Heroes of the Storm II: Thread. Augmented. Logical Decision

[Malistrae]

I don't remember the last three off the top of my head so I doubt they'll make it into HotS.

Mengsk, Alarak, and Duran are all on your side at some point.

Ma'lash... Maybe? There isn't a lot on him. Alarak seems like a way better choice to represent the Taalda'rim.

For other "villainous" characters we have Kerrigan, Abathur, Zagara, Tychus, and Nova (Zeratul too for that matter...). You're against them all at some point in the story just like Mengsk, Alarak, and Duran. I suppose it's a matter of degrees, but that's kind of where I was going with this.

I think you are still mostly thinking about the orginal SC and Brood War. In those games there wasn't really strong a separation between "heroes" and "villains", since you often played as negative characters with a lot of greyness involved. But SC 2 is a completely different beast. Let's look at the characters we are discussing.

I don't think you can argue against Mengsk being a villain. He is the BBEG of Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm, after all. The fact that he started out on "our side" is fallacious, because our POV != heroes. Heroes and villains are different from protagonists and antagonists. To use a Warcraft analogy, Arthas is a villain, even though he was the protagonist in three WC 3 campaigns.

Alarak as I have noted is also throughly villainous character who constantly spouts pseudo-Sith philosophy when talking and is extremely hateful and contemptful towards the other two Protoss factions. He is only allied to Artanis during LotV because he recognises that Amon killing everyone is bad for him (and he also wants revenge). This doesn't mean that he is heroic in any sense of the word. In fact, if Amon was removed from the plot Alarak would almost certainly serve as an antagonist.

Duran is absolutely not heroic. Just... no. He is a malicious and fanatical shapeshifting alien, who pretends to servel evil!Kerrigan and later Mengsk, while being even more villainous than either of them.

Kerrigan is essentially redeemed. Post-Wings of Liberty, Blizzard completely white-washed her into a noble, if somewhat still unscrupulous, hero (one of their worst story decisions, if you ask me).

Abathur and Zagara are not villains, by the virtue of being Kerrigan's underlings. They are also obviously not heroic, thus they are more like Neutral-ish.

Tychus and Nova are pawns and victims of Mengsk. One was blackmailed, the other was brainwashed. They are thus not villainous, since their more villainous actions (Tychus' betrayal of Raynor, Nova's actions against the Raiders) were not done out of their own volition, but rather out of coercion by an outside force.

And Zeratul is just no. His SC 2 characterization is unambigously saintly and heroic.

Bear in mind, that I am discussing this from the LG perspective of most media. I personally see Mengsk as a great hero, who showed us that it is the destiny of the Overman to overcome society and dominate his inferiors. But most Alignment tests register me as NE, so my perception of things is somewhat "warped" compared to common notions of ethics and morality.

Also, it is important to note that Blizz decided to include in HotS such trivial non-entities as Lunara, Murky, Morales or Hammer. Ulrezaj was a book BBEG that many expected to appear in LotV (although, he ultimately didn't). Discounting potential heroes because they are not famous is not wise. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so many C-listers and D-listers in the roster.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So after never ever EVER picking it (literally never), due to conventional wisdom, I finally decided to try out Nydus Network for Zagara. It's actually pretty fun! I understand why you're not supposed to pick it (Maw is just so incredible), but I really dig being able to zip around the map willy-nilly. I do wish that it were easier to manage the network, though. I saw someone suggest that you could target a worm to destroy it (so that you could place a new one, instead of having the earliest worm despawn), and I rather agree with that.

[Anxe]

Large Amount of Text

I'd disagree with Kerrigan being redeemed. She's still killing civilians left and right in Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. She's got the greater good in mind though.

The others... I'd disagree with Tychus and Nova as well. It's not clear to me that they'd be good characters even without Mengsk's influence.

Everything else is well put!

