text:
Photo essayist to share book, images of migrant workers with WCSU
DANBURY, CONN. — Photographer and author David Bacon will be on the campus of Western Connecticut State University to discuss his book, "Illegal People … Living Under the Trees," on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011.
The discussion will begin at 2 p.m. on the main floor of the Ruth Haas library on the university's Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. The public is invited to this free lecture about U.S. immigration policy and its effect on displacement and migration. Bacon currently has a photo exhibit on display at the library.
Bacon's book focuses on migrant workers from Mexico who flee their native country for economic reasons and says in his book that migration is necessary to their survival. His book explores the difficult working conditions in the field, the housing crises in indigenous communities and efforts to preserve their culture.
For more information, contact the Office of University Relations at (203) 837-8650.
Western Connecticut State University offers outstanding faculty in a range of quality academic programs. Our diverse university community provides students an enriching and supportive environment that takes advantage of the unique cultural offerings of Western Connecticut and New York. Our vision: To be an affordable public university with the characteristics of New England's best small private universities.


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I take a lot of digital photos, but I'm not professional photographer, and my photos often need improving. The most common problem for me is that a photo is too light. There are probably advanced techniques of configuring photo camera and adjusting the photo in Photoshop, but I dont really have time to study them. So I found an easy trick to make such photos better very fast. Lets take a photo shown on the right. It need to be a bit darker. You can adjust its levels (Ctrl-L) or simply apply Auto levels (Ctrl-Shift-L), but it doesnt always produces good results.
Here is my trick:
* duplicate layer with photo
* set blend mode of the new layer to multiply
* adjust layer opacity (usually 50% is enough).
I have setup shortcuts for all 3 actions, so it really takes less than a second to apply! And the result usually has richer colors than it would have after levels adjusting.
... just another example...
← Duality - Making of Medusa - making of →

subset: commoncrawl


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Do EMRs Force Doctors To Draw Conclusions?
Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies. Contact her at @ziegerhealth on Twitter or visit her site at Zieger Healthcare.
Today I was reading a column by the inimitable Mr. HISTalk in which he argued that EMRs really can do a major disservice to patients. One way in which they do so, he suggests, is inherent in their design:
"EMRs try to turn freeform and sometimes tentative thoughts into dropdowns and template-driven generic verbiage that may destroy their original context (that's what programmers do: impose order and create retrievable database information, so it's not really their fault)."
I found this to be pretty interesting, because it highlighted a problem not discussed a lot in this space. To wit, it points out that dropdowns, templates and the like aren't just frustrating — they're actually forcing doctors to document care in pre-prescribed ways which may or may not suit the physician's line of thought. After all, in a template-and-dropdown environment, there's little room for thinking out loud, suggesting theories or making unorthodox observations.
Ideally, the notes physicians enter or dictate should represent the best of their judgment, but also their intuition. Not only is intuition necessary to determine the best course of care for patients, it's a critical tool for divining when something is out of order, be it a test result, the patient's current diagnosis or something in the history that doesn't fit.
And here you have the essential conflict between EMR-driven medicine and "old fashioned" methods. As Mr. HISTalk points out, it's the job of the EMR makers to normalize data such that it can be abstracted, shared and studied. But it's the job of the doctor to solve the problem that shows up in front of them, whether it can be described easily using a template or not.
Now, I'm not suggesting, as many have, that EMRs can't be evolved into tools which are flexible enough to both support physicians' process. But I do think it's important to focus in on issues like these, as they're still very much in play.


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Rochester Institute of Technology joins artistic forces with a variety of businesses and cultural organizations for the 2013 First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival. Since its debut last year, the event has been extended from five days to 10, and will be held Sept. 19-28 in downtown Rochester's East End.
RIT is renowned for combining technology and innovation with its strong artistic community—which will come to life with more than 20 performances showcasing an eclectic mix of poetry readings, dance, film, theater, music and visual arts. Most events are free and will take place at Gallery r, 100 College Ave.; Little Theatre I and the Little Café, 240 East Ave.; and Christ Church, 141 East Ave.
Featured on the roster of RIT events: Elekriti Fusion Band and Wild Nights-Play That Funky Music, Encore a cappella, Kinect the Dots dance, film screening of "Crocodile," storytelling with Howie Lester on Dancing Chickens and Kissing Books, RIT School of Film and Animation Student Honors Show, and a theater production of Israel Horowitz' Line (now in its 38th year Off-Off Broadway) performed by the RIT Players.
"Rochester is a festival town," says Zerbe Sodervick, Gallery r director for RIT's College of Imaging Arts and Sciences. "People come out. They get excited about the arts, and for people who build it into their busy schedules, there's a huge reward.
"It allows them to enjoy a dance performance, live theater, a poetry reading, or the creative efforts of a painter, sculptor and photographer who exhibit their work. The Fringe Fest goes beyond what you see and becomes an extraordinary learning experience and a sharing of events."
For a schedule of RIT Fringe events, go to www.rit.edu/fringefest. Or contact RIT Director of Special Events, Lynn Rowoth, at 585-475-7408 or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Digg has been notorious for driving a server-crashing influx of traffic to web properties worldwide. The social news site has been able to drive anywhere from 1,000 to over 1.3 million page views in mere days.
Reportedly 70% of Digg's user base have blogs, which when promoted to popularity are picked up by other bloggers, driving additional traffic. This helps websites attain additional exposure.
Why the New Digg for Your Business?
The new Digg will allow publishers to grow a targeted following much like Twitter, without having to promote content to Digg's front page. When you submit (or Digg) your content, it will be exposed to your following on their My News page (see below).


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© ® The Nobel Foundation
IPCC honoured with the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
Phone: +41-22-730-8208/84 e-mail:
There is ample evidence of climate variability at a wide range of time scales
all over Latin America, from intraseasonal to long term. In many subregions
of Latin America, this variability in climate normally is associated with phenomena
that already produce impacts with important socioeconomic and environmental
consequences that could be exacerbated by global warming and associated climate
change. Signals that can be related to variability and/or change in climate
conditions for Latin America have been identified in some of the analyses performed
by researchers in the region, particularly for streamflow, precipitation, temperature,
glacier oscillations, general circulation, and extreme events. Estimations of
potential future climate conditions are based on climate change scenarios studies
developed for some subregions of Latin America.
Glaciers in Latin America have receded dramatically in the past decades, and
many of them have disappeared completely (Williams and Ferrigno, 1998). In 18
glaciers in the Peruvian Andes, mass balances since 1968 and satellite images
show a reduction of more than 20% of the glacial surface, corresponding to 11,300
million m3 of ice (Morales-Arnao, 1969a,b; INAGGA-CONAM, 1999). Significant
reductions also have occurred in southern Chile and Argentina (e.g., glacier
Sarmiento) (Basso, 1997). Deglaciation may have contributed to observed negative
trends in streamflows in that region (Morales-Arnao, 1999). For rivers in arid
lands in northwest Peru and northeast and southeastern Brazil, significant negative
trends also have been detected, but these variations seem to be related to human
water management for irrigation purposes and increases in agricultural areas,
rather than climate-induced changes (INRENA, 1994; Marengo, 1995; Marengo et
al., 1998).
Between 20°S and 40°S, precipitation around the Andes occurs mainly
during the winter. Snow accumulates in the high parts of the cordillera and
melts during the summer, becoming the main source of water for rivers in the
region. Agricultural activities in central Chile and the Argentinean central
western plains are maintained through irrigation. Therefore, it may be said
with high confidence that fluctuations in winter precipitation have a strong
socioeconomic impact in the region.
The precipitation record for Santiago, Chile, is highly correlated with snow
depth in the cordillera. Recorded precipitation exhibited a decreasing trend
from the late 19th century through the mid-1970s but has reverted since then.
A similar trend has been detected in streamflow in the region (Minetti and Sierra,
1989; Carril et al., 1997; Compagnucci and Vargas, 1998; Compagnucci
et al., 2000; Waylen et al., 2000). In southern Chile and the
Argentinean cordillera, a negative trend in precipitation and streamflow has
been detected (Quintela et al., 1993; Nuñez et al., 1999).
In northwestern Mexico, there is a tendency for more winter precipitation,
which has resulted in positive trends in river water levels. However, along
with more intense winter precipitation, interannual climate variability has
increased (Magaña and Conde, 2000). On the other hand, some parts of
southern Mexico and Central America exhibit positive or negative rainfall trends,
depending on the orientation of the catchment (Aparicio, 1993; IPCC, 1996; Jáuregui,
1997; TAR WGI Chapter 3).
For Nicaragua, rainfall analysis for 1961-1995 showed negative trends
in the north and northwest parts of the country. A systematic increment was
detected on the Caribbean coast, and almost no variation was found along the
central and the Pacific coastal regions (MARENA, 2000).
In Colombia, weak rainfall trends have been observed for the period 1955-1995,
with no preferred sign at a regional level. For central Colombia, rainy seasons
have been occurring earlier in recent years than 25 years ago (Mesa et al.,
1997). Trends in Colombian river streamflow are mixed, but the main river catchments
such as the Cauca and Magdalena Rivers exhibit decreasing trends. Deforestation
could account for such decreasing trends in river discharges (Poveda and Mesa,
For the Amazon region, Marengo et al. (2000) have identified multidecadal
variations in rainfall in northern and southern portions of the basin, with
opposite tendencies. Perhaps the most important finding is the presence of periods
with relatively wetter or drier conditions that are more relevant than any unidirectional
trends themselves. For instance, the period 1950-1976 was regionally wet
in northern Amazonia, but since 1977 the region has been drier. This dryness
does not seem to be related to regional deforestation (see Marengo et al.,
1998; Marengo and Nobre, 2000; TAR WGI Chapter
3). Similarly, streamflow series in Amazonian rivers also exhibit multidecadal
variations; they do not display significant unidirectional trends (Richey et
al., 1989; Marengo, 1995).
