During BlizzCon 2017 Blizzard Entertainment has announced a variety of changes planned for the MOBA Heroes of the Storm, including enhanced match-making system, rework of stealth, improved camera and much more. The PTR client has been updated to include those changes some of which are now available for testing.
Let’s take a quick look at what Blizzard has in store:
- The matchmaking system has been updated to include a performance-based data-driven system, which takes individual player performance into account when determining MMR gains and losses. (This change will not be available on PTR until the next week)
- In-game Camera height has been significantly increased in order to provide more visibility of the battlefield.
- A variety of changes is coming to battleground objectives, regen globes, stealth mechanic, structures, minions and mercenaries.
Stealth players will now become “Invisible” after remaining still for 1.5 seconds. Invisible Heroes will not display the Stealth visual effect and can still be removed from Stealth by taking damage. This includes Heroes under the effects of temporary Stealth effects such as Samuro’s Windwalk or Tyrande’s Shadowstalk. Additionally, Heroes cannot become Invisible while occupying a capture point, such as Braxis Holdout or Mercenary Camp Beacons. Instead, they will retain normal Stealth visual effects.
Due to those changes, Blizzard is also changing Stealth heroes such as Nova, Zeratul, Samuro, Valeera and more.
During BlizzCon 2017 Blizzard has also presented two new heroes, the Dragons of Nexus: Alexstrasza and Hanzo. With Alexstrasza already in the game, a lot of players expected Hanzo to hit the PTR this week. However, the archer’s arrival on the test servers is delayed until the next week so that Blizzard can focus playtesting on gameplay update and Stealth changes.
