Deathwing Coming to Heroes of the Storm - And Announced Right Before Blizzcon?

One of the long-hoped-for characters for Heroes of the Storm was announced in the past couple days: Deathwing, the grand-daddy of evil dragons in the Warcraft universe and primary villain of the Cataclysm expansion.

While his announcement is sure to be very welcome amongst HotS players, the timing of this announcement is surprising. As of today we're just a week and two days from the start of Blizzcon, which is when you'd typically expect to find news about new characters being added to the game.

Heroes of the Storm has, infamously, been put on a bit of a back-burner lately amongst Blizzard games, and the fact that they're rolling out this announcement before the big Con suggests to me two possibilities:

The first is that they have really big stuff to share that goes beyond a new character. To be clear, I don't think this is the right one.

The other is that there's much bigger news for other franchises and as such, the Heroes presence at the Con will be very small - announcing Deathwing now means that they pretty much don't even need to mention Heroes of the Storm, so instead they can focus on the new WoW expansion, Diablo IV, possibly Overwatch 2, and whatever else they have in store.

Blizzcon 2019: November 1st and 2nd

Blizzard has just announced the dates of this year's Blizzcon, and it'll be the first two days of November.

So, what do we expect, announcement-wise? Let's go franchise by franchise. Obviously, they could start a new one - Overwatch was a big expansion of their brand (and weirdly inspired a whole genre of animated porn, which... congrats? Maybe?) But Blizzard is fairly conservative with its IPs, and so I'm going to assume we'll see updates by existing franchises.

Warcraft:

This will be the main event - it's an odd-numbered year, meaning that we're due to get the announcement of a new WoW expansion to be released about a year later. By then 8.2 will have been out for a while, and we'll either be in the middle of 8.3 or it'll be coming soon. I think it's hard to judge BFA given how overwhelmingly popular (and in this player's opinion, superlative) Legion was, but it's pretty clear that WoW is holding to its pattern of kind of alternating between really good expansions and not so good ones. If that pattern holds, the next expansion will join the ranks of Wrath, Mists, and Legion. Where it stands among those (and again, if it does fit that pattern) remains to be seen, and its announcement is not going to tell us that. Legion was announced at Gamescom to a stereotypically dispassionate German crowd, and enthusiasm was probably tempered by the real disappointment of Warlords of Draenor, but wound up being what I think a lot of people consider WoW's best expansion.

An expansion announcement is coming - the question is what we think it will be about - I'm crossing fingers for a Death/Shadowlands expansion, but we'll see. Could be anything from Dragon Isles to a risen Black Empire.

Outside of WoW, if WCIII Reforged isn't out yet, we'll probably get updates on that, and possibly hear about similar treatments to the earlier games.

Overwatch:

Overwatch is one of the games they have that has pretty regular updates, so I'd expect more heroes and maps and events, probably with a new animated short. We'll also probably get more of the eSports angle with Overwatch League (to be honest, I'm about as interested in eSports as I am in regular sports, which is not very much.)

Heroes of the Storm:

While it's slowed down, HotS will, like Overwatch, probably get some continuing updates. New heroes, new map, maybe.

Hearthstone:

Again, a game that gets regular updates, so I'd expect a new expansion announcement.

Starcraft:

Big shrug here. I think this franchise, despite being one of its most historically popular, is kind of in stasis. The story was finished pretty emphatically in Starcraft II, or at least seems that way. I really don't follow this one, so apologies if I've forgotten something.

Diablo:

Ok, here's the interesting one: I've never seen such a negative reaction to a game announcement as Diablo Immortal, the anger over it seeming to shock the developers who announced it. I get that it wasn't the game people wanted, but it's especially bizarre that, according to Kotaku, Blizzard has actually been working on a Diablo IV, yet did not announce it.

Announcing that it's in development - even if it's a super-early stage - would probably be a good move and give players something to look forward to. I think Blizzard underestimated how skeptical old-school gamers are of the microtransaction-fueled mobile gaming market. Anyway, if there is to be a new main-series Diablo game, giving players something to look forward to would probably be good. Hell, I'm still feeling the high of hearing Elder Scrolls VI announced and I don't think we've gotten a single detail about that game in over a year.

Blizzcon 2018 Opening Ceremony Roundup

Ok, let's get a quick and dirty list of announcements!

WoW: Classic is going to come with your normal WoW subscription and releases next summer! More 8.2 and beyond news coming this afternoon.

Warcraft: WCIII will be remastered in Warcraft III Reforged. Models and terrain are getting ground-up rebuilds, giving us pretty gorgeous looking units.

Starcraft II: Zeratul will be a new co-op commander.

Diablo: Diablo Immortal will be a new mobile game that they claim will be a full action-RPG set between Diablo II and III.

Overwatch: New McCree-focused cinematic introducing Ashe, the leader of the Deadlock gang as a new hero for the game (plus a new Omnic character who is likely to come later.)

Hearthstone: Rastakhan' Rumble will be the next expansion, based around Trolls, Loa, and fighting at the Gurubashi Arena.

Heroes of the Storm: The first HOTS-original character is getting added: Orphea, the daughter of the Raven Lord, will use a bunch of spooky gooey shadow magic (with teeth!) and walks around with a massive coffin on her back.

I'll go into more details as we get them.

