Hello Everyone,
Hero Attack version 2.24 has been released on the North American server. It includes 2 new maps, changes to spell and energy scaling, some bug fixes, many balance changes, some new features and a variety of changes. To be honest, this version should have been released a month ago, but was delayed due to a variety of reasons such as studies, family issues, internet issues and laziness. Here is the changelog:
GENERAL- Added the Island Map and the Desert Map to the map pool. Snow Map and Lava Map have been temporarily removed. River Map, Forest Map, Island Map and Desert Map have been renamed Fertile River, Sacred Forest, Island Paradise and Desert Canyon respectively.
- Island Paradise has a special feature called Bananas. Bananas will periodically spawn in the map at various locations. You can pick up a banana with your hero, and if you do, your hero will recover 5% of its life, shields and energy over 5 seconds. There are 6 spawn locations for the bananas (the northwest island, the southeast island and the 4 smallish islands with critters on them).
- Desert Canyon has a special feature called gold minerals. You can purchase an expansion for your team at the cost of 500 minerals by clicking on the miner in one of the two expansion locations. Expansions take time for the computer to build give your team additional minerals.
- Made some various adjustments / improvements to Island Paradise and Desert Canyon from earlier versions (if you played earlier versions on either Hero Attack TEST or the PTR).
- Improved the terrain of Fertile River and Sacred Forest. Switching the Snow Map and Lava Map with Island Paradise and Desert Canyon gave me extra terrain textures to work with.
- Added unique music to each of the 4 maps. The names of the songs and the authors can be found in the credits section for Help.
- Added different ambience soundtracks to each map.
- The intro music is now considered ‘music’ so the volume can be controlled by the player.
- Energy no longer scales with the hero’s level. Instead, most spells (such as damage spells and summoning spells) now scale with the hero’s level (i.e. either the damage dealt or the life and damage of the summoned unit will increase by 10% per hero level). This was done because many people requested it and because it makes caster heroes and energy items more useful in the late game. This change will probably cause temporary imbalance, but in the long run should hopefully be better for the game. You can still increase your hero’s energy and energy regeneration by purchasing energy items or by purchasing stat upgrades.
- Spell scaling should be indicated in all the tooltips of the spells.
- Increased the base energy regeneration from E/200 energy per second to E/160 energy per second, where E is the hero’s total energy. This was done since energy regeneration no longer scales with the hero’s level.
- Most damage spells and summoning spells are now weaker at lower levels. This was done for balance purposes since these spells now scale with the hero’s level.
- Many spells, abilities and items have been modified and rebalanced in attempt to accommodate the changes to energy and spell scaling. The majority of changes to spells are not listed in this changelog.
- Player controlled units (such as marines, zealots, mutalisks, etc.) no longer benefit from team upgrades. This change was done because the damage, life and shields of these units now scale with the hero’s level.
- Decreased the energy requirements of flight abilities to 1.0 energy per second at level 1 (down from 1.5 energy per second). This change was done since energy is less abundant.
- Hopefully fixed a bug where the text on the screen that appears after hero selection sometimes overlaps when a player has too many wins, games played, etc.
- All heroes, with the exception of the drone hero, now have the hold fire ability. This change was done due to various requests. The drone hero does not have hold fire because there is no command card space for the drone hero.
- Increased the ‘experience penatly’ of the leaver bonus due to requests.
- If zero players are left on the opposing team then the game should now end with a victory for the team with remaining players. If the game starts with zero players on the opposing team or players mass leave very early in the game (such as during hero selection) then the game will not end.
- Readded the score board which appears after the game. Of course the scores are meaningless at this point, but this change was done since people requested it since the score board makes it easier to make friends with people after games.
- Slightly increased the radius that your command has to be from a shop in order to sell an armour, weapon or energy item. This change was done because occasionally players would accidently drop their items next to a shop instead of selling their items.
- Fixed (yet again) a lobby bug where both computers could end up on the same team. Hopefully, with a change in patch 1.4, this is the last time I will have to make this change and the bug will not keep resetting itself.
- Increased the combat priority of production buildings. This change was done due to requests and because the low priority sometimes caused heroes to attack enemy units when the hero was ordered to attack the building.
- Added the Hero Attack version number to the screen that appears after hero selection.
- The Hero Selection screen now indicates the map selected during map selection.
- Teleportation items, such as Drop Pods, can only be used if your hero hasn’t taken damage in the past 3 seconds (up from 2). This change was done because people requested it.
- The healing effect of the river in Fertile River now only affects heroes if the heroes have not taken damage in the past 3 seconds. This change was done because someone requested it and because it made the immortal hero too strong when in the river.
- Learn abilities are now transient thanks to patch 1.4. In other words, your hero will no longer stop if it learns an ability.
- Some summoning abilities are now transient that weren’t before due to various requests.
- Added cursor and range actors to some spell items since blizzard claims that it made a change so that cursor actors would work with items. As far as I can tell I have been unable to get these to display properly.
