Start planning your Heroes of the Storm strategy now, folks.
We asked designer Kent-Erik Hagman from Blizzard Entertainment to tell us his best tips for playing the new content that the publisher announced at GamesCom for the free-to-play massive online battle arena game. (See our story on the announcement.) This includes the heroes Kharazim, Rexxar, Artanis, and the StarCraft medic; and the Infernal Shrines map.
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Hagman ran down what makes each of these new things different from what’s already in the game — and what you should play up or watch out for. His work focuses on hero design and he talks a mile a minute, so let’s dive right in.
Above: That Kharazim: He’s everywhere.
The new Diablo monk, Kharazim
Kharazim went active August 10 for players on the public test realms. Those that try him out will find a different healing and support experience compared to existing heroes, Hagman said.
“We knew we wanted to get a Diablo support in there,” he said. “Monk was my first level 60 in [Diablo III] vanilla, and the same for a couple other guys on the team. So we were really excited to get it in there.”
At the same time, they wanted to be sure that the character didn’t play like a support version of [Warcraft characters] Illidan or Chen, he said.
“He’s very inspired by D3. We definitely wanted to stick as closely as we could to that version of the kit while still bringing out the support version,” he said. “So while we definitely wanted to let him customize it, a little like Tyrande and Tassadar, so he could be a little more damage-y, we wanted to make sure he felt like he could solo-heal a team. He definitely can. I’ve done it quite well and it’s really fun.”
That doesn’t mean that a traditional healing mindset will help you here. The key to playing Kharazim well is fine control of how he moves, Hagman said.
“You think completely differently. Your heal is a melee [area of effect] around you. He shares one similarity with [panda cub] Li Li, in that position is everything,” he said. “With Li Li, you want to stay in the back and stay safe, but be near the guys you want to heal. Whereas with Kharazim, you want to dart around. You’re much more like, I want to be close at this moment, or I want to be close at that moment, while you’re darting around the battlefield.”
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People who can’t effectively move and cast at the same time will want to stay far, far away from Kharazim. His Radiant Dash ability moves him instantly to an ally or enemy, where he can attack and cast his heal and then leap away (the ability has two charges, which accumulate over time.)
“You’re constantly looking at the positioning of teammates and enemies and just dancing all over the place,” Hagman said.
Like both of the announced healers, he’ll take some work to master, he said. So give yourself time to practice before taking him out for real matches. The PTR is one opportunity.
“Play him a lot before you figure out if you’re good with him. He takes a while to get used to,” he said. “It can be easy to think that his healing capability is not there, because you may not see the numbers you’re used to right away. It really is a player skill thing, though. He really can solo heal, and he can do it fantastically. It just takes a different mindset than our other healers.”
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Your trait choice is important, he said. Two of Kharazim’s three traits are healing-related. Transcendence causes every third attack by the monk to heal the ally nearby with the lowest health. With Insight, every third attack returns mana, which can then be used for other heals.
“I’d say you’ll have to play 10 games with each trait to figure out how to play properly with each one,” Hagman said. “You need to manage your mana well if you don’t take the mana one, and you need to manage your positioning.”
The overall playstyle is a little frenetic and a lot of fun, he said.
“Kharazim is one of my most favorite heroes,” he said. “I’ll be buying him on day one. He’s so active. You’re always thinking, there’s always something to do. There are so many cool plays you can pull off with him.
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Above: Misha the bear gets off a stun on Kerrigan.
The Warcraft hunter/ranged warrior, Rexxar
The Heroes of the Storm team has been enthusiastic about Rexxar for quite a while, Hagman said. He was originally slated for March or April, before the MOBA even officially launched in June.
“He and Kael’thas were supposed to come out together as part of a Horde bundle thing, and our schedule just blew up in general, and then there was [the hero and game content event] Eternal Conflict, and Rexxar just fell behind,” he said. But that didn’t mean they forgot about him.
“This is the Warcraft 3 team, and they love Rexxar. This is one of the heroes that our artists have always wanted to do, and they’ve had the model for him ready,” Hagman said.
The key to Rexxar’s gameplay is his pet bear, Misha. The duo was inseparable in the Warcraft and World of Warcraft games, and the HotS team made this the hunter’s core mechanic.
