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Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Heroes of the Storm 2.0 and Cassia Live Q&A!

H.. Hey there!

Heroes 2.0 Developer Update

Heroes 2.0 Spotlight

Cassia Hero Spotlight

To answer your questions related to the game-redefining update we're calling Heroes of the Storm 2.0, we're hosting a Q&A right here on the Heroes of the Storm subreddit!

Attending today will be:

The Q&A will be starting at around 11:30 am PDT and will last between 1.5 - 2 hours. Please feel free to post your questions below!

Please note: We’ll also be asking players from non-English speaking communities to partake in the Q&A by submitting their questions to the Community Managers representing their regions. As such, you might see a few Blizzard Community Managers posting questions (in English) on behalf of their communities during the Q&A. Feel free to upvote those questions if you’d also like to see them answered.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    There's not, unfortunately, unless you want to sit down at my computer and run through the latest spreadsheets. The numbers may change over the course of beta, so anything we put out would potentially be inaccurate by the time we launched anyway.

    Some of the calculators I've seen are fairly accurate with the current conversion and you can use those to get a ballpark estimate.

    Hey, I was thinking about this a bit more and if we get to the point with the beta where we're solid on the XP curve and confident we won't change it anymore, I'll see about getting the per-level XP numbers out so the calculators can get more accurate. I think it'd be pretty safe to do at that point.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Question from RMKfast in LatAm:

    Will we be able to buy the skins we want with real money or will we only be able to acquire them with shards?

    Hi RMKfast!

    I’m glad you asked as this has been a source of confusion, so hopefully I can clear that up.

    After the 2.0 update launches, we’ll continue to debut Heroes and their launch items in the featured section of your Collection and these will be available for purchase with Gems. Those items will also go into Loot Chests at the same time, so you’ll have the option to purchase the skins with Gems, forge them with Shards, or win them via a Loot Chest drop.

    These items will remain in the featured section until replaced by the next set of items, which is generally after a few weeks. At that point, the skins would no longer be available for Gem purchase, but will still be forgable with shards and able to be earned as drops from Loot Chests. It’s worth noting that Heroes are always available for purchase with Gems.

    In addition, we’re planning to do weekly sales that bring a selection of older items back to the featured section where they’ll be available to purchase with Gems during that week.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Regarding hero mastery taunts; It’s been reported that it was a, “deliberate decision” that you need to put yourself at risk by taunting to display your hero mastery. (Core Ep. 75 48:34)
    Does the mastery taunt system as we understand it now achieve all the goals you have for it?
    Are there any plans to expand the mastery system to other non-skin aesthetic rewards? (Banners, sprays, voice lines, etc.)

    Story Time
    Speaking for myself, I have never, and likely will never taunt in a game. (Apart from the occasional taunt before the game starts.) Taunts being a locked in animation, I really don’t like having to choose between playing safely and displaying character experience. While I understand detaching it from skins to allow greater freedom in hero customization, it looks like the mastery taunt system will go unused to an even greater extent than master skins were.
    It also seems to go against much of the design philosophy Heroes 2.0 is based on. The goal, as I understood it, was to reward players more frequently, and create a smoother progression curve. However, we only can show advancement with a character at hero levels 15, 25, 50, and 100. I own and like to play a wide variety of heroes, so it seems unlikely that I will ever only get a handful to 25, and never will I get 50 or 100, unless I play for the next 15 years.
    Yes, progression rewards are only meaningful if there is they require progression, but I would still love to see this system expanded to reward players with unique hero banners and sprays. So long as it can’t be displayed in drafts, none of will would feel required to use. Placing these rewards, between the mastery taunt tiers would keep the tiers meaningful, give more consistent progression, and allow players to display their hero mastery in the way they want. /end armchair developer

    Hey Dramble,

    Our team is extremely sensitive to anything that could impede gameplay and tying it to taunt was a way to solve a lot of potential problems in that regard.

    • Taunts are self-limiting. If you’re spamming taunt, you’re probably going to get yourself killed.

    • Taunts lock you in while doing them, so the Mastery Taunt VFX shouldn’t end up interfering with gameplay.

    We are looking at other ways to also show off hero mastery and, in particular, a way to do so during draft. The key there, though, is that it needs to be opt-in like master skins were. If it’s something that is always active, it is likely to increase toxicity towards players who are new to the hero (which everyone is at some point).

