The new Heroes of the Storm Nexus Anomaly is live and this time it brings changes to the towers. The changes offer those retreating under their towers more protection, while discouraging attackers from tower-diving uncoordinated. Additionally, these tower changes also affected the cores, adding special abilities to be cast by each team’s core.
The changes
Blizzard’s changes were based off of years of player feedback. Players felt that retreating under towers provided no extra protection from chasing enemies, as towers and keeps would prioritize minions, mercs and objectives. Now, cores and towers will focus those dealing damage to their side’s heroes instead. The damage will remained focused on said hero until they leave the tower range or are killed.
While having their damage to heroes increased by 10%, keeps and towers now also reduce the armor of heroes. This starts at a reduction of 5 from cannon towers, and scales up to 40. Forts and keeps start at a reduction of 10, scaling up to 40 as well. Cores also have special abilities added, which deal percentage damage to heroes, meaning pushing without a vehicle, objective or minions is no longer possible for extended periods of time.
It’s not all buffs, though. Forts and keeps can no longer slow hero movement. A visual line was also added to more easily see who is being targeted by a tower at a glance.
Tips
A lot of heroes – especially bruisers and tanks – have forms of hard crowd control that can disrupt team fights and displace heroes. Now these abilities can be used to better take advantage of the tower changes and cause enemy heroes to have their armor shredded in addition to taking damage. Here are a few:
- Diablo – Overpower and Shadow Charge can throw enemies under towers and stun them.
- Artanis – Phase Prism can be used to swap enemies and pull them under the tower.
- Stitches – His hook can be used to pull enemies into the tower line, and can also be used to pull reckless tower-diving teammates out of danger.
- Garrosh – Similar to Stitches, he can throw enemies with Wrecking Ball into the tower line, but at level 7 he can pick up Into the Fray, which also allows him to throw his allies, on a 40 second cooldown.
- Leoric – His ultimate Entomb can easily trap enemies under his team’s tower, and at Level 20 he can pick up the talent Buried Alive, which adds a silence to those trapped. This prevents those with a movement ability from using it to escape.
- Ana – Her sleep dart can easily stop attackers under the tower, and pairs well with other forms of hard crowd control.
Heroes like Yrel and Dehaka have ultimates that can heal them for damage taken, allowing them to dive towers and heal back the health lost. Sylvanas is able to use her Black Arrows to stun towers, allowing her team a safe escape or the ability to dive the enemy.
Final thoughts
You can optimize push damage by avoiding AOE abilities and targeting heroes under the towers. These changes overall slow down the pace of the game, and will make defense more enjoyable. You are able to retreat to towers and not be in fear of being dived by a whole enemy team.
The tower changes put Heroes of the Storm more in line with other MOBAs in terms of structure behavior. Full details of the Nexus Anomaly can be found in the official Heroes of the Storm patch notes.