I liked what you said about the minor characters from Warcraft being included. I wasn't sure how pivotal those people were in that universe. And Sgt. Hammer wasn't even a character in Starcraft until her conception in HotS as far as I know. I think that was just a way to bring the Siege Tank and the Vulture into HotS.
Ulrezaj would be awesome to see in HotS. I'm concerned that they've already covered "archon" with Tassadar's ult though. Maybe tap into the dark archon side more, but I'm not sure how they'd get that to work well. Sylvanas already has a similar ability and its widely seen as a ****-tier pick.

[Draken]

I'd disagree with Kerrigan being redeemed. She's still killing civilians left and right in Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void. She's got the greater good in mind though.

The others... I'd disagree with Tychus and Nova as well. It's not clear to me that they'd be good characters even without Mengsk's influence.

Everything else is well put!

I liked what you said about the minor characters from Warcraft being included. I wasn't sure how pivotal those people were in that universe. And Sgt. Hammer wasn't even a character in Starcraft until her conception in HotS as far as I know. I think that was just a way to bring the Siege Tank and the Vulture into HotS.
Ulrezaj would be awesome to see in HotS. I'm concerned that they've already covered "archon" with Tassadar's ult though. Maybe tap into the dark archon side more, but I'm not sure how they'd get that to work well. Sylvanas already has a similar ability and its widely seen as a ****-tier pick.

Lunara and Brightwing did not exist prior to their incarnations in Heroes of the Storm either. Although given Lunara's background, she could have existed in blizzard's internal canon and simply never have been introduced to the public before. Brightwing is for all intents and purposes a random faerie dragon, however (who then became a canon immigrant in WoW: Legion).

Lots of canon immigrants cropping up in Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, truth be told.

[GolemsVoice]

Now don't talk smack about Sgt. Hammer. She rules.

Regarding Tychus' villainy: he's essentially the same as Raynor, but he lacks Raynor's conscience. Tychus looks out for Tychus, and to hell with everyone else. He's not exactly Mengsk level of bad guy, but not a nice person in any way.

[Draken]

Now don't talk smack about Sgt. Hammer. She rules.

Regarding Tychus' villainy: he's essentially the same as Raynor, but he lacks Raynor's conscience. Tychus looks out for Tychus, and to hell with everyone else. He's not exactly Mengsk level of bad guy, but not a nice person in any way.

It is easy to forget that Raynor and Tychus are train robbers, bank robbers, cutthroats and murderers, and in Raynors case, due to his part in Mengsk's rebellion, also a terrorist (Mengsk isn't exactly lying on that front).

Really, nobody in the Koprulu sector is a nice guy. Some of them were just battling the otherworldly host of a selfish, nihilist god.

[Gandariel]

Really, nobody in the Koprulu sector is a nice guy.

Arguably Valerian, Tassadar and Artanis are 100% good.

[Draken]

Arguably Valerian, Tassadar and Artanis are 100% good.

Well, I guess they do fit a D&D description of good. Since that doesn't really preclude doing some really nasty things.

[DaedalusMkV]

Arguably Valerian, Tassadar and Artanis are 100% good.

Matt Horner and Zeratul as well. Horner particularly, to the point that Raynor specifically talks about how much better a person Matt is than him, which is why Matt winds up in charge of the Terran military and Raynor winds up wandering off into the sunset.

Of course, Tassadar burned worlds, even if he did feel bad about it afterwards and tried to find an alternative method of dealing with the Zerg. His hands aren't exactly clean, even if the Protoss do wind up hero-worshipping him. They've still got Artanis and Zeratul for 100% good guys, even if both are pretty dumb and prone to being duped into making things worse.

[Draken]

Dehaka has been properly revealed.

Warrior, classified as Easy.

Can't use a mount. Instead his Z allows him to teleport to any bush/vent/maphidingspotthingy.

Trait: Essence Colector: gains 10 essence on hero kills and 2 on minion kills, storing up to 50. Can be activated to consume the stacks for a heal over 5 seconds, total depending on how much essence was consumed. Talents also cause this to give other bonuses.

Q: Drag - Tongue skillshot, light damage, first enemy hit will then be moved along with you for a while.

W: Dark Swarm - Negates unit collision and deals damage around Dehaka, doubled against heroes. One talent causes this to also work as spell shield.

