We’re working on getting the next balance patch into your hands, but until then we have disabled Zagara in all forms of play. We feel like this is the best step to ensure higher quality matches until we can address her current strengths.
Below is a preview of the changes Zagara will receive in the upcoming patch. Thank you for your patience.
Base
Health reduced from 1575 to 1500.
Health regeneration reduced from 3.82 to 3.12.
Basic Attack damage reduced from 85 to 83.
Baneling Barrage [Q]
Mana cost increased from 10 to 15.
Cooldown increased from 3 to 4.
Damage reduced from 86 to 80.
Talents
Level 1
Volatile Acid [Q]
Removed functionality: No longer increases Baneling Barrage’s damage.
Level 7
Baneling Massacre [Q]
Changed functionality: Gain two additional charges of Baneling Barrage, but increase its cooldown by 2 seconds.
Level 20
Pack Instinct [W]
Damage bonus reduced from 25% to 20%.
Duration reduced from 3 to 2 seconds.
Developer Comment:
In contrast to our usual ethos, Zagara is seeing her talents pay the price for an increase in power to her base kit. While the immediate effect is Zagara has less impactful Baneling talents, we feel that Baneling Barrage is a more interesting ability than from where we started, and we have more room for future changes.
What the hell Blizzard??? Baneling barrage is literally the only thing making zagara good, and you are nerfing it into the ground. how about instead of constantly nerfing the only fun heroes in the game, you improve the crappy heroes that no one ever plays to make them competitive
I’m glad you’ve taken the decision to disable her as she was not at all healthy for the game.
However looking at the changes made to her, I feel like this is another missed opportunity to rework her.
Previously she was a sub par damage dealer who, with the last buffs, made her 1 build broken. Now, she’s going to get base stat reductions and build nerfs which seems a bit unfair as she may return to being a terrible pick again or even in a worst state.
With all due respect, I think she needs more invasive changes like Azmodan or Sylvanas to fix her design flaw and make her kit healthier and more modern (I.e. make her more active to play and allow her more skill expression instead of just a drop it and leave it play style that’s admittedly a tad toxic and makes her an inconsistent dps)
Then again, we’d have to test out your proposed changes for the next patch to see if she’s still viable or not. So thank you for this.
Tbh i dislike these changes. You could easily only increases Q’s mana cost to 20 and make Baneling Massacre a lvl 20 talent instead of useless Broodmother talent. It would easily fix her.
I’m generally not the biggest fan of Smile’s posts, but the comment isn’t really all that crazy. It isn’t cool to take one month to disable her. Especially when they’ve done hot fixes within a week or two in the past. By the second week they should have had more than enough data to do something. They can and should do better.
Should yes, can? Who are we to answer that. We don’t know how stretched they are, we know the Dev team manages a number of Blizzard classic titles. You might be right, but the answer depends on factors most of us aren’t privy to.
I am sure Blizz has their own ideas so what I am about to say is useless, but I kind of feel Zag needs a rework of her creep regarding how it works and how she relates to it. As a long time zag fan (she is one of my higher level heroes), her creep is really what makes her unique and interesting. If they do a deep rework I wish they would focus on that.