In northeast Brazil, multidecadal variations in atmospheric circulation over
the tropical Atlantic have been linked to similar time-scale variations in rainfall
over the region (Hastenrath and Greischar, 1993; Nobre and Shukla, 1996; Wagner,
1996). On longer time scales, rainfall in northern northeast Brazil exhibits
weak positive trends that are consistent with changes in decadal changes in
circulation described in Wagner (1996).
Streamflow in the River Plate basinparticularly in the Negro, Paraguay,
Paraná, and Uruguay Riversexhibits a negative trend from 1901 to
1970, which reverses after this period. Multidecadal variability also is observed
in discharges (Garcia and Vargas, 1998; Genta et al., 1998; Robertson
and Mechoso, 1998). Moreover, there are written reports of alternating floods
and droughts periods during the 16th-18th centuries, indicating high natural
variability (Prieto and Herrera, 1992).
In subtropical Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, precipitation exhibits a long-term
change, with a sharp increase in the period 1956-1990 after a dry period
along 1921-1955 (Castañeda and Barros, 1996). In the Pampa region,
there is a positive trend in precipitation during the period 1890-1984.
This increase in annual rainfalls was accompanied by a relative increase in
precipitation during the spring and summer (Penalba and Vargas, 1996; Hoffman
et al., 1997; Krepper and Sequeira, 1998). At high elevations in northwest
Argentina, paleoclimatic records suggest an increase in precipitation in the
past 200 years (Villalba et al., 1997). In the same region, as well as
in Bolivia and southeast Peru, records show that the 17th-century climate was
wetter and less variable (fewer floods and droughts ), whereas the 18th century
was highly unstable, with a large amplitude in the annual cycle and recurrent
wet and dry periods (Prieto and Herrera, 1992).
Variations in precipitation in Latin America have a strong effect on runoff
and streamflow, which also are affected by melting of glaciers and snow. Based
on available information, there is evidence that these variations and their
sign depend on the geographical subregion under consideration.
Table of contents
IPCC Homepage


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Syfy is wading back into "Sharknado" infested waters. The cable channel's surprise viral sensation is getting a sequel -- or prequel -- to debut in 2014.
"Sharknado," starring Ian Ziering and Tara Reid, is the latest low-budget science fiction thriller to debut on Syfy, which has been host to such films as "Sharktopus" and "Malibu Shark Attack." But somehow, the film's absurd premise, about a tornado picking sharks up from the ocean and spinning them above the streets of Los Angeles, bringing serrated death from the skies, caught on with social media.
During the film's July 11 premiere, 318,232 tweets relating to "Sharknado" were sent, with 5,000 tweets per minute at the height of the frenzy. However, despite the intense social media interest, the movie drew only an average of 1.37 million viewers.
VIDEO: Live chat with 'Sharknado' writer Thunder Levin at 3 p.m. PDT
Still, it's one of the first times that Syfy's low-budget productions have broken through into the mainstream consciousness. Therefore, it's not surprising that a "Sharknado" follow-up is in the works, to be produced by Asylum, purveyors of many a low-cost, drive-in-quality mockbuster.
The film could be either a sequel or a prequel, according to Thomas Vitale, Syfy's executive vice president of programming and original movies. He did reveal that it would bring the "Sharknado" party to the East Coast, with the deadly sharks terrorizing New York City.
Additionally, the channel is opening up the titling of the film to fans. Should it be "Sharknado 2: More Sharknado-y?" or "Sharknado 2: Electric Boogaloo?" or perhaps "2 Sharknado 2 Furious."
Fans are being encouraged to submit their suggestions via Twitter to @Syfymovies.
The family on 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo' is the real deal
Regis Philbin returns for Fox Sports talk show 'Crowd Goes Wild'
N-word war: Rush Limbaugh rips Rachel Jeantel, CNN, Piers Morgan
PHOTOS: TV shows and their spinoffs
Overrated/Underrated 2014
PHOTOS: 101 best-written TV shows of all time


text:
"I'm not denouncing the church and I'm not interested in people who want me to denounce the church," he said, adding that the new pastor at Trinity and "the church have been suffering from the attention my campaign has focused on them."
Obama said he and his wife have been discussing the issue since Wright's appearance at the National Press Club in Washington last month, which reignited the furor over remarks Wright had made in various sermons at the church.
"I suspect we'll find another church home for our family," Obama said.
"It's clear that now that I'm a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will imputed to me even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles," he said.
"I have no idea how it will impact my presidential campaign but I know it was the right thing to do for me and my family," he said.
"This was a pretty personal decision and I was not trying to make political theater out of it," he added.
For months, Obama has been hamstrung by the rhetoric of Wright, whose sermons blaming U.S. policies for the Sept. 11 attacks and calls of "God damn America" for its racism became fixtures on the Internet and cable news networks.
Initially, Obama said he disagreed with Wright but portrayed him as a family member he couldn't disown. The preacher had officiated at Obama's wedding, baptized his two daughters and been his spiritual mentor for some 20 years.
But six weeks after Obama's well-received speech on race, Wright claimed at the Press Club appearance that the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.
The next day, Obama denounced Wright's comments as "divisive and destructive."
Remarks by Wright inflamed racial tensions and posed an unwanted problem for Obama, front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, as he sought to wrap up the party's nod.
More recently, racially charged remarks from the same pulpit by another pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, kept the controversy alive and proved the latest thorn in Obama's side. As a guest speaker at Obama's church, Pfleger mocked Obama rival Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Although Obama condemned comments by both Wright and Pfleger, the controversy persisted.
Obama made clear he wasn't happy with Pfleger's comments - in which the Catholic priest pretended he was Clinton crying over "a black man stealing my show" - and said he was "deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger's divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn't reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause."
Pfleger issued an apology, saying he was sorry if his comments offended Clinton or anyone else.
The timing of Obama's decision broke late Saturday, while most of the political attention was focused on the Democratic National Committee's struggle to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Republican John McCain also has had his woes with religious leaders.
Earlier this month, McCain rejected endorsements from two influential but controversial televangelists, saying there is no place for their incendiary criticisms of other faiths.
McCain spurned the months-old endorsement of Texas preacher John Hagee after an audio recording surfaced in which the preacher said God sent Adolf Hitler to help Jews reach the promised land. McCain called the comment "crazy and unacceptable."
He later repudiated the support of Rod Parsley, an Ohio preacher who has sharply criticized Islam and called the religion inherently violent.
"This was one I didn't see coming," Obama said Saturday when he asked if he had anticipated the firestorm that would erupt over his relationship with Wright.


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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Officials said Friday that a crusading small-town Mexican mayor who denounced cartel extortion has been found dead on a roadside, a killing that has drawn national attention.
Former President Felipe Calderon published tweets demanding an explanation of the death of Ygnacio Lopez Mendoza, the mayor of the town of Santa Ana Maya in western Michoacan state. The largely agricultural town has about 12,000 residents.
Calderon is from Michoacan, which has been dominated for years by the Knights Templar drug cartel. Its members routinely extort money from residents, businesses and even local officials.
"The mayor ... was on hunger strike in front of the senate complaining of complicity between local police and criminals. Today he's dead. How did it happen?" Calderon asked on his Twitter account.
Armando Amaro Vallejo, an assistant prosecutor in the neighboring state of Guanajuato where the mayor's body was found on Thursday, said an autopsy showed he died of "mechanical asphyxiation ensuing from neck trauma," a phrase normally used to refer to strangulation but which could potentially refer to an accidental injury.
Amaro Vallejo said prosecutors were not ruling out homicide in the death.
The Mexican Association of Local Authorities said Lopez Mendoza "suffered during his administration not only from a lack of funding, but also drug cartel harassment."
Lopez Mendoza, 62, recently held a hunger strike to press demands for more funds for local governments. During that strike, he told local media that Michoacan mayors were being forced to give 10 percent of works budgets to the Knights Templar, a charge also made by residents in other parts of the state.
Ricardo Bautista, president of the mayors' association, said on MVS radio that Lopez Mendoza had told others at an association meeting in Mexico City shortly before his death that he was being subjected to extortion by the drug cartel. Bautista said at least 40 mayors have been killed in Mexico in recent years. In some cases, their own local police forces are believed to have been involved in the killings.
Calderon wrote in another tweet, "The crime problem in Michoacan won't be solved as long as local governments continue to avoid cleaning up local police forces and detectives who are infiltrated by the criminals."
In a sign of how widespread the problem is, army troops moved into another town in Michoacan, Vista Hermosa, on Thursday and detained the entire local police force of 25 officers for questioning. Vista Hermosa is located in violent area where the Knights Templar are battling the New Generation, a cartel from neighboring Jalisco state.
On Monday, military and Federal Police moved into the Michoacan port of Lazaro Cardenas, a major source of income for the cartel through drugs, precursor chemicals and extortion. They took over security, dismissing 113 local police.


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Why is wrestling (WWE) still taken seriously?
Posted December 06, 2010 - 12:23 PM
- Yaboy likes this
Posted December 07, 2010 - 10:53 AM
Posted December 07, 2010 - 10:58 AM
^ Well said Mac!
Mac is layin' the Smackdown on your candy [expletive]
Posted December 07, 2010 - 11:11 AM
Mac is layin' the Smackdown on your candy [expletive]
And's that the bottom line cause Stone Cold said SO.
Posted December 07, 2010 - 11:52 AM
MMA sucks btw
Edited by JohnMcCartney, December 07, 2010 - 11:53 AM.
Posted December 10, 2010 - 10:56 AM
MMA sucks btw
I'd love to see JohnMcCartney say that to anyone with any kind off MMA experience.