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Is there any way to know your 2.0 total hero level before the update? Right now it is very confusing with all sorts of calculator converters going on. I believe many players would want to know what their levels are currently, since no one wants to be lv 499 when the update comes in right?

    There's not, unfortunately, unless you want to sit down at my computer and run through the latest spreadsheets. The numbers may change over the course of beta, so anything we put out would potentially be inaccurate by the time we launched anyway.

    Some of the calculators I've seen are fairly accurate with the current conversion and you can use those to get a ballpark estimate.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    I believe it is because when I entered the PTR of 2.0. I got gems when I entered based on my hero level. Still no final word, but at level 600, I am looking at getting ~$70 worth of gems with 1000 at level 5 and 1000 every 100 levels. That is pretty sweet, now if you just buy everything with gems instead of just featured.

    The 150 every 25 levels is not retroactive. We made the 1000 Gem grant at level 5 retroactive because you can only hit level 5 once, but everyone has the opportunity to gain levels going forward and earn the 150 Gems as they do so.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Just to confirm, this means that regardless of how many games a player has played after reaching 20, in 2.0 they will be at 55 or whatever tweaked number you decide on? I presume that XP isn't tracked in live after 20 to get an accurate conversion above 55 for heroes who have been capped at 20 for a long time?

    That's correct. The existing hero level cap is 20 and you don't earn XP above the cap.

    These changes allow new opportunities to gain levels by removing that cap.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    I'm assuming the "it's possible we may do this" is just a way to make sure they don't promise anything.

    Exactly. I'm overly cautious sometimes.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Hello, as a player concerned with visual clutter, will we have an option to disable seeing sprays and banners in game?

    I find these distractions annoying and would love to be able to ignore them in peace.

    Hi Mythomain!

    We don't have plans to allow disabling the new features, but readability of gameplay is a foremost concern for us and our team is extremely sensitive to that. We've taken a lot of steps to ensure that the new features are not interfering with gameplay. For sprays, for example, they are on a cooldown, you can only have one at a time, they only last for 8 seconds, and the art is purposefully visually distinct from effects. Banners are similar in that they are fixed placement in areas that aren't going to intrude on gameplay.

    We are making some tweaks to emojis in-game, though, and limiting how many emoji can be in a single message. Also, we're changing it so when you mute someone, it will clear their messages from your chat log so if they're spamming you, with or without emojis, it'll clear them from your log.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Given your commitment to transparency, I wanted to ask you about the background details of Loot Chests.

    1) Firstly, it is rumored that Loot Chests are biased against duplicates, meaninig that you are more likely to get stuff you previously didn't have than to get duplicates. In addition to Shards and crafting, this would also be a nice countermeasure to the "sticker album effect" (as I like to call it) where the more stickers you have, the more duplicates you will accrue and the smaller your chance of completing your album is.

    Questions: Does this biasing happen and if so, how does it work exactly? How strong/weak is it?

    2) My second question revolves around the fact that Heroes is an ever evolving game where new collectable content is constantly being added in the form of heroes, mounts, and skins (and soon hero-related emojis and sprays) but the source of these items (i.e. Loot Chests) can be stockpiled indefinitely.

    Questions: Are the contents of Loot Chests determined upon their creation or upon their destruction/opening? Can I stockpile Loot Chests from a current patch to unlock content coming in a future patch?

    3) And last but not least, the big questions whenever a Loot Chest-like system is deployed.

    Questions: How is the quality of items in Loot Chests determined? What is their intended distribution?

    4) (sneaky addition) From Hearthstone, we are already familiar with the "pity counter" mechanic where you are guaranteed an item of certain quality after X number of unsuccessful attempts.

    Questions: Is a similar mechanic present in Heroes 2.0? If so, what are the exact numbers and how does it interact with rerolls?

    All of these questions can probably be answered by a lot of collaborative data collection and analysis from the community but it would be nice to not have to go to all that trouble when you already know the nitty-gritty details. It is of course absolutely understandable if you can't share everything with us.

    Hi Kamikaze28,

    There’s no biasing against duplicates. The shard/crafting system is there to handle the duplicates and is sort of self-regulating since the more items you have, the more duplicates you’d get, which opens the door to more shards allowing you to more easily craft the items you don’t have.

