Agreed and that’s something we’d like to add in the future. We felt the expected improvements to matchmaking from performance-based matchmaking were important enough that we wanted to get it out the door rather than wait to roll it out until we could add more player-facing feedback into why the system was giving the ratings it does.

This would have accomplished a lot of our goals too. We ultimately decided to go with removing the Talent because we were trying to reduce the damage dealt by Supports, and felt that the increase of damage available in a team fight is still more than we're comfortable with him having with this new goal in mind.

We'll continue to evaluate the Talent's place though. We know that it was a fan favorite for a lot of players.

Hey Romalien5,

I'm actually really excited about this because we've been working on a good way to be more flexible with how and when we release our reworks by building a brand new pipeline dedicated to them. Sgt. Hammer is the first Hero to receive this treatment and over time we will look for opportunities to apply this new pipeline to other reworks as well!

Ultimately though, the entire team puts tons and tons of content into each release which means sometimes things can get overlooked so being able to separate them out allows us to give them their own spotlight.

Some healers were pushed to become overly specialized, and while they "could" solo heal, it's true they weren't as optimal as some of the other well rounded healers. This is something that we'll be keeping in mind as we continue to make changes to these characters, and make sure they each feels unique and special, but isn't crippled when facing certain compositions.

Hey a1russell,

This collection of changes is pretty significant to the game as a whole and we're aware that some Heroes like Abathur may be more impacted than others. We already gave him some buffs on the PTR to compensate for the changes but we will continue to monitor and adjust further if needed not just for Abathur, but all Heroes. Exciting times are arriving to the Nexus!

He ded.

One of the Heroes listed above is currently in the process of getting a rework...

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/11/creeper.gif

It's an oddly complex question and answer, and I can only speak to what we’re doing on Heroes of the Storm, but let’s start with this:

The most important thing from a rating standpoint is still winning the game.

From there, it’s important to note that Heroes is a very different game and the criteria that get you those wins aren’t necessary the same as in other games. We have 75 Heroes at this point with more coming every month and you can’t swap Heroes mid-game.

In ranked modes, drafting is important and being able to play multiple Heroes well so you can adapt to the draft is important to success. A “one-trick pony” player is likely to score higher from a performance standpoint when playing that particular Hero, but they’re also more likely to lose if they don’t adapt to the situation. They’ll reach an equilibrium point with the players around them where they’re gaining more rank points on a win due to their higher performance on that one Hero, but losing more games overall.

Hey MrVudash,

Everything that is a part of the 2018 Gameplay Updates is currently on the PTR. We may iterate on what is already there but you shouldn't see any surprise additions.

We think there likely a number of factors affecting Thrall's reduction in play rate in high level Hero League:

• Sonya's dominance is crowding out a lot of the variety in the solo lane. In Hero League right now, most players are either picking Sonya or someone that is good against Sonya. Thrall doesn't fare great against her.

• The double support meta really slows down team fights, and Thrall has typically been at his best when Sundering + Feral Spirit is powerful enough to secure a kill.

• When running two supports, a lot of teams still like having two tanky front-line characters and one ranged assassin. Thrall + Main Tank doesn't secure the front-line nearly as well as Leoric/Sonya/Arthas/and soon on. We think with an additional flex spot opening up on team compositions with less double healer being played, we'll see more Thrall as well.

Hey DKWings,

We're hopeful that when the 2018 Gameplay Updates goes live, we will only have to do a few reactionary tweaks here and there but as with all balance changes, once we identify a problem we always try to make the changes sooner rather than later based on the severity of the issue.

Specifically for this update, we already have a reactionary patch scheduled to address things that come up just to be on the safe side.

The Target Info panel we showed at BlizzCon is currently in development and expected to launch in the next few months.

We aren’t currently looking to add options to view core game information in different ways. We always have to strike a balance between usability and complexity, which includes avoiding unnecessary UI clutter and options—unless those options are a fundamental aspect of the interface (like key bindings, for example).