Posted December 10, 2010 - 12:32 PM
watch out the WWE fans are starting to gang up on us
MMA sucks btw
Says the guy hiding behind a computer
Posted December 10, 2010 - 01:26 PM
watch out the WWE fans are starting to gang up on us
MMA sucks btw
lol, such a tough guy aren't you?
Edited by Macasero, December 10, 2010 - 01:41 PM.
Posted December 10, 2010 - 02:56 PM
Posted December 17, 2010 - 05:00 AM
This is by far the stupidest post here on TLN. No offense to the OP but man, Whata are you trying to prove? I'm a big MMA fan, but i never ever belittled people who loves wrestling. Seriously, if you're trying to act cool by posting some of ishes here make some legit arguments and not some dumbass'd debate like this. By the looks of it, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't have a single strand of clue what wrestlers has to go through week in, week out. Have you seen Anderson Silva fight week after week? It isn't fighting but wrestlers are punishing their bodies almost every single week. The story lines are fake, but the pain and agony of those wrestlers are not. You shouldn't even dictate what ''grown'' people should watch. I know everyone is entitled to their own opinions but yours is absolutely stupid. No offense
"Love me or hate me it's one or the other. Always has been. Hate my game, hate my swagger, hate my fade-away, my hunger, hate that i'm a veteran, A champion, hate that. Hate it with all your heart, and hate that i'm loved for the exact same reasons." - Kobe
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Quote:This is a guy I train with sometimes,its not the greatest clip for it but I think you will agree when you see it a couple of times,that his one inch punch,although in no way is a street worthy weapon,its a powerfull display of body mechanics and certainly not a push.And he was probably goin easy.
Quote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKuXOkm09bM Too busy talkin crap and forgot the link LOL!!!
Quote:And yes I am a geek.Waaaaang is like a steel ball on the end of a chain,thats kung fu power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Although a hospital monthly inspection is made, all safety inspections of the above manual reference are not being made. ... 19: Institute a program of safety inspections in accordance with Chapter 5, MP-3, Part III, and maintain suitable records, or include these inspections as part of the stationa#39;s scheduled preventive maintenance program. ... Water is then pumped by two, 50 HP electrically driven pumps, having a combined total pumping capacity of about 700 gpm through an 8-inchanbsp;...
|California Earthquake Disaster
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Once you have finished the sign-up process, you will be redirected to your download Book page.How it works:


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By Claire Davenport
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is to release a swathe of radio spectrum to give mobile and internet companies more space for rolling out faster fourth-generation (4G) wireless services.
Monday's announcement means an extra 120 MHz of spectrum will be available for 4G from 2014 at the latest to try to accommodate a sharp rise in the use of such services on mobile devices.
The radio spectrum, used by all wireless technologies for sending and receiving information, is becoming increasingly crowded as mobile demand adds to TV and radio broadcasting in using a resource also needed by emergency services and military telecommunications.
Industry estimates put growth in global mobile data traffic at 26 percent annually by 2015. According to networking firm Cisco Systems, mobile data traffic volumes in the European Union are expected to increase by more than 90 percent each year for the next 5 years.
Superfast 4G mobile communications allow the use of data-heavy services such as video conferencing.
"This extra spectrum for 4G in Europe means we can better meet the changing and growing demand for broadband," said Neelie Kroes, European Union Commissioner for digital policy.
Freeing up additional spectrum would also help the EU address competition from countries such as the United States and Japan, where wireless services are among the world's fastest.
"The EU will enjoy up to twice the amount of spectrum for high speed wireless broadband as in the United States," the Commission said in a statement.
Companies that own parts of the radio wave spectrum bought after liberalization in the 1990s consider the resource among their most valuable assets and many are reluctant to share.
But in September the Commission pushed telecoms firms to share the radio frequencies they use for mobile and broadband services as space runs out.
(Reporting By Claire Davenport; Editing by Louise Heavens)


text:
LONDON (AP) — British music and entertainment retailer HMV admitted defeat on Tuesday after more than 90 years in business, suspending trading in its shares and calling in administrators to try to salvage any viable parts of the business.
HMV is the last big retail chain selling recorded music in Britain and employs more than 4,000 people working in 238 stores, which will remain open for the time being.
The company's management confirmed that it had failed to gain agreements with lenders and suppliers to continue trading. It has appointed three partners of Deloitte LLP to administer the business.
The name HMV stands for "his master's voice," from the company's trademark of a dog named Nipper staring intently at the bell of an early gramophone player. The first HMV music store was opened in London in 1921. In 1986 the company opened a store in Canada, and later moved into the United States, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The company's shares closed at 1.1 pence in London trading on Monday, down from a high of 4 pence a month ago.
"HMV's notice of administration was inevitable with online retailers, downloads and supermarkets combining to marginalize a brand which has become out-priced and outdated, despite its strong heritage," said Julie Palmer, partner at recovery and restructuring specialist Begbies Traynor.
HMV suffers from the high costs of running too many shops in high-rent city centers, while competitors selling online have lower overheads.
Despite steadily losing market share to Internet sellers, HMV still has about 20 percent of the U.K. music and video market, which includes both downloads and discs.
The same pressure of rapidly changing technology, combined with Britain's sluggish economy, recently swamped two other major British retailers, appliance dealer Comet and the Jessops camera shops.
The British Retail Consortium says that about 10 percent of the nation's shop buildings now stand vacant, and Begbies Traynor says 140 U.K. retailers on are its critical list.
An HMV shop on Oxford Street in London played a crucial part in the launch of The Beatles.
The group's manager, Brian Epstein, went there in 1962 with audition tapes which had failed to impress Decca Records. An acquaintance at the store suggested Epstein have the tapes converted to an acetate disc, which could be done in the building.
According to "Shout," Philip Norman's book about the group, the engineer who made the disc was impressed and sent Epstein upstairs to meet Syd Coleman, head of EMI's publishing company, who in turn connected the manager with producer George Martin. Intrigued by "something very peculiar" in the sound, Martin arranged an audition.
After meeting the group, Martin said he thought: "Well, let's put them under contract. I can't lose much."


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Free-to-Play Hero Rotation: September 25, 2018
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Heroes of the Storm's third Ranked Play Season will go live next week along with the latest Brightwing/Kerrigan content update. Check out new rewards and changes to Team League coming this Season!
Ranked Play Updates
Team League now supports all party sizes, including solo players. All solo players will need to choose which League to play for the first time after the patch. Heroes devs also discussed other changes that they planned to implement this Season in the Ranked Play & Matchmaking AMA from August 9, but because they are not covered in this preview, we're not sure if they make it live.
Ranked Play & Matchmaking AMA Changes
Preventing returning ranked players from placing higher than Diamond 3 each season-roll after placement matches. Reduce the number of placement games required for returning ranked players. Separate out regional GM ladders to allow players to rank up within their local player base and matchmaking rulesets. Add draft swaps for Hero League. Extend the Rank Point Decay to affect more leagues. Blizzard (Source)
Heroes of the Storm's third 2018 ranked season is ending soon, and we've got a host of new rewards that you can earn just by playing ranked games in the coming months. Read on for details!
Season Roll Dates
2018 Season 4 will begin as soon as our next patch becomes available for download in each region. Check the season start and end dates below to make sure you're able to dive into the rankings as soon as the season rolls:
Event Date 2018 Season 4 Start Week of September 25* 2018 Season 4 End Week of December 14* *Exact date may vary slightly by region.
Ranked Play Updates
Team League Team League now supports all party sizes, including solo players. All solo players will need to choose which League to play for the first time after the patch. 2018 Season 4 Rewards
Players who manage to brawl their way up through the leagues during the upcoming season can claim new portraits, mounts, and gold rewards for their achievements in Hero and Team League. Take a look at everything that's up for grabs this season!
Hero League Portraits
Team League Portraits
Mount Rewards
Hero League Rank Rewards Bronze 500 Gold Bronze Hero League Portrait Silver 750 Gold Silver Hero League Portrait Gold 1000 Gold Gold Hero League Portrait Platinum 1250 Gold Season 4 Mount Platinum Hero League Portrait Diamond 1500 Gold Season 4 Mount Diamond Hero League Portrait Master 1750 Gold Season 4 Mount Epic Season 4 Mount Master Hero League Portrait Grand Master 2000 Gold Season 4 Mount Epic Season 4 Mount Grand Master Hero League Portrait Team League Rank Rewards Bronze 500 Gold Season 4 Mount Bronze Team League Portrait Silver 750 Gold Season 4 Mount Silver Team League Portrait Gold 1000 Gold Season 4 Mount Gold Team League Portrait Platinum 1250 Gold Season 4 Mount Platinum Team League Portrait Diamond 1500 Gold Season 4 Mount Diamond Team League Portrait Master 1750 Gold Season 4 Mount Epic Season 4 Mount Master Team League Portrait Grand Master 2000 Gold Season 4 Mount Epic Season 4 Mount Grand Master Team League Portrait If you're ready to begin your Ranked Play journey in Heroes of the Storm but are unsure how, head over to our Ranked Play Guide to get started on the right foot.
Good luck and have fun during the upcoming ranked season!
By Stan
Abathur and Sylvanas can be purchased at a reduced Gem price next week along with various skins and mounts.
Blizzard (Source)
Every Tuesday, we place a number of Heroes on sale, and swap a fresh set of cosmetics into the featured item rotation. Check out this week's items and then head in-game to pick up anything that catches your eye.