Blizzcon Expectations

Blizzcon 2018 is coming in less than a month. What might we expect to see?

I'll put this caveat here that I'm less of a Blizzard omnivore than I used to be - I haven't played much Diablo or Heroes of the Storm in a while. But I can speculate!

Overwatch: While perhaps not as steady a stream as it had when the game was newer, Overwatch does tend to get new characters over time. I suspect that we'll get some new reveal, probably another one of their gorgeous story cinematics, and likely updates on how the Overwatch League is going. They might also announce a new character.

Heroes of the Storm: HotS gets a pretty steady stream of characters, so I'd expect two or three to be announced at Blizzcon. New events and maps would also be welcome. Given their experiments in Nexus-specific stories, we might see that expanded with perhaps fully original characters, though that's pretty broad speculation.

Hearthstone: A new expansion's announcement would be pretty well-timed, given that the Dr. Boom cards have been out for a while.

Starcraft: I don't really know what the plans for the future of the Starcraft franchise are. I suspect that they'll focus primarily on new multiplayer options, but this franchise has shuffled its way to the back a bit.

Warcraft: With 8.1 likely coming either right before or right after Blizzcon, it's time for us to find out more about where the expansion is going. Two years ago, we got a big preview of the Broken Shore and Tomb of Sargeras, with a last-second cliffhanger-offhand-comment being that in the patch to follow, we'd go to Argus. I suspect we'll get a big preview for 8.2 and possibly a similar hint to 8.3, which I'd assume is BFA's capstone patch. The Blizzcon to follow will presumably be to announce the next expansion, so this is when we can expect a big focus on BFA.

Diablo: A week ago I might have said that there's something massive, like Diablo 4 or a second Diablo 3 expansion. But Blizzard has attempted to calm the hype after building it up, so what I suspect is that we're going to get more of a promise than a preview - I would bet that they don't really have the project in a state that's ready to show off, but that we might get a title or basic announcement and then a promise that we'll get a big preview to follow. We might also get word on a rumored Diablo Netflix show, which would be a pretty big deal.

Kel'thuzad Coming to Heroes of the Storm

The next big event in Heroes of the Storm is called The Call of Kel'thuzad.

One of the things that's funny about the Lich King from the Warcraft universe is that he's not exactly a Lich. You could argue that because Ner'zhul's soul is bound to the armor that gave the original Lich King form (that Arthas wore. Bolvar's just wearing the crown) he was kind of pure phylactery to begin with, but the Scourge is host to a fair number of Liches, and Kel'thuzad was probably the first.

KT as I like to call him was the leader of the Cult of the Damned, initially a living necromancer who encountered the original Lich King and swore himself to his service. Kel'thuzad used his cultists to spread the plague of undeath around Lordaeron until he was confronted and slain by Arthas and Jaina. However, when Arthas was turned by the cursed runeblade Frostmourne, the ghost of Kel'thuzad approached him, calling on the Scourge's first Death Knight to take his remains (in the urn that had held Arthas' father's ashes) up to the Sunwell where they could use its energies to raise him as a Lich. That's right: the invasion of Quel'thalas, which killed 90% of the High Elves, was all just to raise this one Lich.

World of Warcraft players encountered Kel'thuzad twice in his floating necropolis of Naxxramas. After giving his captured phylactery to a secretly traitorous priest, he returned in Wrath of the Lich King along with the revamped raid. When we slew him there, he seemed permanently dead, though we never did get his phylactery, so there's a possibility that Kel'thuzad is still lurking in the shadows of Azeroth, waiting to make his next move.

In Heroes of the Storm, it looks like Kel'thuzad will be a control-heavy assassin.

Here are his abilities:

Q: Death and Decay: Launches an orb that explodes at a targeted location, dealing damage and then continuing to damage enemies in the area for the next 2 seconds.

W: Frost Nova: After one second, the targeted area explodes in a burst of ice, damaging and slowing targets within by 25%. Targets at the center will be frozen.

E: Chains of Kel'thuzad: Throws a chain that, if it hits a target, will deal damage to them. For 4 seconds afterward, Chains can be re-cast on other targets, and if multiple targets are chained, they will be pulled together and stunned for .5 seconds.

Trait: Master of the Cold Dark: Gain 1 Blight each time you root an enemy hero. At 15 Blight, the cooldown on all basic abilities is reduced by 2 seconds. At 30, gain 75% spellpower.

R1: Frozen Blast: Launches a blast of frost at the target, rooting and damaging them and anyone nearby.

R2: Shadow Fissure: Creates a fissure anywhere on the battlefield that erupts after 1.5 seconds, dealing damage to heroes standing within it.

Coming along with KT will be a number of Scourge or other similarly themed skins. Jaina gets a dreadlord skin (there's a common theory that Jaina is actually a Dreadlord in disguise or possessed that this seems to be winking at.) Sonya seems to get a Death Knight skin (actually looks like DK tier 8) and Zagara looks like she's getting a crypt lord appearance.

Interesting that both Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are having Scourge-themed events.

Varian and Ragnaros Coming to Heroes of the Storm, Plus Blackheart's Revenge Brawl

Two new Warcraft figures are getting added to Heroes of the Storm.

First, in just a couple weeks, we'll be getting Varian Wrynn, the recently-departed and High King of the Alliance.

