channeled ability that grants Unstoppable.
• Stitches: Fixed an issue that could prevent Stitches’ Hook from landing at point blank range.
• Tyrande: The Shooting Star talent will no longer attempt to target Sand Tornadoes created by the Boss.

User Interface

• Fixed an issue preventing critical healing effects from showing the Crit UI indicator.
• Adding and Removing favorite emojis will no longer cause the chat panel and emoji picker to close.

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