Heroic Deals: September 25 – October 2, 2018
Our next set of Heroic Deals will begin on Tuesday, September 25! Check out the list of upcoming featured items and Hero discounts below. Upcoming Hero Sales
Sylvanas— Sale Price: 312 gems Abathur — Sale Price: 375 Gems The following skins and mounts will be added to the featured item rotation and will become purchasable with gems until this round of Heroic Deals comes to an end:
Upcoming Featured Skins
Skeletal Raven Sylvanas Ironclaw Rehgar Eternal Star Lich Kel'Thuzad Hellish Fallen Junkrat Upcoming Featured Mounts
Horde Road Boar Penance Judgment Charger
By Stan
This week's brawl, Booty Coffers, is virtually Blackheart's Bay with minor twists. Blackheart appears on the map immediately after the gates open and only accepts payments of 100 Doubloons. He will bombard the enemy Core instead of structures, Doubloon chests spawn more often, appear at new locations, and drop more Doubloons. Play 3 games of Booty Coffers to earn a standard Loot Chest.
Blizzard (Source)
Blackheart got greedy! Only the richest team can hope to win over his favor with a hefty payment of 100 coins. Dodge cannonball barrages while trying to gather enough Doubloons to take down your enemies. Yarrrrrr!
Shuffle pick - Choose from one of three Heroes before entering the battle. Standard play - no talent or level restrictions. Blackheart appears immediately after the gates open, and accepts Doubloon turn-ins as usual. Skeleton Doubloon camps have been removed from the map. Doubloon chests spawn more often, appear at new locations, and drop more Doubloons. Forts and keeps drop 10 Doubloons when they die. Mercenary camps drop an additional 3 Doubloons (for a total of 5). The Boss camp drops a total of 15 Doubloons. While chests are active, Blackheart fires one cannonball every 2 seconds in an area immediately around the chest. Blackheart does not bombard enemy structures as normal (at 10/12/14 Doubloons, etc.). Instead, he waits for a team to turn in 100 Doubloons, whereupon he bombards the enemy core until it's dead. REWARDS:
Complete three matches of the Booty Coffers brawl to earn a Loot Chest! Find out more about the Heroes Brawl game mode on our Heroes Brawl site; and as always, you can find more information on this week's Brawl by clicking the Brawl Info button at the bottom of the play screen when preparing to queue for the Brawl game mode.
As always, we'll see you in the Nexus!
By Stan
Heroes of the Storm developers answered your design and balance questions on reddit yesterday and here's a summary of the AMA.
Heroes of the Storm Game Design & Balance Team
The following members of the Heroes of the Storm dev team answered your questions:
/u/BlizzCooper – Matt Cooper (Lead Content Designer) /u/KaeoMilker – Kaeo Milker (Production Director) /u/Blizz_Daybringer – Brett Crawford (Live Designer) /u/BlizzNeyman – Alex Neyman (Live Designer) /u/BlizzAZJackson – Adam Jackson (Live Designer) /u/BlizzMattVi – Matt Villers (Lead Hero Designer) /u/Blizz_SHolmes – Steve Holmes (Battleground Designer) AMA Highlights
Vile Infection, Phoenix, and Lightning Serpent will have their tooltips changed to match their existing functionality (they will list as a separate damage number instead of a percentage bonus). Rampant Hellfire, Dragonstrike, Zei's Vengeance, Arcane Orbit, and Buzzsaw will all see gameplay changes so that their perentage based bonuses stack additively with other percentage based bonuses. It's not great that the optimal play at highest levels is to kill minions and ignore the enemy Hero. A constant struggle of developers is that they want to create a game where offensive play is the optimal strategy. However, at the top end of play, pros are encouraged to find a situation where the optimal play is to be safe so they have a better chance to consistently win more often, as offensive play is more risky and less desirable. They have many reasons for infinite tower ammo and they'd like to make laning interactive outside of reverting that change. Solutions to improve laning? a) More Health/Mana management. It's bad when Heroes have too much sustain (Blaze, Yrel). b) More rewards for winning a lane. The risk/reward is not enough in favor of the player who is outplaying their opponent in the lane. A quest (be it baseline or a talent) is all about adding asymmetrical power spikes to an otherwise fairly static power curve. Uncapped quests are fun, because all games start out with a chance to become infinitely powerful. They will continue to rework quests that require less optimal play in order to stack quickly. Recently, they got rid of Tyrande's Sentinel quest. New Heroes oftentimes have low Mana costs. They want to make Mana costs more meaningful and are discussing things internally. They need to definewhat Mana means to the game and what direction they want to move towards. It's not fun to run out of Mana. Following the release of the matchmaking improvements, they've seen a dramatic increase in match quality, but also longer queue times, mostly during off-peak hours. Blizzard's working on adding dynamic matchmaking restrictions that scale based on the number of players in the queue. They're looking at the entire ranked play system. Removing queue restrictions from Team League is a small step towards larger changes. It's unacceptable if players are unable to find games due to their MMR and rank points being too divergent. They're internally discussing getting rid of points and mapping MMR bands directly to a more granular rank system. Malthael: Tormented Souls changes are planned. No ETA, but the reworked version would likely focus on dealing spread damage, enhancing Reaper's Mark-focused gameplay. Role rework is planned later this year. The biggest hurdle to making Heroes that break fundamental gameplay rules (Abathur, Cho'gall, Murky) is that it's not good enough to just make them fun to play, they also have to be fun to play alongside and against. Ragnaros was intended to be a core-replacement Hero who would sit in your base and command fiery minions on the battlefield. There were points in development where Stukov could revive dead Heroes as Zerg constructs with unique abilities, Alexstrasza could heal enemies, Mephisto could make enemy Heroes hostile to each other, and more. Ana: Healing Dart will gain the functionality to pass through full life Heroes in a future patch. Eye of Horus and Aim Down Sights will be updated when they decide to do a talent rework for her. Catapults can't be blinded right and and this is a bug that has been fixed in the Brightwing/Kerrigan rework patch. The general philosophy has moved toward increasing emphasis on interactive & skill-based gameplay for Support Heroes. Illidan: Small tuning is planned for him, but nothing substantial. The larger the rework, the greater risk of hurting the Hero's core identity. More abundant changes means that the game is fresher for people, and fewer Heroes are left alone for less time. Lunara was a Hero they thought would be overpowered at launch, but the opposite was true. Conversely, they thought Malthael was fine when released, but he ended up completely crushing the solo lane. Mobility is a great way to allow playrs to make flashy plays and has a high skill cap, we'll likely see more forms of it with added counterplay in the future. Garden of Terror rework was done in response to years of consistent player feedback (apparently it was the least favorite map in the game). Goal of the rework was to preserve the map's thematic elements while removing the elements that made players sigh when they saw the loading screen. Blackheart's Bay changes are in the works, but they currently do not expect a complete mechanical overhaul like the Garden rework. Chen: Will be revisited at some point, the update won't be happening in the next few months though. It's clear that he's not a tank with his current kit. Multiclass is gone with the role rework. Varian will be categorized as Bruiser/Tank. Tassadar: Has been a challenging Hero to balance. They'll look at him to see how he can improve. Previous AMA Recaps
Art & Animation AMA: July 11th Ranked Play & Matchmaking AMA: August 9th Blizzard (Source)
Why are there so many systems for damage multipliers in use, and what are the intended interactions
Me and /u/zanzure have written multiple posts about this topic, and the current system seems to be very unintuitive
(Quiz, Results)
There are also many edge cases which seem to make no sense. There are currently three different variations on % multipliers.
Differing CEffectDamages (e.g. Hanzo's [[Dragonstrike]])
MultiplicativeModifierArray (e.g. Alarak's [[Sadism]] and Lightning Surge center bonus)
AccumulatorArray (e.g. Ming's [[Arcane Orb]], Gul'dan's [[Rampant Hellfire]])
Each of these have large differences between each other. Which one is intended? These different methods are frequently worded identically as well (For comparison: [[Dragonstrike]], [[Sadism]], [[Rampant Hellfire]]).
Hey lemindhawk and zanzure, we appreciate your passion and the time you've invested into discussing how damage multipliers work.
In general, our principle for percentage based bonuses is for them to be additive with one another. This allows us to tune them to feel like nice meaty benefit when taken on their own, without getting out of control when stacking several together.
There have been a few instances where the tooltips are not matching the effects in game -- we plan on fixing these soon. Vile Infection, Phoenix, and Lightning Serpent will have their tooltips changed to match their existing functionality (aka, they'll list a separate damage number instead of a percentage bonus). Rampant Hellfire, Dragonstrike, Zei's Vengeance, Arcane Orbit, and Buzzsaw will all see gameplay changes so that their percentage based bonuses stack additively with other percentage based bonuses.
This is an early look at what we're planning on changing, and there's a chance that when we start to fix these bugs that things may change slightly, so don't be alarmed if the course changes slightly. But I wanted to share what we are working on since you've put so much effort into compiling the list of exceptions. Thanks again!
What is the general consensus on Infinite Ammo vs Ammo for turrets. Infinite ammo has put the Solo Lane into a boring, stagnate state that revolves around high-sustain and waveclear with no incentive to push the structures (due to infinite ammo, 250 xp towers, risk of being ganked)?
Thanks for the question ZerglingHOTS!
We've been reading a lot of the discussion on the solo lane, and are still talking with each other internally about what the true causes and solutions are for the current state of the solo lane.
Here are some of my thoughts on the current state of the solo lane:
I agree that there is an issue with there not being enough interaction between some heroes in the solo lane, and that at the highest levels it's not great that the optimal play is to kill minions and largely ignore the enemy Hero. As a side note here, a constant struggle we have as developers is that we want to create a game where offensive play is generally the optimal strategy. It's important that, most of the time, offensive play is optimal so that the game has exciting moments and is driven towards its inevitable conclusion. However, at the extreme top end of play, pros are actually encouraged to find any situation where the optimal play is to be safe so that they have a better chance to consistently win more often, as offensive play is generally also more risky, and therefore less desirable. I believe it's a complicated problem. There are a lot of factors going on, and saying that the cause is purely something like infinite tower ammo is a bit scary to me as we could easily make a mistake and create system-level changes that don't actually resolve the true issues, which could, at best, do nothing to solve the problem, and at worst create more issues with the flow of the game as a whole.