Varian will be a hybrid warrior/assassin, who appears to be able to go Arms, Prot, or Fury depending on the talents you take, which should be a great versatile option for adapting to other teams' compositions.

Ragnaros is, I'd assume, a Specialist, who has massive wave-clearing abilities and can even take over a fortress (whether it's been destroyed or not) to get huge and smash things.

Blackheart's Revenge is a brawl in which one side will attack while the other defends. It appears the attacks will need to keep Blackheart's ship from getting destroyed.

Blizzcon 2016 Schedule Released

Blizzard's mostly annual proprietary convention is coming next month, and they have just released the schedule. Of course, these schedules can sometimes give you a good clue to where their various games are going and if there's something exciting to anticipate.

There are several "What's Next" panels, which frequently imply expansions, though I've learned to take that with a grain of salt after being very confident in a new Diablo III expansion for previous Blizzcons. Also, the World of Warcraft "What's Next" panel specifically refers to World of Warcraft: Legion, and given that the company has made it clear that they're going to focus on really ensuring that Legion has legs, I honestly think even hinting at the expansion to follow Legion would not be met by a good response - something that they're aware of.

So let's break it down by franchise.

Hearthstone:

Hearthstone gets updates at a pretty good rate and is a huge cash cow for Blizzard. We just got a new adventure, so I'd expect to hear about a new expansion this time around. No hints as to what that will be so far, as far as I know.

Heroes of the Storm:

Heroes just added new maps (which I haven't actually played yet) and new characters. Much like Hearthstone, though, additions to the game come at a pretty regular pace, rather than big bursts. So I'd expect them to announce a couple of new heroes and possibly a map, as well as new skins of course.

Diablo:

Diablo's 20th anniversary is coming up. Diablo III is also very much ready for a new expansion, or perhaps we're ready for Diablo IV. I don't see a ton of Diablo panels, though, so I'll remain skeptical.

Starcraft:

Starcraft has a "Foundations for the Future" panel. Obviously the grand Starcraft II trilogy has come to a conclusion (and frankly, the plot really seems tied up in a definitive way) so I am curious about what their plan for the future of the franchise is. Granted, the original Starcraft persisted as a popular multiplayer game basically until Starcraft II came out (and may even still be played) so I would bet that Blizzard's focus is going to be on tending to the multiplayer side of things.

Overwatch:

Like Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, Overwatch is a game that gets frequent updates, and so I wouldn't expect to see a huge thing like an expansion or sequel yet. Instead I'd expect to maybe hear about new game modes, maps, and characters that will filter in over time.

Warcraft:

Legion just came out a month and a half ago, and they're also making it clear that they're going to stick with this expansion for the long haul (fingers crossed they succeed at that) and so the idea of hearing about the next expansion is basically a 0% probability. In fact, I'm not even sure that we're going to hear about the second raid tier, as I imagine that the Nighthold raid won't even be open yet at that point, given that we'll be getting Trial of Valor in between Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. 7.1 will probably come out some time before the end of the year, but not necessarily before Blizzcon. Still, if they wanted to reassure players, announcing content to follow the release of Nighthold would be very welcome.

Blademaster Samuro Coming to Heroes of the Storm

This one's a bit of a deep cut, but if you played Warcraft III's expansion The Frozen Throne and did the Founding of Durotar campaign, Samuro was an Orc Blademaster who aided Rexxar in his fight to protect the fledgling orcish nation.

While Grom Hellscream was also a Blademaster, Samuro really instilled the class with a distinctly samurai-like feel, including the banner worn on the back and the katana-like sword. Samuro was a member of the Burning Blade Clan, which, as we learned in Warlords of Draenor, was originally considered a very honorable clan that was focused on discipline and precision, but would later fall to demonic corruption. Samuro represented one of the last remnants of the original Blademaster tradition.

I'll confess I'm not sure that Heroes of the Storm desperately needs another Orc character (so far we've got four, not counting Samuro, and we don't have any Trolls or Draenei, and the only Gnome is actually a dragon while the only Tauren is sort of a joke character.)

It looks like Samuro will have some of the traditional Blademaster abilities. Mirror Image, Critical Strike, and Windwalk are your Q, W, and E abilities, while your heroics are Bladestorm and Illusion Master, the latter of which allows you to swap places with one of your Mirror Images.

Samuro will be a melee assassin, and hopefully the voice acting won't be a kind of offensive Japanese accent this time!

Alarak, Zarya, and New Map, Skins and Mounts Coming to Heroes of the Storm

I've been very focused on the pre-Legion events in World of Warcraft, but this bit of news hit me via YouTube.

There is an upcoming event in Heroes of the Storm called "Machines of War." Much like the Eternal Conflict event focused on Diablo, this one will focus on Starcraft, including two new Starcraft-themed maps called Braxis Holdout and Warhead Junciton.

Braxis Holdout will have your team capturing beacons to fill your side's holding cells with Zerg. Once either holding cell is full, the zerg are unleashed to attack the other side, preferring hero targets.

Warhead Junction will have nukes spawn that you can pick up and launch at your opponents' fortifications, though if you die before you send it off, your enemies can take the nuke and use it against you.

Heroes is getting two new heroes, Alarak from Starcraft and Zarya from Overwatch.

