Characters / Heroes of the Storm: Starcraft Universe

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This page is for how StarCraft heroes appear in Heroes of the Storm only. For how the characters act in their own universes, see the pages for those games.

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Starcraft Universe Heroes

Melee Assassins

Alarak, Highlord of the Tal'darim

Voiced by: John de Lancie (English)^note Other Languages: Andrey Sokolov (Russian)

"Finally."

The newest and most cunning leader of the Tal'darim protoss, Alarak temporarily allied himself with Artanis and the Daelaam to fight against his former master, Amon. After the war, Alarak led the Tal'darim to find a new homeworld among the galaxy to start anew, free of Amon's influence.

In Heroes, Alarak is a Melee Assassin who specializes in feast-or-famine gameplay and punishing enemies who have overextended. His trait is Sadism, which by default doubles the damage his abilities do to heroes and any self-healing Alarak receives. This bonus can be increased by scoring takedowns, but resets on Alarak's death. His Discord Strike hits a T-shaped area in front of him after a short delay, dealing damage and silencing enemies hit. Telekinesis pushes himself or enemies (or both!) a short distance in a direction Alarak chooses. Lightning Surge discharges electricity between Alarak and his target, damaging the target enemy and dealing heavier damage to any others caught between them, while also healing Alarak for each hero struck.

His first Heroic is Deadly Charge. After a range-determining windup, Alarak charges forward and deals heavy damage to all enemies he passes through. His second Heroic is Counter-Strike. Alarak protects himself from damage and crowd-control effects for a short period, then lashes out to damage a large area if he was attacked by an enemy hero during that time.

His current skins are Highlord Alarak, Herald of N'Zoth Alarak, and Dark Nexus Alarak.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Given how the Tal'darim work as a culture, being their Highlord also implies having proven yourself the top asskicker among them.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: His primary weapon.
• Blood Knight: Fighting and being powerful are basically all he cares about.
• Casting Gag: The Discord Strike ability manages to do this twice. The ability's name is shared by John de Lancie's character Discord in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and the ability is mapped to the Q key by default while he also played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Combos:
  • Use Telekinesis to drag an enemy hero to Alarak, then follow up by Discord Strike to deal massive damage, and if the enemy hero tries to get away, use Lightning Surge.
  • Gets another level of this since he is the first hero whose level 20 talent, rather than exclusively letting him modify whichever ultimate ability was chosen, instead lets him pick up his other ultimate. Using both of these abilities together makes for a pretty devastating combo as well, letting him charge through the enemy team and then deal huge area damage when they try to retaliate.
  • To emphasize his combo-focused nature, Alarak also has several talents that encourage him to land his abilities all in succession - Show of Force deals an extra burst of damage to enemies struck by his full combo and gives a Sadism boost, while the drawback of Last Laugh can be avoided if he hits enemies enough times with his spells in a few seconds.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Acts like a really self-centered MOBA player. To drive it in further, he has a talent that increases his Sadism meter when an ally dies nearby, meaning that he actually benefits from watching his allies die.
• Continuing is Painful: Damage boost from Sadism can be greatly increased by scoring takedowns, and certain talents can boost it even further - especially Rite of Rak'Shir on level 13, which can potentially scale infinitely - but when Alarak goes down, all these bonuses are lost, meaning he'll be significantly weakened for a long period of time.
• Counter-Attack: His Counter-Strike Heroic puts him on a defensive stance, which protects him from all damage briefly. If an enemy hero would attack Alarak during this stance, he will lash out a powerful psionic blast in a wide area in front of him.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Alarak excels at bursting down enemy heroes in ganks and teamfights by forcing them out of position and eviscerating them or heavily punishing enemies that overextend. What he's not good at is everything else. His survivability is mediocre at best and one good disable can result in him getting put down, his sustain still relies on fighting enemy heroes, and his PvE just sucks because Sadism, the source of his monstrous burst damage, only works on heroes.
• Cthulhumanoid: His Herald of N'zoth skin, which turns him into a faceless one.
• Deadly Lunge: His Deadly Charge Heroic lets him charge in a straight line after a short windup, dealing heavy damage to all enemies he passes through.
• Deadpan Snarker: Almost all of his dialogue consists of this.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • All of Alarak's basic abilities are relatively hard to land due to their narrow AOEs, and both of his Heroics are on the gimmicky side. However, once you learn his combos and are able to land them consistently, Alarak becomes a force to be reckoned with.
  • With the D.Va patch, he received a unique type of Quest talent that gives him three tasks - two relatively straightforward, and a very difficult third. The catch? Completing the hardest task counts as finishing all tasks on the quest, giving Alarak a massive power boost.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: Lightning Surge is rather mechanically interesting in that it is targeted on a unit, but also hits enemies between Alarak and the designated target. The catch is that striking enemies in the middle deals more damage than targeting Lightning Surge on them directly and is required for some of his talents, meaning that to get the most mileage out of the ability, Alarak has to position himself in such a way that he can hit his intended target by aiming at a second enemy behind them.
• Expy: He a Sith in everything but name.
• Flanderization: Made into even more of a jerk than his original incarnation, likely a response to how his trolling endeared him to players. This makes a certain amount of sense: When he's dealing with other protoss, he's merely rude, overbearing, and superior. But, based on his interactions with Nova in Covert Ops, he holds terrans in utter contempt. In the Nexus, he's always dealing with terrans and he knows it.
• Flying on a Cloud: His default mount (called Highlord's Ascent) is a small floating cloud of vapor for him to stand on. He's otherwise restricted to other floating mounts.
• Glass Cannon: Alarak's spells tend to rip through any hero that happens to be on the receiving end, but his durability isn't terribly impressive, he doesn't have a decent escape ability, and his utility is rather lacking if he's not willing to cut his Sadism meter.
• Hero Killer: His intended design, due to his Sadism trait boosting the damage of his skills, including his Heroics.
• It's All About Me: One of his celebration quotes...
  Alarak: Go, and tell the others of the victory I have won here.
• Jerkass: He does not think highly of anyone. Especially apparent in his healing quotes. Whereas even Diablo and Arthas are genuinely thankful for healing they receive...
  Alarak: Is this the best healing you can do?!
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Just reading this page spoils the fact that Alarak defeats Ma'lash for the title of Highlord.
• Mage Killer: His abilities make him terrifyingly good at this. Telekinesis can be used to force mage heroes towards him, where he can shred them to bits. Discord Strike comes with a Silence which is absolutely devastating to any spellcaster. And since the abilities of mage heroes tend to be telegraphed, he can use Counter-Strike to heavily punish such attempts.
• Magic Knight: While his attack damage is fairly respectable, much of Alarak's damage output comes from his Sadism-boosted spells.
• Magikarp Power: Alarak's Lightning Surge has a low cooldown but does little damage, unless his "Negatively Charged" talent is taken, which increments its middle's damage upon landing hits on heroes with its middle. With some time, skill, and hits, Lightning Surge's damage can grow tremendously. There's no limit to number of times it can stack either, meaning its damage has the potential to scale infinitely.
  • Also the case for Alarak in general - his abilities start out modestly powerful, but if he can start building Sadism, he gets the potential to completely destroy heroes that end up on the wrong side of his spells. It's not unheard of for squishies caught out by a stacked Alarak to get vaporized by a single ability rotation.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • Alarak is the first hero who can choose and use two separate heroics at Level 20 (and also the first hero who can't upgrade their Heroics with talents), and he also uses his Sadism trait as a secondary resource for certain Talents.
  • Sadism only increases damage done by abilities but not his auto-attacks (though there's a talent that modifies that), so Alarak needs to be played with the mindset of a melee, short-ranged Mage hero.
• Mind over Matter: Alarak's Telekinesis skill has a lot of uses, from displacing enemy heroes or to push himself to the direction he wants.
• Never My Fault: One of his recall quotes.
  Alarak: I must leave, and I blame this failure on you.
• Odd Friendship: With Murky, whose bloodthirstiness he admires, Garrosh, who is also a cruel leader who rules through power and fear, and Mephisto, who admires Alarak's immense hatred.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Kinda. Despite his Jerkass behavior towards his allies, one of his talents, Pure Malice, gives his trait an 8% bonus (stacking up to a maximum of 40%) whenever a nearby ally dies. So, if you happen to be in the area and your enemy is at low-health, you could use the extra power to avenge your fallen comrades.
  • He also has a quote for when an ally kills an enemy:
    "You are not as weak as you appear."
  • One of his quotes for healers isn't quite as condescending as the others:
    "You've served your Highlord well enough."
• Power at a Price: His talents take this concept and run with it.
  • Some of his Talents reduce the effectiveness of his Sadism trait in exchange for utility.
  • Exaggerated by his late-game talent, Last Laugh, which can be activated to remove all roots, slows, and damage over time effects and teleport to the chosen location, but will reduce Alarak's Health to 1 if he doesn't deal damage to multiple Heroes in few seconds after using it. ^note Before D.Va patch, he didn't even have that chance - his health dropped to 1 instantly.
  • Another one lets him refresh all his basic abilities, at the low low cost of permanently reducing his Sadism meter.
• Psychic Powers: As with all protoss. In Heroes he specifically uses telekinesis.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: As per the standard Tal'darim look.
• Sadist: Referenced from his Trait, which makes his skills deal 100% more bonus damage and gives him 100% more healing against enemy heroes.
• Shock and Awe: With Lightning Surge.
• Status Effects: Discord Strike silences all enemies it hits. Alarak can take certain Talents that reduces his Sadism to apply slows to his Telekinesis and Lightning Surge.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Downplayed- he's even more of a jerk here than his original incarnation, but even back in Legacy Of The Void he is still the same arrogant, bloodthirsty Troll if a bit less of a Jerkass.
• Troll: The medium lessens it somewhat, but one of his Stop Poking Me! quotes has him mention that the Tal'darim name their worlds after significant events, then he brings up Slayn... only to tell you to let your imagination run wild as to what it was named after.
• Ungrateful Bastard: So you healed him. Expecting a thank-you? Well, you won't be getting one. He'll happily comment disparagingly on your healing skills, though.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Telekinesis can force Alarak's enemies into a position where he can very easily hit them.