E: Burrow - Baseline ice block. Can still activate his trait during this.

R1: Isolation - Single target skillshot. Damages, slows and silences for 3 seconds. Also causes the target to not have allied vision and lowered vision radius for 6 seconds.

R2: Adaptation - Activate, initiate 5 second countdown, recover 60% of all damage suffered during the 5 seconds.

Also amusingly, some pictures show him without his arm and some show him with it. So it seens that he can regrow it over the course of the game.

[ChaosOS]

I think a tweet or something from Blizzard clarified that he regrows his arm when you hit 10

[CarpeGuitarrem]

My hype for Dehaka (despite never having played an SC campaign) keeps growing the more I hear about his kit. Sign me up, folks. A tank that's never late to the teamfight? AW YEAH. I've noticed that I really like global mounts, between Brightwing, Falstad, Abathur, and Zagara's Nydus Worms. They just make you so much more dangerous, and let you keep laning for a little bit longer, which adds up.

Oh, and I really dig that he has an innate Ice Block as well as a ton of regen. Limited CC, though.

[Gandariel]

He very likely will get some sort of slow with his AoE.

Also, even more likely he'll get a Tunneling Claws talent (can move while burrowed) which make him preetty darn useful

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So, this "HOTS funny moments"-style channel started as something that wasn't the greatest, mostly okay.

But this time around, it was pretty much filled with hilarious gold. Also, there's enough Xtreme Pufferfish action to satiate my needs.

[Gandariel]

Must be a good week for videos, then...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Must be a good week for videos, then...

The comedic timing there was spot-on.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

PTR Patch Notes are up

Brace yourselves. There's some radical awesome changes coming. I don't even know where to begin.

Tychus getting an activateable Giant Killer on his passive is pretty sick, though.

[Gandariel]

Holy mother of patches.

Illidan seems strong, can't really tell anything about Tychus or Gazlowe.

Very happy about Sylvanas new ult

Very sad about Jaina losing Blink AND Ice block

EXTREMELY happy about the possibility of KT (my main) being good again :D

Also, some of the new level 20 talents (Gazlowe and KT) look beautiful. Not necessarily powerful, but exactly what i'd be expecting from a level 20 talent. Yay!

[CarpeGuitarrem]

A few quick takes...

Tychus
Massive, massive reworks, largely to make autoattack Tychus viable. Minigun is no longer a borderline useless trait, for one. There's no wind-up time, so it'll spin directly into faster and faster autoattacks up to the max. And the fact that you can activate it on a 12s cooldown to get Giant Killer for three seconds is ridiculous as a baseline ability! Like WOW. I'm really happy I own Tychus. Plus, Minigun gets some strong supporting talents: increased duration when you attack heroes, reduced cooldown, increased damage against enemies above 40% health (but reduced damage against low-health enemies), and lifesteal. Which, since he's gonna be dishing out loads of AA damage with minigun, that lifesteal is gonna be amazing, especially since it's 100% lifesteal.

Run and Gun's redesign is also fantastic. Initially, it seems to have been designed as an initiation ability: you Run and Gun into a fight, and it spins up your minigun. Incidentally, that's also a terrible use of the ability; you need it as an escape. And the rework is just awesome for that, because of the talent support it gets. First off, you can collect regen orb stacks to use with Dash (which works because Tychus lanes well). Increased movement speed after R&G, just amazing for escaping. And once you get to the max of 25% movement speed boost, you get 50% increased range on R&G, like what? You dash even further? That's further than Valla's vault, I think! Or you can grab the talent that gives you damage reduction after R&G, CDR on R&G, a basic attack range boost (which lets you kite really well with it)...Level 1 is all gonna be about enhancing your escape ability. I love that.

A few other interesting talents here and there, like Tychus' version of Gathering Power (kills give +2% attack speed with a bonus 10% when maximum 20% attack speed is reached), a unique sort of Spell Shield (all ability damage is reduced for 3 seconds, activateable), and a Level 20 Giant Killer (only adds 1% of the max health, but this is on top of the Giant Killer he gets as a passive).

