By: Kevin William “Eisenhart” Serafico Enriquez

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Heroes of the Storm is Blizzard Entertainment’s upcoming online “Hero Brawler” game, similar Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBA) like Dota 2 and League of Legends (LoL).

Featuring Heroes from Blizzard’s main franchises (WarCraft, Starcraft and Diablo), Heroes offers a fast-paced and intense gaming experience that just doesn’t get boring! Blizzard Entertainment is one of the world’s top game development companies, known for making top-notch games for their three world-renowned franchises WarCraft, Starcraft and Diablo.

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Hail Heroes! Big patch, big news! Heroes of the Storm is now officially in Closed Beta Testing. There are a lot of big changes, with the addition of a new battleground (Sky Temple), a new hero (Thrall) and Ranked Play/Hero League as the main highlights.

For a summary of the major changes, check out Blizzard’s CBT video:

New Hero: Thrall, the former Warchief of the Horde

Arguably one of the most popular characters around, Thrall from WarCraft is one of the most exciting additions this patch. Story-wise, Thrall is an Orc Shaman, a powerful, heavily-armored warrior who is capable of calling the elements to his side in battle. He’s also famous for his weapon: the warhammer called Doomhammer.

In-game, Thrall is classified as a Melee Assassin, which means he’s a close-range fighter focused on dealing damage. What sets Thrall apart is that while being melee, most of his abilities are focused on dealing Area-of-Effect (AoE) damage using his elemental powers.

I’ve tried Thrall for a couple of games already and trust me, this guy’s going to bring a lot of firepower on to the battlefield, while having a good amount of staying power due to his passive healing trait. That said, focused Damage-per-Second (DPS) from an enemy team can still bring the Warchief down easily, so Thrall users have to make sure that they’re not tanking major damage.

Hero Kit

Abilities

Chain Lightning – blasts three enemies with lighting

Feral Spirit – unleash a spirit wolf to burn and root enemy Heroes

Windfury – increases attack and movement speed for three attacks

Trait

Frostwolf Resilience – using abilities trigger healing on Thrall

Heroic Abilities

Earthquake – slows down all enemies in a large area

Sundering – damages and stuns enemies in a long, wide area

As a bonus, Blizzard gives us two new skins for Thrall on release. One is Thrall’s Shaman-themed Master Skin, while the latter seems like a demonic-themed Hellhammer skin. For those interested, Thrall + the Thrall Hellhammer skin are currently on a 25% discount bundle in the in-game store.

Ranked Play, Hero League, and Draft Pick

For the competitive players out there, this patch comes with the introduction of Ranked Play. Before now, players were only able to join either Unranked Matchmaking or Custom Games. While only Hero League will be available initially, Team League will be introduced in a future patch.

What’s the difference, you ask? Hero League will let players join Ranked Matchmaking, focusing on the player’s individual skill and ranking, while Team League will focus on dedicated 5-man teams. Note, however, that players need to own at least 10 heroes to be eligible for Hero League. Hero League will also try to match your team with a matching enemy team; for example, if you have a team of two players in a party with three solo players, Hero League will find a similarly composed enemy team to balance the game out.

Another cool feature introduced in this patch is Draft Pick. Say goodbye to those lengthy pre-game ban and pick sessions! No more chaotic chat storms just trying to sort out team compositions. What’s more interesting is that it may finally help addressing the issue of duplicate heroes on either team, which was so common especially when there were far fewer heroes available in early alpha.

New Battleground: Sky Temple

For those who’ve been looking for a different kind of challenge, Blizzard’s also releasing a new map previously announced last BlizzCon 2014: Sky Temple!

The primary objectives of the map are temples located along the three main lanes. Each temple, when controlled by a team, will start demolishing the enemy base. Sounds cool, right? There’s a catch: Powerful guardians guard these temples and your team has to defeat these before controlling the shrine. To make it worse, one or more of the shrines will activate periodically, meaning teams will have to decide on either focusing on taking a single shrine, or splitting their team to take all.

It looks like Heroes with good area and minion control will have a field day here!

These mechanics will surely make this a chaotically competitive map, with an emphasis on map control and intense team clashes on or around shrines. It will be a challenge holding shrines and maintaining lane control (not to mention not dying while you’re at it), but the price of failing objectives in Heroes of the Storm is defeat.

Hero Overhaul, Skin and Animation Changes

Three heroes received major overhauls, including Falstad (Ranged Assassin), Abathur (Specialist) and Lili (Ranged Support), with almost all of their skills and talents changed. Several other heroes including Jaina, Chen, Illidan, Kerrigan, Nova, Tychus, Azmodan, Gazlowe, Zagara, Tassadar and Muradin have received minor changes to their skills. In addition, we’re getting a whole bunch of new skins, and some old skins are getting art and animation updates! The new Egyptian-themed Zagara and Tassadar skins will be available for the Sky Temple Battleground.

For a full list of changes of hero, shop, game improvements and bug fixes, check out the patch notes blog here!

Conclusion

Now, some of you might think, “Hey, it’s another DotA or LoL clone!”. Well, let me tell you right now: you’re making a big mistake right there!

Heroes takes the fun and competition to a whole different level. True, you don’t need to worry about some of the usual things in MOBAs, but trust me, the objectives and competition alone will keep you busy and raging from the start.

If you want a streamlined, balanced and clean fight with a a deep focus on teamwork and strategy that’s the same over and over again, this is the game for you.

Happy Brawling, Heroes! Elements guide you!

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