I don't disagree with that sentiment! There are definitely some talent problems on those Heroes we'd like to address! For now we're more focused on release, but we'll be exploring it later on!

Oh, Illidan definitely has some problems with talent diversity! In terms of strict buffs and nerfs, it wasn't something we felt was needed immediately for this patch. However, we will be of course keeping an eye on him.

As for the talents, those usually take us a bit longer to cook up (for reference, we did the ETC/Diablo talent revamps back in January), but it is definitely something I'm very personally interested in getting fixed. It'll just be a question of finding the right time to slot it in.

<3

Mrgrrlrlrglrlrl!!!

That's a great suggestion!! I'll pass it on to our UI/Online Team right now :-)

Ooooooh this one is fun!!

So we've been itching for a while to remove the Unstoppable behavior from a lot of our quick-dive abilities (Diablo Shadow Charge, Falstad Barrel Roll, Kerrigan Ravage, Illidan Dive (this will be impactful!), etc.)

We've recently gotten the tech needed to do this, but we were only able to get it hooked up to Diablo in this patch. You can expect in future patches it to be removed from others as well. It's definitely going to have some impact, and we'll definitely be keeping a super close eye on it and how it impacts the game and feels.

As for ETC, I don't believe he's ever been unstoppable during Powerslide.

They're cominnggggggggggggggg

Both!!!

Some heroes were purely mechanical driven (Abathur!!) and others got their mechanics from the theme of the Hero (Murky!!). It really depends on the Hero. If there's a strong fantasy already for the Hero, then there are player expectations for certain abilities (cough Phoenix cough), so we definitely want to hit those. And sometimes someone will come up with a wackadoo-crazy mechanic, and we're like "We gotta get this in the game!!!11one" and we'll find a hero for it!

It was indeed a conscious decision!! We didn't believe that being a good sieger/pusher was part of ETC's core identity (Identity: knock-around disrupter bard, with good sustain, but not good burst healing), so we removed the trait affecting minions. I believe the Echo Pedal change, however, was more about making it feel good as a talent. By having it so early in the tree, we had to balance its power level low. But by making it higher, we could make it mightier. It did affect the split push a little, but not enough to where we were super concerned. (And if you are looking for the damage build, Pinball Wizard might be up your alley!)

Stitches is on our radar! Might need a little help. Arthas we think is in a good spot, and we're afraid he might actually be a sleeper...

Believe it or not one of our highest win rate heroes is Tyrael!

That being said, yes, sanctification could use some fixin' it up. It is something we want to address, but given the state of other live-balance issues, it hasn't been a priority (yet!!). That being said, it's something I am personally looking forward to getting fixed, because come on, AoE invulnerability?! That's so crazy!! We can make it work. We have some things in mind. Just a matter of when we can slot it into the schedule!!

While we don't look at tier lists, we do have LOTS of data!! We look at overall winrates (across quick match, across Hero League, Team league), and we also look at specific MMR brackets to see if a Hero is good overall, but super strong or super weak at the high end play.

There are some heroes that are just too stronk overall (having too few weaknesses, or too many talents that fill in said weaknesses) that just need to be nerfed in one way to bring them back in line. If we only ever buffed heroes, we'd be in a world of power creep really quickly.

That being said, when it comes to our lower-win-rate heroes, we are definitely in the business of buffing them up to bring them in line. Sometimes these buffs are simple Qaulity-of-Life changes (like say, letting Jaina's trait apply to structures and unstoppable units), and sometimes they're straight number buffs (+5% damage to Jaina's QWE), and sometimes both (Oh Jaina!!).

It is a goal of ours to get as much variety as possible at all levels of the game. It's a very lofty goal, and it is hard to fight human psychology here (anytime you have a series of choices (Heroes in this case), some will be perceived as better and some worse). But we will fight on, and we'll do what we can to make the game as well balanced and fun as possible!!

Yes it's one of the most picked talents! Sorry, I meant that it's so good it's crowding out the other ones (we wanted to help those talents out).

Yeeeep! :P

So Zagara used to have Ultralisk, and Kerrigan used to have Devouring Maw!! GASP!! That'd be a very different world we'd live in if we didn't end up swapping those back a year and a half ago.

Oh also, Azmodan used to have a different [Z] power, that let him port from town to town to be in multiple lanes. This however was lifted into Zagara's Nydus worm!

(For reference, Zagara is one of the oldest heroes in our roster...she's seen a few kits)

It's actually not too uncommon for us to try a Heroic ability on a new Hero internally, and it doesn't fit, and then we lift the mechanics and then use it on another Hero coming up! :P

Sure!!