From my perspective, we didn't really see these issues so much after Tower Ammo specifically came out, and we saw it a lot more with the release of Blaze and Yrel, who are both heroes with incredibly high sustain, good waveclear, and who are difficult to gank. Because of this, we targeted the sustain of both of these heroes in our balance patch which is coming out today. I don't think this will completely solve what's going on, but it's a step that we wanted to take in the short term and see how that works.
I admit that this could be an incorrect observation, as it could have just taken this long to have other root issues of the solo lane experience come to light. We had many reasons for tower ammo being infinite, and we would like to explore other ways to make laning interactive outside of reverting that change. We're totally open to feedback and suggestions here, and will be having discussions going forward about how to make this more interactive. One cool suggestion that I thought was neat was ChaosOS's post about the mage minion having Sapper-like qualities to it.
In regards to my view on the specific problems and where I'd like to see the solo-lane go, the two things I'd like to see are:
More management of Health, Mana, and getting value in trades against the enemy hero. When heroes have too much sustain (ex. Blaze and Yrel), it's a heavy de-motivator to interact with the opponent since that damage will quickly be undone. More reward for winning the lane. Right now I believe that the risk/reward for shoving the opposing hero out and pushing with the lane is not enough in favor of the player who is outplaying their opponent in the lane. You have recently reduced the amount of quests (Stukov, Tyrande), realizing that you went a bit overboard with them. Are you happy with the baseline quests of the Assassins I mentioned above (Alarak, Kel'Thuzad, Zul'jin, The Butcher)? Because I honestly don't feel very happy about those and wish for a way to not make them feel too feast-or-famine-like.
Good morning Lorhand - great question!
While we do read quite a bit of criticism about baseline quests, typically pointing at the feast-or-famine nature of them, there are also a lot of players that enjoy the thrill of chasing power. At the end of the day, a quest (be it baseline or a talent) is all about adding asymmetrical power spikes to an otherwise fairly static power curve.
The Heroes you listed above all bring a unique playstyle to the Nexus that I think is actually very fun for a large number of players. I personally love designing and playing with quests that are uncapped, because every game starts out with a chance to become 'infinitely' powerful. That said, the reality is that we know the average stacks that a player gains in a game, and at what time they are unlocking the rewards behind them. Ultimately, we still like these types of quests because they make for increased variability between games--sometimes a player feels like a God, and sometimes not so much. If you think about the 'carry' role in other mobas, it is very similar. Many of us love that feeling of a really good game - one where everything just clicks. This makes up for those games where maybe you're not playing at your best and can find areas to improve your game. While we don't want to push this philosophy towards ALL of our Heroes by any means, I think we definitely have room for a few of them.
Lastly, it is important to know that we are always actively looking at a lot of the quests in the game. We went through a period where we tried to add as many of them as possible, which actually ended up creating a lot instances where you needed to play less than optimally in order to stack quickly. Your example of Tyrande is actually perfect - I originally created the baseline Sentinel quest, and although a lot of players enjoyed it, when working on her recent rework, I knew I needed to remove it. We still have quite a few quests in the game that do this and we will continue to either remove them or change them in ways that reward you for using them correctly.
The next PTR patch seems to bring us back into a direction where mana is a real, present, limiting factor on the sustain of powerful heroes (thinking of Blaze and Yrel changes in particular). Many recent heroes such as Fenix or release Yrel have either no mana or no meaningful mana costs. Where is the dev/balance team at on mana in terms of the fun factor versus usefulness in creating balance?
Hi Hermitpurplerain!
We have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow to talk about this exact issue. I can't give any specifics in regards to what changes we're looking to make, but I wanted to let you know that it's on our mind.
Regarding Matchmaking, especially at the top end.
What is in the works to correct the issues in master/GM right now. queue times are getting worse, game quality continues to decline, and high profile streamers/pros that should be ambassadors for the game continue to be displeased.
What Matchmaking updates can we anticipate in the future to re-gate the top end and ensure better match quality.
I have been summoned.
Following the release of the matchmaking updates in H35, we've seen a dramatic overall increase in match quality as a result of our prediction rates tightening significantly. Since then, we've also seen longer queue times, particularly during off-peak hours. We've also seen some situations recently where players have had their MMR dramatically diverge from their rank. This makes it even harder for those players to find matches over time, as we're typically looking for matches that band them nearer to their rank in order for that player to more easily move into the appropriate league and division. If a bronze player with a high MMR keeps getting matches with platinum players, that doesn't help that player leave bronze, and the platinum players tend to get tilted because they don't think bronze players belong in their games.
First, we're working on adding dynamic matchmaking restrictions that scale based on the number of players in the queue. If you're playing during off-peak hours. you may end up with the occasional rainbow game--but you'll find games.
Second, we're looking into situations in which players are having a hard time finding games due to their MMR and rank points being too divergent. This is unacceptable and we're going to resolve the situation.
Lastly, we're taking a long, hard look at the entire ranked play system. Removing queue restrictions from Team League is a small step towards larger changes. We think it's time to take a step back and take a look at our existing ranked play framework and ensure that it's the right fit for Heroes of the Storm today.
Low-hanging fruit solution: get rid of rank? Only have MMR, and matchmake off that alone. Could still have "Leagues", but all they denote is what percentile your MMR falls in.
We're discussing getting rid of points actually and mapping MMR bands directly to a more granular rank system. That said, this is all early and we'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.
Has there ever been thought of completely revamping a hero's role with a rework? (Ie turning Xul into a tank, or Tassadar into a complete assassin)
Hey Sprinklings, thank you for the question!
The short answer is yes! In fact we just did something similar with Tyrande. While a lot of players loved her hybrid Support/Assassin playstyle, she was having a hard time finding a solid spot in the meta. Since her rework last year, we have read a lot of feedback saying that our support players really missed playing her as a healer. When starting her most recent rework, we took the opportunity to shift her role and rebuilt her talent tree and kit around embracing that.
As for the future, I can honestly tell you that we have heard your feedback about Tassadar, and when his time comes, we will be having a lot of discussions about potentially shifting him towards the High Templar you all want and deserve - En Taro Tassadar!
Since Malthael's latest rework, Tormented Souls has become very redundant with his cleaving auto-attacks and is rarely ever picked (along with Last Rites' flaws also being addressed and making it feel a lot better). Are there any changes to Tormented Souls currently in the works to make it more viable in any way?
Hey maguszeal, thanks for the question.
It's true that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction for Tormented Souls after the changes giving Malthael cleaving attacks. We've toyed around with the idea of making some changes to make sure that it's still an attractive pick that offers something useful (and unique), but we don't have anything ready to share right now. It's likely that whatever will be done would focus on dealing spread damage, as well as enhancing Reaper's Mark-focused gameplay.
Anecdotally, when we were working on Malthael's cleaving changes, we knew that there was a possibility that Tormented Souls would lose value so we experimented with a few changes to it then. One of them was trying to make it deal flat damage that was increased by enemies affected by Reaper's Mark, but we decided to shelve the idea because it felt pretty similar to Kerrigan's Maelstrom.
It's something that we might revisit soon, since we think having an AoE-focused Heroic for Malthael is good design space to explore.
Any news regarding the Role Rework?
Hello, Gnueless! I'm excited for the role changes and yes, we've been preparing for them with some shifts in surrounding areas. We don't have a solid release date as of yet, but if all goes well, we hope to roll out the update later this year.
So...Soon™ to Soonish™.
Are there any plans to continue to release "quirky" heroes in the future? (Similar to Abathur, Cho'gall, Murky) I always felt like that was HotS' niche was that they weren't afraid to create heroes that were very unique in their play. Lately it seems the development team has focused on more traditional playstyles rather than quirky ones.
The short answer is "yes, we'd like to", but I also want to share some of our philosophy.
The biggest hurdle to making heroes that break fundamental game rules is that it's not good enough to just make them fun to play -- they also have to be fun to play alongside and against. If a hero is extremely fun, but your teammates groan when you lock them in, it's fair to say that's not a satisfactory place for that hero to be in. I think it's cool to have heroes that are a little more niche and don't show up as often, and do unique things because it makes the games where they do show up more special. They're awesome when they work out.
Currently I'd say Abathur is a great example of what we want to see from these types of heroes. He's relatively rare, but shows up in games often enough that players are familiar with who he is and what he does. Players generally recognize what a good Abathur is capable of and how to adapt their play when he's on their team. Most importantly of all, our game is very much about team fights, and despite his weirdness Abathur has a clear and reliable way to contribute that doesn't leave his team feeling like they're fighting 5v4.
We want to make more heroes that fit in that space and continue to explore ideas. We originally wanted to do Ragnaros as a "core replacement" hero who would sit in your base in all his raid boss glory and command fiery minions on the battlefield. We ultimately decided not to do this for fantasy reasons (it just didn't feel like Ragnaros if you couldn't smite insects with your own two fiery hands), but the gameplay is still promising and we want to revisit it at some point with a more appropriate hero.
We also try varying levels of wacky ideas on almost every new hero we make. There were points in development where Stukov could revive dead heroes as Zerg constructs with unique abilities, Alexstrasza could heal enemies, Mephisto could make enemy heroes hostile to each other... We have good reasons for why we didn't end up implementing those examples, but the point is we're not afraid to try new things and look for ways to surprise our players that are both fun and make sense within the context of our game.
Put simply, we want to make heroes that are unique, AND that players are still excited to play and play with 3, 6, and 12+ months after they come out. This is a very difficult standard to achieve when it comes to truly rule-breaking heroes, but it's something we're excited to keep chasing.
Ana's Detachable box magazine has been left untouched after quick emergency change. Does the team has any play on this talent?
Will Ana receive her update to make her basic kit interact like Overwatch too? i.e. heal pass through full health.
Does the dev have plans on updating Eye of Horus to increase its attractiveness as well as aim down sight and custom optic?
