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If a stealth Hero maneuvers carefully and plans ahead, they could be hiding anywhere… even right next to you! stealth Heroes that we’ve lost with the more obvious stealth visual effects. Our goal with this addition is to bring back some of the uncertainty when playing vs. If a stealthed Hero remains immobile for a short amount of time (currently 1.5 seconds) they will become “Invisible” and will not display any outline or visual effect until they move again or are revealed by dealing or taking damage.You must still hit them with an aimed attack if you want to break their stealth. Some important things to note are that stealthed Heroes will still be hidden on the minimap, and they still cannot be directly targeted by abilities. With this change, we want to shift this power away from that ‘eye test’ and encourage more strategic use of stealth.
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The stealth shimmer visual effect is now much easier to spot when you’re facing off against stealthed Heroes.With our upcoming changes to stealth, we want to remove the “eye test” mechanic and give both stealth Heroes, and the opposing teams, a better experience in matches. However, in high-level ranked play and esports, stealth Heroes were much weaker and hardly ever seen. In uncoordinated Quick Match games, stealth was king. Due to this, there was also a large disparity in the power level of stealth Heroes at different ranks of play. On the flip side, against a team that consistently failed to spot the shimmer, stealth Heroes could dominate the match and force players into a very passive and not-entirely-fun playstyle. Previously, if the opposing team could quickly spot the enemy stealthed Hero, they gained a significant advantage while the stealthed Hero was left with very few options for counterplay. While we recognized that stealth Heroes in their previous incarnation did a great job of fitting the fantasy of their characters, we also identified that the stealth shimmer visual gameplay was extremely hard for a significant number of players to see, and was ultimately just an eye test for the opposing team. Making the decision to change the way stealth works in Heroes of the Storm wasn’t an easy decision. We’ve outlined those changes below, along with some reasoning and explanations behind the changes from the Live Design team. As part of our 2018 Gameplay Updates, we’re making significant changes to how Stealth works in Heroes of the Storm.
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