Heroes of the Storm PTR Patch Notes - November 3, 2025

Our next Heroes of the Storm patch has just hit the Public Test Realm and will be available for playtesting. As always, if you encounter any bugs during your PTR play sessions, please stop by the PTR Bug Report forum to let us know about your experiences.

Quick Navigation:

• General
• Map Updates
• Balance Update
• Bug Fixes

General

• Updated Homescreen and Startup Music.

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Map Updates

• General
  • A new Fallback Tower has been added to the longer lanes on each of the following battleground maps. This new tower will die when its corresponding Fort dies: Alterac Pass, Battlefield of Eternity, Blackheart's Bay, Braxis Holdout, Cursed Hollow, Dragon Shire, Garden of Terror, Hanamura Temple, Infernal Shrines, Sky Temple, Tomb of the Spider Queen, Towers of Doom, Volskaya Foundry, and Warhead Junction.
  • Attacks from Towers near Keeps and the Core will now reduce Hero armor, and the reduction has been increased from -10/-20 Armor to -20/-40 Armor.
  • Attacks from the Fallback Tower will reduce Hero armor similar to Towers near Keeps and the Core.
  • Forts, Keeps, and the Core will no longer grant Allied Heroes that take damage in their radius 35 Armor for 4 seconds.
  • The comeback system has been slightly magnified, particularly at wide level gaps.
• Alterac Pass
  • Cavalry now gain more health in the later stages of the game.
  • Cavalry now take 60% damage from structures (up from 50%).
  • Early capture time reduced from 30 seconds to 25 seconds. The first spawn only spawns a single defending unit.
• Braxis Holdout
  • Early objectives have lowered in health by 15%, but scaling has been increased significantly after 15 minutes.
• Garden of Terror
  • Garden Terror health scaling increased.
  • Garden Terror structure disabling plant bulb now damages itself at 10% per second (up from 6%).
• Infernal Shrines
  • Early objectives have lowered in health by 15%, but scaling has been increased significantly after 15 minutes.
• Warhead Junction
  • Nuke damage has been changed to flat, scaling damage. Scaling is updated when a Warhead is picked up.
  • Nukes now deal double damage versus Forts, Keeps, and the Core.

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Balance Update

General

• Pinnacle Rewards have been added to mutiple Heroes. These will be hard to obtain but provide powerful rewards.

Heroes

Falstad

Talents

• Level 1
  • Dishonorable Discharge
    • REWORK: Bonuses are now provided at 20/45/150 hits. At 20 hits, gain 30% damage. At 45 hits, gain 75% damage and reduces the cooldown y 2 seconds. Pinnacle Reward: At 150 hits, Lightning Rod provides 2 additional strikes.
  • Frequent Flyer
    • REWORK: Reduced attack speed bonus from 40% to 25%. Now provides 1 stack per minion and 5 stacks per Hero. At 50 stacks, gain 20 attack damage. At 125 stacks, gain 50 attack damage. Pinnacle Reward: At 300 stacks, gain 125 attack damage.
  • Gathering Storm
    • REWORK: Bonuses are now provided at 30/80/150 stacks, rather than incremental gains. At 30 stacks, gain 30% damage. At 80 stacks, gain 50% damage. Pinnacle Reward: At 150 stacks, gain 70% damage.
    • REWORK: Lose 8 stacks on death, but can not lose milestones that have already been completed.
• Level 7
  • Charged Up
    • Moved to be a Level 13 Talent.
    • No longer provides additional hits, but instead provides cooldown refresh on Hero takedowns.
• Level 13
  • Thunderstrikes
    • Moved to be a Level 7 Talent.

Guldan

Talents

• Level 1
  • Echoed Corruption
    • Increased stack requirement to 60. Pinnacle Reward: At 100 stacks, Corruption now heals for 50% of the damage dealt.
  • Pursuit of Flame
    • Increased radius from 10% to 15%.
    • Reworded to say "Fel Flame's area is increased by 33%".
    • You now lose 6 stacks upon death and can not lose progress upon completion.

Kerrigan

Base

• Primal Grasp [E]
  • Cooldown reduced from 10 to 8.
  • Delayed damage reduced from 195 to 165.
  • Initial damage increased from 25 to 40.
• Ravage [Q]
  • Damage reduced from 130 to 115.
• Impaling Blades [W]
  • Cooldown reduced from 12 seconds to 9 seconds.
  • Damage reduced from 165 to 150.
  • Now includes a baseline quest: Kill enemies within 1.5 seconds of hitting them with Ravage. Minions grant 1 progress and Heroes grant 5. At 75 stacks, Ravage gains 125 damage. Pinnacle Reward: At 125 stacks, Ravage gains 200 additional damage.
  • Radius increased from 1.5 to 1.65.
  • Stun duration reduced from 1 second to .75 seconds.
• Assimilation [D]
  • Increased the amount of shield gained from 10% to 20% of damage dealt.