    Contents for Loot Chests are rolled at the time they are first opened. We debated this for a while, but in the end figured that allowed more flexibility for players. You’ve earned the chests and if you want to hold onto it to open in the future rather than dive into it immediately, that’s your choice.

    While I’m sure the distribution will be figured out pretty quickly, we’re not going into details there and what we have currently is likely to change as we tune during beta. As to what determines the rarity tier of an item, I answered more in-depth to an earlier question, but it’s largely subjective.

    Edit re: your sneaky addition: Heroes Loot Chests have similar mechanics that I prefer to just think of as protection against bad luck. Each item in a loot chest is random, so the potential exists to open a loot chest with all legendary items, for example, but the system also ensures you can't go too many items before it guarantees a higher rarity drop.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    It has been mentioned that Blizz is SoonTM from releasing an official API.

    How SoonTM are we talking? Can you give any hints to what types of statistics we could be granted access to from Blizzard?

    Hey Medavis6,

    We don't have any details to talk about right now, but it's being worked on internally. We'll get info out once it's closer to launch.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    1) With the "unmastering" of master skins, will future heroes still release with 2 alternate skins (a "master skin" type skin and some other) or will master skins be phased out?

    2) Are there any plans to release spray/emoji packs themed around HGC teams, similar to the champion nexagon mounts we have already?

    3) Kind of unrelated, but it's always kind of bugged me that Greymane's trait is essentially just an explanation of his E ability. Any plans to give him a trait that actually impacts gameplay, in a similar vein to the new Cho'Gall trait (which previously had the exact same problem of being just tooltip without any function)?

    Thanks for the question, Master_Fish. I can answer your first two questions.

    Since we’re retiring the concept of master skins, new heroes won’t have master skins created for them. We’re still planning for new heroes to have a launch skin when they come out, but whether they have a second one is more flexible. If the artists have a great idea for another skin they want to get out at launch, the possibility is there, but it’s not required.

    We have a lot of plans for the new item types and doing some tie-ins to HGC is something we’re very interested in.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Question from Floppyomino in Italy:

    Will the chest drop rate stay the same once Heroes 2.0 will hit the live servers as it is in beta now or will you modify it?

    The beta is an opportunity for us to get feedback and make adjustments. We're pretty happy with the drop rate currently based on what we've seen, but as with everything else on the beta, it could change before launch.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Question from 최진리, 키라이, Zeraniss, 내게로오라, Wulf, and 가출한저글링in Korea:

    Do you have any plans to implement Clan or Guild system? It’d be very fun to play together with clan members and to have some sort of Clan Quests or Clan Progression to help striving to grow the clan together.

    Yep! We've very interested in implementing a Clan system and agree that it would add a lot to the social aspect of the game. No time frame to share on when it may happen as it's a pretty big undertaking, but it's on our list.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Questions from Гамулятор in Russia:

    • How do you decide whether the skin should be legendary or epic? Are you going to add new voiceover to Desert Queen Zagara?

    • Will there be hidden skins and mounts (not listed in the Collection) which players can obtain in loot chests in Heroes of the Storm 2.0?

    • Do you plan to add announcers for every hero? Any plans to add announcers for heroes which are not presented in the Nexus (Deckard Cain, Covetous Shen)

    With the introduction of Loot Chests, rarity has a much different meaning than before. It’s literally the rarity of an item now. For skins specifically, they were already using the language of Epic and Legendary, though the meaning had nothing to do with actual rarity and it felt really odd to have, say, a skin that was labelled as Epic dropping as a Legendary item in Loot Chests. So, we’ve had to reconcile that and change the labeling to fit the rarity they drop at in Loot Chests. The Loot Chest rarity is largely based on “cool factor,” which is pretty subjective and we expect to be making adjustments to rarities throughout the beta.

    This extends beyond skins. For example, right now all sprays and banners are Common and Rare items, but if we were to add something like the hotly requested “6.5/10” spray/banner, it may be a Legendary item.

    For Loot Chests, with the 2.0 update, all the cosmetic items in a Loot Chest can be crafted with Shards, which means they need to appear in your Collection. There aren’t any items that drop from Loot Chests that don’t show up in your Collection for that reason. It’s possible we may do special items in the future that can’t be crafted, but that’s not currently something we’re planning.