Thank you.
Good morning Boom0128!
I will try to answer all three questions for you - I think the fantasy and reward for Detachable Box Magazine are awesome and would like to keep these. However, the way it is unlocked could probably be tweaked in the future.
Ana's Healing Dart will indeed be gaining the functionality to pass through full life Heroes in a future patch!
As for updating Eye of Horus and Aim Down Sights - these will most likely be addressed when we get ready to do a full pass on her talent tree (potentially a rework).
Game design: Why can't Catapults be blinded, when Siege Giants (similar projectile) and Minions (same classification) can?
Hey Zanzure!
This was a bug that has been fixed in the Kerrigan\Brightwing rework patch. You should see the change to address this go live next week sometime.
What proportion of Heroes are flagged as needing a rework a la Kerrigan and Brightwing, and can the team share the list of Heroes who make up this proportion?
Great question JimmyTurx!
The short answer is that it varies. There was a point last year where we had almost 5 Hero reworks in flight at the same time (boy, that was crazy). Since then, we have gone into a much more stable timeline for them and normally have Live Designers working on about 2 at any given time. We normally have a rotating list of about 8 to 10 that we want to work on, but there are many times where someone not on that list sneaks in (Tyrande for example).
There is (IMO) a lack of frontline supports in HotS. Not necessarily supports trying to be a pseudo-dps, but someone who isn't afraid to fight alongside their frontline with strong defensive tools. The roster overwhelmingly leans toward fragile, divable heroes, and we only have three genuine melee supports in Kharazim/Uther/Rehgar. This is why I believe people are still upset about no self-casting Ancestral; because Rehgar is one of the few supports who shouldhave a resilient/aggressive playstyle, but was deliberately hamstrung.
Is there any chance we will see more supports that can stand up with the frontline, or have mechanics added to require/encourage that gameplay (similar to Insight/Transcendence Kharazim, or Malf/Whitemane but melee)? A great example of what I'm describing would be Brigitte from OW.
You mean you don't play Deckard as a frontliner? >_>
Kidding aside, I think this is fair feedback and that there's definitely room in the roster for more of these types of heroes. I'll defer to the Live Design team when it comes to our plans for existing supports, but in general our philosophy has moved toward increasing emphasis on interactive & skill-based gameplay for support heroes, and frontline supports feel like a natural fit for that type of gameplay.
There are many factors we consider when deciding which heroes to add to the game so I can't make any immediate promises, but we'll be keeping this in mind as we look to add more support heroes in the future.
I have a question about the state of Mana:
New heroes normally dont have mana issues if they have mana at all (Genji, Hanzo, Tracer,Maiev,Deckard, Yrel, Whitemane,Fenix,Junkrat). Older heroes like Rehgar or Uther are out of mana after the first mid lane brawl.
Is this discepancy intentional or do you want to close this Mana cost gap?
Thank you for the question Kallesin.
This is actually a very hot topic right now among us. We have an hour long meeting this week to align ourselves with what Mana means to our game and what direction we want to move towards.
While it is a very powerful tool from a balance design perspective, it is not really 'fun' to run out of Mana. Since our game is fast paced and 'brawly', I think we need to be a little on the forgiving side when it comes to Mana tension.
As more heroes enter the Nexus, knock backs and displacements in the game are increasing. Will dazes/knock backs ever become keywords and have talents that interact with them?
For example, supports have ways to give armor or interact with stuns/silences/slows, but the only way to deal with knock backs is Cleanse, or other Unstoppable effects. Will this continue as is, or will there be other ways to counter play?
Hey USSKorolev, thanks for the question.
Just to clarify for some readers, we have a number of displacement abilities that also have stuns tied to them. For example, Johanna's Condemn, Garrosh's Wreckling Ball, or Junkrat's Concussion Mine. One of the key reasons to have these stuns is to break moving channeled abilities such as a Li Li's Jug of 1,000 Cups. Another core reason is that the stun can help to add "weight" to the ability and make it feel a lot better to use. Without the stun on Condemn, heroes would immediately start moving following the initial displacement, often due to previously queued up move orders, and the ability just wouldn't feel right. That pause helps players to recognize the impact and allows Johanna a small opportunity to capitalize on this ability.
There are of course a number of displacement abilities that do not have this stun which we refer to as "dazes", including ETC's Face Melt and Falstad's Mighty Gust. I'm not sure we have discussed adding a new keyword to interact with these abilities specifically, although it's an interesting thought.
We're always interested in giving players counterplay options, so it is something we will talk about internally. I do think there are a few issues though which I'll go through:
First off, most knockbacks happen extremely quickly, too quickly for you to react once they occur in many cases. Take the ETC Face Melt example, you'd basically have to preemptively use your counter to avoid the displacement – which gets into the territory of pre-cleansing and Unstoppable effects, which we already have. If we said this new counter was always on and waited for a displacement effect to hit you (i.e. Spell Shield), then I'm not sure how fun that would be to play against. If you see someone with Spell Shield, you can often try to poke this off with a weaker ability, but you may not have a secondary displacement effect that you can use to remove this new buff.
Another thought is, we must be careful about how niche we make talents or abilities. Pointing a talent towards a very specific use case will often go unpicked and we will end up adding secondary effects to the talent for it to become an attractive option. In a lot of cases, those secondary effects can overshadow the original design and that becomes why you pick the talent. As an example, take Ana's level 13 talents, one is for Stuns while the other is to counter Slows and Roots. We ended up having to put secondary effects on these talents to make them useful in more cases, and now those secondary effects have become the primary reason to pick these talents in a lot of cases (i.e. more healing vs. armor).
On map design
It seems like there is a shift towards maps with a single must-win objective (e.g. Hanamura rework). Some players find this is good, as the simplification requires less strategic thought and team coordination. By and large, it simply involves making sure you are at least on even level tiers and win the team fight to get the objective.
For other players, this simplification goes a little too far. There is really only "one way" to win the match, especially with the recent nerfs to other map strategies such as split pushing (for better or worse). I was wondering what your map design principles are and whether the team is fine with having one straightforward and clear method of winning, or are there plans to create more strategic depth to maps, whether this is adding new map mechanics or enabling different team comp metas.
On a personal note, I would love to see more map mechanics added to some maps as it would open up more macro play options and increase the replay value of those maps.
We purposefully crafted our battleground design principles so they do not steer us toward a specific type of map objective. Instead, they focus on driving the game forward, managing emotional tension, and providing mechanical and visual variety (among others). There's no principle that tells us to collapse players into a small area for a highly impactful, centralized objective. It's true that we've been doing that more than usual recently (Volskaya Foundry and Hanamura Temple for sure, Alterac Pass and the Garden rework to some extent) but this is not the new standard.
General: Frequently Blizzard will include very small numbers changes that don't appear to be intended to seriously shift a heroes power level. Are these intended as signals to the player base to rethink how they're approaching the hero or are you using data to tell you to do those very fine tuned changes?
Hey ChaosOS!
First off let me say - "Thank you so much for all of your work and passion for the Heroes community!"
Now, to address your question: Small number tweaks are normally done when a Hero or Talent is just slightly off-balance. While losing 2 Basic Attack damage is pretty minor for most Heroes, Raynor might see a slightly larger shift since the vast majority of his damage output comes from there.
For a different example - there are a lot of times where we may see a vast difference in pick rates between talents on a tier, but parity between win-rates. Sometimes we might do a slight nudge to the under-picked talent in order to get players to reevaluate it. Sometimes it takes multiple nudges before the community starts using and respecting it (Mighty Gust for example).
What's the great plan for illidan? Why not just buff his 10.
Any insight on that? He does not need a rework just specific 10 buffs, Hunt back to 60~75 sec CD and moving some 20 demonic form buffs to 10 IMO.
Hey TheGameOn, thanks for your question about The Betrayer. He's one of my personal favorite Heroes.
Right now Illidan primarily takes The Hunt because it offers unique and fun gameplay, so we aren't all that upset that it's the more commonly picked Heroic ability. That being said, Metamorphosis is being chosen 40% of the time in higher level Hero League, though it doesn't always feel like it. It isn't winning nearly as much though, so there might be room for improvement.
Illidan isn't seen all that often partly due to this being an unfavorable metagame for him. With a bruiser-heavy meta, not only is there a lot of crowd control to deal with him, but also fewer squishy targets for him to chase down. Just a year ago Illidan was very meta, and hasn't seen many changes since, so we're confident that maybe small tuning changes combined with a more favorable meta will allow him to fulfill his niche in the game again.
Why do you prefer slower, larger scale reworks over smaller, more abandunt changes?
We see time and time again heroes get ignored for months/years and they slowly devolve into a critical state requiring a full on rework like raynor, kerrigan, vikings, chen.
We have other heroes that are at a decent winrate with low use/unused talents that havent been changed for a while, making for a 1-dimensional talent builds and overall less compelling interactivity and gameplay, yet these issues go seemingly ignored for an incredible amount of time.
Hey Dreadnought7410!
We don't prefer to do slower, larger scale reworks over small changes--they both have their uses. We've released balance patches regularly with many changes to multiple heroes over time, and generally save large reworks for heroes who need more sweeping changes.
There are advantages and disadvantages to smaller balance tweaks and large rework changes. I went over many of these specifics in our last AMA, but some things we think about are:
The larger the rework, the greater the risk of hurting the hero's core identity. Even if you make a slam dunk design, it will not have as great a chance of being widely accepted if it significantly alters the hero's fantasy.
As you mentioned, more abundant changes means that the game is fresher for more people, and fewer heroes are left alone for less time.
Small number or functionality tweaks can make talent builds feel fresh, which in turn makes the hero feel new and exciting without the need for a major rework.
