This has been a big year for Heroes of the Storm when it comes to hero reworks. We’ve seen many of the older heroes in the game such as Raynor, Diablo, and Tyrande brought back to relevancy by these reworks and now it’s time for two more: Stitches and Sylvanas. Here are the details.
Sylvanas Rework
For a long time, Sylvanas has been an oddball in the Heroes of the Storm roster like most other Specialists. Due to how her trait immobilizes and stuns minions, mercenaries, and structures, many casual and low-rank players stubbornly play her as a solo laner when really her trait is best used to enable her team to push really hard while she stuns buildings. This mindset has led to Sylv being considered a meme in some regards, causing people to roll their eyes and become frustrated just by seeing her in draft. While she has some merit on maps where her trait can enable the team to snowball an early win, she typically is outperformed by ranged assassins such as Greymane or Fenix who both have solid structure damage and waveclear ability.
Blizzard has stepped in now to set the record straight and give Sylvanas a definitive role in a team. Here are some of the changes:
- She is now going to be classified as a ranged assassin.
- Her trait will be the same but it will be an activated ability so she does not always have it up.
- Her auto attacks stack on enemies and deal more damage after three stacks are reached.
- Mind Control is now a skill-shot that silences the target and makes them run towards Sylvanas.
- Her Shadow Dagger ability will now only spread to other enemies if you auto attack the Dagger target.
Here is the video that Blizzard shared to inform us of these changes:
Stitches Rework
Tanks in Heroes of the Storm tend to be in your face, always repositioning enemies and generally being a wall that the enemies have to get past in fights. Stitches does this well, but he lacks a lot of the heavy Crowd Control abilities that tanks like Muradin, Diablo, or Garrosh have. He’s been defined by his Hook ability for a long time, and players who play him sometimes forget their role as the frontline tank in order to throw long ranged hooks that pull enemies into their team. While this strategy definitely has its place, it has caused some discrepancy in how to best play Stitches.
With the new rework on the way, Blizzard has attempted to fix this conflict of playstyles. Here are some of the changes:
- His auto attacks now apply his trait, Vile Gas, in an Area of Effect around the target.
- The distance on Stitches’ Hook has been reduced, but there are now more talents centered around the hook.
- Slam now applies a slow to all enemies affected by it, slowing and damaging more the closer you are to Stitches.
Here is the video that Blizzard shared to inform us of these changes:
These reworks will be the last ones of 2018 and will be released before the 2019 game changes are put into Heroes of the Storm. You’ll be able to check out these changes on the Public Test Realm (PTR) on Monday, December 3.
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