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“We really wanted to do the idea of the ranged warrior, the guy who’s completely different because his tankiness comes not through him but through his permanent pet,” he said. “But we wanted to be sure we differentiated it. We didn’t want it to feel like you were playing two-unit Lost Vikings. Your bear works a lot more like a WoW hunter pet — in fact, that’s kind of where we were going with that.”
That makes your biggest challenge as a player figuring out how to manage Misha. Her positioning, health, lifespan, and movement can mean the difference between happily annoying your enemies to death or playing as a severely weakened hero.
Above: A healthy Misha can take on all the punishment Stitches can deliver.
“She is everything for your kit,” Hagman said. “When she dies in combat, she’ll resurrect after a few seconds. It scales over time; early game, she comes back pretty quickly, but late game she’ll be down and out for 20-25 seconds. When that happens, your W and E [key] abilities grey out, because they are Misha abilities. One has Misha do a line stun, the other heals up Misha. Without Misha, you’re really half a hero in some regards.”
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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.”
Infernal Shrines is a Diablo-themed map, with a new mechanic: Punishers, crushing bruisers that are summoned by the first team to activate a shrine and kill 30 of its guardians. The shrines themselves are themed like Diablo III enemies: arcane, mortar, and frozen.
It all adds up to a lot of damage on the map all at once.
“You’re going to feel like you’re playing Diablo,” Hagman said. “You’re playing Heroes and suddenly arcane enchanted lasers are flying all over the place and you’re like, ‘What the crap?’ and then frozen things are all over the place. It’s going to be awesome.”
The complexity and variety of it will pose new challenges for players, he said.
“It’s one of my favorite maps right now,” he said. “I think Cursed Hollow is always going to be my favorite, but this one … I need to play more before it dethrones Cursed Hollow in my head. I have a lot of attachment to that map in my head, because I made it, but this might dethrone it. It’s so cool.”
Above: It all looks so pretty. Not at all dangerous.
It’s a huge map, larger than Battlefield of Eternity, he said, with three lanes posing interesting splits and the mercenaries in a unique position. The shrines will add new danger and choices to the battles.
“We were actually talking about this at lunch today, and one of our designers was talking about the fact that this map doesn’t feel super-snowbally,” he said.
“What it is, is the collection mechanic, in terms of killing the guys, plus the fact that the Punishers don’t do a lot of siege damage. They don’t advance the game state too much, by themselves. It really requires the team to follow up with them. It causes the map to be naturally very rubber-bandy. You get a lot of close games on this map.”
But that doesn’t mean Punishers are wimpy. They may not do much to advance the win, but they’ll annihilate your heroes (or the enemy’s) if you ignore them, he said. They jump and stun in an area of effect, and they’re not restricted by line of sight — gates, for example.
“You’ll be hiding behind your gate while the Punisher’s meleeing the gate and you’re like, ‘OK, I’m going to start plinking away at this Punisher like it’s a Grave Golem,’ and suddenly it’s in your face, you’re stunned, their team is diving you and you’re dead, and you’re like ‘What happened? I don’t know what happened.’
“You’ve got to really respect the Punishers, and they’re going to hurt you,” Hagman said. “They’re going to punch you in the face, and you’re going to die, and you’re going to laugh, and you’re going to love it.”
Above: There’s a definite Heaven-and-Hell theme (appropriate for Diablo) going on here.
The Punishers themselves come in the same three flavors as the shrines. So the frozen ones can freeze you, the mortar ones lob bombs that do a ton of damage, and the arcane ones have long, rotating lines of lasers coming from their bodies and sweeping the map.
“The affixes are so much beautiful flavor. Having the frozen, the mortars, the arcane enchanteds, you have to engage with them on their own terms,” he said. “You have to respect the CC of the frozen, you have to respect the damage of the mortar and you have to respect playing the dance that is arcane enchanted.”
This is the map he most looks forward to seeing in the hands of high-end players, he said.
“I can’t wait to watch pro teams play on this map, and watch them struggle and die, and laugh at them as they die, like ‘Aaaaaaa, I thought you were so good! You died to the stuff!’ It’s gonna happen. And it’s gonna be great.”