That said, large reworks are sometimes necessary. Some examples of why this happens are:
To update older heroes and bring them in line with current design philosophies. To carve out a role for heroes who have fallen out of use relative to other heroes currently favored in the game. To solve fundamental design issues with their kits. Going forward, you can expect to see us make numerous smaller changes to improve hero and talent pick/win rates. For example, today we just released a balance patch with changes for 17 different heroes.
General: What does the process for building a balance patch look like? How do you decide what issues to tackle, how do you test ideas in terms of doing what you want them to do, and when are things locked in for implementation and bugtesting?
Hey ChaosOS!
Every week the members of the balance team meet to talk about the state of the game. One of the things we do during this meeting we all bring up individual changes/heroes/issues that we would like to see addressed in the upcoming balance patch.
In regards to how we decide what issues to tackle, there isn't a single method, as our decisions can come from various sources. Some of these are:
We have a lot of data that we can look through to find anomalies. We can see hero and talent win/play rates across various filters to see if something is over/underperforming.
We watch pro play and have discussions about what is happening there.
We all play the game regularly, and use our personal experience to see where we can make improvements for the average player.
We look at heroes who haven't been tweaked in awhile to see if there's any room to make changes.
We make the actual changes the week before the patch releases so that we have time for QA to check the changes and fix bugs.
Sometimes for larger balance changes, for example Artanis's changes that came out in a balance patch, we will test the changes for weeks/months in advance and merge them into the next balance patch once we're confident in the design.
I am curious, which hero did you think would be extremly OP on release, yet turned out to be very weak.
Vice versa, which hero did you feel was UP, but turned out to be overtuned on release?
Hey SeeALot, great question.
Lunara was a character we thought would be OP on release and we were a little worried about, however she ended up being really low initially and needing lots of buffs.
Malthael is an opposite example where the balance team felt he was fairly solid overall but the larger development team thought he was going to be really weak. Malthael ended up completely crushing the solo lane and being extremely powerful upon release.
Thoughts on heroes who almost always only has a single talent in certain tiers? examples being garrosh picking into the fray, dehaka picking feeding frenzy, ana picking sleep dart quest
We put a lot of work into building out talent tiers and trying to offer players interesting choices, so when a single talent ends up dominating a tier it's pretty disappointing.
The Hero Design team does the initial work of designing talent trees for all new heroes, and most of the time we can recognize and prevent these cases early so that the Live Design team never has to worry about it. This is something I feel we're getting even better at as we learn from previous talents like Into the Fray or Glacial Spike, and even from Heroic abilities like Cleansing Flame that end up as one-sided choices.
When lopsided talent tiers do make it out the door, it forces us to think very carefully about how we want to bring them back in line. Usually the reason these talents are so popular is that they're very fun to use or provide key utility a hero doesn't otherwise have - so simply removing or weakening them may not be the way to go. In that case we can either-
A: Make the effect baseline (as with Glacial Spike on Kel'thuzad) and reshuffle other talents accordingly
B: Revisit the talents on that tier and try to make the other two choices feel just as impactful (as with Holy Ground on Tyrael)
Which of these options is preferable varies case-by-case, but the most important value is not to undermine what's cool and enjoyable about a hero with whatever changes we decide to make. Given the choice between having uneven talent picks, or making a hero less fun overall, we'd prefer to wait on changing the talents until we're confident that our changes will have the desired effect.
Hi homer12346,
We do review talent trees to make sure there is some diversity in options. The goal would be that every talent is viable in some situations and your talent selection can feel fluid based off the match state, team compositions, etc. If there are two solid talent options at a tier that garner the majority of picks and a third lesser chosen one, this can still be okay as long as there is some scenarios where this third (or fourth) talent can be viable. Sometimes it's purely a personal playstyle preference for why players pick certain talents, other times it can be different skill bands where some players may simply avoid active talents all together.
Funny enough for Feeding Frenzy, while it is the most picked talent, Symbiosis does still see around 20% of the picks and has an overall higher win rate. ?
Xul: As you have noticed, he became a maintank in certain comps (shown in the HGC). Are you happy about this and do you have plans for him, either making him a real maintank (like changing his role from assassin to Tank) or tune him more into the assassin role wih removing some survivability?
Hey Elegostelkai!
Right now we're pretty happy to see Xul in HGC, and in general we like to see weird/wacky comps have their time in the spotlight. A core tenet of our design philosophy is that we want to push the boundaries of what a conventional MOBA is, and as such we're excited when our players do the same.
That being said, if an off-meta strategy becomes too powerful and dominates pro-play for too long, it can be a problem if it drastically warps the fundamentals of our game and take it to places where there isn't enough interaction between both teams.
We don't currently have any plans to change Xul due to his recent games in pro play. We'll be keeping an eye on it, but for now, we're cool with it.
How are you guys reacting to the pushback against the mobility Overwatch heroes have brought into HotS? By that I mean, is this feedback you've listened to and found yourselves agreeing with, which you will apply for future hero releases or do you feel different, and if so how/what?
Tracer and Genji's translation into the game has really shaken up the game and the community, given that their kits and mobility break a lot the core mechanics and penalties of the genre. Combining high damage with ranged attacks, while being able to apply it on the move. Mages and older HotS heroes, in particular, adhere to these limiters and have to sacrifice mobility or expose themselves in order to apply their damage. Tracer and Genji have an easy time getting in and out of combat while being nigh impossible for most heroes to shake off while taking very significant damage.
Very frustrating, being killed by heroes which do not adhere to the moba mechanical rulesets which restrain most other heroes. Especially by characters from a new Blizzard universe which after 3 years is still struggling to establish itself. (We've embraced the characters, but there's still no real plot or enough world building for it to currently stand next to IPs such as Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. Though I understand that they can bring interesting new mechanics and gameplay to the game.
Hey Mozerath, thanks for your question! Mobility in Heroes is something that we've been watching for a long time.
To start with, we've always pushed the boundaries with Hero Design in HotS; we think that it's one of the things that makes Heroes of the Storm special. We have characters like Cho'gall, Abathur, or The Lost Vikings that really "break the rules" of traditional character design. The key to these characters is adjusting their power the appropriate amount while keeping these unique traits in mind.
The great mobility offered by Tracer and Genji is another one of these unique traits, though not as flashy as a two-headed ogre. We knew that during development they would need to be balanced around it (in fact at one point Tracer had so little Health that she was being one-shot by Nova). We didn't anticipate how much we would need to tune them down though, so unfortunately they've been steadily nerfed (for the most part) since their release. We think they're much healthier than they started in terms of balance at this point, though we're always looking to make further tuning adjustments when we think the time is right.
We do have other characters in the game with high amounts of mobility (as has been pointed out in this thread). Illidan, Zeratul, and Lucio are good examples. The biggest difference between them and Tracer or Genji is that their mobility has more conditions. These include target selection (Illidan's Dive), range limitations (Zeratul's Blink), or inability to travel over terrain (Lucio's Movement Speed). These added forms of counterplay make these abilities feel better to play against than they would otherwise, and allow us to really push the envelope with them.
At this point, we think that the low-condition mobility from Tracer and Genji makes them special, and we likely won't add more characters with this level of mobility without conditions. But we do think that mobility is a great way to allow players to make flashy plays and has a high skill cap, so you'll likely see more forms of it with added counterplay in the future.
Some heroes have heroic abilities with extremely low pick/win rate. For example: Lili's Dragon, Kelthuzad's Frost Blast, Mephisto's Durance and Guldan's Rain.
Are there any plan for changing how these skills work fundamentally beside number tweaks?
Hello blacktiger226,
We are always looking to bring both win and pick rate parity to all Heroics. The reality is that it is actually very difficult sometimes without making sweeping changes. Some of the examples you list above fit that bill and will most likely see changes if and when they are looked at for reworks ?
On developing new heroes, I wonder if we will have heroes of the Heroes of the Storm universe or if all the heroes will be from other Blizzard universes
One of the many amazing things about Heroes of the Storm is that ANYTHING is possible in the Nexus!
I feel like there's a lot of controversy around Garden of Terror and a lot of people saying it lost it's identity mainly (including myself unfortunately). That said, what are your guys plans for other maps like Blackhearts Bay? I think it would be good if the team communicated more with the community before putting so much effort into a map redesign.
The Garden of Terror rework was done in response to years of consistent player feedback (in community discussion and in our own user experience research) saying Garden was among the least-loved maps in the game. Our goals for the rework were to preserve the map's thematic elements (seeds, shamblers, terrors, weather effects) while removing the elements that made so many players sigh when they saw the loading screen (chasing a vehicle around, eternal night phase, zero sum double vehicle phases, vehicle time-out).
We iterated on the Garden rework several times internally. First we tried small changes like repositioning/renumbering shambler camps, changing timers, and changing the vehicle's abilities and spawn point, but none of those changes made the map notably more fun or interesting. The map still had the same problems it did on live servers. Then we went wild for a bit with experimentation - at one point we had a completely new layout and a "siege vehicle" objective reward that could dig in, spawn bushes around it, spawn shamblers to push in a direction, and shoot out burrowing seed bombs that detonated for aoe damage. We tried a "gauntlet" type design where we spawned a series of seeds, one at a time, all over the map, and the first team to gather three won the objective. Those were interesting experiments, but they each had their own fatal problems. Ultimately, we found that the version on PTR right now provided the most fun we've ever had on Garden. The story might not be over, though. We're confident that this version of Garden will do much better than its original version, but if we're wrong, we'll do what we need to do.
As for Blackheart's Bay, we do plan on adjusting the map, but we currently do not expect a complete mechanical overhaul like the Garden rework.
Any plans on having shuffle pick be an option in custom games? (instead of forcefully enabled for ARAM?)
It makes doing, for example, 1 versus 1 battles on the same hero impossible on Lost Cavern since you are forced into a new hero upon game start.
Adding a Shuffle Pick option to the custom games screen (with some additional buttons and levers to customize it further) would be cool, I agree.