    We don’t plan to do announcers for every hero. We’re cherry picking the ones that we feel are most interesting.

  • BlizzTravis
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Questions from BryanBlack in Russia:

    • There are some players who have more than 1000 games with a concrete hero (in theory they could be higher than level 20). In Heroes of the Storm 2.0 what hero level will they receive?

    • Will there be an opportunity to buy items without buying gems?

    Hey BryanBlack! Thanks for the question.

    A Hero at the current level cap of 20 converts to level 55 with the experience curve we’re using in the beta. We may tweak things a bit over the course of our beta test, but it should end up in that range.

    Starting with Heroes 2.0, item purchases will be made with Gems rather than direct currency purchases. Gems are primarily purchased with real money, but you’ll receive 1000 Gems at Player Level 5 (and anyone over Player Level 5 will get that when they first log in after the 2.0 launch) and another 150 Gems every 25 Player Levels. I’ll probably be saying this a lot, but those numbers are where we’re at currently with the beta and subject to tuning changes.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    For me it is a very important topic and I don't care about the fate of Uther Lightbringer and its application in the current meta. The whole concept of this hero is very interesting,but I'm not happy that Uther does not have auras , which had been in Paladins from Warcraft 3 or World of Wacraft Why would he not add them?

    One of the issues with passive Auras is their lack of play/counterplay. They're just kind of there and uninteresting, mechanically.

    In working on Uther's rework, the idea of "Devotion Aura" (giving Damage Mitigation to allies), however, was alluring, fit his fantasy, and something we hope to address.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    2nd post by me, greedy but it's not a question, more a suggestion/request.

    I've seen some talk about how you want to expand the hero classification system and how players ask for more education on how to play the game.

    I must say, something that helps me personally is learning how YOU see heroes' roles, like in developer comments of hero reworks when you say things like "this rework focuses on strengthening this hero role as a _______", or when in one of your posts you said Samuro's role is to disable carries. I never thought of those heroes as those roles until I read your thoughts on them! And quite often I find myself wondering, what is hero X supposed to do? What is the best use for him? How am I supposed to know?

    So I think if you add the hero's role as you see it- like you so often mention in patch notes- to the hero descriptions in-game, it would help quite a lot.

    Hi LordGreenburger!

    This is something we tried to address in the Probius patch. If you're in the Hero Select screen for a non-draft mode, you may have noticed we've updated all of the Hero Descriptions to try to succinctly call out the designed role of each Hero, so you know what kind of compositions they pair well with or excel against!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    What happened to poking your Heroes and getting lines of dialogue out of them? That was fun, but disappeared a few months back.

    Those are still there! I think in previous builds we had some bugs that caused them to not play, but I'm 80% sure we've gotten those fixed! I'll double check today though!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Can someone explain to me the Blind and Silence mechanics in this game? It doesn't seem to be based off the physical school or magical school, but based on auto-attack? .. anyway, any help on this would be appreciated to better understand Cassia's effects since she heavily relies on blind.

    thanks!

    Blind means that their Basic Attacks will miss.

    Silence means that they cannot use Abilities.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Hi!

    Do you plan to add more anti-shield heroes/talents/abilities?

    How is the Uther rework coming along? I heard some people got to play him at an event you recently hosted. Many said he was too strong. Is that the reason it is not in the current iteration of the PTR?

    Hello!

    Anti-shielding mechanics is definitely something we're discussing. We like Varian's, but want to be careful who gets them and how they're used.

    As for the Uther rework, it's coming along, and will be ready for you guys soon(tm)! The version we had at the event wasn't the final version, and there's still some iteration going on!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Just want to quickly ask a question on Medivh:

    Is there any plan to buff his weaker talent? His talent build is very restricted. For example, at Lv7, Q quest could generate way more value than the other 3.

    His talents havn't been touch for about 9 months. I think it is time to share some love for him.

    Hello!

    We don't currently have plans for a Medivh Talent udpate, but i'll definitely be glad to take the feedback back to the team!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Do you have any plans for Medivh at the moment or are you happy with his place even though he have a low winrate in general?

