“There has never been a better time to play Heroes of The Storm,” Game Director Alan Dabiri said, and the rest of the development team reiterated, time and time again throughout the course of the night at the Heroes Media Summit in Laguna Beach this past weekend. And now the rest of the world knows why: Blizzard is rolling out Heroes of The Storm 2.0. The update, which redesigns character and player leveling and the rewards system, enters beta today with a full release scheduled for April 25.
“Our goal for progression is to make it more frequent, more meaningful, and more rewarding,” said Travis McGeathy, lead designer.
This change includes erasing the level cap completely, for both heroes and players. Heroes 2.0 also brings loot chests that give all players access to cool rewards every time they level up, including the Prime Evil Diablo skin. Leveling up will also happen a lot faster. Previously, once you get to around level 10, it took 13 to 15 hours of gameplay to level up that hero. Now, it will take just a few hours. Player level milestones will be rewarded with chests that include rare items and hero level milestones will have rewards associated with the specific hero.
There are five new item types which are focused around the social ability of the game.
-Emojis -- there’s a set for every hero.
-Announcers -- there’s over 100 different lines
-Voice Lines -- every hero has audio taunts
-Banners -- add flair to the battlefield by replacing someone else’s
-Sprays -- because why not add more Overwatch stuff?
Heroes 2.0 also adds a new currency – Gems can be bought or earned through progression milestones. There’s also shards, a crafting currency. Players will receive shards from loot chests, either as direct drops or every time you get a duplicate item it will be fragmented into shards. Players can then use those shards to craft any cosmetic item available in a loot chest. So if there’s something you really want and you have had terrible luck, you don’t have to rely purely on random chance. Players can also use gold to reroll loot chests, though you can only do this a few times and the cost goes up every time.
The store has also been rebranded as a collection system. Mount and skin selectors are now called loadouts. So in addition to choosing the mount and skin, you can now choose your banner, spray, voice line and announcer pack. You can make three customized loadouts per hero.
The update would not be complete without a new character: Cassia.
Cassia is a range assassin who specializes against physical attackers. Part of how she does that is through her trait, avoidance. As long as she is moving, you’ll see her shield light up and she gains 65 physical armor. She’s just going to shrug off those shots. Her first ability is lightning fury (Q). She’s going to hurl a lightning-infused javelin and when it hits someone it splits into two perpendicular bolts that pierce everyone in their path and do the same amount of damage.
Cassia’s next ability is blinding light (W). It’s a two-part ability. Cassia passively yields bonus damage to any blinded target, but she can activate the ability to bind targets herself. The next ability is fend (E). This one has some risk reward to it. She’ll dash into a target and start stabbing repeatedly with her javelin, but she’s stationary so your trait is going to be turned off.
Cassia’s first heroic is ball of lightning, which she throws and will bounce up to six times between other enemy heroes and herself if there is no target nearby. The second heroic is valkyrie. Cassia summons down an ancient warrior and it places itself far way from her, charging toward her impaling the first hero it hits on it’s spear dragging over to her.
When Heroes 2.0 releases, XP will automatically convert to the new system and players will receive their loot chests and rewards immediately. (For example, level 10 translates to level 15 and level 20 to level 55.) Check back for more coverage on Heroes 2.0 before its April 25 release. View the open beta notes here.
