Heroes of the Storm - Stukov Patch

With the latest Heroes of the Storm patch, developer Blizzard introduces the new hero Stukov. In addition, there is a new battlefield rotation for Ranked Matches and a lot of improvements and bug fixes. Balance changes have been made to several heroes, especially Xul's skills have been tinkered with.

Heroes of the Storm - New Champion Stukov

Alexei Stukov is the new addition to the Nexus. The mutated and contaminated ex-commander will take on the support role. He uses his tried viruses and parasites to heal allies or to slow down the enemy.

A detailed overview of Stukov's abilities, including that You can find Spotlight Video in our previous article.

user interface

If Heroes of the Storm is minimized in the background, it is now in the foreground when someone has been removed from the queue, a game has been found or a team member leaves the lobby.

A new option "Disable wobbling picture effects" has been added.

Battlefields

Ranked Play Battlefield Rotation has been updated to include the following maps:

Hanamura
Dragon Gardens
Burial chamber of the spider queen
Cursed valley
Hell shrines
Garden of Fears
Warhead Manufactory
Ghost mines
Towers of doom

In addition to other heroes, a lot of work has gone into revising Xul's abilities:

Xul

Skills

Spectral Sense (Q)
- Mana cost reduced from 65 to 55
Cursed Harvest (W)
- Mana cost reduced from 65 to 60
Bone prison (E)
- Now causes all active skeletons to focus on the target.

Talents

step 1
- Shackles (active)
  - Extended functionality:
    - Automatic attacks against Slowed, Immobile, or Stunned Heroes reduce the cooldown of Bone Armor by 2 seconds.
Level 4
- Reaper's Tribute (Q)
  - New functionality:
    - ! Quest: Meet enemy heroes with Spectral Scythe.
    - ! Reward: As soon as 20 heroes have been hit, the cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds.
- Prison guard (trait)
  - New functionality:
    - When Bone Prison is used, 2 skeletons appear. These skeletons do not count towards the maximum number of skeletons that can be mastered.
    - ! Quest: Create skeletal warriors.
    - ! Reward: After 80 skeletons have been created, skeletal warriors gain 50 % increased movement and attack speed when they focus on an enemy due to bone prison.
- (New) Death scythe (W)
  - Each time Cursed Harvest deals damage to enemies, the cooldown is reduced by 0.5 seconds, up to a maximum of 10 seconds.
Level 7
- Essence of Trag'Oul (Trait)
  - Moved from level 4 to level 7.
  - Revised:
    - Skeleton auto-attacks restore 1 % of Health and 0.4 % of Mana.
- Drain vitality (W)
  - Revised:
  - Cursed Harvest heals Xul for 60 damage inflicted by the hero %.
- Weaknesses (W)
  - Now also increases the duration of the attack speed slow of Cursed Harvest from 2 to 3 seconds.
- Rathma's Blessing (Trait)
  - Away
Level 13
- Aging (Q)
  - Away
- Giant Curse (W)
  - Away
- (New) Echo of Death (Q)
  - After another 1.5 seconds, 2 more spectral sensors appear next to the first and move back towards Xul, dealing 75 % damage.
- (New) Fast Harvest (W)
  - When Xul deals damage to an enemy with Cursed Harvest, he gains 5 % increased attack speed for 3 seconds, up to a maximum of 75 %.
- Executioner (passive)
  - Moved from level 16 to level 13.
Level 16
- Skeletal Control (Trait)
  - Away
- Cadaver Explosion (Trait)
  - Moved from level 13 to level 16.
- Bone spear (active)
  - Moved from level 20 to level 16.
  - The cooldown has been increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
Level 20
- Grave call (R)
  - Away
- (New) Andariel's face (R)
  - Xul is healed for 50 % of the damage done with Poison Nova. Skeletal Warriors become poisonous skeletons, dealing 50 % increased damage.
- Cadaver obedience (R)
  - Renamed to The Cold Hand of Death
  - New functionality:
    - No longer causes skeletal mages to spawn from dead heroes.
    - Now causes Skeletal Warriors to become Frost Skeletons, whose auto-attacks slow enemies by 30 %.
- (New) Kalan's Decree (Trait)
  - Every time a Skeleton deals damage with auto attacks, the cooldown of Xul's Heroic Ability is reduced by 1 %.