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Heroes of the Storm balance patch reins in Li-Ming

Li-Ming hit the Nexus ground running. Perhaps a little too much, according to Blizzard, so it has issued some significant nerfs in the latest Heroes of the Storm balance patch.

Ozzie Mejia

February 17, 2016 11:30 AM

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It hasn't been that long since Blizzard issued out the last balance patch for Heroes of the Storm. However, the mystical powers of Li-Ming are proving far too strong for the Nexus, so the overlords at Blizzard have stepped in to issue some major adjustments.

"Li-Ming is a little too strong right now," states the developer rationale on Battle.net. "Her ability to deal incredible damage is awesome, it was just happening too often, too easily. We've nerfed Astral Presence and Diamond Skin to preserve a couple of her core weaknesses: Mana tension and fragility. We've also removed Ess of Johan, because we found that it made landing Magic Missiles too easy. While we know that a lot of players really enjoy Ess of Johan, we think that it will be better for Li-Ming in the long run to preserve her high skill cap."

Li-Ming isn't the only one seeing some changes. Let's check out the full list of adjustments:

Li-Ming

• Astral Presence (Talent): Mana Regeneration bonus now only triggers while below 25% Mana, rather than 50%
• Diamond Skin (Talent): Shield amount decreased from 25% to 20% of maximum Health
• Tal Rasha's Elements (Talent): Ability Power bonus decreased from 20% to 10%
• Magic Missiles (Q): Damage reduced from 147 (+3.5% per level) to 147 (+3% per level)
• Arcane Orb (W): Ess of Johan (Talent) removed. Triumvirate (Talent) distance traveled requirement reduced from 80% to 65% of maximum distance

Rehgar

• Lightning Shield (W): Rising Storm (Talent) damage bonus reduced from 20% to 10% per stack; Maximum stacks increased from 10 to 20

Anub'arak

• Hardened Carapace (W): Shield amount increased from 242 (+4% per level) to 260 (+4% per level)

Stitches

• Devour (E): Last Bite (Talent) cooldown reduction on kill decreased from 15 to 12 seconds

The other changes seem to address a few outstanding Hero issues, like Rehgar dealing too much damage with Lightning Shield and Stitches using a Last Bite exploit. While this change list seems small, it looks much bigger when stacked with the major tweaks issued last week.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?