    We don't have any current plans to change Medivh. At high levels of competitive play, we're still seeing a healthy amount of Medivh.

    He's a tricky character to balance well, as he can do very well if a player is on point with their Portals and Force of Wills.

    We have this fun graph that shows how a Hero's winrate adjusts with the player's Hero Level. Medivh has one of the steepest curves, as you'll see really high-level Medivhs have silly win rates, due to their skill with the Guardian of Tirisfal.

    (Fun Medivh fact of the day, one of our engineers walked by and let me know that the layer of pathing that lets Medivh fly over things that players can't walk through is called "Birdperson")

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    I dont want to sound rude but heroes 2.0 sounds more like interface 2.0 judging from all the new stuff I have seen. Can we expect big changes to gameplay like new battlegrounds(with new gameplay mechanics), More multiclass heroes and different ways to play the game?(Like PVE, custom games or improved brawl)

    Hi Shadowbourne2415!

    There's still more exciting things about Heroes 2.0 that we'll be sharing later! In fact, you can check out this nifty page to get a sneak peek at when we'll showing those things off!

    http://us.battle.net/heroes/en/heroes20/

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Since many new and old heroes have got their task talent. Will you bring more tasks to the heroes that don’t have, like Thrall and Xul.

    Hello! I presume this is in reference to Questing talents, and I can say that as we're making future Heroes, and as our Live team is doing Hero talent revamps, it is something we are looking to add to Heroes where it makes sense.

    We love what Quests can do for the game, in giving players a personal goal to strive for, and offering a personal power spike to a skilled player faster!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Cake or Pie?

    Pie all the way!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Hello!

    It's been hinted before that there would changes to overall healing output of supports so that they don't become healbots and have power in other areas. Is there any current discussion regarding healing/health and damage/health ratio? Are you guys comfortable with the current status?

    Thanks!

    Hello! It's been hinted before that there would changes to overall healing output of supports so that they don't become healbots and have power in other areas. Is there any current discussion regarding healing/health and damage/health ratio? Are you guys comfortable with the current status? Thanks!

    Hello!

    It is true that we've mentioned this before in passing. It was actually one of our original design intentions behind adding Armor to the game, so that we could pull some of the focus on healing out.

    However, it's not something we're sure needs to happen. We're still actively discussing the current "Time-to-Kills" (TTKs) in our game, and keeping an eye on the meta.

    One thing we are trying to do with reworks with healers is to move more of their "power pie" (what things they are strong at) out of healing and into utility, to give them more ways to make plays and otherwise influence battles.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Curious how you guys decided on a role and kit for Cassia.

    A lot of HotS heroes are very reminiscent of their actual in-game counterparts. Heroes like Lucio, Valla, Samuro, Uther, etc... are all very similar to how they actually play in their respective games, but Cassia seems more like she was designed to fit a niche rather than to to recreate the classic Amazon character.

    I feel like there was a great opportunity to create a hero with two separate kits. Similar to how Varian can choose tank or dps at level 10, letting people choose between bowzon or javazon would have been really cool. Whether you get to choose at level 1 as a passive and you get a different set of skills/talents or even if it was similar to Jayce from LoL where her D would actively switch between bow/javelin.

    Or instead of making her some kind of auto-attack assassin counter, she could have been a hyper aggressive assassin. Critical strike as a passive, charged strike Q for burst, lightning fury or plague javelin W for harass and wave clear, decoy E for diving into a fight, all packaged into a melee javazon. Level 1 talent would be a choice between evade, avoid, or dodge. Freezing Arrow or Valkyrie for ultimate, or even lightning fury with charges would be a powerful ult.

    I just feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities for an Amazon hero. The ultimates feel like they were just kind of throw into her kit. The Ball Lightning just seems random and makes me wonder if the designers were confusing Amazons with D3 Demon Hunters and the Valkyrie, while interesting, reminds me more of the Valk'yr from WoW than D2.

    Overall she just feels like a totally made-up character designed only to counter auto-attackers and has no real similarities to her D2 counterpart. Fend is directly from D2 but just makes her feel like Pantheon from LoL, lightning fury is cool but the way it splits is pretty disappointing, and she doesn't even have critical strike! One of her most iconic abilities! Every build for Amazon put at least 1 put in crit.

