Reworking of several crucial talents including Promote and Rewind promises to shake things up this December.
Even though the HoTS servers were brought down for an unexpected amount of time today due to the patch, HoTS fans have still been pouring over the latest patch notes. A lot of the complaints were addressed (I'm looking at you Nova, Azmodan and Abathur) while some underplayed heroes have recieved some cool buffs. The biggest change is, of course, the addition of Jaina Proudmoore, the iconic mage who's abilities and talents offer an exciting look at what the other heroes might look like after the most up-to-date polishing and balance reworks.
Let's take a look at some of the biggest changes.
With the reworking of Promote to last only 15 seconds, Abathur will no longer have the ability to risk free push a lane, this combined with the noticeable increase on his Ultimate Evolution should result in a much tamer Abathur with the reduced option of both pushing a lane while simultaneously engaging in a team fight. Still good, but a needed change.
Anub'arak recieved a shadow nerf on top of the obvious. With the ability to self-cast straight line spells removed from the game, Anub'arak lost the ability to control and curve his impale. This was clearly unintended, but it did create exciting opportunities to stun multiple targets. The changes are interesting here: Locust Swarm and Harden Carapace have gotten worst, and with the removal of Rewind as a possible talent choice, Anub'Arak has lost the ability to CC multiple times and soak up damage.
He has gotten imposing Presence however, and that talent universally has been buffed from reducing incoming enemies attack speed by 30% up to 50%. Maybe this will make up for the lost tankiness.
On top of these buffs, it has been stated by Blizzard that Li Li will have almost all of her talents re-worked, which is promising. Her healing will scale more and her Heroic has an increased search range, which is actually really vital. Li Li's high movement speed makes her a great emergency healer so Jug of 1,000 cups will save more people more often now.
Apparently the names of Nova's abilities were in hot contension, but hopefully things have calmed down now. Flat damage nerf to Snipe is reasonable. Flat damage nerf to Hot Shots (now Anti-Armor Shells) is also understandable, althought a little overboard as now the only reason to choose the talent is the ability to burst, not actually do more damage. The biggest nerf to Nova is by far the removal of the Rewind talent, which essentially reduces Nova's burst damage in half.
Lots of changes to Tassadar, but not exactly all nerfs. Tassadar is not an assassin hero, but he has been played like one. This isn't what Blizzard intended when they labeled Tassadar as a "support" hero, so naturally his talents that do damage have been weakened. Something that HotS developers say a lot is that they want decisions to be more tactical, and these Tassadar changes force players to do just that. Oracle lasts for less time, meaning the choice of when to use it becomes harder. The same principal is at work with the reduced cast time of Archon. Tassadar is still strong, but i'm happy to see him not so dominant.
What do you think of these changes? You can find the complete patch notes here as well as some thoughts behind notable talent changes by the Technical director of the game, John "Johnzee" Hodgson here.
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