Kerrigan, Queen of Blades

Voiced by: Vanessa Marshall (English)^note Other Languages: Sophie Riffont (French), Polina Shcherbakova (Russian)

"Wait 'til they get a load of me..."

Formerly a Ghost - an elite covert operative, Sarah Kerrigan was a powerful psionic with a burgeoning relationship with Commander James Raynor. That fell apart when she was betrayed by Arcturus Mengsk, and ended up apparently dying to the zerg. However, her actual fate turned out to be much worse, as she was captured and assimilated, transforming her into the terrifying Queen of Blades, a violent, destructive, and sociopathic super-psionic acting as the head of the ever-growing swarm. Although the original Kerrigan was apparently dead, the Queen of Blades would go on to play a much more important role in the galaxy than anyone could have foreseen.

Kerrigan is a Melee Assassin hero, based around leaping onto an enemy and tearing them to shreds while utterly preventing their escape. Her trait, Assimilation, causes her to gain a temporary shield whenever she deals damage. Ravage is a damaging lunge with two charges which refunds a charge and the mana cost if the target dies within a short time after impact. Impaling Blades targets an area, which erupts into a circle of spikes after a delay to inflict heavy damage and a brief stun. With Primal Grasp, Kerrigan summons a row of spines that pull enemies in a cone towards her, then gathers psionic energy. After a delay, the energy is released, damaging nearby enemies.

Her first Heroic ability, Maelstrom, surrounds her with a highly-damaging psionic aura for a few seconds. She can freely attack and use all of her abilities while it's active. Her second Heroic ability, Summon Ultralisk, calls an Ultralisk which charges forward, stunning the first enemy hero hit. The Ultralisk then pursues the target for a few seconds and can be commanded to attack different targets by Kerrigan.

Her current skins are Primal Queen Kerrigan, Succubus Kerrigan, Countess Kerrigan, Queen of Ghosts Kerrigan, Legion Mistress Kerrigan, Cheerleader Kerrigan, and Brood War Kerrigan.

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• Arch-Enemy: Presumably Mengsk once he's added; for now, it's Nova.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Designed to pounce on an enemy and relentlessly tear them apart; however, she has very little option to disengage, and will quickly be killed herself if she leaps into a situation she can't handle.
• Battle Couple: As this is the rehumanized Kerrigan, she's this with Raynor.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: She's completely naked, but her zerg-infested form lacks attributes.
• Barrier Warrior: Gains shields whenever she deals damage.
• The Beastmaster: She can be this with her Summon Ultralisk Heroic. She can control the movement and the attack target of her Ultralisk.
• Bizarro Universe: Her Queen of Ghosts skin is Kerrigan mostly deinfested after the events of Wing of Liberty had Nova not attacked Valerian's base and kidnapped Raynor.
• Blood Knight: Some of her kill quotes indicate this.
  Kerrigan: Did it hurt? GOOD!
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Her primal zerg glow is lampshaded by Tassadar when she tries to explain she's no longer evil.
  Kerrigan: I am not your enemy, Tassadar. Things have changed.
  Tassadar: Yes. You radiate a purple glow now. How very different.
• Combos: She's the combo assassin of Heroes, with her skills forming a deadly pattern. Drop Impaling Blades on the ground, then follow up by using Primal Grasp to drag an enemy hero to it and deal massive damage, if the enemy hero tries to get away, use Ravage to cherry tap.
• Composite Character: Although most of her quotes imply that she's still the self-appointed Queen Bitch of the Universe from Starcraft: Brood War, Kerrigan heavily implies through some of her quotes (most notably, her kind words for companions who heal her or could use some healing themselves and her interactions with Raynor at the start of a map) that she's actually the version from StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, which featured a personal struggle to regain her former niceness and compassion alongside her transformation into a primal zerg and the return of her purple-glowing Queen of Blades appearance. This is hilariously lampshaded with one of her poke dialogues:
  Kerrigan: Wait a minute, aren't I supposed to be human now? Make up your mind, Blizzard; human, zerg, human, zerg...pick one.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Her Summon Ultralisk Heroic can be upgraded with the talent Torrasque which makes the Ultralisk enter a egg state when its timer expires or when it dies, and if the egg isn't destroyed or if its timer expires, the Ultralisk will respawn, ready for another scuffle.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Kerrigan is labelled "Hard" for a reason. With plenty of ways to start a fight but almost none to disengage, Kerrigan can potentially rip multiple enemies to shreds in quick succession, but needs to pick her fights carefully and not get in over her head as Assimilation shields won't be enough to save her if she does. Even her basic Impaling Blades into Primal Grasp combination qualifies, as careful timing and positioning of both abilities is needed to ensure that the enemy is dragged into the spikes as they pop out. Miss and Kerrigan wastes a ton of mana for very little damage (if any), but if the combo lands, it's going to hit hard.
• Easily Forgiven: Averted. Maybe Raynor is happy to work with her seeing as she's the Reformed, but Not Tamed Anti-Hero from Heart of the Swarm but Tassadar remains hostile and suspicious towards her, Zeratul still wants revenge on her for forcing him to kill Raszagal before laughing in his face about it (even if he'll work with her against the other team and/or Amon out of pragmatism) and Tychus is just as happy to kill her as he was in Wings of Liberty. The latter even spares the opportunity for a joke to bitterly growl that she doesn't have anyone to save her from him this time.
• Finishing Move: Ravage is designed as this, as its cooldown is reset if the target dies. Certain talents emphasize this even more by granting additional benefits from using Ravage to kill enemies.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Debatable. More like 95% zerg, 5% human.
• Healing Vat: One of talents lets her enter a chrysalis, which will protect her from damage and heal her over time.
• I Am the Noun: Kerrigan IS the Swarm.
• Ms. Fanservice: Kerrigan is a bit more subtle at this than other female characters in the game, but she still got some going for her, and definitely much more than in her home universe. Additionally, she has not one, but TWO skin sets where she looks like a succubus (and thus, Stripperiffic), and she also has another one where she dresses like a cheerleader girl.
• Our Demons Are Different: Both her Succubus Kerrigan and her Legion Mistress Kerrigan skins, which reimagine her as a Warcraft succubus. Both have horns on her head and bat-like wings; the Succubus skin gives her a corset-bra fusion and a Thong of Shielding, while the Legion Mistress gives her a Chainmail Bikini instead, along with some leg armor.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Her other skin, known as Countess von Kerrigan, is her as the ruler of Raven Court, which she apparently ruled as The Caligula. It even comes with a special mount which allows her to shapeshift into a bat with Kerrigan's head.
• Pet the Dog: Despite being the self-proclaimed Queen Bitch of the Universe, her speech is surprisingly soft from time to time, and she encourages wounded allies to go heal in a gentle, concerned tone. Makes sense, since this Kerrigan is from Heart of the Swarm.
• The Rival:
  • To Nova: they're both Action Girl Friendly Snipers with powerful psionic abilities and a laid-back, but professional, attitude. Well excepting the psionic ability, Kerrigan was those before being infested. Attitude-wise, Kerrigan looks down on Nova as Always Second Best and Nova voices her annoyance of being constantly put on the shadow of Kerrigan's reputation at the Ghost Academy.
  • Also to Sylvanas. They each consider the other unworthy of the title queen.
• Unholy Matrimony: Her Countess skin is married to Crimson Count Arthas.
• Units Not to Scale: Starcraft shows Ultralisks as being much larger than Kerrigan herself. Not this game; the Ultralisk summoned by Kerrigan is at least a head shorter than she is.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Her third ability, Primal Grasp, drags every enemy in its range back towards her with zerg talons.

Zeratul, Dark Prelate

Voiced by: Fred Tatasciore (English)^note Other Languages: Pierre Dourlens (French), Andrey Yaroslavtsev (Russian)

"I serve."

Zeratul is a wise but mysterious Dark Templar. He taught Tassadar the arts of combat, and eventually they became friends. Following Tassadar's sacrifice and the zerg conquest of Aiur, Zeratul fled with many protoss to the Dark Templar home of Shakuras, and obtained the aid of Matriarch Raszagal. Unfortunately, Raszagal had been enthralled in secret by Sarah Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, who played the protoss and the Dark Templars like pawns. While on retreat, Zeratul discovered the zerg-protoss hybrid forces created by a rogue xel'naga. He knew that this xel'naga, Amon, was a threat to every living being in the galaxy, and even learned, much to his apparent disgust, that Kerrigan held the key to the galaxy's survival. Now Zeratul steadies himself for the battle to come - striking from the shadows and aiding his allies where he can - his life for Aiur.