    Hello!

    When deciding on Cassia's kit, we've got a lot of Bows in the game, but we don't have many Javelins, and we know there's a ton of Javazon fans out there.

    We wanted to hit that "Lightning Javazon" build, with Lightning Fury being her way to spam lightning out there, and Fend to represent that Melee Javazon build used for Baal or Pindleskin runs to down bosses fast.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    What was the design decision behind giving Cassia a lower attack range? This isn't a complaint at all just curious. :D

    Outside of that just want to say how much I've enjoyed Cassie and Probius! They are the most fun new heroes for me in awhile. also as a veteran player with 5.5k+ games and a lot of money spent im super stoked for 2.0 and all the awesome changes. Keep it up!

    What was the design decision behind giving Cassia a lower attack range? This isn't a complaint at all just curious. :D Outside of that just want to say how much I've enjoyed Cassie and Probius! They are the most fun new heroes for me in awhile. also as a veteran player with 5.5k+ games and a lot of money spent im super stoked for 2.0 and all the awesome changes. Keep it up!

    For Cassia's attack range, the thinking was that we wanted to encourage her to be close to her targets while keeping her Avoidance trait active. This enables her the flexibility to threaten her opponent with a Fend at any moment, and fulfills the fantasy of an in-your-face Javazon moreso than a longer-ranged Bowazon archetype. Further, it allowed us to tune the damage higher than we normally would for a basic attack!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Hi Devs, none of you answered my questions last Q&A. I hope it can change today. Here are my questions: 1. How in the world there is no Alarak announcer pack? 2. I main Alarak, and it's been quite a while since his Telekinesis has been bugged. It goes without saying, Alarak's W is everything is his kit. That should've been addressed time ago. Can we expect some fixes soon? 3. Why no love for Alarak? Address the issue with his talent tree choices. And make double cross baseline.

    1. Why no love for Alarak? Address the issue with his talent tree choices. And make double cross baseline.

    I can say that we are actively working on an Alarak talent update, with some new nifty toys for our favorite Tal'darim. I will also say that a certain "Mildly Popular" level 4 talent is making it in baseline...

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Hey there!

    My question is about The Lost Vikings!

    After seeing some of the recent reworks I was wondering if you guys could revisit the little guys. Although the base of gameplay is really solid and fun, talents are quite lacking and could be holding some fun potential.

    For instance, the Quest mechanics would be an incredible way to encourage diferent gameplay other than soaking multiple lanes and with a little imagination could make players multitasking a bunch of quests all around the map.

    Things like run X meters as Erik to get the effects of Eric the Swift or Charge Y Heroes as Olaf to get 25 armor. You could add a few "major quests" at lvl 1 that all vikings must complete a part (like Varian's) to get a sweet late game, heck, that could be their trait instead of just increasing health regen a bit.

    One idea I also like is having talents at 7 and 13 be variations of Spin to Win and Jump! And scatter older talents as completion bonuses on talents that gives every Viking a bit of utility.

    TLV is one of the most unique heroes of MOBAs and I would love to see the new design style going wild on them!

    We don't currently have plans for a TLV talent revamp.

    However there's some really cool ideas in here that I'll happily take back to the team!!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    for /u/centaurik will there be an update for raynors talents like you have been doing with many other heroes?

    We currently don't have any plans for a Raynor talent update.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Targeting abilities by clicking on Party Frames is a controversial topic in the community with some people saying that it's needed to get maximum value from some heroes (especially supports) and others saying that it the game would require less mechanical skill. What is your opinion on that and is it a feature that we might see in the future?

    Targeting abilities by clicking on Party Frames is a controversial topic in the community with some people saying that it's needed to get maximum value from some heroes (especially supports) and others saying that it the game would require less mechanical skill. What is your opinion on that and is it a feature that we might see in the future?

    It is definitely on our radar to get to soon(tm). We're currently looking at allowing players to use target unit abilities on allies only (as we feel it's the most beneficial for Healers).

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Are we gettings heroes from hearthstone? Any thoughs on Kazakus?

    "At last, a worthy disciple!"

    Alas, I can't say what Heroes are in development, but we do love us some Hearthstone!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    u/Centaurik

    Your team has talked about capturing the fantasy of a character through play. In my opinion, Ragnaros is a shining example of that.

