Heroes of the Storm July 31st PTR Update Lets You Test Garrosh

The Heroes of the Storm July 31st PTR lets the players test the new hero Garrosh and other upcoming changes. Changes include adjustments to six heroes, new collection, user interface updates, map rotation, and bug fixes. The Garrosh Public Test Realm period is taking place from July 31st to August 7. After this period, we can expect the updates to make their way to the live servers.

Garrosh made his first appearance as a new hero almost two weeks ago. In the period after, we’ve got to know his abilities in the hero spotlight. This new warrior is now live on PTR for testing.

v2.27.0 PTR Notes

The full patch notes, including all bug fixes, Garrosh talents and collection details, can be found on the official site. The collection details are featured in the “In Development” trailer, where you can see what they look like.

General Team Compositions

• Quick Match – Quick Match will now prefer not to make mirror matches, the same hero on both teams, when other options are available.
• Versus A.I. – Removed Mirror Matches: Players will no longer face duplicate enemy A.I. Heroes in this game mode.

Art Artanis – Daelaam Artanis’ Twin Blades activation effect is now green to match the color of his warp blades.

User Interface

• Armor Indicators – Armor buff and debuff indicators have been added next to Hero healthbars.
• Cursor Cooldown Notifications – An option to display ability cooldown indicators near your mouse cursor has been added. This feature can be enabled or disabled in the options menu
• MVP Banners – The MVP player’s Banner will now show in the initial MVP screen.
• In-Game Chat Improvements
  • The in-game chat box can now be moved by clicking and dragging the directional arrow indicator seen when the chat box is open.
  • n-game chat history can now be accessed using the ‘Page Up’ and ‘Page Down’ hotkeys.
  • A timestamp option has been added to display in-game times before chat messages.
  • Hero names will now display as Hero icons to the left of messages in chat.

Battlegrounds

• Map Rotation Update – The Ranked Map Rotation has been updated to include the following: Braxis Holdout/ Battlefield of Eternity/ Sky Temple/ Cursed Hollow/ Blackheart’s Bay/ Towers of Doom/ Warhead Junction/ Dragon Shire/ Garden of Terror
• Cursed Hollow – Audio and visual indicators have been added to alert players when there are 10 and 5 seconds remaining on the Raven Lord’s Curse.

Ragnaros Abilities and Talents

• Living Meteor (W) – Damage reduced from 72 to 68
• Blast Wave (E) – Cooldown reduced from 10 to 9 seconds
• Level 1
  • Shifting Meteor (W) – Additional Functionality: Each time an enemy is hit by Living Meteor, they take an additional 3% damage from subsequent hits by the same Meteor
  • Engulfing Flame (E) – Adjusted functionality: No longer grants cooldown reduction on Blast Wave / Now also increases the damage of Blast Wave by 75%
• Level 7
  • Superheated (E) – Removed
  • New Talent: Blistering Attacks (Passive) – Every 10 seconds, your next Basic Attack deals 60% bonus damage. Enemies hit by your Basic Abilities reduces this cooldown by 1 second
  • Molten Power (W) – Damage bonus increased from 15 to 20% per enemy Hero hit
• Level 20 Lava Surge (R) – Cooldown reduction increased from 10 to 30 seconds

The Butcher Stats, Abilities and Talents

• Stats – Basic Attack damage lowered from 140 to 130
• Abilities Fresh Meat (Trait)
  • Meat required to complete his quest increased from 125 to 200
  • Damage bonus per Meat stack decreased from 1 to .5
  • Meat dropped by enemy Heroes increased from 5 to 25
  • Bonus damage on quest completion increased from 100 to 125
  • Once the quest is completed, enemy Heroes continue to drop Meat, giving The Butcher 5 permanent Basic Attack damage per Meat collected
• Level 1 Abattoir (Trait) – Removed

Probius Ability

• Worker Rush (Z)​ – Worker Rush can no longer be activated while the Worker Rush buff is still active. This will prevent players from accidentally placing the ability on cooldown when leaving the Hall of Storms.

Auriel

• Auriel’s resource bar will now glow when at maximum Hope.

D.Va Talents

• Level 4 Diverting Power (W) – Instead of preventing D.Va from moving during Defense Matrix, this talent now adds an additional 50% slow.

Sonya Ability

• Whirlwind (E) – The time required after activation before the ability can be canceled has been increased from .5 to 1 seconds. This should help prevent accidental cancellations.

Collection

• New Bundles – Garrrosh Heroic Bundle, Mad Axe Garrosh Skin Pack, StarCrossed Bundle, Warcraft Armory Bundle
• New Skins – Garrosh, Anub’arak, Li-Ming, E.T.C., Abathur, Alarak, Dehaka, D.Va, Probius, Rehgar, Samuro, The Butcher, Valeera, Varian, Zul’jin

New Mounts – Road Boar