Zeratul is a Melee Assassin hero based on the Dark Templar unit who is adept at sneaking up on an enemy, eviscerating them with heavy burst damage, and making a clean getaway. His trait is Permanent Cloak, which causes him to enter stealth while out of combat for 3 seconds. His first basic ability, Cleave, is a simple Spin Attack that damages surrounding enemies. His second ability throws a Singularity Spike which latches on to the first enemy hit, exploding after a short delay to damage and slow the victim. His Blink ability allows him to teleport a short distance without breaking stealth. He also has a fourth ability, Vorpal Blade, which allows him to instantly teleport to the last enemy he basic attacked within 3 seconds.

His first Heroic creates a Void Prison which will place all heroes, minions, and structures within it (except Zeratul) in Time Stop, making them unable to act or take damage until it expires. His second Heroic, Might of the Nerazim, passively causes his next basic attack to deal more damage after using an ability. When activated, it becomes a copy of the last ability he used, dealing half damage.

His current skins are Dark Prelate Zeratul, High Templar Zeratul, Executor Zeratul, Ronin Zeratul, Zerg Hunter Zeratul, and Unraveler Zeratul.

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• And This Is for...: If he gets to kill an enemy Kerrigan, he invokes the name of one of her victims.
  Zeratul: [after killing Kerrigan] For Raszagal!
• Apologetic Attacker: His Odd Friendships with Tassadar, Artanis and Raynor have held up, so he reacts to fighting alongside them/against them appropriately.
• Bash Brothers: With Raynor, Artanis, Fenix and Tassadar. Technically they're all Odd Friendships.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: His primary weapon.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Zeratul used to have a Heroic called Shadow Assault that caused his basic attacks to teleport him to the target. It was interesting, but couldn't hope to compete with the game-changing Void Prison, and was even a bit overkill considering Zeratul has no problem sticking to targets. It was replaced with Might of the Nerazim, a far more effective player-killing ability.
• Combos: The passive effect of Might of the Nerazim encourages him to combine abilities and basic attacks in sequence. In fact, it takes the effect from a removed talent called Combo Slash.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He's a hero in StarCraft, despite the title.
• Deadpan Snarker: Makes a couple jabs at the player's expense in his poke quotes and if you make him wait long enough in the shop.
  "Long ago, an oracle foresaw the arrival of a hero. One who will guide my blade to victory. Clearly, you are not that hero."
  "The Dark Templar are a nomadic people. We are not fond of sitting around in one place... doing nothing."
• Flash Step: Retains his trademark Blink ability. Additionally, he also gains Vorpal Blade and has a couple talents with a blink effect as well. His old Shadow Assault Heroic allowed him to do this on all of his basic attacks for a brief period of time, but was removed for being Cool, but Inefficient.
• Glass Cannon: As with most assassin heroes, Zeratul can utterly tear an unsuspecting enemy to shreds but can't take a hit in return. Even more so after his rework, which took away most of his self-healing options.
• Hunter of Monsters: One of his alt skins is armour constructed from the bones of zerg, aptly named "Zerg Hunter".
• Invisibility: Much like Nova, Zeratul's permanently invisible unless he's attacking, in which he'll get invisible again when not attacking.
• Light Is Good: One of his alt skins makes him one of the Khalai protoss, the traditional gold and white protoss. It's a role-reversal with his buddy Tassadar.
• Moveset Clone: Interestingly enough, his base moveset is basically that of Maiev Shadowsong's in Warcraft III. Cleave is mechanically identical to Fan of Knives, Blink is Blink, and Singularity Spike is a dead ringer for Shadow Strike. Naturally now that Maiev is in the game, she's been through heavy Divergent Character Evolution.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Zeratul used to easily steal merc camps with Void Prison, just by throwing it in the capture area then moving on it without an opposition. This was especially devastating for stealing bosses. It was later changed to also freeze the ground it's placed on, making Void Prison steals take far more careful planning.
• Power Copying: Might of the Nerazim is an internal version, with the ability icon showing a distorted "fake" version of the last ability he used.
• Samurai: His Ronin skin is that of a samurai who failed to protect his master and now seeks to atone for his misdeeds — a Continuity Nod to certain events which took place in StarCraft: Brood War.
• Skill Gate Characters: As with anything involving invisibility, Zeratul can wreck lower skill players, until the players learn to see the Visible Invisibility. However, this trope is downplayed compared to Nova, as even without his invisibility, Zeratul can be tricky to catch and he's still a capable direct combatant.
• The Sneaky Guy: It's kind of a Nerazim specialty.
• Surprisingly Sudden Death: He can be built for extreme burst damage the moment he breaks stealth, at the cost of everything else. While it's most likely not enough to take out an entire health bar, it could easily wipe 50-70% of the squishier Hero's hp in 2-3 seconds. The worst part is that he could open with his Blink first, so even when you are trained to see his Visible Invisibility, there's just nothing you can do to prevent him from getting the jump and shred you to bits in moments.
• Teleport Spam: His baseline kit includes Blink and Vorpal Blade, and he can get a few more from talents. His first heroic can also clone Blink if he needs even more teleporting.
• Time Stands Still: Void Prison freezes time for anyone caught in it^note can be upgraded to exclude allies. Savvy players can use it to split the enemy team, or to aid in capturing mercenaries^note See if the mercenaries are pulled away from their capture point. It they are, freeze the enemy just as they killed the last merc, and capture the point yourself.
• Violation of Common Sense: One of the most common way to deal with Zeratul's Void Prison heroic is to run into it. The heroic is often used to separate the enemy team so the fight is now a 5 against 3, so intentionally getting caught in the heroic allows your team to re-engage at 5 vs 5. Of course, if the enemy team packs AoE disables, your team will be open to it once the heroic ends...

Ranged Assassins

Fenix, Steward of the Templar

Voiced by: Marc Graue (English)^note Other Languages: Igor Staroseltsev (Russian)

"En taro Adun!"

Once a valiant zealot fighting for the Protoss Empire, after falling to the zerg at the Second Battle of Antioch, Fenix was reborn as a dragoon: a quadrupedal assault walker. Despite this, his warrior spirit remained undaunted, and he went on to fight alongside James Raynor, Tassadar and Zeratul to defeat the zerg Overmind. After the fall of Aiur, Fenix went on to work with Raynor and Kerrigan to combat the encroaching UED, but was betrayed and killed by the Queen of Blades.

Fenix is a sustained-damage Ranged Assassin who represents the Dragoon unit from StarCraft I. His trait is Shield Capacitor. Fenix has a large shield on him, which takes damage before his health and rapidly regenerates while out of combat. His first ability is Plasma Cutter, a laser weapon that rotates around Fenix on a selected radius, damaging and slowing enemies. His second ability lets him switch between two basic attack modes - Repeater Cannon, a fast-firing single target blast; and Phase Bomb, a long-ranged ball of energy that explodes in an area. Finally, Warp allows Fenix to teleport to a nearby location after a short channel, with the destination being hidden from enemies.

Fenix's first Heroic is Purification Salvo, scanning all enemy heroes within a wide arc in front of him then unleashing a devastating barrage of missiles at the scanned targets, dealing even greater damage to slowed enemies. Planet Cracker, his second Heroic, locks Fenix in place while he fires an enormous laser with unlimited range in a straight line, dealing massive damage to enemies caught inside.

His current skins are Ruinwalker Fenix and Dark Nexus Fenix.