So I'm super excited for this patch!! I don't know what's actually gonna happen with all the changes that went in :-D. So I don't think we'll be seeing a huge drop off in ETC/Diablo play. I think Anub'arak, who was already on the climb as more and more players saw the power of the cocoon, will start to shine. The usabilty fixes to his Q and E are not insignificant, and having the beetles home in on his targets is going to be pretty impactful.

We've also got a slew of tweaks to Muradin that I think will help him out as well! And as it stood, Arthas found himself being successful in Kill-Comps (Hi Kerrigan! And now Kaelthas too?! Shweet!!), and Tyrael was one of our highest win rate warriors.

As for bringing up other warriors to their level, that leaves Sonya and Stitches. Well we did some more changes to Sonya (who let's be honest, isn't a "true warrior" in the strictest of senses) that I think will be helping. As for stitches, he's one we definitely have to be careful with. There was a time in the days of yore of our game where we held stitches to be "The Tankiest Hero" in our game. We've since changed course on that, and realize that Stitches core strength is that he is the "Hookiest Hero" in our game. I think there are still very viable comps to run with Stitches (pick comps mostly), so as for changes to bring him more in line, it could be very small changes to his health or damage if need be. But I'd rather buff Stitches to their level than nerf all of our warriors, as I think we're continuing to get in better and better spots with all of them. (Time may prove me wrong on this one though!)

And as for our general consensus, it's really a break down of: -Can we make the weaker hero better by simply tweaking some numbers, without blowing out their designed weaknesses? -If not, are there some design changes we can make to the DQWER1R2 or Talents that would help better define the character and give our balance designers the hooks to make the character better?

This guy's got it! These were design driven, not balance driven. Our balance designers work on a much tighter schedule (patch-to-patch) while we work much further out (our stuff usually requires help from the other departments and more time to validate before we push it out to you all :-))

I think the funniest one i've seen was Web Blast...by an Anub'arak allied to the Kael'thas. OOPS.

As for real counters, Tassadar should probably never be targeted by Pyroblast ;-). Ancestral Healing can work well. Any tank with Hardened Shield at 20. Really, as Kael'thas, there are a few heroes who have momentary Invulnerability. You want to be extra careful to not target those heroes with pyroblast. Divine Shield I think will start to see a higher pick rate, leading to more picks on phoenix, then leading back to more divine storms, then leading back to more pyroblasts, then leading back to more divine shields...it will be a fun vicious cycle for Uther and Kael'thas :P (actually what will probably happen is whichever one of them hits 10 first will make the pick that then gets counter picked).

Sure! So for Gazlowe, this was a chance to fix some of the least picked talents (turret storage for instance), and provide some buffs. I certainly can see how it looks like a mixed bag at first, but what I think is being overlooked a lot is the changes to the Lazer. This ability was oft underused/neglected, and with the new timing changes, it makes it a much more deadly ability that can be used mid combat. As for the cone versus circle, this was a bit of cleanup to make the turrets more reliable. Before, it would pick random targets in a circle around its primary target, but it is now going to be able to hit targets that are close to the turret and are en-route from the turret to its target. This fixed a few issues for us (for instance it could randomly give his turrets extra range which was definitely odd when on the receiving end), and also allowed it to hit targets that were in its prior "dead-zone" in melee range for the turrets.

Ultimately, in playtesting, we feel these are buffs overall to Gazlowe. It will require a little bit of a new approach in playing Gazlowe, using his lazer mid-combat, but we think this will make him a better hero overall.

And of course, if the thousands and thousands of games you guys play gives us data to show the otherwise, we'll definitely respond and keep an eye on it!! :-)

We really view Warriors as excelling at a few things: Initiating Fights, High Self-Sustain (unlike Supports who are allied-sustain focused), damage that ramps over time, and second best CC in the game. (Supports get best CC).

As for the changes to Diablo and ETC, it actually had little to do with the current meta. Those reworks were done on the design side about 5 months ago (well we started 5 months ago, and wrapped them about 4 months ago before going to Art and Sound and QA and etc. etc.) back when they weren't even really impactful in the meta! It was quite funny watching Heroes of the Dorm and thinking "well how about that, they've become the most popular heroes...and our talent revamps for them are in the pipe...well this will be interesting!" Overall, these changes weren't meant to affect the meta necessarily. They were design driven, not balance driven. That being said, our balance designers certainly looked over all the changes very carefully, and we'll be continuing to monitor how it does impact their win rates. Our main goal however, with these revamps, was to fix a lot of the egregious talent pick rates, and let these Heroes have multiple build options available to them!

Hopefully this gives some insight as to the "why" we did these changes!