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Hands-on with Alexstrasza and Hanzo in HOTS
Alexstrasza and Hanzo are swooping into Heroes of the Storm in the latest update, so we try both characters and learn more about them from the devs who made them.
Two new dragons are coming to Heroes of the Storm. First, there’s Alexstrasza, the Life-Binder, a ranged support who gives up her health to heal allies and can transform into a menacing Dragon Queen to scorch her foes. And then there’s Hanzo, the Overwatch archer who’s undoubtedly soon to be everyone’s new main. But one question remains: in an event all to do with dragons, where’s Deathwing?
“That kind of falls into the line of where there are a lot of heroes from the Blizzard universe we would love to bring in but it's all just a matter of time, right? We want them. But there's no timeline as of now,” says Jade Martin, game designer on Heroes of the Storm. For now, it seems we’ll have to remain patient for the arrival of the cataclysmic fire-spitter and first get to grips with Alexstrasza and Hanzo.
At the start of 2017, Blizzard said that this year would be a good year for supports after a lack of new additions to the role in the past. Over the last twelve months we’ve seen that to be true, as Lucio, Stukov and Ana joined the Blizzard battle royale. Alexstrasza makes that number four on the year and she brings her own spin on the role.
“Alexstrasza is a unique kind of support that I don't think we really have right now,” explains Martin. “Her main thing is that she's actually able to give her life to heal other allies, so it's a huge component of her support kit. The main component of that is her Q, Gift of Life, which takes a percentage of her max health and gives it to an ally.”
This type of skill will be immediately familiar to Soraka players in League of Legends, though it’s the first time Heroes of the Storm has experimented with this type of healer. It adds an interesting new dynamic to the role – one where you have to keep a close eye on your health pool to judge the strength of your heals instead of just worrying about whether you have the mana to cast them.
Alexstrasza does, however, have some more traditional healing in her W, Abundance. This ability places a circle on the ground that erupts after a few seconds and heals all allies standing within it. “So, she plays this game between her Q and W of healing allies, getting into her W to top off her health and stay at the high health thresholds so that she can then heal more with her Q,” explains Martin.
Her last basic ability, Flame Buffet, deals damage in a straight line and sets fire to any targets it touches. It gains some utility, though, because if you hit a burning enemy with it again they’ll be briefly slowed, giving your allies an opportunity to follow up with damage, more lock down or flee from a bad fight.
“The more iconic thing which we all saw in the trailer is that she can turn into a dragon on the battlefield,” says Martin. “This enhances her basic abilities but also gives her an increased health pool and additional armour while she's in that mode, which plays into that health percentile healer because the more health you have the more you're going to be healing. So, her abilities get a little bit stronger in that regard.”
While Dragon Queen serves as Alexstrasza’s trait, its lengthy cooldown means you should treat it like a second heroic ability and save it for a big team fight or objective skirmish to take full advantage of it. Dragon Queen also slightly alters her base kit, not only enhancing her heals, but swapping her Flame Buffer to Wing Buffet. This move knocks away enemies with a gust of wind, making it a perfect disengage or displacement tool.
Speaking of heroics, Alexstrasza has two wildly different options. The first binds her life force to an allied hero and after a few seconds the hero with the lower health percentage is set to the same as the other hero. It’s a great tool to cast on a tank at the start of a fight or a target who’s getting focused down to give them a burst of healing to survive the onslaught. Like Rehgar’s Ancestral Healing, it’s an ability best used early to ensure it connects.
The second is far more dramatic, as she takes to the sky and bombards the battlefield with meteors that deal damage to enemies and heal her allies. “It really allows your allies to be aggressive while she's in the air so you're channeling damage and you can also retreat with it too!” says Martin.
“Supports definitely have the expectations that they're going to heal or shield and we're always looking for different ways to do that,” he continues. “I think for Alex specifically, the fact that we're about to do that with percent health and use Abundance to create an area where allies can stand into, really kind of separates her from other supports we have in the game.”
However, if that’s not your preferred role, then the event’s other dragon may grab your attention. Hanzo marks the eighth Overwatch hero to venture into the Nexus, bringing with him a kit that’s practically identical to his skill set in the FPS. He has Storm Bow on Q to charge up an arrow, Scatter Arrow on W, Sonic Arrow on E to grant vision and his first heroic is Dragonstrike – complete with its iconic yell when cast.
“Our goal is to make the character feel like they do in Overwatch, so often times we start by bringing over a kit of that character that is a close as we can make it to Overwatch, but then from there there's many weeks of iteration, playtesting and seeing what works and what doesn't,” says Matthew Cooper, balance team lead on Heroes of the Storm.
It feels as if they’ve succeeded in this goal with Hanzo. You may not be one-shot headshotting players from halfway across the map, but his Natural Agility trait and options for poke damage mean you can bound across the battlefield picking off targets at range. Also, Dragonstrike is perfect combo material for an ETC Mosh-Pit, a Warlord’s Challenge from Garrosh or – to borrow wholesale from Overwatch – a Zarya Graviton Surge.
The unique challenge for the Heroes development team, then, is designing a second Heroic for Hanzo. When his kit is already well-established and perfectly capable of being transferred to the MOBA with small modifications, what else can really be added? It’s a task they seem to enjoy being set, however.
“That's part of the fun of bringing Overwatch heroes... we're going to make sure that they transition into our game as well as they can and make sure they have all the iconic abilities. His Heroic Dragonstrike is in both Overwatch and our game, but we need to take some liberties with the talents and the R2s that kind of let them be a little bit different and more unique in our game.”
The decision made by the team was to give him Enhanced Crystal Arrow... wait, sorry, Dragon’s Arrow, as a second Heroic. Yes, this ability also fires a large missile across the battlefield, damaging and stunning the first target it hits. Nearby enemies are also stunned and the effect lasts longer the further the arrow travels.
Yes, the move has been unmistakably borrowed from elsewhere, but with its immense playmaking ability and that feeling of satisfaction when you thwack someone from the other side of the map it’s easy to understand why. Expect the highlight reels to start coming out when he enters the Nexus later this year.