Tychus feels like a new hero in line with recent heroes being released, not just in terms of numbers but in terms of how focused his kit feels now.

Sylvanas
The obvious tweak is the Heroic change, but first...I really like what they're doing to her talent tree. For one, Level 1 is no longer a choice with a bunch of dead options. A: Overflowing Quiver is no longer redundant, B: Paralysis is pretty useful but not dominantly so, C: a bonus to nearby mercenary damage is pretty neat. In general, it looks like they've moved around her options so that different talents are now clustered with one another, which is good because some of them were good but in competition with better talents.

They also ditched useless talents like the one that gives you Stealth after Haunting Wave. Cold's Embrace got toned down to become less of a must-pick.

Okay, and I dig that Possession is now a talent ability. Much more useful now, and you don't have to give up Wailing Arrow to use it. And Mind Control seems like a really fun ult! Great way to deal with heroes who have escape mechanisms, and it's a hard counter to Nova.

So, a lot of her weak/uninteresting talent options got patched up, and she feels a lot fresher, from what I can tell.

Talents
Block now reduces damage by 75%. This is huge. Makes it a much more competitive choice, and it definitely means that slow autoattackers are going to see a viable counter on characters who have Block. I note with amusement that Murky got a renamed Block so that it can now only reduce damage by 50%. (Also, all Block-like talents like Li Li's Elusive Feet, and the damage reduction on Pixie Dust, seem to have been changed to match.)

Nydus Worm is still not amazing, but it does get some nice quality-of-life improvements that change how it works.

• Instead of putting a Worm at the Hall of Storms, you'll now just heal while you're within a Nydus Worm
• Being able to place Nydus Worms while you're inside the Nydus Network means that you can hop into a worm, find an escape point or attack point, and then spawn it and exit

I dig that. It'll be more fun to use now, and it'll be an ult that probably sees you continually placing worms now, instead of putting your worms down and then ignoring the new charges you get.

[Malistrae]

Looking at the Illidan changes, I would say the rework seems pretty good. I especially like that they moved Immolate to LV 1. Illi really needs it for damage, even with its slightly nerfed status.
KT is just wow. It is so amazing. I think Blizz finally managed to break his stagnant optimized build. I really like that AB is now integrated into Mana Addict. And Chain Bomb is now unnecessary. Bring on the Flames! Bolt of the Storm is now removed, but it's unmourned. The rework gives a lot of potential escape tools to KT. I always hated having to take BoS. It was just so boring a talent that allowed people to avoid the consequences of bad positioning.

In conclusion, I really like that Blizzard is moving away from general talents to more individualized ones.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So, I installed the PTR HotS to check out the changes. OH MY LANDS MIND CONTROL IS A FUN ULT. In general, the new Sylvanas is pretty great. I'm really digging the rework.

[GolemsVoice]

The way they changed the garden terror also puts an end to the hit-and-run style of garden guerillia fights.

[ChaosOS]

Been playing a bunch of PTR today, my thoughts:

Lost cavern is a solid design for an ARAM map, no frills and the regen globes help the game from stalling out while giving something interesting and extra to go for

Dehaka is cool, a lot more roaming and gank focused than a lot of the past warriors who tend to lack good mobility skills. Deceptively tanky between his burrow, trait heal, and potentially healing ultimate

Interface and other improvements are AWESOME and exactly what we needed.

Stealth buff to Illidan: "Effects applied when Basic Attacks strike the target will no longer be applied if evasion causes the Basic Attack to miss." buried in the "Design and Gameplay" header

DK change is nice, Garden Terror now works more normally with the just hit the damn building rather than the drop pot-> run around strat

General talent changes are good, Block now much more appealing

Greymane bullet ult is now significantly more viable, I could pretty reliably land it on the enemy backline when I tried it out

Illidan is a boss now and actually has pretty solid talent design. 1: Increased damage 4: Mobility 7: Sustain 13: Mitigation 16: MORE DAMAGE

Jaina got hit by the "Bolt of the storm is picked by too many heroes" purge, but Ice Barrier is a pretty good talent so don't discount its move to 13

Kael'Thas also has much better talent diversity although people have found the Trait build very effective. Chain bomb is now less "Random free damage from minions" and now a conscious need to spread out.

