[News] Heroes Of The Storm

[Lunix I]

The only thing that’s constant in the Nexus is change. As mentioned at BlizzCon 2018, in the coming months we’re bringing you gameplay and matchmaking changes, feature updates, and a whole new way to earn experience with Boosts! Read on for more information.

The objectives of this update :

One of our major goals with the 2019 updates is to implement gameplay changes that encourage closer matches and avoid the dreaded “snowball” effect. After careful design, implementation, and iteration, we felt that this best way to accomplish this goal was to slow down the “snowball effect” just as it starts to come into play. In short, we’re changing the way we reward players who prioritize push strategies to gain experience and power advantages. While we still want to reward players for pushing, we’re focused on removing the direct power advantage we give to these teams and will instead reward them with a strategic advantage. To accomplish this, we’re making the following changes:

Structure Adjustments:

Previously, we granted a great deal of experience to players for destroying structures. In order to help us accomplish the goals we described above, we’ve redistributed how Experience is earned across a few parts of a match, as detailed here:

• Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep
• Decreased Experience earned from destroying Towers by 50%
• Passive Experience gain increased by 15%
• Increased Experience gained by defeating defending Mercenaries by 100%
• Defeating Laning Mercenaries will now grant 100% of Defending Mercenaries Experience 

To ensure that teams were still rewarded and encouraged to take down key structu re s, we are also changing how catapults (and their Battleground-specific equivalents) are awarded. Here’s how:

when a team destroys a Fort, they’ll now gain a Catapult in every 3rd Minion wave. This allows consistent (but not constant) pressure in a lane that enemies will have a hard time ignoring. This change also introduces a secondary form of snowball prevention that is not as obvious—a team that’s ahead will have more pressure in lanes, pushing Minions (and Experience) towards their opponents, allowing them easier and safer ways to regain a foothold in the match. As a note, killing a Keep will result in Catapults with every wave, which is identical to the current live functionality.