Update November 3, 2017: That leak proved true, as World of Warcraft’s Alexstrasza was revealed to be one of two new heroes for Heroes of the Storm. She’s a support character with access to a Dragon Queen ultimate, transforming her into an incredible dragon form.
Game director Alan Dabiri tells us Alextrasza will be on the PTR next week. Typically heroes make their way to main game a week after their test server debut.
Tempted by Blizzard’s MOBA? Get started with our guide to the best Heroes for beginners in HOTS.
Alextrasza’s role as support is intended to shore up that position’s role in the game. “Prior to this year we had a lot of community feedback around ‘what about supports, you guys aren’t doing enough with supports,'” says Dabiri. “We promised this would be the year of supports, and I think we’ve fulfilled that promise. We’ve come out with a lot of awesome supports throughout the year. She provides a lot of cool abilities to help her team, the key distinction with her is she’s our first support hero that comes with percentage-based healing without talents.”
She’s particularly unique in that she can sacrifice her own health to heal teammates, and her heroic allows her to start raining down fire that will both heal allies and hurt enemies.
Here’s what to expect from Alexstrasza’s abilities.
Hero Trait
- Dragon Queen
- After 1.25 seconds, transform into a dragon and gain 500 Health. While Dragonqueen is active, Alexstrasza’s Abilities are empowered, and her Basic Attacks deal 143 damage and heal allied Heroes for 43 in an arc in front of her. Additionally, the duration of incoming Stuns, Roots, Slows, and Blinds is reduced by 50%. Lasts 15 seconds.
Primary Abilities
- Gift of Life
- Sacrifice 15% of Alexstrasza’s current Health, healing an ally for 150% of that amount. Dragonqueen: Breath of Life Cooldown greatly reduced and does not cost Health.
- Abundance
- Plant a seed of healing that blooms after 3 seconds, healing nearby allied Heroes for 20% of their maximum Health. Dragonqueen: Preservation Heal area and amount greatly increased.
- Flame Buffet
- Launch a fireball, Burning enemies hit for 75 damage over 5.5 seconds. Hitting enemies that are already Burning deals 125 bonus damage upon impact, Slows them by 40% decaying over 2 seconds, and refunds the Mana cost. Dragonqueen: Wing Buffet Damage and Knockback enemies in an arc.
Heroic Abilities
- Life-Binder
- Bind Alexstrasa’s life force with an allied Hero. After 2 seconds, the Hero with a lower percentage of Health is set to the same Health percentage as the other Hero.
- Cleansing Flame
- After 1.25 seconds, take to the sky and drop 5 fireballs over 6 seconds at the position of the mouse cursor. Fireballs deal 150 damage to enemies and heal allied Heroes for 300 Health. 2 seconds after dropping all fireballs, Alexstrasza lands at the position of the mouse cursor.
We’ve also gotten an early look at her full list of talents courtesy of the Icy Veins forums.
- Level 1
- Live and Let Live: While Alexstrasza is above 75% health, Gift of Life’s cooldown recharges 100% faster.
- Circle of Life (Quest): Collect Regeneration Globes. Reward: After collecting 15 Regeneration Globes, Abudance heals for an additonal 5% maximum health. Reward: After collecting 25, Abudence’s healing burst creates a Regeneration Globe.
- Flames of Fury (Quest): Hit 20 burning heroes with Flame Buffet. Reward: Hitting a burning hero with Flame Buffet reduces Dragonqueen’s cooldown by 5 seconds.
- Level 4
- Surge of Vitality: Abundance also grants allied Heroes 30% movement speed for 3 seconds. Increase Flame Buffet’s initial slow from 40% to 60%.
- Exuberance: While Alexstrasza is above 75% health, gain 15% movement speed.
- Life Blossom: While Alexstrasza is above 75% health, Gift of Life creates a Life Blossom at target’s location. She can collect the Life Blossom to make her next Gift of Life cost no health.