Alarak is an Assassin. He's melee, but has lots of ranged abilities to pull his targets to him.

The thing that has me most excited about Alarak is that his first alternate skin is "Herald of N'zoth," turning him into a N'raqi from the Warcraft universe (basically their equivalent of Mindflayers/Ilithids, and more commonly referred to as Faceless Ones.)

Zarya is a ranged warrior, with lots of shielding abilities as well as the ability to trap enemies and bombard them with grenades.

There are also new skins for Rexxar ("Raider Rexxar," a sort of Terran armor look,) Kerrigan ("Queen of Ghosts," which gives her more of a Terran tech look,) and the Butcher ("Butcherlisk," making him look like an Ultralisk.) There's also a ghost-themed motorcycle.

Anyway, I've been saying for a long time that we needed some sci-fi themed Heroes maps, so I'm pretty happy about this upcoming event.

Gul'dan Live in Heroes of the Storm

Gul'dan, hands down the most evil mortal in the Warcraft universe, has arrived in the Nexus. Gul'dan is the figure that the WoW Warlock class is based on, and so you're going to see some familiar abilities if you've played much WoW. For a little lore backstory, Gul'dan was originally a Shaman of the Shadowmoon Clan. When the Burning Legion decided to use the Orcs to exterminate the Draenei, the demon Kil'jaeden appeared as the ghost of the Shadowmoon chieftain's wife. But it was in the chieftain's apprentice that Kil'jaeden found his most useful resource. Gul'dan wanted power, pure and simple, and Kil'jaeden felt no need to disguise himself when appearing before the orc that would come to be called Darkness Incarnate. Gul'dan happily served the Legion, convincing the Orcs to drink demon blood, binding them to serve the agents of chaos. Guilty of just about every crime imaginable, Gul'dan finally got himself killed when trying to wrest the power of the fallen Titan Sargeras from his Avatar's tomb. Thanks to our alternate-universe-hopping misadventures in Warlords of Draenor, a new version of Gul'dan is back, leading the Legion on a massive invasion of Azeroth.

Gul'dan is a ranged assassin hero, with strong sustained damage and powerful self healing. Let's go over his abilities.

D: Life Tap:

Gul'dan does not passively regenerate mana. Instead, you'll need to sacrifice health to regenerate your mana. He does seem to have a decently large health pool to help with this.

Q: Fel Flame:

On a short cooldown, Gul'dan sends out a wave of green fire, starting narrow and then growing wide when it reaches its max distance. This will definitely cover an entire minion wave, and it does moderate damage.

W: Drain Life:

On a somewhat longer cooldown, you can target a hero, minion, or mercenary (I don't think it works on buildings) and deal constant damage over a few seconds while you heal considerably. This is going to be a very important move for you to compensate for the Life Taps you'll need for mana, but obviously it also works to heal you from damage that enemies have inflicted. This ability doesn't cost mana.

E: Corruption:

You target an area that looks like three circles in a row. The three areas explode with shadows, one after the other, starting with the one closest to you. Enemies within these areas will get a small damage-over-time effect on them. However, if they are hit by multiple explosions, such as if they are running away from you as you cast this, they will get multiple stacks of the DoT, which adds up to a pretty significant amount.

R: Rain of Chaos:

You channel for several seconds, standing still while felfire meteors rain from the sky over a large area. When each meteor lands, it does a large amount of damage to anyone nearby.

R: Horrify:

Targeting an area, this will send enemy heroes running in all directions for a couple seconds.

Gul'dan is relatively tough, which is good given that you're going to be damaging yourself constantly to sustain your attacks. The upshot of this is that Gul'dan is actually quite sustainable out in the field. Use Drain Life whenever you can, but try to hit targets that will stick around and not die any time soon. The heal is the same regardless of what you're hitting, but if the target dies, the effect ends.

You're also going to want to be careful with positioning, as Gul'dan doesn't have any escape abilities. Pairing with a healer will make Life Tap a more forgiving mechanic, but make sure they know not to heal you when you could just as easily use Drain Life - in other words, outside of intense group fights, healers should probably just let you take care of yourself.

Corruption is also tricky to use optimally, but it's also fantastic against enemies that are fleeing, as they tend to have low health, and your DoT is the perfect thing to finish them off.

Gul'dan, Auriel, and new Skins/Mounts Coming to Heroes of the Storm

Much as the Medivh trailer suggested, Gul'dan will be arriving in the Nexus (presumably next) to mess things up with the other heroes.

We don't have big mechanical details on the new heroes being added, but it appears Gul'dan will have a lot of shadow-based attacks, including what appears to be a "fear" style ability that sends enemies fleeing. He definitely looks like a ranged assassin or specialist, both of which would fit with his theme.

Gul'dan is delightfully colorful for a modern video game character - the color scheme seems based on his WCI&II appearances, though you can have his more muted brown robes as his secondary color scheme option. His master skin ditches the hood in favor of a big collar/mantle. His premium skin is basically the tier 12 Warlock set with its spider theme.

Next up is Auriel. It's high time we get another Diablo Angel. In terms of abilities, I think she's a melee character of some sort. She appears to have some snares, using her big ribbon things to attack foes. Just given her general theme, I would have guessed she was a support character, but the abilities we've seen - albeit briefly - suggest one of the other roles.

