Heroes of the Storm Dev Tracker

Very cool!

I do think it would be neat for some more analysis on your end of what this data means. You did a little with Ragnaros and Xul, but I’m sure there are more cool, interesting gems you can find in there.

In any case, I think it’s awesome that you took the time to get this data.

Johanna is a generally powerful tank and is more meta right now, so you’re good picking her pretty much any time. She does shine more on maps where waveclear is more powerful. She’s particularly valuable on maps with two close lanes that consistently need to be cleared, like Tomb of the Spider Queen and Dragon Shire.

Diablo has traditionally been more powerful on certain maps. He can absolutely dominate games on maps where teams fight in small corridors such as Cursed Hollow, Infernal Shrines, and Towers of Doom.

Everything being equal, Johanna is the safer pick more often, but Diablo can completely win the game for you, particularly if you are more skilled than your opponents and are reliably taking advantage of their mistakes in positioning.

Hey, Stavros. This is reasonable, I can look into Nova (love her) decoy A.I.

I think this is reasonable, thank you. I will take a look at the health thresholds that govern the healing fountain goal and see if it’s safe to adjust.

Hey AnaBanana, this is something I will look into.

Hey, mynd.

I agree with the frustration of watching disconnect replacement A.I. try to help, but often end up becoming a liability to your team. I want to share with you more details of additional changes related to your feedback that we are hoping to ship in the next release, details that we did not have time to include in my original post or the blog.

When your ally disconnects from the game, their replacement A.I. is put into a precarious position. It’s like suddenly dropping a Silver player into a match with 9 Master players. It’s very difficult for the AI to keep up with humans. In the past we have tried to make A.I. more sophisticated by attempting to capture more and more game context into their decision making, hoping that it would make them react more intelligently. Our collective observations have lead us to accept that disconnect replacement A.I. will never be strong enough in its decision making to play well with human players on their own. Instead, we want...

Yes, this is something that I have fixed for the next release.

Hello, and good day to you all!

My name is Kevin Gu, and I am a Senior Designer on the Heroes team. I have been working alongside Jeff Beaudoin, our Lead Gameplay Engineer, on our game’s A.I. We wanted to take a moment to update you all on where we are and how our three major A.I. initiatives are progressing.

Reconciliation of the Goal and Tactical Systems

There are two systems under the hood of Heroes that work together to drive agent behavior: the Goal system and the Tactical system. The Goal system is responsible for determining where A.I. agents should move, while the Tactical system provides agents with awareness of their surroundings so that they use and target their abilities intelligently. Last year, in an effort to improve agent in-combat positioning, we made it possible for the Tactical system to override the Goal system. Although we believe the changes were ultimately a good iteration, they did expose several underlying issues that w...

Hey melvin,

Cho’gall must be picked in a round where you have two picks available. If you only have one pick available, then Cho and Gall are classified as unavailable picks. If time runs out and no one is hovering a valid pick, or selects a valid pick for that last slot, then the draft will be terminated and leavers given to those not hovering valid picks.

Thanks for the find. Will fix!

Hey everyone,

After some internal investigation, I am unable to reproduce the issues you are calling out. So, I’m going to need some help and more information. First, I want to explain how this event works.

1. The Repeatable quests grant stickers, and every 3 stickers you are awarded a Common Toy Event Chest. This chest is awarded to you IMMEDIATELY after the match ends. This means, as soon as you are on the post-game score screen, that Loot Chest is already in your Loot Tab.
2. Completing laps grant Rare Toy Event Chests. These chests are awarded to you once you open the Special Event tab and roll the die advancing you past the starting point.

I wanted to call this out because there is a chance this could just be a miscommunication in how those Common Loot Chests are awarded. Usually, what happens is the Common Chest is opened immediately post-game and then players open the Game Board, complete a lap, and are expecting 2 Loot Chests (one for com...

Hey there Quazer!

We are currently aware of this issue and investigating the best way to go about fixing this. I understand this is an unfortunate bug that limits enjoyment of Storm League, but we hope with some patience, we can get this fixed in the best way to further prevent other bugs, or creating other problems with enjoying Storm League.

Hey KrazzoWLA,

Thanks for the reports! I’ll take some time to check these out today!

Huginncord

Hey Basara,

That’s because the baseline quest on Storm Bolt can actually get multiple stacks if the enemy Hero dies within 2.5 seconds of being hit. You can see that on the tooltip for Storm Bolt!

Hey Calcaz!

We get enough data, even with a massive ban rate. Of course, as more data comes in we’re more confident with where things sit, but we have always had enough data to make educated changes before the first balance patch after a new hero release. After the first balance patch, we always have an even more clear picture of where things stand since we have that much more time for data to come in.

Balance patch is looking good!

For Deathwing, more general nerfs across the board, particularly to Destroyer form. Also some Worldbreaker buffs and talent tuning.

Can’t confirm dates. Confirming dates is the path to the dark side.