New Blog Post Explores Changes to the Early Game

The Heroes of the Storm site has been updated with a lengthy blog post to discuss and reveal forthcoming changes to the "early game" in order to make it more meaningful. This builds on the "What's Next" panel as conducted during last month's Blizzcon 2017. There are two main focal points with regard to incoming changes: Laning Phase and Battleground Objectives.

With this in mind, we wanted to revisit these experiences to explore ways we could make improvements. We’ve re-evaluated our approach to many aspects of the early game, and made a variety of changes to structures, regeneration globes, mercenary camps, and even our objective spawns, to make laning more meaningful throughout a match. 

That in mind, these are some of the changes you can expect to see in HotS in the future:

• structure ammunition is being removed -- though don't think that means no shooting. It means that towers, forts and keeps have unlimited ammo. "Since ammo can no longer be depleted, we’ve also reduced structure damage to minions, and increased minion damage to help them hit a little harder."
• standalone towers are removed, though stats have been "rolled" into nearby gate towers, forts and keeps
• True Sight on towers, forts and keeps will reveal stealthed characters
• regeneration globes will be "team only" for 3 seconds and "neutral" for 3 additional seconds
• objectives will being on three maps at 1:30 into the match and the rest at 3:00 into the match
• more consistent and earlier warnings about upcoming objectives along with mini-map indicators
• match length is targeting the 20-minute mark
• Mercenary Camp improvements

These new features are currently available on the PTR, so swing by the Heroes of the Storm site to read more specifics and jump on in to try them out for yourself.