Auriel's master skin involves a mask over the usual black void that Angels have instead of faces, and her premium skin is a Demonic variant (which actually is a bit disappointing - Tyrael already has one of those. We should get a Naaru-themed angel!)

Additionally, there are new skins coming for existing characters:

Johanna is getting a Spellbreaker skin, making her look like one of the elite anti-magic Blood Elf fighters from Warcraft.

Arthas is getting the Mystic Kingdoms skin, which gives him a sort of Chinese wuxia look and replaces his icy attacks with jade (and also makes him look alive with a black beard - curious what his Army of the Dead will look like with this skin.)

Li-Ming is getting the Striker skin, which makes her look like a volleyball player. Her orb is replaced with a ball and her wand is now a trophy, and she's wearing comfortable gym clothing. Yes, Disintegrate becomes a rapid-fire burst of volleyballs.

Finally, there are some new mounts, like a matching horse for Mystic Kingdoms Arthas, an alternate Cyber Wolf, and a Hellsteed.

As great as Arthas is (he's my favorite Warcraft villain,) I wish some other heroes would get new skins. It's great that newer heroes like Johanna and Li-Ming are getting some love. Really I just want a new one for Xul.

Medivh Live, Heavy, Heavy Hints That Gul'Dan Is Next

Medivh is now live. He's a ranged specialist with a lot of powerful group-support abilities (honestly, I think they could have labeled him support.)

But what's interesting here is that they've also basically told us who's coming to the Nexus next, and it's Gul'dan.

Other than Azmodan's "Azgul'dan" skin, we haven't seen Warcraft's worst mortal (Arthas gives him good competition, but he's already the Lich King in his Heroes of the Storm version and frankly, even at his worst, he might still lose out to Gul'dan.)

Given Gul'dan's prominence in both the recent Warcraft movie and the upcoming Legion expansion, I'm not surprised to see that Gul'dan's coming to Heroes of the Storm. I'm eager to find out what abilities he has, because we actually haven't really ever seen Gul'dan in combat except in cutscenes, and even only rarely then.

Chromie in Heroes of the Storm

Given that she just might be my favorite character in all of World of Warcraft, I had to get Chromie immediately.

Chromie is a Bronze Dragon, but she fights in her more familiar Gnomish form. A lot like Tracer, Chromie is a fragile assassin with very high damage potential, especially against enemy players, but essentially no health. Perhaps even less than Tracer, and certainly without the escape moves.

So why play her, other than loyalty to what is obviously the best dragonflight? Range.

Holy crap does she have range.

Chromie has range on par with Sergeant Hammer, and without having to go into Siege Mode in order to get that range. The trick, however, is making sure that you target your opponents well. Chromie will be absolutely devastating if the player knows how to lead his or her shots, targeting where the enemy will be rather than where they are now. Playing against Chromie, you'll want to keep on the move.

Sand Blast is your Q, and fires a ball of sand after a wind-up (this is a theme) in a given direction. It has long range and will only hit heroes. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage, given that you can hit an enemy hero behind a wave of minions but you also won't be clearing said wave. The range on this is very long, so you can hit heroes that are too far away from you to hit back.

Dragon's Breath, your W, will also have a delay, but like Sand Blast, this also has a large range. You can definitely get some cheap shots against enemy structures and minion waves. This will not show a reticle where it's going to land, so if you come at enemies from cover or simply feint, you can often catch your opponents with it.

Time Trap, your E, is far more situational. You put a trap on the ground that lasts for a good long while, and when an enemy walks over it (it's invisible to them,) they'll be put in stasis for a second or so. If you can trap them in one of these, quickly wind up a Dragon's Breath or Sand Blast to take advantage of their inability to move.

Her two heroics are Slowing Sands and Temporal Loop.

Slowing Sands is easily available, but will eat mana for as long as it's up. Still, given the target-leading you'll need to pull of Chromie effectively, you'll definitely enjoy making it difficult for your enemies to evade your attacks.

Temporal Loop likewise will make it harder for your enemies to escape, though it will probably take a little more finesse. You effectively force the enemy to do Tracer's Recall after a couple seconds, making it harder to escape and of course putting them in the line of fire for your shots.

From a distance, Chromie is a total menace. However, she seems to have Murky-level health, so make sure you stay the hell away from your enemies. Dragon's Breath will let you do a bit of wave clear, but you'll primarily focus on enemy heroes when they're about.

Tracer's Incredible Killing Blow Potential in Heroes of the Storm

I've been enjoying Tracer in Heroes of the Storm quite a bit. I tend to play for the daily quests, which has unfortunately not popped up for Assassins lately (and I doubt there will be a "Play as an Overwatch hero" quest for some time) but I've been doing some "extracurricular" games on Tracer, and I'm beginning to appreciate how powerful she is at taking down enemy heroes.

She definitely has her weaknesses - she's very squishy and if she's stuck in a lane by herself, it's going to take her forever to clear a wave of minions, as she doesn't have any AoE except Pulse Bomb and one talent I'm aware of that affects Melee.

But against heroes, holy crap does she shine. The latest game I played, we had a total of 33 enemy takedowns and 16 of them were my doing.

