In my "break" from committing and real game time to World of Warcraft, I've been spending a lot of time making another Legend push in Hearthstone, and playing a lot of Heroes of the Storm with friends. The game is a ton of fun, especially when playing with a group you can talk to over Skype or whatever your voice chat of preference is. And this past weekend Blizzard gave us an event that we should have had in London at the actual launch event. But I won't go into that because I want to do a positive post ffs. Blizzard announced their first in what I'm going to assume is a series of in-game events of sorts.
The Eternal Conflict is a series of in-game releases based around the Diablo universe. It began, somewhat unceremoniously with the release of Johanna, and will continue for "a few months". We were shown a preview of the Butcher and our eighth battleground, The Battlefields of Eternity. I like the approach Blizzard is taking by creating an event around its releases. Let's face it, the Diablo and Starcraft universes are heavily overshadowed by Warcraft in Heroes at the moment. We still need a Diablo Support and a Starcraft Warrior. The approach of a theme surrounding releases spices up normal hero releases in comparison to other games.
The Battlefields of Eternity battleground is our first venture into traditional Blizzard areas making their way into Heroes, and there are some nice changes that could be easily overlooked. There are only two traditional lanes, with the map objective in the center. This puts a huge emphasis on the objective of defeating the enemy's Immortal and controlling your own. On maps like Cursed Hollow and Sky Temple there are times that ignoring the map objective is a viable strategy that allows you to take an enemy fort or keep while the other team focuses on the objective. With only two lanes there is less of an opportunity to gain an experience advantage or to destroy an early keep to strengthen your lane minions. Another nice change is new type of mercenaries. Sky Temple brought a new look to siege giants and bruisers, but with Battlefields of Eternity, we get mercenaries with different abilities. Bruiser camps have two hell hounds and a shaman that will resummon the hounds until his is killed. This is similar to how the web weavers in Tomb of the Spider Queen behave and it's nice to see it transitioned to other maps and minions.
The Butcher is our next melee Assassin. I was a bit worried he would be another Warrior based solely on his size, so it was a pleasant surprise that he was announced as a damage dealer. His trait is a twist on Diablo's soul gather mechanic. The Butcher collects Fresh Meat from minions and heroes he kills, and those stacks of Fresh Meat buff his attack damage up to 25%, all lost on death. He also comes with what seems to be a strong kit. He has a melee attack with a slow, a debuff effect that causes attacks against that target to heal him, and a long range charge stun. The charge stun seems a little unreliable. He moves pretty slowly so the target should have plenty of time to get away. His heroic abilities seem pretty strong as well. His Furnace Blast is a delayed explosion surrounding the Butcher that can be activated while using his charge ability to set up a sort of combo. But I think his Lamb to the Slaughter ability is insanely strong. He pins an enemy hero to a post and that hero can't move from that location. If they leave the area they are pulled back to the center. The level 20 talent for the ability causes it to chain all enemy heroes in the location. The potential this gives in team fights should be easily exploitable in the late game.
We also got a glimpse of a new mount that sort of resembles a Kodo from WoW dressed up in Diablo garb. And there a poster for the event gives us a glimpse at some skins we can expect to see.
We saw Amazon Nova in one of the launch videos Blizzard released, but we also have an Angelic Diablo of some sort, and perhaps a preview of the redone Demonic Tyreal we were promised. And obviously we see the Skeleton King Leoric that we saw at Blizzcon last year. Expect him to be the next hero launched after the Butcher sometime in July. After that I would like to see a support from the Diablo universe to round out the event. Auriel could give us our second Angel hero, or we could see a Monk hero. Blizzard also hinted at multiple Diablo themed maps so we could see a second one similar to how Sky Temple and Tomb of the Spider Queen were tied together. I'm excited to see how much content this event brings to the game, as well as what it means for the inevitable Starcraft, Warcraft and Retro versions. While I still think the prices for these items are still too high, a strong amount of content released with this event is at least a show of good faith that the money is being used well.
Feel free to let me know what you think of the event or what you would like to see in the future. Thanks as always for reading.
Till next time, Chris
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