Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm has been a bit of a contentious title for many. Some feel that the game was a shallow attempt to capitalize on the MOBA trend, joining League of Legends and Dota in the ranks of huge MOBAs. Others were excited at the chance to see so many different Blizzard characters in a game together.
Either way, Blizzard’s title has been well-received by most, especially on a critical level. Part of this is because of Blizzard’s insistence on continuously changing up the gameplay with features like the Nexus Anomaly, which changes the gameplay considerably each season.
With the most recent additions to the Public Test Realm, Blizzard added in this season’s current Nexus Anomaly – “A Call for Help.” This anomaly drastically affects how structures interact with the players, providing a more powerful defense for its allies.
“We’ve heard feedback over the years that a lot of you would like to feel more protected by nearby friendly structures,” Blizzard writes in their patch notes., “In order to address this issue, we will be making the following changes to structures:”
One interesting change is that defensive structures now generate a beam towards their target to make it more clear what they’re attacking. Attacking an opponent under their tower will also now cause the tower to immediately focus on the attacker until they die or leave range.
Combined with these enhanced visibility and targetting mechanics, cannon towers, forts, and keeps will now deal 10% more damage to heroes. They’ll also reduce hero armor by up to -40, with forts and keeps doing 10 armor per hit while towers do 5. Countering this, forts and keeps will no longer slow enemy heroes.
The Cores are also getting some new mechanics, depending on the map. Each map has a unique theme-appropriate effect, such as the Battlefield of Eternity, which will now spawn 2 volleys of Frozen Orbs every 8 seconds. These will deal 5% of their target’s maximum health as damage and root them for 1.5 seconds. Each unique ability will only occur on the appropriate map.
These changes should provide a great amount of change to the current gameplay, where defensive structures can almost be entirely ignored. However, reading the specific unique abilities, it likely won’t be long until the community begins complaining about them being a bit overpowered. For example, the Cursed Hollow map causes the Core to spawn a Curse under nearby heroes every three seconds. These curses deal damage and reduce armor for 75 seconds, which might need a bit of tweaking. Either way, these changes are certain to shake up the current metas.