Heroes of the Storm‘s latest update arrived this week, bringing with a new character: StarCraft‘s Medic, known here as Lt. Morales.
As previously detailed, Morales is a healing-centric support character. With one of her two Ultimate abilities, she’s capable of transporting her entire team across the map using her dropship. You can read about all of her abilities here.
A number of changes to the game’s maps (and their objectives) are also made in this update. Sky Temple will no longer allow for all three temples to be active at the same time, as Blizzard said this “didn’t leave the defending team with many options.” Infernal Shrines’ Punishers are now more predictable and less punishing; they now always jump to the nearest target within range (as opposed to a random target within range) and have less health. Garden of Terror’s Garden Terrors can now disable the enemy Core with their Overgrowth ability so as to discourage them from being used defensively. And Battlefield of Eternity’s Immortals now scale higher in the late game, helping to ensure games don’t take as long as they sometimes did in the past.
While it’s not a proper level, the Try mode map has been altered, too. It’s now larger, with a new area below the lane and a target dummy. Try mode has new options as well, such as a way to remove cooldowns, reset talents, and jump to a specified level (rather than needing to manually click the Level Up button repeatedly).
Following matches in Quick Match, Hero League, and Team League, the game will now pose you with a one-question survey. These questions are in regards to “a variety of game-related topics” and are answered using a one-to-five star system. According to Blizzard, “These surveys will help us to continue making improvements to Heroes of the Storm with future updates.”
Other changes of note include a new overlay for Murky’s egg; improved AI (both in terms of talent selection and decision making on certain maps); and a new, maximum graphics setting for many players on 32-bit operating systems. Players are now limited to Medium settings or lower if they don’t have sufficient memory, though there is a potential workaround. You can see the full patch notes here.
More characters are on the way to Heroes of the Storm following the addition of Morales. One we know of is Artanis, StarCraft’s first Warrior, who is coming on October 27 and will be for all buyers of StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void. Those who preorder the game can start playing with him on October 20.