We don't feel like every Hero has to be seen at a competitive level. We're really happy when unique strategies show up every once in a while, but the needs of Esports and Quick Match can be vastly different. Beyond just balance, for Esports we also want to be sure that watching the Hero is fun and that they showcase player skill.

The goal was to have no net adjustment to game duration. If there turns out to be some (which is possible), we'll be ready to make some changes to get it back to where we want.

It’s still on our list for the future. It’s a sizable feature and we felt it was important to get some of these other features we’ve recently announced out first.

Hey Tbkzord,

This does come up every now and then because the more folks we can get on to PTR, the more feedback we can collect before going live! At the end of the day though, this falls under the eternal question of "what do we deprioritize?" and we feel like right now our attention is better spent developing features for the live game rather than the PTR. Having said that, we would like to do more for special PTR events such as this one in the future.

I'm sure we'll keep discussing on our end and if we can find a good solve, it will end up on the PTR eventually.

Li Li's win rate was far lower than we thought it should be, even after a rework. While Alexstrasza was a little low, it was more in line with what we expected from a new Hero release (they always trend up aggressively).

There's probably more tuning to be done to Alexstrasza (just like all our supports now that we've made so many changes), so I wouldn't be surprised if we received some changes in the future.

All Stealth (and consequently the Talents) will behave the same way.

• They will all use the new visuals that are much easier to see.
• If you remain still for 1.5 seconds you will go fully Invisible, unless you're on a Map Capture Point.

Obviously, some characters will get different mileage out of this Stealth due to the way their Stealth Talent/Ability works, but they'll still follow these same rules.

Hey Bo0tSkull,

Unless the Hero has gone invisible, the shader is always active when the Hero is stealthed.

Showing MMR comes with downsides as players tend to chase it once it's more visible, but MMR isn’t a reward mechanism, so that rarely ends well.

MMR has one purpose: to be an accurate representation of skill so the matchmaker can utilize it to make great matches. When players chase MMR, you usually end up with one of two results:

1) Players get disappointed when MMR doesn’t go up quickly…which it shouldn’t, because skill doesn’t go up quickly.

2) Players find a way to manipulate things to increase MMR, which leads to worse matchmaking overall for both that player and everyone around them.

That said, we still want to make MMR visible in the future for different reasons. Right now, for ranked modes, the only visible indication of skill is rank. Even though rank IS a reward mechanism (and expected to float away from MMR, because it’s the only visible indication of skill), players believe rank directly relates to skill and get understandably upset when people of different ranks are in the game with them, even if they are actually at the same MMR.

As such, our matchmaker currently tries to match people of similar rank AND MMR together, which isn’t ideal. If MMR were visible, matchmaking could be based entirely on MMR and let players of different ranks play together.

But, no, I don’t have a time frame for when it will happen. It’s not a high priority item due to the downsides that come with it.

<3

We don’t have plans for full MMR decay as we’ve found that players quickly bounce back to a 50% win rate after returning from even extended absences. But, the new matchmaking system that’s rolling out soon factors in how long it’s been since you last played as part of its rating. The effect is similar, but it’s not a permanent reduction in MMR like decay would be.

It was partially a gradual change due to exploring new mechanics we thought would be fun (Alexstrasza/Ana), and partially a conscientious decision to add more weaknesses to healers because they were overall incredibly powerful.

When we can, we've made sure that this weakness isn't so big that you feel like you have to draft a second support to keep you alive (like Morales new healing mechanic). We probably still have room to improve here.

Every queue has its own MMR.

D.Va being weak. She has the same winrate as Muradin, who is still regarded as one of the more powerful Warriors in the game. A lot of her problem is that she doesn't quite fit the Bruiser or Main Tank role so she isn't able to be drafted very often.

Chen is another example.

That doesn't mean that we don't have plans for changes to these characters, but we do think that they aren't in nearly as bad a spot as the community feels.

Yes.

This is a concern for us, so we only compare data for equal proficiency with the Hero (in this case we filter only players with high Hero level with the character).