The main reason for this is her mobility. She can keep pace with a fleeing hero and continually barrage them with damage, which immediately means that the usual "first you've got to catch up with me" strategy for fleeing isn't going to work.

Blink then allows her to close distance to make sure that she's always in range of the fleeing adversary, and Recall allows her to even overextend into enemy territory for those last couple points of damage and then get back before the towers shred her.

I've also started to get better about using Pulse Bomb. I may have neglected to mention this in the post where I went over her abilities, but this is a sticky bomb that will attach itself to a target - it's a very short range (improvable with a talent) and certainly a skill shot, but if you blink in close to an enemy and pop it onto them and then Blink/Recall back, you should be able to stick it without too much difficulty, and especially if there's a crowded team-fight going on, this can really do some devastating damage.

Tracer is not an easy hero to play - she might demand more actions per minute than any other (though Lost Vikings might beat her.) One thing you'll have to manage a lot is making sure you're targeting the right enemy - she can be locked on to someone out of range and thus ignore a closer target. And of course, Blink is very powerful, but only if you can aim it correctly. Recall has a bit of a cooldown, so you'll want to be aware of when it's available and be ready to use Blink as an escape rather than pursuit tool in case Recall is not available.

And one last thing, because Pulse Bomb is charged using your own actions and can be made to charge much quicker, I'd recommend using it frequently and not simply letting it sit on your action bar. It'll take a nice chunk out of an enemy hero's health, and can potentially do some very large AoE damage.

Chromie and Medivh Abilities

While not yet officially announced as far as I know, it looks like Chromie and Medivh's Heroes of the Storm abilities are now publicly available, so let's take a look!

Chromie:

Chromie will be a Ranged Assassin, and unsurprisingly, her abilities all have a time theme to them (now that I think of it, they really should have done an Infinite version of her instead of a Fel-corrupted one.)

Trait: Timewalker

Chromie's trait is rather simple - you get your new talents one level earlier than everyone else (except the level 1 talent, of course.) This means that you'll get your heroic abilities at level 9, and will generally mean that you're a bit ahead of the curve.

Q: Sand Blast

Sand Blast is a long-range skill shot that only hits enemy heroes (no structures or minions) and has a 1-second wind-up. Obviously you'll need to guess where your enemy is headed to make sure this lands.

W: Dragon's Breath

This also has a 1-second wind-up. You'll target an area and after a second it will be blasted with a bunch of sandy bronze-dragon breath. Unlike Kael'thas' Flame Strike, enemy players will not be able to see where you've targeted this ability, so you can be tricky with it.

E: Time Trap:

You can throw a trap on the ground (it looks like an hourglass) that seems to persist indefinitely (limit one at a time) that is invisible to enemies and will put them in stasis for a couple seconds if they walk over it.

Heroic 1: Slowing Sands

You can place a patch of shifting sand in an area that persists as long as you have the mana to keep paying for it. This will slow any enemies who stray into it, and seems to slow them down by more the longer it's been out.

Heroic 2: Temporal Loop

This is actually pretty much Tracer's Recall ability, but cast on an enemy. You cast it on them and a couple seconds later they get teleported back to where they were when you cast it.

So clearly Chromie's going to be pretty tricky to play. She's definitely built to control and take down heroes, and I suspect that the delays on two of her main abilities is going to mean she'll be quite the challenge to play well. Still, there's a lot of synergy here - Time Trap, Slowing Sands, and Temporal Loop will all make it easier to keep enemies where you want them to be so you can hit them with Sand Blast and Dragon's Breath.

I don't know damage numbers, but I suspect that, given the challenge of landing Q and W, they'll probably deal a pretty high amount.

Medivh:

Medivh is a Ranged Specialist. He has some pretty funky tools that can both help allies and crowd-control enemies.

Trait: Raven Form

Instead of a mount, Medivh can transform into a Raven. In this form, he is totally invulnerable and can also fly over terrain, meaning that Medivh can get anywhere safely and also scout very effectively. Probably also very good for flanking enemies.

Q: Arcane Rift

This skill shot will send out a wave of damage. It has a very short cooldown if you manage to hit an enemy hero, but otherwise has a 7-second one.

W: Force of Will

This is a short-duration invulnerability that you can cast on allies. It doesn't prevent CC, but if you've got a friend who's about to take a big hit from a Pyroblast (or needs a second to escape,) this will prevent them from taking all damage. Not sure if this can be self-cast.

E: Portal

This is a bit like a Warlock's Demonic Portal. You create a portal to a targeted area (I think it needs to be within vision range of you.) The portal persists for a few seconds and allows you and your allies to jump back and forth between the two connected ends of it while it is there.

Heroic 1: Poly Bomb

Cast this on an enemy hero and they will be polymorphed into a flying sheep. However, when the polymorph expires, any other enemy hero standing within range will also be affected by Poly Bomb, meaning that if two enemy heroes are standing together and not moving apart, you could theoretically keep them trading back the polymorph indefinitely. Not sure if this affects multiple targets if there are three or more heroes clustered around each other.

Heroic 2: Ley Line Seal

You send a fairly long-range skill-shot out that will put enemy heroes in stasis for a few seconds as it hits them.

