Heroes of the Storm Patch Notes-September 27, 2016

The latest Heroes of the Storm patch was a biggie. Gaming changing. Great. Incredible. All those jazzy kinda words. Blizzard added Zarya from Overwatch into the game as well as another Starcraft themed map. Let me lay out some of the patch notes for you and explain.

New Hero: Zarya

Aleksandra Zaryanova is one of the world's strongest women and was a promising athlete, but all that changed when the Siberian omnium reawakened. As a soldier in the Russian Defense Force, she now proudly uses her strength to protect the ones she loves.
Trait

• Energy
  • Each time Zarya’s Personal Barrier or Shield Ally absorbs 10 damage, her Energy is increased by 1. Each point of Energy increases Zarya’s damage by 2%. After 0.5 seconds, Energy decays by 3 per second.

Basic Abilities

• Particle Grenade (Q)
  • Launch a Particle Grenade that deals damage to enemies within a small area. Deals 50% damage to Structures.
• Personal Barrier (W)
  • Gain a Shield that absorbs damage for 3 seconds.
• Shield Ally (E)
  • Grants an allied Hero a Shield that absorbs damage for 3 seconds.

Heroic Abilities

• Graviton Surge (R)
  • Launch a gravity bomb that detonates after 1 second and draws enemy Heroes toward the center for 2.5 seconds.
• Expulsion Zone (R)
  • Launch a gravity bomb that deals light damage and creates an expulsion zone for 3.5 seconds. Enemies who enter the affected area are knocked back and have their Movement Speed reduced by 50% for 1 second. 
   

Zarya is pretty cool. Right now I'm trying to save up the gold so I can buy her. I saw her in every game I played today and she is a pretty strong tank. She seems to have a lot of offensive power too, at least in the games I played. Zarya's were getting like 30 assists easy and plenty of kills to boot. I really love how her ultimate from Overwatch, Graviton Surge made it into Heroes. Not gonna lie, it does feel a lot like Overwatch when she uses that ability. And you know you're going to do a ton of damage to your enemies in that gravity bomb. She's awesome. I'll probably enjoy playing her when I get the 15,000 gold to purchase her. 

New Battleground-Warhead Junction

Once a testing facility for nuclear weapons, Warhead Junction has since fallen into ruin. However, the site's abandonment hasn't stopped its glitchy adjutant from continuing to produce and hand out nuclear weapons. Join the arms race of Warhead Junction, build up your stockpile, and rain hell on your enemies!

Warhead Deployment

• Multiple Warheads will spawn periodically across the battleground.

Collect Warheads

• Pick up a Warhead to activate your Nuke. Use it or you will drop it when you die!

Call Down the Thunder

• Launch Nukes to devastate the enemy team's fortifications.

Performance

General

• Additional improvements have been made to Heroes of the Storm’s overall frame rate, affecting all game modes and Battlegrounds.

This is major! Everyone that's played Heroes has been affected by lag or had frame rate issues. For instance, I used to be able to run Heroes fine on my laptop but suddenly whenever I went on to play it became too laggy to even run properly. It's good to see that Blizzard is making improvements to the frame rate. Maybe they could work on improving the netcode too? 

Shop

Bundles

• New Bundles
  • Thunder Guard Zarya Bundle – Available until October 11, 2016.
  • Raider Rexxar Bundle – Available until October 11, 2016.
  • Undying Legends Bundle – Available until October 18, 2016.
  • Ultimate Undying Legends Bundle – Available until October 18, 2016.

New Hero

• Zarya has been added to the in-game Shop.

Mounts

• Returning Mounts
  • Judgement Charger
• Removed Mounts
  • Lunar Dragon
  • Spectre Phantom
  • Dire Wolf

Skins

• Raider Rexxar
• Thunder Guard Zarya
• Master Zarya

Price Changes

• Diablo’s prices have been reduced to $3.49 USD and 2,000 Gold.
• Muradin’s prices have been increased to $6.49 USD and 4,000 Gold.

Everyone that plays mobas knows its cool to have the sweet looking skins. I'm pretty proud of the skins I've bought in both Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm. I have some of the best in both games. It's pretty rad going into battle looking like a suave dapper character. I'm already interested in the Thunder Guard Zarya and the Raider Rexxar skins. Both of which look awesome. 

There was a ton of changes to a bunch of heroes as well. But the biggies here is the addition of Zarya and the Starcraft map Warhead Junction. Warhead is an okay battleground. It doesn't bring anything new to the table, just a fun gamemode to add to the mix. You basically just pick up nukes and you can nuke your enemies' base or wherever you want. If you die you lose the nuke. Nothing too crazy but pretty fun. It's great to see Heroes of the Storm getting some much needed love and attention from Blizzard. I want to see Heroes stay in the limelight it has, however dim that may be compared to League and Dota. It's still a great game. I enjoy playing it over Overwatch even sometimes because I can just relax and listen to music while I play. 

I've heard a lot of great albums playing Heroes. A lot of metal but a lot of jazz too. Anyways, I can't wait to get Zarya and add her to my tank playing roster.