Haven't really seen Kerrigan or Lunara

The Butcher Lamb to the Slaughter ult is definitely stronger and potentially much scarier if he's working with his team

Tychus is a tank busting monstrosity, very viable now. Just bought him on live in anticipation of this patch

Gazlowe also drastically improved, I see three builds: Turrets with Robo Goblin so you can manually target, Lazors with either ult, and the bomb wombo combo build. The new bomb talent at 4 eats mana like crazy but is very strong (Gives you two turret charges for landing your E on a hero)

March of the Murlocs 30% damage buff means we'll definitely see it more

Sylvanas is awesome, Wailing arrow is still good but Mind Control is a lot of fun and very viable if you don't need the interrupt aspect of Wailing arrow. Similar theory to Illidan where rather than multiple builds it's themed tiers. 1: More push 4: PvP 7: Push 10: CC ult 13: Survivability 16: PvP. Little more synergy though on her, for example the "Increased Q max stacks and fire faster" plus the E talent at 13. I'm a little sad the "Haunting Wave grants stealth" got cut from the kit as I would've liked to see it tacked on somewhere else but such is life, it wasn't a great talent but it was cool to have.

Nydus is greatly improved, the split push is real. Opens up as a more viable option.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I do like how "Haunting Wave can be cast twice" got merged with "Haunting Wave refills your arrows".

EDIT: also, I tried out some of the keybinding stuff, and WOW is it a massive quality-of-life increase. The tiny thing I like the most is being able to rebind attack-move to left-click, but I also love being able, say, to rebind Kael'Thalas' Gravity Lapse to "quick-cast on release" while the rest of his kit is on normal quick-cast. Makes a huge difference.

[ChaosOS]

Patch is up, what are people looking to play first?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Patch is up, what are people looking to play first?

Just played some Tychus. He. Is. A. BEAST. Can't wait to try him in Hero League.

[Draken]

Patch is up, what are people looking to play first?

Purchased and played Dehaka. Really fun and very nice.

[Gaelbert]

EDIT: also, I tried out some of the keybinding stuff, and WOW is it a massive quality-of-life increase. The tiny thing I like the most is being able to rebind attack-move to left-click, but I also love being able, say, to rebind Kael'Thalas' Gravity Lapse to "quick-cast on release" while the rest of his kit is on normal quick-cast. Makes a huge difference.

How exactly do you do this? I know it's somewhere in the Hotkeys menu but I've never found the actual "attack move" label to re-bind.

Been playing a lot of Sylvanas. A little disappointed, honestly. The first three tiers of talents are all a little meh to me, she only gets to be super fun once you have the double haunting wave/refill arrows talent. That being said, she is a ton of fun once you reach that. Great dueling and potential for some clutch jukes. Been seeing a lot of Zeratul recently and it's been fun bursting him down before he expects it. It is a tricky fight though, particularly if he took the vorpal blade talent where he can just straight teleport to you. Kinda want to see the Remorseless talent moved down to 7 again, I like playing her as a PvP character with potential to push and I don't think Remorseless at 7 would be OP anymore.

[Gandariel]

Just played some Tychus. He. Is. A. BEAST. Can't wait to try him in Hero League.

Looks like Hotslogs disagrees...

[CarpeGuitarrem]

How exactly do you do this? I know it's somewhere in the Hotkeys menu but I've never found the actual "attack move" label to re-bind.

Hotkeys, and then what you rebind is the "A" key in the basic Hotkeys display, where it says A, S, D, Esc. Click the "A", and that lets you set alternate keybindings for that key. When you bind "Left mouse button" to the A key, it automatically makes left-click into attack-move.

Looks like Hotslogs disagrees...

Aww. I hadn't checked, but I can sorta see why. He's traded in survivability for a lot of damage, and that's a big change. I'm sure there's ways to make him work out really well, but there's gonna be some really hard lessons to be learned. I don't know if he's overall more powerful, but his damage sure feels beastly still.