- Fixed a bug caused by patch 1.4 where some range actors (such as the range actor of a sieged siege tank would not display). In addition, I have made a change so that these actors no longer display to the enemy. Thankfully, blizzard fixed the target filter bug for range actors in patch 1.4
- Fixed a bug caused by patch 1.4 where some heroes, such as the marine and preserver, would not respawn properly after being killed.
- Hopefully fixed a bug where the zergling heroes and the reaper hero would sometimes not respawn at the team’s beacon if they died while jumping a cliff.
- Heroes will now respawn in their ‘normal’ form (example: the drone hero will always respawn as an unburrowed drone hero and no longer a spine crawler if it died while in spine crawler mode). Ironically, a change blizzard made in 1.4 which caused the respawn bug for some heroes allows me to make this change.
- Various minor changes that either I have forgotten to add or are not that relevant.
TERRAN- You can no longer use the drop ship item when you hero is flying. This was done because loading and unloading flying units messes up the unit’s height.
- The yamato gun item no longer deals AOE damage. This change was done because the item hard countered some heroes too effectively (such as the mutalisk hero) and because the damage now scales with the hero’s level, so the AOE is no longer necessary to make the item viable late game without making it overpowered in the early game.
- Fixed a bug where the domination item did not have target filters.
- Fixed a bug cause by patch 1.4 where the cloak ability of the ghost hero and banshee hero would sometimes stop working at level 3. The cloak ability is no longer passive at level 3 and is instead toggleable. The cloak ability can now be autocast.
- The damage of the ghost hero’s nuclear strike ability no longer increases if you learn level 2 of the ability. Instead, the range of the ability increases (while energy cost and cooldown decrease). This change was done because someone requested, because the damage now scales with the hero’s level and because a change in patch 1.4 allows me to change to size of the range actor using upgrades.
- Increased the miss % of the banshee hero’s suppression drones to match the damage reduction of the defiler hero’s dark swarm ability.
- The attack cooldown of the reaper hero has been increased to 1.2 seconds from 1.15 seconds for balance reasons.
- The thor hero no longer has the self-fixing armor passive. Instead, the thor hero has a new ability called stomp. Stomp causes the thor hero to jump into the air, move towards target point, and then land dealing AOE damage to ground units. The thor hero plays its medivac animation while using this ability. This change was done because the thor involved too much a-moving and couldn’t be microed very much. In the thor’s case it was particularly bad since, unlike other a-moving characters, the thor doesn’t have a good movement speed. Hopefully stomp allows more microing and positioning since stomp can act like a blink ability. The ability also gives the thor hero ground AOE damage, which the thor hero needed.
- Removed the fidgeting from the SCV hero’s build ability due to various requests that it was annoying and caused the SCV hero to occasionally become stuck.
- The number of predator cubs that the predator hero can have now increases with the level of the ability. In addition, the damage and life of the cubs no longer increase with the ability of the level. Instead, the energy cost and cooldown decrease while the damage and life of the cubs scale with the hero’s level.
- The radius of the predator hero’s paramagnetic attraction ability has been reduced to 6 (from 8) for balance reasons.
- Added a destroy structure ability to the hellion hero’s flame turret due to a request.
- Fixed a bug where the planetary fortress would occasionally have 2 health bars.
- Marines spawned by the marine hero no longer gain combat shields when the hero learns calldown reinforcements level 2. This change was done because these marines now scale with the hero’s level.
PROTOSS- Protoss shield regeneration has been globally changed to be more like Starcraft 1 and less like Starcraft 2. The base shield regeneration has been reduced from 2 to 1 but the delay before you regenerate shields has been decreased from 10 seconds to 3 seconds. This change was done because various people requested it and for a number of reasons. This change makes protoss computer controlled units slightly weaker when a large number accumulate for a push, it makes damage dealt to protoss buildings more permanent, and it makes it so that protoss heroes that are constantly engaged in combat are more likely to benefit from regeneration.
- Energy crystal has been nerfed slightly (20 energy recovered to 15) for balance purposes since this update makes energy relatively more useful.
- The power field item now gives +1 shield regeneration instead of +1 shields per second while the unit still has shields for simplicity reasons.
- The damage reduction of the hardened shield item has been reduced to 36% (18% for archons, dark archons and immortals) from 40% (20% for archons, dark archons and immortals) for balance reasons.
- Multiple obelisks can no longer recharge the shields of the same target at the same time.
- The radius of energy nova has been reduced to 6 (from 8) for balance reasons.
- Hopefully fixed a bug where the phoenix hero would sometimes be considered an air unit even when in ground mode.
- The reaver hero’s movement speed has been increased to 1.5 from 1.375 due to requests and for balance reasons.
- Fixed a bug where a reaver hero with a leaver bonus would sometimes make ‘mini scarabs’ (i.e. scarabs that deal half damage) rather than regular scarabs when it should have created a regular scarab.
