#Especially with Nazeebo becoming scary again

[official-alan-dabiri]

First and foremost, Falstad and Artanis have been slightly underperforming, especially in autoattack-focused builds. Not because they’re not being picked, but because those builds suck. As such, we’re buffing the generic talent Seasoned Marksman. This way, we can buff these two underperforming builds without actually putting either of their names on the patch notes. Checkmate, Flavor of the Month players.

Q build Arthas has been terrible for a long time, outside of extremely specific circumstances. Despite this, we need it to be worse. The level 4 talent Deathlord now no longer increases the range of Death Coil. Instead, it refunds mana when used on an enemy hero, but honestly, the only time Q build was good was against hypermobile ranged assassins, and the range was propping that edge case up.

Charge Build Diablo sucks. It still will after this patch, but slightly less. It’s a shame, since this is clearly supposed to be the meta build over Flame Stomp. But it’s too hard to buff the post-charge move speed duration, so we’re just gonna let it stay trash.

Leoric was only the smallest buff away from being a strong solo lane hero in the current meta, instead of a strong situational pick into a good match-up. So we gave him an unspeakably enormous buff. Literally huge. We’ll see what happens!

Sometimes, power creep leaves heroes behind. Sonya, a once-dominant force in the offlane and in teamfights, has been severely outpaced by tanky solo laners who can endure their damage, and diving solo laners who can one-up her blowup potential in teamfights. So we decided to give her some buffs. Including one that is, as the kids say, nice.

With another dragon entering the nexus soon, Alexstrasza needs some buffs so that... Um... Maximum dragon. We’re also adjusting Brightwing for the same reason. More dragons. Chromie? Why? Chromie’s a gnome, right?

We ran into a hero fantasy issue with Rehgar. With his level 4 Feral Heart talent, players had incentive to stay towards the back of the teamfight to safely regenerate mana. You know. Like a healer. With the new adjustment, he’s going to feel a lot more like a melee dive assassin. Which he is supposed to, as the healer you pick when you didn’t want to be a healer, but your team made you do it.

Tyrande has remained very powerful for a while, but, due to difficulty to play - and definitely not other reasons - she is not seeing as much play. So we’re buffing her talents like across the board. And not doing anything about the dominance of Johanna. Because that’s what Tyrande needed, talent adjustments.

After our very successful rework of Whitemane. And the balance adjustment that was not another rework that brought her back in line, she is in a very good place. As such, we are making very minor adjustments. Including a 2 second CD adjustment baseline, and a ton of straight buffs to talents across the board. Very minor adjustments to a hero that was just fine after the rework. Absolutely fine. Did not need another rework and a huge suite of buffs. Including a 30 second CD reduction on her heroic. JUST FINE. THE REWORK WAS GREAT.

So that the terran and zerg can understand, the Highlord has prepared a simplified statement about the next change: Alarak too strong. Alarak made less strong. Still good though. Complain less please. Protoss very balanced.

Genji has fallen out of the meta a little bit, since the people playing him don’t want to suffer consequences for their terrible life choices that led to them being Genji players. In order to tempt people to the dark side, we’re giving Genji some small buffs. Embrace the anime bullshit. Do it.

We realized - just now, because nobody knew this - that Junkrat is overpowered. Nobody knew this. This is entirely new information. Luckily, we caught this now, and have made some minor adjustments to bring him more in line.

Kel’Thuzad. Talent diversity. That’s it. That’s the change.

Nazeebo and Zagara have basically vanished from most levels of play. Earlier reworks and talent adjustments made them much more difficult for less payoff than easier heroes. As such, we’re giving them some small, very small- what? Not small? Okay, okay. We’re giving them some modest- What? Not- 20% spellpower and 30% attack damage? Does that stack with their other- it does? And- and what? Well. Say hello to your new SL nightmare splitpush gods.