You recently vastly improved the reconnect feature. Will a spectate feature ever be added?
Hi, reddituser25987! We continue to improve the rejoin functionality and while doing so are touching areas of the game that could, eventually, make spectating a possibility...
HOWEVER, while we'd love to watch HGC games live in client or check out our friends playing while waiting to party up, we have no plans to prioritize a spectate feature above the myriad of core game systems and features that we want to keep improving at this time.
Tooltips are very inconsistent.
[[Archon]] states its splash radius. [[Fury of the Swarm]] doesn't say what the splash radius is.
[[Water Dragon]] lists the range in which it summons. [[Divine Reckoning]] doesn't list its radius.
[[Maelstrom]] says "per second" while dealing damage every 0.25s, while [[Fend]] states its tick rate (every 0.25s).
[[Varian/Charge]] can target structures. [[Colossus Smash]] can not. It's impossible to know cases like these from the tooltip.
Generally, information seems to be extremely lacking in tooltips.
Also, summon descriptions are nearly always extremely lacking. They sometimes state health, sometimes state attack speed and usually damage. Why are they not always mentioned? For example:
[[Abathur/trait]] lists the Locust's health, but most others don't (say, [[Ultralisk]]). Right now on the PTR Ultralisk now doesn't even state its attack damage (only the skillshot's damage, and that it splashes for 50% when attacking). [[Gargantuan]] doesn't even mention the stomp's damage, or the fact that it slows!
Writing good tooltips is a really important and often underappreciated skill in game design. It becomes particularly challenging when you have a really big game being made by many people, and a ton of heroes made over several years alongside and evolving design philosophy.
You're totally on the mark that our tooltip consistency could be better and it's something we've been gradually working to improve. I don't think we'll do one "huge" update in a single patch per se, but we regularly revisit our tooltips (especially during hero reworks) and plan to continue those efforts going forward. If you see anything that looks particularly off, bringing it to our attention as you've done here is also great.
That said, one thing I'll add is that consistency is only one of many values we employ when writing tooltips. Technically most abilities in the game have a 0.125 second cast time, but we don't actually put that in the tooltip for the sake of readability. It may not seem like a big deal for one tooltip, but every hero in the game has dozens and dozens of tooltips, so readability ends up driving many of the decisions we make around how to present information. However this is something we're very open to feedback on as there may be places where something is off (like your Varian example), and we greatly appreciate players bringing cases like this to our attention. Thanks!
When is the Chen rework coming?
Chen is the 3rd least picked hero behind Lost Vikings and Probius. His winrate is awful. There's zero way at this point that the balance team can claim he's "balanced" at this point. Take a look at the info that jhow provided in the solo lane matchup. He has very few positive matchups. He needs fixed in a bad way. This is very frustrating for people who love the brewmaster. I've running with the #FixChen hashtag on twitter for a while now. Almost over a year now at this point. Please save us. At least give us a timeline at this point. ?
Hi Zexerous, glad to hear you're a Chen fan and hopefully we can make some changes in the future that will help address some of those concerns.
To touch on his win rate quickly, depending on the filters I'm looking at (HL vs QM, MMR bands, games played as Chen, etc.), he is sitting around 47-49%. This does put him on the lower spectrum of hero win rates, but it's still not that far off.
We made some talent adjustments to Chen a few months back, but we will revisit him at some point – I think it's clear that he's not a tank with his current kit (having to constantly stop and channel in fights), but we haven't fully embraced him as a Bruiser either. We will likely look towards that direction in the future.
I'm not able to provide a timeline at this point, only that a major Chen update won't be happening in the next few months. While not part of your primary question, we do also want to look at Probius, Lost Vikings, and other low play rate heroes as well.
Lastly, I'd like to ask if some skins or Heroes make it forbidding for other Heroes to come in the game. Widowmaker from Overwatch can never come due to Widowmaker Nova existing? Mercy because of Auriel? Kaldalis because of Artanis?
I really hope they don't come as skins cause that would be terrible and huge disrespect to those characters imho.
Cheers and thank you for your time, God bless.
Hi BertRaccoonGR!
Making skins that have crossover with existing heroes does not necessarily mean we won't add those heroes in the future. An example of this is with the Novazon skin which was clearly inspired by the Amazon from D2. Even with this skin, we knew we wanted to do a D2 Amazon and we're super excited to bring Cassia to the Nexus ?
Would the team at Blizzard ever consider more instant point and click crowd control (a la Brightwing and Medivh polymorph)? I don't feel like there are enough reliable ways to shutdown mobility and am often frustrated by this in QM.
We have a handful of these, the ones you call out and others like Varian's Taunt. In general, we're trying not to introduce a ton of new hard-CC that is targeted as these are not very skillful to execute well (you clicked on the enemy), and have low counterplay options (the enemy clicked on you). It's likely over time that a few of these will trickle in on new heroes though.
Is it possible to see other heroes in the Multiclasses category, besides the Varian, or the Blizzard Classics, in addition to the Lost Vikings?
Hey Zequi21, good question.
For the Multiclass category, we're planning to remove that with our eventual role update. Varian would most likely fit into a couple of the newer categories, Tank and Bruiser. There would be a few other heroes who would also hit multiple categories such as Zarya in Support and Bruiser. Overall, the multiclass role wasn't very clear to players and often you couldn't play Varian the way you wanted due to your team's composition.
For Blizzard Classics, I would love to explore some of these characters in the future. There's so many awesome characters we want to add, so it's a question of when they make the most sense and when is the right time. There's other things we of course need to consider like making sure they're bringing fun new mechanics and playstyles as well.
Chromie was designed as an artillery mage. The recent rework did away with that role completely changing her playstyle to a hybrid auto attack spell caster and many players were not fond of it which was reflected by the fall of her pick and win rates. Would you ever consider reverting the rework and adjusting her numbers which many Chromie mains had requested?
Hey Demon_Ryu, thanks for the question.
Through reworks and balance updates we've pushed Chromie out of the artillery mage role. Overall this is a playstyle we weren't happy with as it didn't feel great to play against. To touch briefly on a few points:
-Her abilities were extremely long range (artillery design), but that meant that she was often off-screen from an enemy perspective and you didn't have a lot of control over her damaging you. Basically, just keep in perpetual motion and hope she misses.
-Because her abilities were fairly hard to land, the damage they dealt had to be cranked up to extreme levels to keep her win rate and effective damage output in a reasonable spot. Essentially, if she only lands 20% of her abilities, then those abilities have to be extremely impactful when the hit. This could lead to her 1-shotting enemies which again is not fun to play against.
-She was extremely hard countered by certain enemies. I don't believe we've really addressed this point, but it is something we'd like to soften.
-She has a ton of CC between her Time Trap and both Heroic abilities. In general, multiple CC effects can be frustrating to play against and she brought more than many characters. This combined with the above points was just not a great spot for her to be in. This CC also made the rest of her kit much easier to use and much more consistent which was a challenge to tune around and make feel fair.
As for the future, we will likely make more Chromie changes and potentially even reimagine what her core playstyle should be, but its unlikely we will go back to that long-range artillery mage style.
From what I understand the lifesteal component to Tassadar's shields has been a problem with his balance for a long time, initially only being a talent option then becoming baseline with a talent to increase it. Has the dev team considered eradicating lifesteal from his base kit and talent tree to balance him better for pros and non-pro play as a pure utility support? (There is also the matter of lifesteal not fitting Protoss from a SC gameplay/lore perspective.)
Hello T-280_SCV!
Tassadar has definitely been a unique challenge for us the balance side. I think we have learned a lot of valuable lessons from him, though, and we'll definitely be taking a look at him to see how we can improve.


text:
A 17-year-old is in grave condition after being shot in the head Tuesday afternoon in the front passenger seat of a stolen car, an official said.
DAYTONA BEACH -- A 17-year-old is in grave condition after being shot in the head Tuesday afternoon in the front passenger seat of a stolen car, a police spokesman said.
Occupants of a gray Dodge Charger fired several shots at a red Ford Five Hundred, and at least one shot struck Jiron J. Dent in the head, Daytona Beach police spokesman Jimmie Flynt said. Dent's injury is considered life-threatening.
"There's a bunch of blood and brain matter in that car," Flynt said as crime scene technicians inspected the vehicle.
The three occupants in the Dodge -- George Green Jr., Justin Nelson and Tijuan Isaac -- were all arrested, Flynt said.
Green, 18, was charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle and resisting arrest without violence. Green also had warrants for his arrest for failure to appear in reference to battery, grand theft and burglary charges, Flynt said. Nelson, 22, was charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle and violation of probation. Isaac, 18, was charged with possession of cocaine, possession of less than 20 grams of marijuana and trespassing.
Police, including Chief Mike Chitwood, chased suspects in the shooting that started about 12:07 p.m. near Florida and Georgia streets, Flynt said.
At 12:11 p.m., a person who called 9-1-1 told dispatchers a male jumped out of the Ford in the 1300 block of Phillips Street, Flynt said.
A pursuit by police, Volusia County Sheriff's Office deputies and a sheriff's helicopter of the Dodge took place, and it came to an end on Wesley Street, north of Jimmy Ann Drive and LPGA Boulevard, after stop sticks were deployed, Flynt said.
About 12:48 p.m., the three suspects were in custody. The Ford was found with bullet holes in the back window and trunk lid at Heineman and Phillips streets off Dunn Avenue.
Flynt said two of the suspects in the Dodge were caught early on, and police found the third suspect hiding under a nearby home in the area of LPGA Boulevard and Wesley Street. A gun was recovered in that area.
Police believe there were three occupants in the Ford including Dent, Flynt said. Another person in the car was taken into police custody, and they are searching for a third occupant.
Flynt said both vehicles involved were reported stolen, and it is not clear if occupants of both vehicles fired shots.