Medivh looks to be a pretty tricky hero like Chromie. There's definitely more of an emphasis on working with the team, which should make his trait particularly invaluable for getting to allies who could use the help. On his own I suspect that Medivh will be far less effective, to the extent that I almost wonder if it might be more accurate to list him as a Support hero.

Heroes Leak: Chromie, Medivh, and New Skins/Mounts

Currently in the tease phase, there's a leaked video showing new heroes Chromie and Medivh, as well as alternate skins for them along with Nova and Tyrande, and some new mounts.

Chromie, aka Chronormu, is a Bronze Dragon who is also the best dragon character in all of Warcraft. As a Bronze Dragon, she travels through time dealing with chronological anomalies and enlists the aid of Azeroth's heroes. She almost invariably does this in the form of a diminutive female gnome, and so it appears that for the most part, in Heroes of the Storm, she will use this Gnome form.

Medivh is a hugely important Warcraft character. The son of Aegwynn, Medivh gained his incredible magic powers not from the Council of Tirisfal - which is customary for Guardians - but instead directly from his mother. Unfortunately, that's not all he got. Aegwynn was possessed by the spirit of the Dark Titan Sargeras, who transferred himself to Medivh when he was in the womb. Sargeras would use him to open the Dark Portal, unleashing the Orcish Horde on Azeroth. Medivh was eventually killed by his friends Lothar and Khadgar, but he later returned as a spirit - presumably free of Sargeras' corruption - as a prophet to organize the heroes of Azeroth to fight off the Burning Legion during the Third War.

Chromie will get a fel-corrupted skin in addition to her master skin, with a fel version of Billie the goat to complement it. Medivh will get Knight Owl Medivh as an alternate skin, which has a kind of futuristic-knight look to it (maybe giving him an Overwatch alternate persona?)

Tyrande will get a similar futuristic-armor skin while Nova will get a skin that basically turns her into the Overwatch character Widowmaker.

Additionally, there will be two new mounts, a Elemental Wolf and an Epic Elemental Wolf.

Time-Warping with Tracer in Heroes of the Storm

I decided to splurge and get the Tracer bundle (the simple one with just her and the Specter skin.) I've only played one game with her so far, but she's got a very interesting feel to her.

Tracer is, of course, the flagship hero of Overwatch, and is all about speed, mobility, and time-bendy powers. She is going to be absolutely terrifying in the hands of a skilled player, but to play her to her fullest potential, you'll need to be able to manage her movement in clever ways.

Tracer's biggest advantage is that she gets to auto-attack on the move. You'll be dealing way more damage through your auto-attacks thanks to this, but the price you pay is that she only has 20 rounds in her clip. Hitting D or simply emptying her guns will reload, which takes very little time, but it does mean that your attacks will be interrupted occasionally.

She's also pretty fragile, but you have a lot of tools to escape enemies (and hunt down retreating ones.)

Q: Blink

You get three charges of Blink that will recharge over time. This lets you teleport a medium distance very quickly, which will be really great for chasing down fleeing enemies. It's also, of course, a pretty handy escape tool (though another ability fills this role more clearly.)

W: Melee

When within melee range of an enemy, you can hit W to do a quick burst of damage to them. There's a talent that can make this an AoE ability, which is quite nice.

E: Recall

Hit this button to rewind time, going back to the location you were a few seconds ago. At level 20 you can upgrade this to also heal you back to your previous amount of health, which is pretty great. This has a long cooldown than the others, so use it judiciously.

R: Pulse Bomb

Tracer only has the one heroic ability, but she gets it at level 1. This will shoot an explosive a relatively short distance from you (it's a skill-shot) that will then explode after a couple seconds and slow down affected enemies. You'll need to charge up this skill by using your other attacks, with various talents affecting the way your abilities recharge it.

Tracer is a lot of fun so far, and her ability to fire while moving is very powerful. I played Garden of Terror, and not only could I fire on large groups of enemy heroes trying to catch me as I retreated, but I was also able to dodge around the big garden terrors during the night phase without letting him get too many hits in.

My main recommendation is to save Recall for desperate situations and use Blink to chase down fleeing foes. I might update this as I have more insights.

Blizzcon Announcement Leak - Nov. 4th and 5th

Blizzard briefly put up an announcement of this year's Blizzcon, but quickly took the announcement down. However, it's no shock that the company would have it this year. So what kind of predictions should we expect?

World of Warcraft:

Legion is going to launch some time in the middle of the year - my guess is mid-to-late June, so at that point we will have been on the Broken Isles for a few months. At most I think we might be getting ready for whatever Legion's second raiding tier will be. Assuming that they're continuing with the Warlords model (as disastrous as that might be, it's possible they started planning Legion before they realized what a bad idea a two-tier expansion is) that's probably going to be the Tomb of Sargeras, but I'm hoping that it will be a middle-tier - though given what we've seen of the Legion alpha, I don't know what that middle tier would entail.

Anyway, it's extremely unlikely we'll start hearing about the expansion that comes after Legion until 2017.

Starcraft:

Starcraft just completed its Starcraft II trilogy. I honestly don't know what's in store for the series. The ending of Legacy of the Void really closed off the vast majority of the storyline. There's still room for conflict, certainly, and new characters might arise to carry forward, but I think after the long rollout of Starcraft II, we're probably going to see the series take a breather at the very least.