    Are there upcoming heroes with transformative mechanics that introduce brand new, distinct mechanics? Heroes like Cho'gall, Abathur, Ragnaros.

    Is there a character fantasy that has been too difficult to capture, or hasn't been able to progress through early development?

    Your team has talked about capturing the fantasy of a character through play. In my opinion, Ragnaros is a shining example of that. Are there upcoming heroes with transformative mechanics that introduce brand new, distinct mechanics? Heroes like Cho'gall, Abathur, Ragnaros. Is there a character fantasy that has been too difficult to capture, or hasn't been able to progress through early development?

    Hi! Sorry, I can't really discuss anything that's in development, but I can say that we still love designing and developing Heroes that break the mold!

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Apologies for the long list, I've been prepping for this one for awhile!

    1. We’ve seen a lot of armor starting to pop up recently in both new heroes and reworks. We need a way to see exact armor values easily in game now as that is going to be an important aspect going forward. What are your plans for more transparency in this area beyond just shield icons?

    2. What was the thought process behind the ETC changes? Normally when we see tank health reduced as much as we saw with him, permanent armor is also added, but with ETC, this armor is tied to his abilities, only one of which you should normally be using on demand. Coupled with attack speed, echo pedal hero damage, and team utility nerfs, this has left ETC feeling extremely squishy and awkward to play compared to his old trait/stats.

    3. Sprays are incredible, but with the recent talk of cutting down on clutter, some of them can be very distracting, especially if a lot go down at once. What are your plans to make sure abilities always have priority, and sprays won’t become a distraction or something that will hinder you from being able to see abilities?

    4. What is the thought process behind not having gem costs assigned to most store items all the time? And if this is not a possibility, do you have plans for a large assortment and frequent rotation of both new and older items for gems in the store?

    5. Can we get more details on Mastery Taunts (Possibly more hero specific stuff for them in the future)? Are there any plans for allowing/implementing this same sort of “Mastery of a Hero" thing in game or in draft (though admittedly that could lead to problems of it’s own, “only lvl 15 omg you must suck”)?

    6. What is the reasoning behind several of the skin status changes from epic to legendary? Are some of these older skins getting upgrades or is there something else that drove this change?

    7. Can you tell us when Loot Chests are generated? Is it when you open them, or when you receive them? And if it’s when you receive them will a reroll be based on what is currently available, or what was available when you originally received it?

    Bonus - Can Rehgar please have his self cast ancestral back so he can move back to a more aggressive risk/reward playstyle (and imo any totem/lightning shield changes don’t change the fact that it’s too risky to be up front in the first place currently)?

    Bonus Bonus - Brightwing 2.0 now plz?

    We’ve seen a lot of armor starting to pop up recently in both new heroes and reworks. We need a way to see exact armor values easily in game now as that is going to be an important aspect going forward. What are your plans for more transparency in this area beyond just shield icons? What was the thought process behind the ETC changes? Normally when we see tank health reduced as much as we saw with him, permanent armor is also added, but with ETC, this armor is tied to his abilities, only one of which you should normally be using on demand. Coupled with attack speed, echo pedal hero damage, and team utility nerfs, this has left ETC feeling extremely squishy and awkward to play compared to his old trait/stats.

    Well I can try and answer numbers 1 and 2!

    For (1), we are definitely looking at ways to increase visibility into Armor, both permanent Armors and temporary Armor adjustments. We think we can do better, and are actively discussing how and when we can get it into the game!

    For (2), ETC, well in general he was doing too many things. He could be drafted as a general warrior, he could split push/have a global with Stage Dive, he could set up strong Wombos with Mosh Pit, and he could pair well with Basic Attackers with his trait. For someone who we thought did well in a more generalist role, we needed to pare down all the things he brought. We felt the Attack Speed was the most vestigial component, as it was moderately hidden, and wasn't so strong as to be an obvious draft implication.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    Thanks for doing this Q&A!

    I find it very interesting that the Scourge banner has yet to be included, nor has their icon as a spray. There's also a certain face missing from all the Warcraft 3 portraits. Are they not ready yet? Or are you waiting for a special occasion?

    Any chance that we'll see the Death Knight Arthas skin updated and re-released in HotS 2.0?

