You can’t ignore Rexxar’s safety either, of course; as in World of Warcraft, if you kill the hunter, his pet vanishes, so Misha will not stick around to avenge your death. The bear makes an excellent tank, but the trick is getting your opponents to tackle her instead of you.
“You’re playing this constant kiting, dancing game with the enemy team, where they really don’t want to attack Misha, but you’re trying to make them attack Misha,” Hagman said. “And so they’re constantly frustrated, the stooopid bear that’s eating all their skill shots.
“You’re like, ‘Yeah, take it Misha! Quick, Misha, come back!’ And you call her back to your side, and they’re like dang it, we almost actually killed the bear, and then you heal her back up with your Mend Pet and send her back out there, like [bear voice] ‘Ooookay,’ and they’re like ‘Auuuuggh!! Stupid bear.’ She definitely provides a lot of frustration for opponents – hopefully in a good way.”
Rexxar is the only ranged warrior in the game that works quite that way, he said. “He’s definitely really interesting in that regard.”
Above: Artanis. For when you just want to punch something in the face.
The StarCraft warrior, Artanis
Artanis is the reward for preordering the Blizzard space real-time strategy expansion StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. As a result, expect tons of crossover between this Protoss leader and the character’s abilities in the new pack.
Unfortunately, this made it a bit difficult for Hagman to discuss specifics, since little related information has been announced about Legacy of the Void just yet.
“I have to be careful not to say too much, but we’re trying to hit a lot of flavor hits from Legacy of the Void,” he said. “We see this as a cool opportunity to let the two games reference each other in this regard.”
Still, we managed to get you some high-level help.
First, know that Artanis is a tank, someone who can wade in and take serious punishment. Blizzard added him to give StarCraft a full suite of characters for questing purposes, but he also fills a unique niche in the lineup, Hagman said.
“Artanis is an amazing hero, and I’m glad we did him, and I think he’s awesome,” he said. “We already have the good high Templar and the dark Templar with [StarCraft II heroes] Tassadar and Zeratul.
“We wanted to hit the zealot, that dual Psyblade-wielding, front line heavy warrior type of guy, and … I don’t think I’m allowed to say more than that before Che’von [Slaughter, public relations representative] pulls out a knife and slits my throat.”
“I don’t actually cut him with the knife. I just show him the knife,” Slaughter offered helpfully.
“She hasn’t cut me yet. I see dried blood on it though, so I know where that knife has gone,” Hagman said. But he offered some tips. Artanis feels more like the Diablo III barbarian tank Sonya, he said, or an Arthas without the crowd control.
Above: Concept art of Artanis’ “Purifier” skin — at least, we think that’s what this is.
“He’s a bruiser, a brawler kind of guy who likes to get in there and muck it up with everybody. He’s not like a [Warcraft-themed tank] E.T.C., who is a lockdown type of character,” he said. “He’s much more about like, listen, I’ve got two gigantic … I don’t think I can call them light sabers, but look, we all know what we were referencing when we made Psys 20 years ago in StarCraft.
Above: Concept art of a StarCraft zealot with Psyblades.
“You’ve got these two gigantic glowing weapons. You expect good things to happen from them for Artanis. He’s going to be in there mucking it up in the midst of it, being a slightly disruptive and annoyingly difficult to kill force. You have to deal with him, because he is doing things to your team.”
That’s a key strategy point for the opposing team, Hagman said. It’s easy to dismiss Artanis in favor of more immediately deadly heroes, but to ignore him is to die.
“OK, we don’t have to kill him right now, but if we don’t kill him in the next 20 seconds, he’ll kill three of us,” he said.
“We have to take care of him eventually. He makes it tough for your team in terms of target prioritization. You want to kill that squishy Nova, or Jaina, or Kael’thas right away — and yeah, you do, because they’ll kill you in 5 seconds. But you need to kill Artanis eventually.”
Above: The StarCraft Medic in Heroes of the Storm.
The as-yet unnamed StarCraft medic
“You know you’ve been waiting for her, you didn’t know you wanted her until now, but may I introduce to you the StarCraft Medic,” Hagman quipped. The character won’t have a full reveal of its name or abilities until later, but he described the role he expects her to take — and how much you’ll need to prepare.
“She is a ranged support and she has very powerful healing to a single ally — very different from Malfurion, who is all about healing multiples, and Li Li, and even Kharazim and Rehgar with his chain heal,” he said. “She is much more that single target healer, and offering the team protection through various [crowd control] and other utility features.”
But just because the Medic is a dedicated healer doesn’t mean she won’t require the best gameplay you have to offer.
“She’s one our highest skill-capped healers in the game,” Hagman said. “I can tell when we play internal tests. You can tell when someone’s playing the medic for the first time. It’s just like ‘Wow, did they even have a healer? Wow, these balance guys, they need to tune her up.’
“And then one of them takes her for a spin, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, Medic is so broken [overpowered], I don’t understand.’ It’s really cool. You’ve got to be gooooood with the medic. You’ll make yourself shine with her.”
Early indications are that this is another character for the opposing team to focus fire on, since her impact can change the game fairly easily. One skill shown at GamesCon was the medivac, where the Medic essentially airlifts a hero to safety.
“A medivac overlay drops down and it looks really sweet. Our team killed it,” Hagman said.
Above: Try not to get distracted by the pretty artwork. This map is lethal.
The new Diablo-themed map, Infernal Shrines
You know a map is going to be trouble when you ask the designer about it and he just gives his best “evil overlord” laugh.
“This is going to be the first map that murders people,” Hagman said. “And it’s going to be gloooorious.”