by JR Cook - 4 months ago     show comments

Heroes of the Storm is getting some serious love with today’s patch, and the headliner is a total rework of Abathur’s Locust Strain. The patch notes dropped earlier today and they’re packed with changes that reach way beyond the slug lord, including Alexstrasza Dragonqueen adjustments, Haunted Mines returning to ranked play, and substantial tuning for heroes like Cho’gall, Chromie, and Diablo.

Abathur’s Locusts Get a Complete Overhaul

This is the big one. Abathur’s baseline Locust Strain has been fundamentally redesigned from the ground up. Locusts now lose health over time instead of having a fixed duration, heal for 20% of damage dealt, and gain 20% of their max health back when a nearby minion dies. Their base damage dropped from 58 to 36, but they now deal 100% bonus damage to non-heroes to compensate. Health took a hit too, down from 350 to 225.

The talent tree shuffle is equally significant. Locust Brood moved from level 16 all the way down to level 1 (with a cooldown bump from 45 to 75 seconds), while Survival Instincts made the opposite journey from 1 to 16. There’s also a new level 4 talent called Slapathur that makes Abathur’s basic attacks deal 350% bonus damage and stun enemies, which sounds absolutely hilarious in practice.

Alexstrasza’s Dragonqueen Becomes More Flexible

Alexstrasza is getting quality of life improvements that should make her Dragonqueen form feel smoother to use. The cooldown now starts after Dragonqueen expires rather than on activation, and it’s been reduced from 150 to 130 seconds. Talents that affect Gift of Life now also apply to Breath of Life, and the same goes for Abundance and Preservation.

The healing numbers on Dragonqueen abilities took a slight hit (Breath of Life down from 20% to 15%, Preservation from 30% to 25%), but the talent improvements more than make up for it. Flames of Fury now has a mythic reward that refreshes Dragonqueen’s duration when you hit enough heroes without dying. On Ruby Wings got completely reworked so Fireball charges aren’t consumed if you hit at least 3 heroes.

Ranked Gets Haunted Mines and Loosened Restrictions

Haunted Mines is back in the Storm League map pool, which is going to be divisive (it always is). More importantly, you can now party with unplaced players in ranked, which removes a barrier that’s been frustrating for groups trying to play together at the start of a season.

The patch also includes balance changes for Blaze (Adrenaline Stimpack attack speed reduced, Bunker cooldown up 5 seconds), Cho’gall (Consuming Fire now heals a flat 75 health, Calloused Hide threshold adjusted), Chromie (Time Trap health reduced to 250, Dragon’s Breath now shows radius to enemies), Diablo (Shadow Charge and Overpower damage up, Fire Stomp damage down slightly), and several others. Warhead Junction’s channel interrupt penalty also dropped from 10 to 5 seconds, which should make contesting objectives less punishing.

A new skin for Lucio (Ruby Chromesthesia) is available, and the homescreen and startup music got updated. It’s a meaty patch for a game that’s technically in maintenance mode, and longtime players should find plenty to experiment with.

If you’re jumping back in to test the Abathur changes or climb ranked with Haunted Mines back in rotation, a quality headset makes all the difference for hearing ganks and coordinating with your team. The SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5 delivers excellent spatial audio for tracking enemy rotations, while the Logitech G Pro X 2 Lightspeed is the same pro-grade wireless headset used by esports players worldwide.

Source: BlueTracker HotS