Heroes of the Storm Changes Stealth

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.

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: 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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 
 
For more Heroes of the Storm BlizzCon 2017 coverage, be sure to check out the overview blog featuring such news as Alexstrasza and Hanzo!