- Level 7
- Burdened Flourish: Alexstrasza received 30% more healing from Abundance and 100% more healing from Regeneration Globes. Hitting a burning hero with Flame Buffet heals Alexstrasza for 10% of maximum health.
- [Name Unknown] (60-second cooldown): Activate to reduce an enemy hero’s damage by 50% for 3 seconds. Healing a stunned, rooted or silenced allied hero reduces the cooldown of this ability by 30 seconds.
- Life Unbound (Active, 90-second cooldown): Activate to heal an allied hero for 15% of their maximum health and deal X damage to nearby enemies. Healing a stunned, rooted or silenced ally reduces the cooldown of this ability by 30 seconds. Cannot be used on self.
- Level 10
- [R1] Life-Binder: Bind Alexstrasa’s life force with an allied Hero. After 2 seconds, the Hero with a lower percentage of Health is set to the same Health percentage as the other Hero.
- [R2] Cleansing Flame: After 1.25 seconds, take to the sky and drop 5 fireballs over 6 seconds at the position of the mouse cursor. Fireballs deal 150 damage to enemies and heal allied Heroes for 300 Health. 2 seconds after dropping all fireballs, Alexstrasza lands at the position of the mouse cursor.
- Level 13
- Dragon Scales: Gain 30 armor while stunned, silenced or rooted, and for 2 seconds afterwards.
- Tough Love: While Alexstrasza is above 75% health, Gift of Life grants its target 20 armor for 2 seconds.
- [Name Unknown]: Heroes healed by Abundance gain a shield that is equal to 60% of the amount healed.
- Level 16
- Draconic Discipline: Increase Dragonqueen’s duration by 9 seconds.
- Ritual of Life: Life Binder activates 3 times over 6 seconds.
- Level 20
- Ruby Wings: Healing or damaging heroes 8 or more times with Cleansing Flame activates Dragonqueen upon landing.
- [Name Unknown]: While Dragonqueen is active, Alexstrasza’s basic attacks apply Flame Buffet, but her attack speed is reduced by 25%.
- Blessing of the Red (Active, 40-second cooldown): Grant an allied hero 500 health until they die. Cannot be used on self, or on a hero who already has Blessing of the Red.
Update November 3, 2017:Heroes of the Storm China accidentally published its updated BlizzCon landing page before the publisher’s annual expo this weekend.
Its artwork reveals the game’s big announcement. Don’t read on if you’d like to be surprised – but as our original story from two months ago suggests, we’ve known this is coming for some time.
The landing pagehas been reverted to its old Halloween theme, but the premature art showedOverwatch’s Hanzo and World of Warcraft’s Alexstrasza posed together, enfolded by Alex’s dragon form and Hanzo’s spirit dragons. This basically confirms that Alex and Hanzo are coming to Heroes of the Storm, as first spotted by a Redditor in a Blizzard presentation (see original story, below).
Here’s a grab of the landing page on Imgur, and here’s the associated Reddit thread.
Original story September 4, 2017:Blizzard may have inadvertently let slip the next residents of Heroes of the Storm’s Nexus: Overwatch’s divisive archer Hanzo, and World of Warcraft’s noble Red Dragon queen, Alexstrasza.
Sharp-eyed Redditor Spellethur spotted the two heroes’ names in this presentation on the design of Kel’Thuzad, the last hero to join the HOTS roster. Can’t make them out? Here’s an image. As you can see, the text is very blurred, but we think we agree with Spellethur’s conclusion. We look forward to the inevitable banter between Hanzo and his brother Genji, and to HOTS players experiencing the rage of regular Hanzo insta-picks.
The next World of Warcraft expansion is almost certainly getting announced at Blizzcon, and if a current in-game quest for Chromie the time dragon is anything to go by, dragons will feature prominently. Hence, we’re going to guess Alexstrasza will also be unveiled at Blizzard’s annual bash in November.
Would you support Hanzo and Alex moving into the Nexus? Let us know in the comments.