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• Always Accurate Attack: After locking on, Purification Salvo always hits its targets.
• Armored But Frail: Fenix has the lowest health pool of all Ranged Assassins, but has the highest total health if you include his shields.
• Badass Creed: "I fear no enemy, for the Khala is my strength. I fear not death, for strength is eternal!"
• Bash Brothers: Retains his camaraderie with Raynor, Tassadar, Zeratul and Artanis.
• Blood Knight: Even if he's in a Dragoon, Fenix enjoys a good battle.
• Composite Character: While Fenix is obviously based on the Dragoon, his kit takes an equal amount of stuff from the Stalker (the StarCraft II replacement). He has the Dragoon's long-range blasts, but also the Stalker's Warp and Repeater Cannon attack.
• Cute Machines: Not as intentional or obvious as Probius, but making the otherwise faceless Dragoon expressive also makes it look kind of adorable.
• Deflector Shields: Shield Capacitor protects him with a permanent shield, mimicking Protoss units in Starcraft.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Fenix is far more intensive to play than other Basic Attack heroes than Raynor for instance, as to maximize his damage the player needs to learn the rhythm to correctly switch between Phase Bomb and Repeater Cannon ^ExplanationFenix's Basic Attack cooldown carries over between his attack modes. Since Repeater Cannon recharges the cooldown quicker than Phase Bomb, the trick is to switch to Repeater Cannon after every Phase Bomb attack and then switch back to attack with Phase Bomb again once his next Basic Attack is ready. This effectively increases Fenix's damage per second, as Phase Bomb deals more damage, splashes, and has increased range. Coupled with stutterstepping and being more careful about positioning due to his Plasma Cutter and dodging attacks with his big body, he is one of the strongest but also most difficult Basic Attack heroes in the game.
• Diverting Power: One of his talents lets him disable his shields in order to massively boost his damage, letting him go full Glass Cannon.
• Energy Ball: He fires these while in Phase Bomb mode.
• Glass Cannon: With his shields down, Fenix is effectively this, with even one early-game Talent encouraging this trope hands-down by disabling his shields in exchange for boosting his basic attack damage (said talent has since been reworked to give him a damage boost up front that is maintained for as long as he keeps attacking, and drains his shields after the boost runs out).
• Laser Cutter: Plasma Cutter is this on a larger scale.
• Man in the Machine: Fenix, the Protoss individual, is severely wounded and kept alive by his robotic life support/siege weapon. (Before being injured in battle, he was the same character class as Artanis.)
• Meaningful Name: Someone who basically dies but gets a second chance at life? You mean, like a phoenix?
• Mythology Gag:
  • Fenix's death animation is a recreated version of the original StarCraft's Dragoons. His walk animation also remains true to the original game, wherein the Dragoon's orientation never pivots and it crabwalks in all directions.
  • In his Stop Poking Me! quotes, he makes mention of Aldaris sending him to Glacius to preserve his memories. He also mentioned embellishing some of said memories and figuring no one would notice – memories that would later be uploaded to Talandar, his Purifier incarnation in StarCraft II. And yes, Fenix, someone noticed.
• Not the Intended Use: Though a Glass Cannon, Fenix's Flash Step and regenerating shields give him just enough survivability to play the Offlaner role, normally reserved for Mighty Glacier types.
• Odd Friendship: With Raynor, as always. Has also befriended Genji, D.Va and Samuro.
• Plasma Cannon: Most of his weaponry is made of plasma.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: His Shield Capacitor grants Fenix a regenerating shield when out of combat, but in exchange, his health regeneration is very much non-existent.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: The Planet Cracker is, in StarCraft lore, a beam so powerful that it's only found on Motherships and above, the former of which are explicitly said to be city-sized. Naturally, it's a lot less "planet obliterate-y" here than it is in the lore. How Fenix managed to fit a weapon that size onto the Dragoon's frame and provide the power for it, we may never know.
• Spider Tank: The Dragoon is a large, four-legged robot.
• Stance System: He switches between a shorter-ranged sustained Repeater Cannon, or the bursty long-ranged Phase Bomb.
• Status Effect-Powered Ability: Purification Salvo deals significantly increased damage to slowed enemies. This works with both the slow he applies from Plasma Cutter or any slow from an allied hero.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Planet Cracker. Fitting since it's meant to, well, crack planets.
• Weaksauce Weakness: There are a number of talents that instantly destroy shields (most notably Varian's Shattering Throw). Since about 1/3 of Fenix's health is shields, these are disproportionally effective against him.

Nova, Dominion Ghost

Voiced by: Grey DeLisle (English)^note Other Languages: Laura Blanc (French), Maria Ovchinnikova (Russian)

"Locked and loaded!"

One of Dominion's finest Ghosts — an elite corps of assassins with potent psychic powers. November Annabelle 'Nova' Terra was born psychic, and at a young age was drafted into Ghost Academy due to her psionic powers and military capabilities. Where most Ghosts are conscripted, Nova volunteered — and indeed, she did so hoping to erase the pain of her traumatic childhood with a mind-wipe. Nowadays, Nova remains a Ghost of the Dominion. She is empathic and capable of showing a friendly and tender side, but she is mostly dedicated at her job, showing only a cold professional attitude and deadly efficiency. Her loyalty lies with the Dominion organization, so depending on who's in charge of that organization she can be a cold enemy, when under Arcturus, or a reliable ally, when under Valerian.

Nova is a Ranged Assassin hero specializing in biding her time, getting the right position, then blasting her enemies away. Her Permanent Cloak trait passively cloaks her and increases her movement speed when she is out of combat for 3 seconds. Her main abilities are Snipe, a high-damage single-target skillshot that gains stacking damage with each hero hit but loses all stacks if Nova misses; Pinning Shot, a targeted shot that greatly slows the enemy; and Holo Decoy which summons a false Nova that attacks enemies, but deals very low damage. Using Holo Decoy does not break stealth. Nova also has a fourth ability, Ghost Protocol, which instantly activates Permanent Cloak and creates a Holo Decoy at her location.

Nova's first Heroic ability, Triple Tap, locks on to a targeted enemy hero and fires three heavily damaging shots at them. However, the shots will hit the first enemy hero or structure in their path, which may not be the intended target. Her second Heroic ability, Precision Strike, calls down an orbital bombardment at any location on the map, striking for massive area damage after a short delay.

