Hey Zanzure!

This was a bug that has been fixed in the Kerrigan\Brightwing rework patch. You should see the change to address this go live next week sometime.

Hey maguszeal, thanks for the question.

It's true that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction for Tormented Souls after the changes giving Malthael cleaving attacks. We've toyed around with the idea of making some changes to make sure that it's still an attractive pick that offers something useful (and unique), but we don't have anything ready to share right now. It's likely that whatever will be done would focus on dealing spread damage, as well as enhancing Reaper's Mark-focused gameplay.

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Anecdotally, when we were working on Malthael's cleaving changes, we knew that there was a possibility that Tormented Souls would lose value so we experimented with a few changes to it then. One of them was trying to make it deal flat damage that was increased by enemies affected by Reaper's Mark, but we decided to shelve the idea because it felt pretty similar to Kerrigan's Maelstrom.

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It's something that we might revisit soon, since we think having an AoE-focused Heroic for Malthael is good design space to explore.

Hey TheGameOn, thanks for your question about The Betrayer. He's one of my personal favorite Heroes.

Right now Illidan primarily takes The Hunt because it offers unique and fun gameplay, so we aren't all that upset that it's the more commonly picked Heroic ability. That being said, Metamorphosis is being chosen 40% of the time in higher level Hero League, though it doesn't always feel like it. It isn't winning nearly as much though, so there might be room for improvement.

Illidan isn't seen all that often partly due to this being an unfavorable metagame for him. With a bruiser-heavy meta, not only is there a lot of crowd control to deal with him, but also fewer squishy targets for him to chase down. Just a year ago Illidan was very meta, and hasn't seen many changes since, so we're confident that maybe small tuning changes combined with a more favorable meta will allow him to fulfill his niche in the game again.

Hey lemindhawk and zanzure, we appreciate your passion and the time you've invested into discussing how damage multipliers work.

In general, our principle for percentage based bonuses is for them to be additive with one another. This allows us to tune them to feel like nice meaty benefit when taken on their own, without getting out of control when stacking several together.

There have been a few instances where the tooltips are not matching the effects in game -- we plan on fixing these soon. Vile Infection, Phoenix, and Lightning Serpent will have their tooltips changed to match their existing functionality (aka, they'll list a separate damage number instead of a percentage bonus). Rampant Hellfire, Dragonstrike, Zei's Vengeance, Arcane Orbit, and Buzzsaw will all see gameplay changes so that their percentage based bonuses stack additively with other percentage based bonuses.

This is an early look at what we're planning on changing, and there's a chance that when we start to fix these bugs that things may change slightly, so don't be alarmed if the course changes slightly. But I wanted to share what we are working on since you've put so much effort into compiling the list of exceptions. Thanks again!

Hey Mozerath, thanks for your question! Mobility in Heroes is something that we've been watching for a long time.

To start with, we've always pushed the boundaries with Hero Design in HotS; we think that it's one of the things that makes Heroes of the Storm special. We have characters like Cho'gall, Abathur, or The Lost Vikings that really "break the rules" of traditional character design. The key to these characters is adjusting their power the appropriate amount while keeping these unique traits in mind.

The great mobility offered by Tracer and Genji is another one of these unique traits, though not as flashy as a two-headed ogre. We knew that during development they would need to be balanced around it (in fact at one point Tracer had so little Health that she was being one-shot by Nova). We didn't anticipate how much we would need to tune them down though, so unfortunately they've been steadily nerfed (for the most part) since their release. We think they're much healthier than they started in terms of balance at this point, though we're always looking to make further tuning adjustments when we think the time is right.

We do have other characters in the game with high amounts of mobility (as has been pointed out in this thread). Illidan, Zeratul, and Lucio are good examples. The biggest difference between them and Tracer or Genji is that their mobility has more conditions. These include target selection (Illidan's Dive), range limitations (Zeratul's Blink), or inability to travel over terrain (Lucio's Movement Speed). These added forms of counterplay make these abilities feel better to play against than they would otherwise, and allow us to really push the envelope with them.

At this point, we think that the low-condition mobility from Tracer and Genji makes them special, and we likely won't add more characters with this level of mobility without conditions. But we do think that mobility is a great way to allow players to make flashy plays and has a high skill cap, so you'll likely see more forms of it with added counterplay in the future.

Thanks for the question Delta-Sniper.

When we first implemented Consume Souls, it only did damage. Vision was primarily added as a quality of life aspect, since we wanted players to be able to see what opponents were doing to counter the incoming damage as it happened if they were in fog (plus, it adds lots of fun drama moments when you can see what's going to happen). We decided to add a slow about halfway through the process for a couple reasons.

1. It added something to the Heroic that wasn't damage, so we could tune that aspect of it down. Believe it or not, the damage was much higher internally for a good portion of Mephisto's development.
2. It also gave another use case for using the ability, rather than always as an execute. Since the ability doesn't have an aiming or targeting component, it's important to make the decision as to when you use the ability interesting, even after you've used it for the 50th time.

We've since pulled back on the damage slow amount so that we can get it properly balanced. We're hesitant to change the damage value on Consume Souls at this point. We think that right now it's at the sweet spot between dealing a significant damage to a single enemy (to execute them) and just being white noise damage on the whole enemy team. Of course, we will make further changes if we feel they're necessary, but you'll likely see other adjustments first.

Red velvet cupcakes. Because they're delicious.

Question from one of our European players:

Overwatch heroes are kind of 'ported' from OW into Heroes. However, what happens when a hero that already exists in HotS is reworked in OW (Diva, Hanzo)? Can we expect their next rework (if any) to represent their new OW self, or will they keep their 'Heroes' personality? Or can they get something completely different, that they haven't been (and likely wouldn't be) in OW?

Question from one of our European players:

Have you considered reworking Nova to work more like her SC2 self? At least the players using the forum seem to like that idea. Currently her kit is focused on only one thing, and it's not even as good as it used to be before the stealth rework, as her overall damage is lower and her build diversity is worse. Her SC2 kit will allow her to be more versatile, without punishing her as hard as her current kit does.

Question from one of our European players:

Is the current hero release rate "final", or can it be adjusted to something between the old release rate and the new one. Or is there a chance for us to get the old release rate back? Are you happy with this "new" release rate?