    But mainly, where is the Archlich of Naxxramas, esteemed Lich Lord of the Plaguelands, Commander of the Dread Necropolis, Master and Founder of the Cult of the Damned, formerly of the Council of the Six, Creator of the Abomination, Summoner of Archimonde the Defiler, Betrayer of Humanity, Hearthstone Enthusiast, and Majordomo to the Lich King Himself, Kel'Thuzad?

    Edit: Partial answer given, take a look.

    But mainly, where is the Archlich of Naxxramas, esteemed Lich Lord of the Plaguelands, Commander of the Dread Necropolis, Master and Founder of the Cult of the Damned, formerly of the Council of the Six, Creator of the Abomination, Summoner of Archimonde the Defiler, Betrayer of Humanity, Hearthstone Enthusiast, and Majordomo to the Lich King Himself, Kel'Thuzad?

    What I love about this subreddit is that I can always count on /u/RobotDoctorRobot to always inquire on the whereabouts of the Archlich of Naxxramas, esteemed Lich Lord of the Plaguelands, Commander of the Dread Necropolis, Master and Founder of the Cult of the Damned, formerly of the Council of the Six, Creator of the Abomination, Summoner of Archimonde the Defiler, Betrayer of Humanity, Hearthstone Enthusiast, and Majordomo to the Lich King Himself, Kel'Thuzad.

    (I will also say that he is still on the list of 300+ Heroes we'd love to get to one day)

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    1) With the "unmastering" of master skins, will future heroes still release with 2 alternate skins (a "master skin" type skin and some other) or will master skins be phased out?

    2) Are there any plans to release spray/emoji packs themed around HGC teams, similar to the champion nexagon mounts we have already?

    3) Kind of unrelated, but it's always kind of bugged me that Greymane's trait is essentially just an explanation of his E ability. Any plans to give him a trait that actually impacts gameplay, in a similar vein to the new Cho'Gall trait (which previously had the exact same problem of being just tooltip without any function)?

    3) Kind of unrelated, but it's always kind of bugged me that Greymane's trait is essentially just an explanation of his E ability. Any plans to give him a trait that actually impacts gameplay, in a similar vein to the new Cho'Gall trait (which previously had the exact same problem of being just tooltip without any function)?

    We don't currently plan to adjust Greymane’s trait. He’s in a great spot balance-wise (smack dab in the middle), and I'm not sure we need to add more mechanics to the Hero. We did recently add to the trait, though, so he now gets Armor in Worgen form.

  • Centaurik
    Posted 7 years, 6 months ago (Source)

    A question to /u/Centaurik: in many of the balance changes, as well as rollouts of new heroes like Varian, there seems to be a discrepancy between what the community calls a "tank", and what the game designers call a tank. In the community's definition, CavalierGuest has identified four areas that a "tank" needs:

    • Engaging for your team.
    • Peeling for your team.
    • Being a mobile ward.
    • Being a damage sponge.

    But judging from comments made in the past, it seems that the design team sees things differently, and that you only see one or two of these features as being necessary for a tank.

    So my question is: to you, what is a tank?

    A question to /u/Centaurik: in many of the balance changes, as well as rollouts of new heroes like Varian, there seems to be a discrepancy between what the community calls a "tank", and what the game designers call a tank. In the community's definition, CavalierGuest has identified four areas that a "tank" needs: Engaging for your team. Peeling for your team. Being a mobile ward. Being a damage sponge. But judging from comments made in the past, it seems that the design team sees things differently, and that you only see one or two of these features as being necessary for a tank. So my question is: to you, what is a tank?

    This is indeed a most excellent question, and I'm happy to reply!!

    The first thing I'll say is that this isn’t a solid "thus sayeth the mighty Blizzard" definition written in stone. This game is constantly evolving, and figuring out what exactly our different roles are and what they mean are always evolving. (For instance, when designing Medivh, we deliberately tried to make him a pure utility Support, who could support his team but not providing healing. We learned that in Heroes, a successful team typically needs some out-of-combat method of recouping damage taken, something he wasn't capable of providing).

    So, Tanks. Yes. So I'd say, that in our current line of thought, we view Tanks as needing 3 main qualities:

    -Initiate

    -Peel

    -Self-Survivability

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