Her current skins are Elite Agent Nova, Spectre Nova, Roller Derby Nova, Novazon, Widowmaker Nova, and Deathranger Nova.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Zigzagged. Nova as she appeared in the main series proper is basically a Cold Sniper who's very dedicated in her job and does not let emotions get in the way, and because being under Arcturus Mengsk's employment, she's usually being put as an antagonist (and her idea to kill Tosh was considered the 'non-canon' version, thus opposed). In this game, however, without Mengsk, she is instead portrayed as someone who got hired by the good guys, be friendly with both Raynor and Tychus (she never met the latter face to face in the original), and is a lot more of a sassy Friendly Sniper when normal friends are involved (see Token Evil Teammate below). However, this heroism might be a Call-Back to Starcraft: Ghost, where she was meant to be the main protagonist and quite possibly not a Villain Protagonist. Then took another turn post-Legacy where it's revealed that she's just loyal to the Dominion, so she'd technically be a heroic character if she's under Valerian.
• A.I. Breaker: Negative example. Thanks to a bug, if she's cloaked while in brush, thanks to the fact that AI can always see into the brush, the latter overrides her cloak and they'll break their 'ignore her if stealthed' rule.
• Armor Is Useless: Her Spectre skin wears light plate armor but isn't any less squishy for it.
• Ascended Meme: Nova was called the "best player killer in the game" by a teammate of a streamer, who proceeded to lose the game and the teammate blamed the enemy Nova for their loss. In the next game, despite building a very questionable team composition in the draft, the streamer decides to pick Nova, the "#1 Player Killer" hero in the game, and wins a very unfavorable game. Henceforth, the community started to call Nova jokingly the "#1 Player Killer" hero, despite her only commonly known to be useful in less coordinated games outside of tournaments, as all she does is killing enemy heroes. Blizzard caught onto the meme and added a reference◊ to it in the Punisher Arena and D.Va mocks Nova when she gets a kill on her.
  D.Va: "#1 Player Killer"? Oooookaay...
• Automatic Crossbows: In her Novazon skin, a homage to the Amazon from Diablo II, Nova trades her sniper rifle for a huge-ass crossbow, probably the fabled Buriza-Do-Kyanon.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Triple Tap deals an absolutely hideous amount of single-target damage, but comes with numerous downsides. First of all, it has to be channeled, which reduces Nova's teamfight efficiency at best and makes her a sitting duck at worst, so it's only safe to use in ganks. Then, the bullets can be blocked by buildings or healthier allies, potentially foiling a kill. Finally, it's a single-target nuke, which can be mitigated by various abilities that grant Protected or invincibility (though not to the same degree as other abilities of the type since it hits three times). Precision Strike is thus considered the more practical go-to Heroic option, since the area-of-effect damage makes it great for teamfight combos or zoning, the global range makes it just as viable as a finisher, and it deals enough damage in tandem with Nova's other skills to pick off squishy targets anyway.
• Battle Couple: It's implied she became this with Gabriel Tosh in the description for her Spectre skin.
  It was just her and him against the whole damn universe... just the way she liked it.
• Berserk Button: Call her whatever you like, except "sweetheart". Tychus finds this out.
  Nova: Call me "sweetheart" again, and you spit out a bullet. Are we clear?
• Boom, Headshot!: Has Talents that reference this. Also, Raynor mentions the time she shot him in the head.
• Breast Plate: Wears a form-fitting boobplate in several of her skins, meant to emphasize her ample assets.
• Cold Sniper: Largely depends on the opponent, but her coldness is aimed primarily at Kerrigan or Raynor.
• Combat Pragmatist: Encouraged. She's squishy and her damage is too sporadic and delayed to let her win straight up fights, so she's encouraged to use ambushes and dirty tricks to get the upper hand on her enemies.
• Composite Character: The third colour variations of her normal skin is basically Pre-infested/Ghost Kerrigan and her Widowmaker skin makes look like, well, Widowmaker.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Bots aren't fooled by her stealth. They're generally coded to ignore her anyways, but there are exceptions.
• Confusion Fu: She can create a duplicate to act as a decoy and fool the enemy team into chasing the wrong Nova. Amped up with "Rewind" (resets cooldowns for basic abilities) and "Lethal Decoy" (the decoy or decoys do 50% of her damage). A smart player can ramp it up by emulating the movement style of a decoy and thereby confusing the enemy on which one is a decoy, though it also has an equally big chance for the enemy to either catch on, or kill her by accident (thinking that they were attacking the decoy when in truth they're attacking the real deal).
• Crippling Overspecialization: Nova specializes in doing tons of single-target burst damage, making her an excellent assassin and surprise attacker. What she lacks is anything else whatsoever: reliable escapes (since Visible Invisibility is a thing, and characters under stealth can still be hit with skillshots), utility and wave-clear (which she only gets from Talents, and at the cost of burst damage). Besides, the other stealth characters (Zeratul, Valeera, and to a lesser extent Samuro) are able to do what Nova does and more besides. As such, she's not considered a very good character unless there's someone on the opposite team that she can specifically hard-counter.
• A Day in the Limelight: Nova stars in the Heroes Brawl "Ghost Protocol", a match on Towers of Doom where one team consists entirely of regular Nova and the other is composed entirely of Spectre Nova. Additionally, killing an enemy damages the enemy core, and Snipe is a One-Hit Kill. Cue ten Novas camping an altar and waiting for some schmuck to either try and capture it or fire the first shot.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Her Snipe increases in damage every time it hits an enemy hero up up to a cap of 5 times, but the bonus is lost if she fails to hit anything. A Nova player who's good at landing the skillshot without missing is seeing a 900+ damage Snipe (even more with her armor-reducing talent). Add Explosive Round (deals 40% of the Snipe damage as AoE) and Perfect Shot (reduce cooldown to 3 seconds when it hits an enemy hero) to the mix, and she won't even need to use her Heroics to be effective.
• Double Tap:
  • One of her heroics lets her triple tap.
  • Also the name of one of her talents, which gives her a second charge for Pinning Shot.
• Glass Cannon: Has insane burst damage if positioned correctly, but can't take hits or do nearly enough sustained damage to win a straight up fight; she has to rely on harassing her opponents to whittle them down, then pick them off once they're vulnerable. If she's caught out or tries to pick a fight with a full-strength enemy, she's toast.
• Hero Killer: Commonly known to only be useful in killing enemy heroes, that fans started to call her jokingly the "#1 Player Killer" hero in the game.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: She brags that she can shoot the wings off a butterfly, and upon killing Brightwing she'll remark that she told you so. (Although to be fair, shooting the wings off an animal the size of a cat isn't as impressive).
• Invisibility: Permanently stealthed as long as she's not attacking, capturing something, or recalling back to base. Like all stealth heroes, if she stands still for 1.5 seconds while stealthed, she completely turns invisible.
• Javelin Thrower: If she uses the Novazon skin, her Snipe becomes a javelin throw, in homage of the Javazon build of the Amazons.
• Kill Sat: One of her heroics calls one of these.
• Kill Streak: Triple Tap can be talented to reset its cooldown whenever it kills an enemy hero. It's not unheard for Nova to wipe out a heavily wounded enemy team one by one.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Two of her quotes use this trope:
  • If she scores a kill, she may blow a kiss... either directed to the hero she just killed, or to the player. Though the fact that she follows up with a normal blow, likely to her gun, seem to imply the former more.
  • Her annoyed quote: "Failure is never an option. No seriously, go check the menu. I'll wait... Not there, huh?" refers to the fact that if you hit the Menu button... well, there's no 'Failure' button (or even within the Options menu).
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: She got a mind-wipe when she became a Ghost proper. In fact, that was the reason she joined in the first place, since she wanted to bury her unpleasant past. If you click her enough, however, it seems like her old memories have returned.
  Nova: I can't believe I made out with Tosh... Wait, wasn't I supposed to be mind-wiped in that manga? I don't remember.
• Ms. Fanservice: Even more so than in the StarCraft II series. Nova is still wrapped up in a Spy Catsuit that shows her body off nicely. Not to mention, her ponytail is even longer for those who like that sort of thing. Her skins continue the theme.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Towards Tychus, who just laughs it off.
  Nova: Keep your eyes on the battlefield, Tychus.
  Tychus: I never make promises I don't intend to keep.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Roller Derby Nova is not the Ghost November Annabelle Terra, but instead a rollerskater named Kate Dennings whose nickname is 'Supernova'. Likewise, her Novazon skin comes from Sanctuary as it was at the time of Diablo II, like if you named your Amazon 'Nova'. Averted and parodied for Widowmaker Nova, which implies it's this in the skin description, then pulls a Bait-and-Switch.
• One-Hit Kill: Well, more like three-hit-kill, but her Triple Tap deals so much damage that most squishier targets can be easily killed if all three land. Of course, that's assuming no one takes the bullet for them.
• Or Are You Just Happy to See Me?: Used as one of her joke quotes, where she asks if she detected nuclear launch or this trope.
• Palette Swap: Just like every hero, she has several colour variations, but she is particularly notable, as one of the versions of her default skin looks like Sarah Kerrigan pre-infestation.
• Shoot the Mage First: One of the few claims Nova can have is her excellence in doing this, as mages like Jaina and Kael tends to be both squishy and having little escape options, perfect targets for her burst. This is one of the few ways that Nova can be viable in higher rank plays... to counter-pick a heavy mage team composition. On the other hand, being a Glass Cannon with insane burst capability also puts her on the receiving end of this trope... as long you can find her first.
• Skill Gate Characters: As with anything involving invisibility, Nova absolutely wrecks lower skill players with her insane burst and decoys and staying out of sight most of the time. But against players experienced enough to see through her tricks and invisibility she can easily become experience on a stick.
• The Sneaky Guy: As expected from a Ghost, Nova won't be able to put up much of a showing in a direct confrontation, but can bait targets into unfavourable positions to blow them up. Holo Decoy is great for both throwing enemies for a loop or eating incoming skillshots, while Nova can capitalize on her stealth and out-of-combat mobility to show up in unexpected places with major burst damage.
• Tactical Withdrawal: Ghost Protocol is an escape ability that was added to Nova's repertoire after the stealth mechanic was reworked. While Nova in general should be played with a hit-and-run strategy, when she's caught, she still can relatively safely escape from a battle this way.
• Taking the Bullet:
  • Her Triple Tap heroic can be prevented by hiding behind structures or other teammates. Savvy players can intercept Nova's bullets to save their dying teammates.
  • A crafty Nova player is pretty good at eating skillshots with Holo Decoy, especially with the Rapid Projection talent that cuts its cooldown to only 6 seconds. It can be placed anywhere in a large range, allowing her intercept big abilities like Kael's stun or Dehaka's drag.
• Third-Person Seductress: You will probably gather quickly that Nova enjoys flirting with the player, even if it's sometimes in a somewhat Tsundere-like manner.
• Token Evil Teammate:
  • For the tutorial, as the flipside of Nazeebo on the otherwise heroic team led by Raynor and Uther. While Nova isn't openly evil, she does work for Arcturus Mengsk, Raynor's Arch-Enemy, and she has canonically never been directly on the same side with Raynor (As seen in Heart of the Swarm, Raynor choosing Tosh over Nova in Wings of Liberty is the canon route) making her a Punch-Clock Villain. That makes her a Punch-Clock Hero in the tutorial. This is probably encapsulated in her quote on killing someone, she just takes her 'paycheck' for killing whoever she's ordered to.^note One may wonder if Uther or Tyrael paid her more than Mengsk...
    Nova: That's why I make the big bucks.
  • Hilariously, take all those and she still has an unused quote about killing Arcturus (because Mengsk, as of now, isn't playable or announced):
    Nova: I guess I can add 'regicide' to the list...
  • At the time she was released as a Hero in this game, the trope was played quite straight, but after Legacy, this ends up subverted as it's revealed that Nova is just loyal to whoever is in charge of Dominion, and if the one in charge was a good guy (Valerian), she'd be good as well.
• Unknown Rival: While being set up as Kerrigan's rival, Kerrigan didn't seem to recognize her greatly, and if she does, she'd scorn Nova's skills as Always Second Best in Ghost capabilities. Nova's pretty annoyed at that, although she's never riled up about those taunts. Though if poked enough, she does express annoyance of being compared to her constantly back in those days.
  Nova: Well, all day in the Ghost Academy, everyone kept talking about how wonderful Sarah is, how awesome Kerrigan is, Kerrigan this, Kerrigan that, Kerrigan, Kerrigan, Kerrigan...!
• Visible Invisibility: Her cloak gives out a white silhouette. While she's still untargetable, attentive enemies can still tell where she is and fire AoE or skillshots in her direction to reveal her.
• You Are Already Dead: If she takes aim at you and there's no friendly hero or buildings to intercept the bullets for you, you're screwed. Even if you manage to stun her, she'll most likely still manage to get one or two shots out.

Probius, Curious Probe

*beep*

Since his activation, Probius has always wanted to prove himself. He may be small, but he made a big difference by warping in a critical pylon during the retaking of Aiur. As the bravest of probes, Probius is eager to fulfill his purpose in the Nexus.

Probius is a Ranged Assassin hero, based on the Protoss Worker Unit, that focuses on area denial and control. His trait, Warp In Pylon, allows him to build a pylon that generates a Power Field. In its Power Field, he recovers mana extremely fast (otherwise, he doesn't regenerate mana at all). Enemy minions drop minerals on death, which Probius can collect to speed up his trait's cooldown. For abilities, Disruption Pulse is a straightforward skillshot that fires a blast of energy; Warp Rift has two charges and creates a slowing field that blows up after a few seconds or when hitting the center of it with Disruption Pulse; and Photon Cannon builds a temporary cannon that fires at nearby enemies and gains extra attack speed and reveals enemies while inside a Power Field.

His first heroic, Pylon Overcharge, temporarily turns his pylons into powerful, invulnerable long-ranged turrets and massively boosts the size of their Power Field. His second heroic, Null Gate, creates a linear gate that damages and heavily slows enemies attempting to pass through it.