- The life and shields of the warp prisms created by the reaver hero no longer increase when the reaver hero learns warp in warp prisms level 2. This change was done because the life and shields now scale with the hero’s level.
- Hopefully fixed a bug where the void ray hero would continue attacking while stunned.
- The void ray hero’s prismatic charge ability now deals 100% damage on units in dark swarm.
- Fixed a bug where the stalker hero’s shadow wave did not have a range actor.
- Fixed a bug where the hotkey for the archon hero’s Psionic shockwave ability was incorrect.
- Hopefully fixed a bug where the zealot hero could avoid the cooldown of his ultimate by dropping an item.
- The zealots created by the zealot hero no longer gain leg enhancements at level 2 of the warp in zealots ability. Instead, the zealots benefit from the zealot hero’s leg enhancements passive ability.
- Decreased the energy cost and duration of the zealot hero’s stone form ability (but not cooldown) to avoid a bug where the walk animations of the zealot hero would stop working.
- The dark zealot hero’s soul drain ability no longer works on buildings for balance reasons.
- The sentry hero’s force field ability no longer costs energy, but can no longer be spammed. Instead, creating a force field requires a charge. The maximum number of force fields charges that the sentry can have and the rate at which the sentry hero gains charges depend on the level of the ability. This change was done because there is less energy available due to the changes to energy scaling and because this change makes it so that players have to be smarter about how they use force fields.
- Fixed a bug where the sentry hero’s guardian shield ability would continue after the sentry died. The guardian shield ability can now be autocast.
- The range of the dark templar hero’s swap ability now increases with the level of the ability.
- The high templar hero no longer has 2 psionic storm abilities. Instead, the high templar hero has a passive ability called khaydarin amulet. Khaydarin amulet increases the energy and energy regeneration of the high templar hero. This change was done because the recent changes to energy scaling mean that in the late game the high templar no longer has enough energy to support 2 psionic storms along with other spells.
- The maelstrom ability and aura of darkness passive of the dark archon hero have swapped places. The aura of darkness is now a regular ability that reduces sight range by 2 per level and the maelstrom ability is now the ultimate. This change was done due to various requests and because this change gives the dark archon an early game passive. This change also reduces how frequently the dark archon can use the maelstrom ability.
- The duration and energy cost of the colossus hero’s time pyramid ability have been decreased due to a request.
- The attack cooldown of the colossus hero has been decreased to 2.1 from 2.2 for balance reasons.
ZERG- Increased the ‘range slop’ of some heroes such as the defiler hero and the baneling hero due to various requests. This means that these heroes are more likely to fire their ranged weapons when attacking a unit that is running away from them.
- Fixed a bug caused by patch 1.4 where the corruptor hero’s actor would disappear when the corruptor morphed between its air mode and ground mode.
- The overlord hero now benefits from its generated creep while flying. This change was done due to various requests.
- The overlord hero’s creep no longer damages nearby enemies at level 2 and level 3. Instead, learning level 2 or level 3 of this ability increases the passive life regeneration of creep. This change was done due to a request.
- The overlord hero’s disease cloud now reveals invisible units. This was done due to a request.
- The drone hero now only gains +1 armour and +20% life (down from +2 armour and +50% life) while in crawler mode. This change was done because the drone hero was too powerful while a spine crawler or spore crawler.
- There is now a maximum number of larvae that the queen hero can have at any given them. This change was done since the larvae blocking strategy was slightly too powerful and because larvae now scale with the hero’s level.
- The spawned larvae are automatically selected when created. This was done due to a request.
- The maximum number of zerglings that a zergling hero can create has been halved. This change was done because the zergling blocking strategy was slightly too powerful and because spawned zerglings now scale with the hero’s level.
- The zergling hero’s spawned zerglings can now jump cliffs if the zergling hero learns wings. This change was done so that spawned zerglings would have an easier time keeping up with the zergling heroes.
- The devour ability of the zergling hero no longer requires energy. Instead, devour requires a charge. The zergling hero can hold up to 3 devour charges and gains a charge every 15 seconds. This change was done because the ability was often ignored in favour of spawn zerglings and because changes to energy scaling mean that the zergling hero is unlikely to have enough energy to use devour.
- The ultralisk hero’s ram ability is no longer affected by the hero’s movement speed and the hero is assumed to move at speed 3 for ram. This change was done due to a request.
- The roach hero can now use corrosive acid on air units.
- The defiler hero can now store up to 3 charges for its consume ability (meaning that the defiler can consume 3 units at once) and the defiler gains a consume charge every 15 seconds. The consume ability has been nerfed slightly due to the fact that energy is now relatively more valuable than in previous versions.
- Dark swarm now lasts 20 seconds (down from 30 seconds) for balance reasons.
- The range of the lurker hero’s silk thread ability now increases with the hero’s level. The immobilization duration of this ability has been decreases slightly at higher levels for balance reasons.
None.