Diablo:

There was apparently some hiring call for people to work on a new Diablo game. The question then is whether it's a new expansion or Diablo IV. I'd wager more on the former, as Diablo III has gotten fairly popular, especially with the console version. A new class and a new act would work pretty well, and perhaps a bunch of new ideas brought into the seasonal system or the bounties/exploration mode. There's also a few story hooks that would carry directly from what's happened in DIII so far. I just hope they don't turn the Nephalem evil or something.

Hearthstone:

Hearthstone has been getting pretty regular periodic updates, so I don't expect to see anything terribly radical. Probably a new solo adventure and maybe a new expansion announced (by then, Whispers of the Old Gods will have been out for several months.)

Heroes of the Storm:

Like Hearthstone, Heroes is built for periodic small updates - throwing in a hero or map every now and then, and of course skins and mounts. I'm hoping we see more unusual maps like Towers of Doom (both the unique tile set and objectives.) Still, major shifts are probably going to be rare, so I'd simply look for these periodic update announcements.

Overwatch:

Overwatch will have officially been out for a while by then. Given that it's a general-admission type game, we won't see individual new characters introduced. We might see a big chunk brought in as DLC, though. It'll be way too early to announced a full sequel though.

Something New:

Blizzard has been expanding its franchises recently, so I wouldn't be shocked to hear them coming up with another major project to work on. Personally I hope we get something a little more solo/story-driven. As enjoyable as I'm finding Heroes of the Storm, I tend to prefer games with a solid solo campaign, and finding that "Project Titan" was scrapped in favor of making Overwatch a multiplayer-only shooter was pretty disappointing.

Lost Cavern Battleground Announced for Heroes of the Storm

A new battleground is coming to Heroes of the Storm called Lost Cavern. This will be for custom-games only, and is a simple one-lane battleground with no real map objectives and also no Hearthing/healing back at the starting area.

It's more or less the opposite of Towers of Doom (which I really enjoy,) and uses the tile set of Tomb of the Spider Queen.

I don't know whether this is the proposed "arena mode" they had talked about earlier or if it's another idea.

I do think that adding more battlegrounds is generally always going to be welcome in Heroes - though you could find yourself in a position where there are so many that you find you aren't getting your favorites as much.

This doesn't look like a terribly hard BG for them to build, which is fine. It's also not really my style - also fine.

My hope though is that they're working on something new with the ambition of Towers of Doom. I absolutely adore the aesthetic of ToD, and the way it's constructed keeps the whole map relevant throughout the game without encouraging a stalemate.

Also, given that we're going to start getting Overwatch heroes soon, it seems high-time that we have a sci-fi themed battleground. Hell, even Warcraft has plenty of sci-fi elements. Raynor and Kerrigan have had to fight their way through medieval castles - how about making Valla and Jaina fight their way through a space station?

Dehaka Coming to Heroes of the Storm

Much as I predicted in an earlier post, Dehaka from Starcraft will be coming to Heroes of the Storm. I don't know if he'll come before or after Tracer, but given that he's only just been announced, I'd guess he's next up after her.

Dehaka is one of the Primal Zerg - an example of the species as it existed before the evil Xel'naga Amon got involved in altering their genetics. Unlike the vast goopy swarm, the Primal Zerg were individuals who, through predation, could absorb some of the genetic material of their prey, taking on beneficial traits. In Heart of the Swarm, Dehaka acts as something of a guide to Kerrigan when she goes to the Zerg homeworld, and while he reserves the right to try to challenge her and devour her essence, he acts as an ally for now.

Dehaka's skills appear to be the following:

Z: Brushtalker: Instead of a mount, you can burrow to any bush or vent on the battleground every 40 seconds, which should make Dehaka pretty good at rescuing allies in need.

D: Dehaka's trait is Essence Collection. You get 10 Essence per Hero takedown and 2 per enemy minion killed nearby, to a maximum of 50. You can then activate the trait to regenerate health over the next 5 seconds for every stack consumed (not sure if this means it will last super-long at full stacks or, more likely, it will be more potent for each stack.) This can be cast while using Drag or Burrow (see below.)

Q: Drag: You lash out with your tongue, dealing light damage to the first enemy hit and dragging them with you for 1.75 seconds. Depending on the range, this might be a powerful tool to force enemies into a bad position.

W: Dark Swarm: For three seconds, you can move through units and you deal area damage around yourself, doing double against Heroes. This can be cast during Drag and Burrow.

E: Burrow: Burrow into the ground, entering stasis and becoming invulnerable for 2 seconds.

R: Isolation: Launch a biomass that deals damage, silences, and slows the first enemy hero it hits by 30% for 3 seconds. For 6 seconds, that hero loses sight of allied heroes and has greatly reduced vision.

R: Adaptation: After a 5 second delay, heal back 60% of the damage you took during that period.

So overall, it looks like Dehaka might not have a ton of damage output, but as a warrior, he's got some nasty crowd control and some nice survivability. I wonder what the cooldown on the trait and Burrow will be, because I could imagine if they're short enough, he could function a little like a Zerg Roach - messing things up and then dropping away briefly only to pop back up fully healed.

The initial alternate skin for Dehaka looks like it's in line with the Mecha-Tassadar and Cyber-arak as a kind of mech-version of the character. Maybe we need more Kaiju for them to fight?