Probius cannot use mounts. Instead, he has Worker Rush, which gives him a passive bonus to speed. It can also be activated to considerably boost this bonus for a few seconds, but he will lose the extra speed prematurely if he takes damage.

His current skins are Probius Prime and Terran Probius.

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• Achilles' Heel: He relies heavily on his Pylons to have any long-term impact. His mana pool is utterly pathetic without the Power Field's regeneration, his Photon Cannons don't even work outside of it, and his basic attack makes Abathur's slap look threatening in comparison. Removing his (quite squishy) Pylons is as good as removing him, at least temporarily.
• Adaptational Badass: An average Probe in the Starcraft series is a Non-Action Guy that doesn't pose a threat to anything aside from other Worker Units unless it's placing down Photon Cannons, and even in his cinematic of origin, Probius doesn't do anything other than warp in a Pylon. Here, he's capable of dealing a ton of damage even without Photon Cannons, and can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Arthas and Diablo.
• Ascended Extra: Probius was the probe that was featured in the opening cinematic for StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void and now, Probius made it to this game.
• Ascended Meme:
  • "(You Must) Construct Additional Pylons" is an oft-used phrase by Starcraft players, and it's one of Probius' talents.
  • His backstory itself might count. There was a joke that the probe in the Legacy cinematic was the real hero of the battle, and now he's a literal playable Hero.
• Badass Adorable: He's a cute little probe who happens to use pylons and turrets to blow his enemies to smithereens.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Despite only having one "eye", Probius has two large, expressive eyebrows.
• Combination Attack: His Q and W are made to be used this way. Both attacks are fairly unimpressive on their own (although still useful), but firing your Q into your W allows you to detonate the slowing field for burst damage.
• Construct Additional Pylons: Wouldn't be a probe without this ability. Specifically, Pylons in this game allow Probius to regenerate mana and power his photon cannons, and with talents they can also buff teammates. It's also the name of his Pylon Overcharge upgrade, which allows him to... construct additional pylons.
• Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Turns out, running toward an explosion rivalling a nuclear blast and into hostile territory is not a wise move.
• Cute Machines: This probe is the most adorable little curious thing to ever be released. It manages to convey emotions despite being a machine! Look at it!
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In his trailer, when he springs his trap on the enemy team, said trap consists of about 5 pylons and a rapidly increasing number of photon cannons. Even with the Construct Additional Pylons talent at level 20, Probius can only have a maximum of 3 pylons out at a time, and he can only rapidly warp in cannons with a specific talent that requires them to attack enemy heroes. (In total fairness, the enemy team — Ragnaros, Cho'gall, Azmodan, The Butcher, and Dehaka — consists of six players, so perhaps Blizzard were just evening the odds.) This may be a Mythology Gag related to his original appearance, where his Pylon allows the Daelaam protoss to spawn quite a few more Zealots than the Arbitrary Headcount Limit would ordinarily permit, which has accurately described as a "200-Gate all in."
• Cyber Cyclops: He's effectively a robotic Oculothorax.
• Deflector Shields: Probius has an optional talent that grants him shields equal to 10% of his max HP.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Probius has one of the steepest learning curves in the game and, due to the rarity of players who regularly play him, most players don't know how to coordinate with a Probius. This makes his kit very hard to use, as his Pylons are easily destroyed, his ultimates are relatively weak when compared to other heroes, he's very fragile, and he cannot set up his defenses on short notice due to the cooldown on his Pylons. Small mistakes can also cost him dearly, as proper placement of his Pylons and Warp Rifts in team fights is crucial. That said, he is still quite powerful once mastered, able to frustrate enemies to no end if they try to chase him through his Warp Rifts and Photon Cannons.
• Expy:
  • You can't look at this guy and NOT think WALL•E. He even drags his "arms" in the same manner.
  • His erratic expressions has been likened to the personality spheres of Portal. His "eye" is even an exact match for Wheatley's.
• Facial Dialogue: He can get a lot of emotion across using those eyebrows.
• Fragile Speedster: If you catch Probius, he quickly goes down - but thanks to his innate speed bonus, talents which make him even more slippery, an on-demand speed boost, and his slowing abilities, that is a pretty big if.
• Glass Cannon: Probius has the 3rd lowest health pool of any character worth a full kill (beaten by Abathur and Tracer), but deals immense damage with Warp Rift detonations, especially considering his limitless mana within a Power Field. To wit, a level 21 Probius deals 416 damage from Disruption Pulse alone, and 764 damage from Warp Rift detonations.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Never explicitly stated, but barring the immensely popular Starcrafts animation, probes are mindless automatons who mine resources, warp in buildings, and are oftentimes used as expendable scouts before more specialised automatons are created to fulfil that purpose. Probius, on the other hand, is shown in his trailer as wanting to follow other heroes into battle, and sulks in sadness when he is instead commanded to continue warping in pylons and cannons, seemingly unsatisfied with his lot in life. When a huge explosion alerts him that danger is near he doesn't do the self-preserving thing of running away like he was programmed to do - he moves toward the explosion to discover what became of the heroes because of curiosity.
• Home Field Advantage: He gains massive bonuses from his Power Field, and is almost powerless outside of one.
• Jumped at the Call: Probius was not at all satisfied with his lot in life, wishing he could tag along with other heroes into battle. So when a huge explosion alerted him that his allies might be in danger, he rushed into action.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Probius cannot recover mana outside of a Power Field, healing fountains, or the Altar of Storms, and cannot use conventional mounts. In addition, he relies on creating power grids and turrets to put on pressure.
• Mythology Gag: The recolors of Probius's default skin use the color palettes of the Purifiers and Tal'darim, two of the protoss factions present in Starcraft II.
• Oh, Crap!: His reaction in his trailer when he sees Ragnaros, Cho'gall, Azmodan, The Butcher, and Dehaka. He gets to return the favour when he lures them into his turrets.
• Original Generation: Zig-zagged. He's the probe from the Legacy of the Void cinematic, but this is the first time he's been given a name, personality, or any kind of focus. He's meant to represent the generic probe unit, much like how Hammer and Morales represent generic units.
• Sdrawkcab Name: In the French version of the game, he's named EDN-OS, which is backward (with a dash in the middle) for "Sonde", which is French for Probe.
• Spam Attack: Probius' primary abilities (Disruption Pulse and Warp Rift) deal massive damage with a cooldown of 3 and 6 seconds, respectively. Considering he practically has limitless mana within a Pylon's radius, he can lay down immense ability damage to the enemy if not stopped.
• Sphere of Destruction: Warp Rift is a spherical anomaly that slows down enemies caught in it, and Probius can detonate it by firing a Disruption Pulse into it to deal massive damage.
• Squishy Wizard: As long as he has a Pylon nearby, Probius can zone out enemies very efficiently with his spells and push lanes like nobody's business. However, he's also incredibly fragile, making him vulnerable to enemy divers like Genji.
• The Turret Master: With Photon Cannon. With Pylon Overcharge, he can also turn his Pylons into turrets.
• Units Not to Scale: A protoss pylon in Heroes of the Storm is roughly the size of Probius himself, who as a Hero is already larger than most NPCs in the game. In StarCraft gameplay a pylon is significantly larger than the probes that warp them in, and in cinematics – such as the one retroactively featuring Probius – pylons are depicted as being enormous compared to everything around it.
• The Unintelligible: Much like his home series, Probius only speaks in distorted beeping noises.
• Who's Laughing Now?: In his cinematic, Probius is cornered by a team of Butcher, Dehaka, Lil'Ragnaros, Azmodan and Cho'Gall. They're sure to be victorious bullying the small probe. Then the Pylons and Photon Cannons rise and start wiping them out, Probius' expression scream of this trope.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: A variant of this is invoked by his trait, which allows him to gather minerals from slain enemies to speed up how fast he can summon another Pylon.

Raynor, Renegade Commander

Voiced by: Robert Clotworthy (English)^note Other Languages: Patrick Béthune (French), Vsevolod Kuznetsov (Russian)

"Any time you're ready!"

Originally a marshal on a backwater planet, Jim Raynor was forced to Mercy Kill the infested Backwater Station and fell afoul of the Terran Confederacy. After that, he was busted out by Arcturus Mengsk, and from there became entangled in a long-running series of events involving a terran civil war, the war against the zerg and the appearance of the protoss, and would wind up having a very complicated relationship with one of the most destructive beings in the galaxy.

Raynor is a Ranged Assassin hero who specializes in lane pressure and teamfighting, but is very versatile overall. His trait, Give 'Em Some Pepper, empowers every 4th basic attack, causing it to deal bonus damage and splash to nearby enemies. His first basic ability is Penetrating Round, firing a bullet which damages, slows, and knocks back everything it hits. His second basic ability is Inspire, which temporarily increases the attack and movement speed of Raynor and nearby minions and mercenaries. His third ability is Adrenaline Rush, which rapidly heals him for a percentage of his max health. Basic Attacks reduce its cooldown, increased against heroes.

His first Heroic Ability calls in the Hyperion to launch a bombing run in a straight line while heavily damaging structures with its Yamato Cannon. His second Heroic, Raynor's Raider, passively causes a Banshee to follow Raynor, attacking his target or whatever he orders. The Banshee can be destroyed, but respawns shortly.

His current skins are Special Ordinance Raynor, Stars and Stripes Raynor, Commander Raynor, Marshal Raynor, Roadraider Raynor, Raynor 76, and Classic Raynor.

