A new patch for Blizzard’s MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, has officially gone live and a powerful Warrior has been added. The big draw is Imperius, who is a bruiser style character that is great at bullying foes and hunting down foes. Blizzard has also made some changes to Abathur, Arthas, and Diablo.
Here are the complete January 8, 2019 patch notes for Heroes of the Storm:
New Hero: Imperius (Warrior)
Leader of the Angiris Council and Aspect of Valor, Imperius has valiantly led the armies of the High Heavens to innumerous victories over the demons of the Burning Hells. While his methods are exact and severe, there is no greater defender of righteousness in the entirety of creation.
Trait
- Valorous Brand
- Each Basic Ability marks enemy Heroes hit for 10 seconds. Basic Attacks consume the target’s marks, dealing 30% bonus damage per mark.
Basic Abilities
- Celestial Charge (Q)
- Lunge towards a targeted direction and stab, dealing 35 damage. If an enemy Hero is hit, Channel to Stun for 1 second and deal 70 additional damage when it fully finishes.
- Solarion’s Flare (W)
- Release a fiery wave that deals 100 damage. Enemies hit by the center take 50 bonus damage and are Slowed by 40% for 3 seconds.
- Molten Armor (E)
- Shroud Imperius in flames for 3 seconds, striking a nearby enemy for 19 damage every 0.25 seconds. Imperius heals for 100% of the damage dealt, with healing doubled versus Heroes.
Heroic Abilities
- Angelic Armaments (R)
- Summon a ring of blazing swords that grants 1000 Shield for 3 seconds.If the Shield lasts the full duration, this ability can be reactivated within 5 seconds to launch 6 swords toward an area, each dealing 140 damage to the first enemy hit.
- Wrath of the Angiris (R)
- After 0.75 seconds, charge in the target direction, lifting the first enemy Hero hit into the Heavens. While in the air, Imperius can steer the landing location by moving.After 2 seconds, slam the target into the ground, dealing 375 damage and Stunning them for 1 second.
User Interface
- A number of visual improvements have been implemented for the Boost system both in and out of games.
Specialist
Abathur
Abilities
- Evolve Monstrosity (R)
- Health increased from 1000 to 1350
- Basic Attack damage increased from 73 to 85
- Health bonus per minion killed reduced from 5 to 2%
- Damage bonus per minion killed reduced from 5 to 2%
Developer Comment: We discovered an issue with Evolve Monstrosity where its damage scaling was incorrect. To fix the bug, we would have massively increased its Basic Attack damage once it was fully stacked, which is already fairly high. Instead, we are taking this opportunity to re-tune the Monstrosity so that it is not quite so powerful once fully stacked, but is stronger right away, which should be an overall buff in most use cases.
Warrior
Arthas
Abilities
- Summon Sindragosa (R)
- No longer disables enemy Summons
- Enemy Summons are now slowed by 60% for 4 seconds
Developer Comment: This change is primarily being made to address cases where Sindragosa would disable high-impact Summons like Jaina’s Water Elemental for exceptionally long periods of time. Now enemy Summons who find themselves in the sights of a giant, undead Frost dragon will only tremble in fear instead of being frozen by it.
Diablo
Talents
- Level 1
- Soul Shield (Passive)
- Soul Shield will now dynamically update if Diablo gains Souls while the Spell Armor is active
Collection
New Bundles
- The following new bundles are only available for a limited time!
- Imperius Heroic Bundle
- Angiris Council Bundle
New Announcer
- Imperius Announcer
- Johanna Announcer
- Ilarian Announcer
New Mount
- Crystalline Saddled Battle Beast
New Skins
- Imperius
- Vindicator Imperius
- Indomitable Imperius
- Demonic Imperius
- Abyssal Demonic Imperius
- Vile Demonic Imperius
New Portraits, Sprays, and Emojis
- Several new emoji packs and portraits have also been added to the game.
Bug Fixes
User Interface
- Fixed a number of tooltip issues and inaccuracies across the game.
- Fixed an issue causing Battleground names to be difficult to read on the Hero Select screen of Custom Games.
Heroes, Abilities, and Talents
- Brightwing: Fixed an issue preventing the Unstable Anomaly talent from increasing Polymorph’s slow.
- Malthael: Fixed an issue that caused some of Malthael’s spell effects to become visible in the fog of war.
- Zul’jin: Fixed an issue that could cause the No Mercy! Talent to reduce damage dealt by Grievous Throw.
It will be interesting to see where Imperius falls in the meta. His ability to take down foes is undeniable, but with the popularity of mobile heroes such as Genji and Tracer, he may have a difficult time taking down foes. If you are looking to try this hero, we strongly recommend playing a few A.I. games to get a handle on his kit.
While the big draw will certainly be Imperius, it’s important not to ignore the tweaks made to other characters. Even though Abathur didn’t technically receive a buff, this should make his Monstrosity less of a hassle to deal with in the late game. Sadly, this patch didn’t address some of the community’s concerns revolving around matchmaking or any changes made to disliked maps such as Blackheart’s Bay.
With the Heroes of the Storm team scaled back, it will be interesting to see what additional content is released going forward.