Talents

• Level 1
  • Fury of the Swarm
    • No longer increases shields gained from primary attacks.
• Level 4
  • Ravaging Ferocity
    • NEW: Gain 25% attack speed for 3 seconds after using Ravage.
• Level 7
  • Boundless Fury
    • Cooldown increased from 10 seconds to 12 seconds.
  • Queen of Blades
    • Cooldown reduction reduced from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Level 10
  • Summon Ultralisk
    • Damage reduced from 250 to 225.
• Level 13
  • Chrysalis
    • HP lowered from 750 to 650.
    • Reduced the amount of health regenerated from 5% max health per second to 4%.
• Level 16
  • Painful Spikes
    • Damage reduced from 70 to 60.
• Level 20
  • Omegastorm
    • Increased extended duration from .25 seconds per hit to .4 seconds per hit.

Sylvanas

Base

• Black Arrows [D]
  • Black Arrows now refers to what was previously called "Banshee's Curse".
  • New Baseline Quest: Deal damage to non-minions with 3 stacks of black arrows. At 200 stacks, increased the damage bonus of Black Arrows by 50%. Pinnacle Reward: At 400 stacks, gain 50% lifesteal against enemies with 3 stacks of Black Arrows.
  • Reduced base damage bonus of Black Arrows to 15%.

Talents

• Level 1
  • Unrelenting Torment
    • NEW: Increases the damage of Shadow Dagger by 20% and increase its duration by 1 second.
• Level 4
  • Haunting Arrows
    • NEW: You can now activate Black Arrows to cause all damage dealt to stun non-heroes. 90 second cooldown, reduced by 3 seconds when attacking a structure.
• Level 7
  • Barbed Shot
    • Bonus damage increased from 350% to 400%.
  • Lost Soul
    • REWORK: Reduces the cooldown of Shadow Dagger when attacking non-minions with 3 stacks of Black Arrows by .75 seconds, doubled against Heroes.
• Level 13
  • Windrunner
    • Recast window reduced from 5 seconds to 4 seconds.

Thrall

Talents

• Level 1
  • Crash Lightning
    • REWORK: Bonuses are now provided at 15 and 30 stacks. At each milestone, Chain Lightning gains 240 damage. Lose 6 stacks on death, but can not lose milestones that have already been completed.
  • Echo of the Elements
    • REWORK: Bonuses are now provided at 20/40/100 stacks. At 20 stacks, reduce mana cost of Chain Lightning by 20. At 40 stacks, Chain Lightning will bounce one additional time. Pinnacle Reward: At 100 stacks, Chain Lightning gains an extra charge.
  • Rolling Thunder
    • Moved to be a Level 7 Talent.
    • No longer increases Chain Lightning bounces by 1.
• Level 7
  • Maelstrom Weapon
    • Moved to be a Level 1 Talent.
    • REWORK: Bonuses are now provided at 20/40/75 stacks, rather than incremental gains. At 20 stacks, gain 20 damage. At 40 stacks, gain 40 damage in addition to the previous benefits. Pinnacle Reward: At 75 stacks, Frostwolf Resilience now provides +200% Healing.
• Level 16
  • Tempest Fury
    • No longer provides additional quest stacks.
  • Thunderstorm
    • Increased damage bonus provided at max stacks from 25% to 30%.
• Level 20
  • Wind Rush
    • Cooldown increased from 80 seconds to 90 seconds.

Zul'jin

Base

• Basic attack damage decreased from 96 to 94.
• You Want Axe? [D]
  • No longer has a cap on stacks.
  • Now causes Zul'jin to lose 3 stacks (15 hits) on death.

Talents

• Level 1
  • Headhunter
    • Increased damage bonus per hero kill from 2% to 2.5%.

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Bug Fixes

Map

• Blackheart's Bay
  • Fixed an issue that caused the Battleground Objective to not start if a particular chest is the last destroyed chest.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the help text for attacking the Treasure Chest to not disappear if a particular chest is attacked.
• Warhead Junction
  • Fixed Warhead Junction Nuke Damage Dealt tracking.

Heroes

• D.Va
  • Fixed an issue that caused D.Va's Mech to not respawn with the correct amount of Blackheart's Bay Doubloons.
  • Base
    • Defense Matrix [W]
      • Fixed missing icon in D.Va's Quick Cast setting for Retarget Defense Matrix.
• Gazlowe
  • Level 16
    • Firin' Mah Lazors
      • Fixed an issue that caused Firin' Mah Lazorz's warning to not display correctly.
      • Fixed an issue that caused Big Top Gazlowe's Firin' Mah Lazorz to create permanent visuals.
• Kael'thas
  • Base
    • Living Bomb [W]
      • Living Bomb will not activate its effects on a target that becomes immune to Living Bomb.
      • Living Bomb will now apply its effects if the target dies with Living Bomb.
• Stukov
  • Level 1
    • Reactive Ballistospores
      • Fixed Reactive Ballistospores tooltip.
• Valla
  • Base
    • Hatred [D]
      • Fixed Hatred Tooltip.
• Zagara
  • Level 1
    • Infest
      • Fixed Infest active current bonus tooltip.
  • Level 16
    • Mutalisk
      • Fixed Mutalisk tooltip.

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