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• Armor Is Useless: His Commander Raynor skin consists of his casual clothes. He does not suffer any stats penalty for it.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: A late-game talent for his trait causes it to lower enemy Armor, including on the splash.
• Artificial Limbs: A bit subtler than most, but in his Roadraider skin his right foot up to his ankle is replaced by a crude replacement.
• Ascended Meme: Several of Raynor's lines like "Give 'em some pepper!" or "Haha, fill 'em full of daylight!" have reached a memetic level in the fanbase. So when Blizzard, after years of requests, finally gave Raynor a rework, many were disappointed that his new trait was named Acquire Weak Spot, which thematically doesn't fit Raynor. Fans suggested to rename his trait to Give 'Em Some Pepper, and even edited (very intentionally badly) over Raynor's Rework Spotlight. Blizzard agreed and renamed Raynor's trait very soon after.
• Attack Drone: Raynor's Raider summons a permanent drone that adds some punch to a fight.
• Badass Cape: Sports one as Marshal Raynor.
• Bash Brothers: With Zeratul, Artanis, Fenix, Tassadar and Tychus, if fighting alongside them.
• Battle Couple: With Kerrigan if they're in the same team.
• Bayonet Ya: In September 2018, he was given a melee Basic Attack animation which makes him use the bayonet on his Gauss Rifle.
• Blown Across the Room: His Penetrating Round does this to several enemies at once.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Raynor is probably the most basic hero around, and is the one you play during the tutorial for this reason. His main combat strategy is 'Keep auto attacking things until they die while keeping at range, and if things get close, use Penetrating Round to knock them back'. Don't let this fool you, though - his damage is not to be trifled with; even today, he has some of the highest DPS in the game, and when it was first released he had the highest.
  • Raynor's Raider isn't very flashy compared to Hyperion (or to the Heroic it replaced pre-rework) and is mostly just passive. That said, giving another attacker to a strong AA hero, especially one with an AoE buff, is no joke.
• Bottomless Magazines: Played with in his Commander skin; ammo isn't a resource for anyone not named Tracer, but periodically Commander Raynor will pop in a fresh magazine into his rifle when attacking.
• The Captain: Just like in the StarCraft universe.
• Death from Above: One of his heroics summons The Hyperion to carpet bomb the area.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In the tutorial, he schools Diablo for trying to eat fear because it's impossible and he's from a sci-fi setting. It ends badly for him... for about 6 seconds.
• Emergency Energy Tank: Adrenaline Rush heals him for a chunk of health. If talented, it gives him additional armor on top of it.
• Glass Cannon: It's surprisingly tough to get to Raynor, as he has a longer range than most ranged heroes, he can increase his movement speed with Inspire, poke damage can be quickly healed with Adrenaline Rush and melees that get too close can be kept at a distance with Penetrating Round. However, if one manages to close in the distance, Jimmy lacks the tools to survive for long, as his health pool is amongst the lower ones in the game and he has no mobility options.
• Glory Days: Raynor misses his Vulture hover-bike from StarCraft. Luckily for him, the Vulture has been released as a mount.
• Healing Factor: Adrenaline Rush heals Raynor for 25% of his health pool and can also grant Armor if talented. He actually can use it quite often, thanks to the Cooldown Manipulation mechanic added to it, making it hard to wear him down in a duel.
• Jack of All Stats: An entry-level hero with a great deal of versatility; he can be reliably built towards hero killing, lane pushing, taking objectives, light crowd control and burst via the knockback of Penetrating Round, and, before it was removed, supporting his team through the use of his Inspire buff and bribing Mercenaries. Basically the only things he can't do are tank damage and heal others.
• Powered Armor: Standard issue for StarCraft Marines.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Notable, because not every hero says this when using their Heroic.
  Raynor: Light em up, Matt!
  Raynor: Rain down hell on my target!
• Primary-Color Champion: Stars and Stripes Raynor. It's actually a Shout-Out to Captain America, complete with lil' wings on the sides of his head.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Raynor is the very first hero you get to use in the tutorial, and his skills make him the archetypical "Baby's First Hero" in Heroes. This doesn't stop him from being a potent character in his own right. The key in his play is understanding his Trait: new players can (and, arguably, should) ignore it, but once you get him figured out and start actively controlling what you shoot when his Trait is up, his efficacy goes up dramatically.
• Space Western: Marshal Raynor is a literal Space Cowboy with a Badass Cape, cowboy hat, and Shoulders of Doom. He is presumably a Sheriff, a Ranger or something similar in the colony of Mar Sara. According to Deputy Valla's skin description, he even recruited gunslinger Valla de Hunter as a Deputy.
• United Space of America: One of his skins, he's from the "United States Space Force". It's even called Stars and Stripes.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Stars and Stripes Raynor works for the United States Space-Force, implying that humanity hasn't established far-flung space colonies in that universe.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Formerly implied by his A Card To Play talent, although it's been since removed. Whenever a hero died, Raynor gained an advantage, no matter which team they were on.

Sgt. Hammer, Siege Tank Operator

Voiced by: Courtenay Taylor (English)^note Other Languages: Ekaterina Afrikantova (Russian)

"Ready to roll out!"

Sergeant Bama "the Hammer" Kowalski has served some of the toughest tours around the Koprulu sector. The thunderous roar of her siege tank's shock cannon strikes fear right into the heart of the toughest of warriors...including some of her allies.

Sgt. Hammer is a Ranged Assassin hero based on the Siege Tank unit, whose strength lies in her immense range and splash damage; she can camp behind her minions and other heroes to snipe enemies, level towers from outside their firing range, and clear out minion waves with little effort. Her trait is Siege Mode, which can be toggled on to greatly increase her range and damage and give her basic attacks a splash radius, but immobilize her. Her abilities are Spider Mines, which throws out three mines that slow and damage enemies, Concussive Blast, which pushes nearby enemies away, and Neosteel Plating, granting her 25 armor temporarily. Being in Siege Mode also increases the range of Spider Mines and Concussive Blast and doubles the armor of Neosteel Plating.

Her first Heroic ability, Blunt Force Gun, fires a massive bullet in a straight line that damages every enemy non-structure it hits and has infinite range. Her second Heroic ability, Napalm Strike, is an AoE blast of fire that damages on impact and leaves a flaming patch behind, and has a tiny cooldown and mana cost and thus can be spammed to hell and back.

Hammer doesn't use mounts; instead she has Thrusters that can be activated to give a temporary massive speed boost. If Thrusters are activated while in Siege Mode, Hammer will instantly exit it, giving her a way to quickly get out of a tough situation.

Her current skins are Master Sgt. Hammer, World War Sgt. Hammer, Sgt. Doomhammer, and Big Shot Sgt. Hammer.

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• Armor Is Useless: She's driving a tank. Her HP pool disagrees.
• Anchored Attack Stance: Sgt. Hammer is immobile while in her Siege Mode, but this can be subverted with the Hover Siege Mode talent, which allows her to move at a snail's pace while pelting any enemies in her Siege Mode range with potshots.
• BFG: As a Siege Tank, almost by definition has one and can obtain another one, suitably named Blunt Force Gun.
• Boring, but Practical: While Hammer's Siege Mode forms the crux of her gameplay, her tank mode is perfectly viable for manfighting single enemy heroes, as it allows her to remain mobile so that she can avoid skillshots and stutter-step, and her Thrusters make for a surprisingly effective chasing tool as they allow her to move faster than mounted heroes.
• Canon Immigrant: Later on in some extra materials in Starcraft II Legacy Of The Void, Sgt. Hammer is confirmed to have been making a stand against Amon with her own band of soldiers.
• Compensating for Something: Quips that maybe Tychus' giant gatling gun is this. He denies it, but laughs about it for a moment anyway.
• A Day in the Limelight: In the "Hammer Time" Heroes Brawl, where players have a match on Towers of Doom... with all 10 people as Sgt. Hammer, and Thrusters permanently available outside Siege Mode. Cue the whole team sieging up and demolishing the map's towers in seconds, or firing 5 BFGs at one poor tower... or an enemy Sgt. Hammer.
  Hammer: Hey! It's been a blast.
• Field Promotion: After Heroes 2.0 update, she's the only hero whose former Master skin kept its old name - the description says that in this case she decided to promote herself to Master Sgt. Hammer.
• Glass Cannon: Slow, can't use mounts, and not very durable. But she has some of the strongest basic attack damage in the game, and packs respectable burst damage in her kit as well. And if she's allowed to use Siege Mode and blast away at the enemy team, she's practically a wrecking ball.
• Gender Flip: Siege Tanks were depicted with a male operator in both Starcraft games. Here, the unit is represented by a female character.
• Girlish Pigtails: Her hair is done into small braids.
• "Instant Death" Radius: Well, not instant, but melee Heroes without the Block talent are in for a rough ride due to her immense range and damage. And if she takes the Graduating Range talent, she can cover up a whole screen by herself. Trying to approach her by walking means exposing yourself to her painful shots, and when you finally get into melee, you'll have to contend with her abilities as well. And when you think it's time to bail, she will continue to take potshots at your back as you try to disengage.
• Kill It with Fire: Napalm Strike, a fast recharging AoE skill, is one of her heroics.
• The Lad-ette:
  Hammer: Lemme guess, you thought Sgt. Hammer was gonna be a man? Well, *belch* joke's on you, kiddo.
• Long-Range Fighter: As befitting a Siege Tank. Siege Mode gives her long enough range to pick targets apart and to chip away at forts without them being able to shoot back. She even has a talent to increase her damage to distant targets. Up close, however, she becomes a lot less effective.
• Major Injury Underreaction: When Sgt. Hammer gets hit, she often yells "Stop that!" or just "Uh-oh!" with a greater or lesser degree of inflection. Justified; she's in a tank, so it's more "Watch the Paint Job!" than anything else.
• Nitro Boost: Although Sgt. Hammer cannot use mounts, she can use her Thrusters to briefly gain a speed boost.
• No Indoor Voice: Years of yelling over tank fire has left her normal tone of voice rather loud.
  Hammer: What? This IS my inside voice!
• Obvious Rule Patch: Originally in the alpha, the core didn't have regenerative shielding, repairable only by MULEs, and BFG did structure damage. A Lv.20 Hammer could fire Orbital BFG in the enemy core's direction and be guaranteed to win eventually.
• Original Generation: Sgt. Hammer is exclusive in Heroes of the Storm, representing the generic Siege Tank unit. And apparently replacing Edmund Duke.
• Remember the New Guy?: Despite being Original Generation, Tychus has heard of her.
• Southern-Fried Private: She has the same stereotypical southern mannerisms as Siege Tank pilots from Starcraft proper.
• Stance System: Her trait lets her switch at will between Tank Mode and Siege Mode, turning from a fairly run-of-the-mill ranged Assassin into an immobile, long-ranged artillery platform and vice versa.
• Stone Wall: Briefly becomes one when she activates Neosteel Plating, especially if she's in Siege Mode. Not only will it reduce incoming damage by 50%, it can be paired with a talent that grants her lifesteal (or an alternative that makes her Unstoppable) or backed up by your supports.
• Super-Persistent Missile: A serious reason not to underestimate the basic attack of Hammer's Tank Mode. Her Siege Mode basic attacks might be instant explosions on target, but her Tank Mode's shells act like full-blown missiles and will chase down enemies no matter how far or fast they run.
• Tank Goodness: She's piloting a Terran siege tank.
• Units Not to Scale: The most blatant example in the game; despite driving a literal tank, her model is not much larger than most other heroes (even smaller than some of them), and when she personally pops up out of the top hatch you can see she's small enough that she would barely come up to most characters' knees.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Averted. Most siege tank operators sit back and let the auto-targeting computers do the work once they've entered siege mode. Hammer, being the best siege tank operator there's ever been, opts to not aim like this, being so accurate she never hits her allies anyway.

