Heroes of the Storm Changes Stealth

Raylan13
Games Blizzard
Games Blizzard

During the Deep Dive panel at BlizzCon 2017, the Heroes of the Storm developers shared some insights into changes coming to the MOBA’s stealth mechanic. There are a few heroes who utilize stealth to creep around the map to ambush unsuspecting enemies, and other heroes who can grant stealth to their friends. Some of the upcoming changes are universal, while others are hero-specific in order to to encourage a particular play style.

First, the universal changes. Currently, it can be difficult to see stealthed players on the battleground. This is troubling because, by and large, they aren’t meant to be totally invisible; additionally, experienced players are more adept at spotting stealthed characters, adding to a potential unwanted disparity between skill levels.

Improved Stealth visuals
Improved Stealth visuals

To curtail this, Blizzard is changing the stealth shader to give heroes a slightly different visual, a la Predator. The trade-off is that, when a stealthed hero remains still for at least a short amount of time, they will become truly invisible. In either case, stealthed players will remain invisible on the minimap to the opposing team. These visual changes apply across the board to all stealth and stealth-granting abilities.

There are some heroes whose stealth mechanics were tweaked even further to be more in line with their unique mechanics.

Nova from Heroes of the Storm
Nova

Nova: Ghost play

  • modify Snipe Master and apply some damage to baseline damage
  • 15% faster while in Stealth
  • new active will instantly put her in Stealth
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    Valeera from Heroes of the Storm
    Valeera

    Valeera: Disable opponents

  • enhance disabling openers
  • add blind to Cheap Shot
  • can teleport if in Stealth for at least 3 seconds; will increase stealth abilities
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    Samuro from Heroes of the Storm
    Samuro

    Samuro: confuse with Mirror Image

  • will be able to swap places with illusions at level one
  • no more random placements; the real Samuro will be closest to player’s mouse cursor
  • move most damage from illusions to Samuro himself
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    Zeratul from Heroes of the Storm
    Zeratul

    Zeratul: keep on keeping on

  • take Vorpal Blade baseline teleportation mechanic and give it to all Zeratul players
  • replace Shadow Assault with Might of the Nerazim – 15s cooldown, will replicate last basic ability used
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    For more Heroes of the Storm BlizzCon 2017 coverage, be sure to check out the overview blog featuring such news as Alexstrasza and Hanzo!