Halloween weekend brought a slew of new content to Newerth, ready to celebrate the official release of HoN Tour with style. New avatars for some popular and some less popular heroes were released as Pyromancer and Predator don their costumes for some trick-or-treating (and you had better give Pyromancer some goodies—he doesn't seem the type to stop at egging the more miserly households).

But put the cosmetic upgrades on hold! Friday was the start of a new early-access cycle and brought the Bubble Mage, Pearl, into the fray as she helps the Legion combat the Hellbourne demons. Pearl is an Intelligence support hero who emphasises decision making; her array of skills make her well-suited for clustered teamfights and early pushing. They come with a tradeoff, however: get the burst heal from Soothing Presence or keep the potent regeneration for its hefty cooldown?



Pearl's skills are definitely more on the defensive side and it's this defensive prowess that enables her team to be more aggressive early—similar to a Jereziah. Most impressively, her ultimate, Preservation, can nullify all damage from some of the notorious teamfight abilities such as Plague Carrier.

Personally, I find Pearl's design to be a refreshing addition to the support pool. Her focus on keeping teammates alive with a combination of Whirlbubble (W), Soothing Presence (E) and Preservation (R) may, at first glance, appear lackluster against our current powerhouse supports, Glacius and Aluna, but this will set her apart when she is released from early access. Too often do supports get caught in limbo between being defensive and offensive (Rhapsody, Monarch, to name a couple) and this more specialized kind of support is a welcome change.

My reservations, however, lie in that many of her skills scale only with damage. Asphyxiate’s slow and duration are at their maximum at rank one of the skill as is the range of Whirlbubble. This gives her immense utility at the early levels as Soothing Presence (arguably the skill that scales the most as it ranks up) is already very strong in early skirmishes, granting 1hp/s regen per hero to everyone in its decently-sized radius. Nonetheless, Pearl, along with her premium and early-access exclusive avatars, Brann and Shadian, are a welcome addition to Newerth.

With a new hero taking the spotlight, some old favorites are given makeovers with new avatars arriving for Predator, Doctor Repulsor, Pyromancer and Geomancer. Tesla (Repulsor) will be free to anyone who celebrates the new $50 or $100 gold coin bundles by buying them before patch 2.6.25! Anyone interested in those bundles would also do well to nab a copy of the Headless Horseman (Pyromancer) holiday edition avatar before it becomes unavailable.

Also more pronounced with this patch is the lore surrounding not just a new hero but new avatars as well. This is following a push by S2 Games to give HoN lore a bigger part to play as seen by having Ryan 'LoreMeister' McDaniel, HoN's lead content manager, explain the detailed lore in recent Dev Blogs.



It may just pad out patch notes with puffery that most of the player base will likely skip but it is a good step to making Heroes of Newerth a more full experience outside of a match.

A new item, Grimoire of Power, also now gives its damage amplification to spirits summoned by Defiler’s Unholy Explosion and Emerald Warden’s infamous pet Gawain's Diving Strike. While unmistakably a buff to both heroes, the addition of the Grimoire feels like more of a fix to an oversight than any targeted buff to Emerald Warden or Defiler.

Lastly, among small bug fixes and normalisations, the in-game voting system took a small change. The player to initiate the vote is still recorded in the chat log but how people vote no longer appears next to their icon on the scoreboard.

Is this a good thing?

Perhaps not.

The internet is already notorious for allowing people the shield of anonymity to hide their actions and I believe this might transcend to the now-secret ballot. No longer will there be any negative press for vetoing a remake vote after a disconnect or not pausing for a teammate.

Will there be a surge of unpaused, unremade games or will we respect our fellow players and vote the good vote?

- superwadiz
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