With the Hon Tour qualifiers finally concluded and a hectic weekend at DreamHack under our belts, all eyes will now be on the “real” part of the Tour. We’ve seen a lot of interesting things over the last few weeks, and the balance changes being brought forward this week definitely reflect on where the future of HoN could be going.

This week’s patch brings changes to five heroes that all have some range of carry potential. Tack on a couple of very noteworthy item changes, and you have a patch that is definitely going to have an impact on how things play out as the first cycle of HoN Tour kicks off. Let’s take a look:

Berzerker
Carnage: Reduced Damage Taken from 20% to 15%.

A slight buff to a hero who doesn’t really see any play in the competitive scene. This could definitely help get a hero some playtime who easily fits in with the “tanky” style of Meta that Trademark eSports helped make viral over the last couple of weeks. Hard to say. But if we do start to see a shift over to a more tanky style of carry hero, then Berzerker has to be highly valuable to those teams running that lineup.

If that’s the case, then will definitely be a great change as it's always nice to see new heroes emerge onto the scene. Until then, all we can do is wait and see.


Blood Hunter

Blood Crazy: Cast Time Reduced from .5 seconds to .3 seconds.
Blood Crazy: Cast Range increased from 600 to 650.
Hemorrhage: Cast Time Reduced from .5 seconds to .3 seconds.

A pub favorite, and competitive laughingstock. Blood Hunter has received numerous changes and tweaks over the years, but still cannot find his way onto the battlefield when it counts. Will these changes push him over the edge? No. But they’re definitely nice additions to remove some of the quirkiness from a hero who relies on being a blur around the map, yet suffered from humorously long and clunky cast animations.

Blood Hunter still needs some fundamental changes to his skillset before we start seeing him locked or banned, but again, these are some much-needed changes to what is still an extremely fun hero to play.


Gladiator

Pitfall: Increased the cast speed and animation from 400 to 300
Pitfall: Impact delay reduced from 1.6 to 1.5
Flagellation: Now propagates to illusions.

The changes to Pitfall are certainly nice, but overall the skill is just a little too unreliable to get Gladiator into the lineup. Gladiator is a great hero, but doesn’t fit any specific role. His stun is just too hard to consistently land to be considered for support, and he doesn’t do enough damage to be considered a carry.

Unfortunately, it looks like Gladiator will continue to be relegated to the pub league without a more thorough makeover. In other news, that Flagellation change could make for some funny Geometer’s Bane + Illusion Rune plays.


Madman

Stalk: Reduced cooldown from 13/11/9/7 to 10/9/8/7

A nice buff to the skill that really makes this hard carry so elusive and powerful in the early game. Madman hasn’t really seen much play lately, but perhaps as more and more teams continue to ban the usual hard carries he’ll start to work his way back into the lineup.

This change will definitely help push him back in that direction, but it most likely isn’t enough on its own to create an influx of Madman lineups.


Pestilence

Flight: Removed the damage amplification
Flight: Duration decreased from 25 to 20 seconds

I always wondered why Flight had the damage amp effect on it. For a spell that literally only grants movement speed, there really didn’t seem to be a need for any negative effect to balance it out. I don’t think these changes will have any real effect on Pestilence’s playtime, but they will certainly affect how he’s played.

Players won’t need to hesitate before using the ability and diving into a teamfight. It should allow him to be much more aggressive, which is a great thing for such a strong initiator.


Icon of the Goddess

Cap of 50 charges
Max charges lost from 10 to 8

Some decent changes to an item that is pretty much exclusive to pub play. Icon of the Goddess just will not ever see any usage in competitive play due to the fact that it only provides increased health and mana regeneration.

Players are looking to maximize what they get from their six item slots, and having a fairly expensive item only offer increased regen just is not worth it. The three items used to create the Icon can all be used to create different, much more effective items.


Striders

Striders now builds into post haste, post haste costs 300 less

Love this change. So much. Before, Post Haste was an item that really was only picked up at the very late game stage, by players who had excess gold to burn. This change really gives the players who would actually utilize it—the supporters mostly—a very natural path to getting them.

Brilliant change and I think you’ll start to see a lot more Post Haste in games because of it.

So overall, we got a really nice patch this week. Some fun alt avatars, a superb change to an important item, and some buffs to heroes that really don’t get a whole lot of playtime. All of this as we head into the first weekend of real HoN Tour action. Who knows, maybe this will be the start of the new Blood Hunter metagame…

Okay maybe not. Enjoy the first week of the HoN Tour everyone! Soon™ is finally here. Game HoN!

-Speidel
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