Tassadar, Savior of the Templar

Voiced by: Michael J. Gough (English)^note Other Languages: Christophe Peyroux (French), Nikita Prozorovsky (Russian)

"From order, comes justice!"

For Tassadar's original version as a Support, see his folder on this page.

Hailed as the greatest hero of all protoss, Tassadar was once an executor of the Templar, until he defied an order to sacrifice terrans to the zerg swarm. He was branded as a traitor and hunted down, where the Protoss Conclave found him striking an alliance with James Raynor and the banished Dark Templar. Tassadar was about to face execution, until his friends broke him out and it was proven that the Dark Templar he brought were vital in destroying zerg cerebrates. In the final hour, Tassadar piloted his carrier Gantrithor and mounted one final defense against the Overmind, allying with the terran forces under Raynor - even the Conclave admitted that he was their final hope. The Overmind proved to be too powerful, so Tassadar made the ultimate sacrifice by overloading himself within his vessel. The ensuing energy shower obliterated the Overmind, weakening the zerg's grip on Aiur and allowing the protoss to escape to Shakuras. Tassadar's heroism was comparable to Adun, and to this day many protoss live by the battlecry "En Taro Tassadar".

Tassadar is a Ranged Assassin hero based on area control and channeled abilities. His trait is Resonance Beam, which makes his Basic Attack a channeled beam that slows the target. While channeling, Tassadar gains Resonance, which increases his Basic Attack damage and mana regen by up to 100%. At maximum Resonance, he also gains a flat amount of mana per second. His first ability, Shock Ray, fires a beam of energy across the ground that deals heavy damage in a line. His second ability is Psionic Storm, creating a lightning storm in an area that deals increasing damage each time it hits an enemy. His final basic ability, Force Wall, creates an impassable barrier at the target location after a short delay.

His first Heroic allows him to transform into an Archon, which grants him a large shield, fully charges his Resonance, and replaces his basic attack with a powerful energy blast that splashes in an area and lowers enemy Spell Armor. His second heroic, Black Hole, launches a black hole that travels forwards in a straight line. Nearby enemies are sucked towards the black hole, and enemies in the center take damage and are stunned.

His current skins are Executor Tassadar, Crypt King Tassadar, Mecha Tassadar, and Dark Nexus Tassadar.

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• Barrier Warrior: While no longer being able to give Plasma Shields to allies, as a protoss, Tassadar still has personal access to them in the form of some talents, the biggest one being the shield he gets from Archon.
• Beam Spam: Between his basic attack being a key part of his kit, and the low cooldown of Shock Ray (as well as a talent to lower its cooldown even further), Tassadar will be firing beams all over the place constantly.
• Berserk Button: Kaijo Diablo is one for Mecha Tassadar.
• Bilingual Bonus: Which also counts as Mythology Gag. His quote when preparing for battle (see above), if translated into the protoss tongue of Khalani, is "Khassar de templari". This is what High Templar units, such as Tassadar himself, say when they spawn.
• Bling of War: His Executor skin pimps out his armor.
• Calling Your Attacks: He sometimes does this when casting Force Wall.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • In the Alternate Universe which Zeratul's High Templar skin is from, Tassadar took his place as the benevolent Dark Templar who showed him the ways of the Void.
  • His Dark Nexus skin, rather than being a twisted reflection of Tassadar, is actually Tassadar himself. He saved the Nexus by absorbing the dark energies into his body.
• Deadpan Snarker: One of his starting quotes to an ally Kerrigan has a rather sarcastic one-liner on his part.
  Kerrigan: I am not your enemy, Tassadar. Things have changed.
  Tassadar: Yes, you radiate a purple glow now. How very different.
• Glass Cannon: After his rework, Tassadar has become a damage-focused Assassin. While his health was slightly increased to be more in line with other mages like Orphea or Kael'thas, he no longer has Plasma Shield as one of his basic abilities.
• The Good King: One of his alt skins makes him Pharaoh Ta-sadar, the ruler of Luxoria, who apparently allowed his realm to be drawn into the Nexus to save it from the Scorpid Swarm, a counterpart to the Zerg. (He was also the Big Good in StarCraft 1).
• Gameplay and Story Integration: According to the backstory of Tassadar's Dark Nexus skin, Tassadar tried to contain the dark energies spilling across the Nexus. The struggle warped his form and altered his abilities. Literally in this case, he was changed from a low-damage Support to a damage-focused Assassin.
• Gravity Sucks: Black Hole draws enemies towards the center. Since it's always travelling forward, that center constantly pushes away from Tassadar. If you get caught in it, there's a good chance it takes you along for the whole ride.
• Humble Hero: "En Taro Tassadar"^note "In honor of Tassadar" in Khalani has become a favorite phrase for protoss after his death, but Tassadar will always say "En Taro Adun".^{From the lore...}Adun was a revered warrior who sacrificed himself to protect the first of the Dark Templar from extermination at the hands of the Khalai protoss and was the first to wield both void and khala energies in tandem. Up until the main storyline, the Khalai were told that Adun drove off the Dark Templar and saved their people, but have since discovered the truth. Unless he's poked a lot, where he'll say "En Taro... me!"
• Mecha: One of his alternate skins, complete with a jet mode mount, new attack animations, and custom voice files full of shout-outs. Technically it's a Humongous Mecha from the same Kaiju universe as Anub'arak's Cyb'arak and Diablo's Kaijo skins, but you wouldn't know that.
  Tassadar: Until all are united!
  Tassadar: Apocalypse: Cancelled!
• Mind Rape: Psionic Storm is this if we follow Starcraft's lore. His Mecha skin uses a Macross Missile Massacre.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Even the slightest hit can somehow make him scream as if he was in excruciating pain.
• Mythology Gag: Both before and after his rework, Tassadar's abilities reference other Protoss units from StarCraft:
  • Psionic Storm is the signature ability of the High Templar, which is in fact Tassadar's character class, and Archon references the fact that two of them can perform a Fusion Dance to create one. Of course, High Templar don't really do anything else that works well in a MOBA^note In the first game they could create Master of Illusion "Hallucinations" used for scouting or bluffing, and in the second they have a Mana Burn ability), so here come all his other abilities:
  • His new Shock Ray ability brings to mind the Colossus unit from the sequel which is a similarly powerful-yet-vulnerable unit that scorches the ground with lasers. Bonus points for one of his Shock Ray talents being named Thermal Lance, the name of the Colossus's weapon; additionally, the Tal'darim Mothership in Legacy of the Void has a ability also named Thermal Lance, which works exactly like Tassadar's Shock Ray. The animation, especially in his Archon form however, are reminiscent of the Legacy of the Void Cinematic, which has an Archon unleash a similar beam attack against a wave of zerglings.
  • The new name for Dimensional Shift is "Shadow Walk", a rite of passage in Nerazim society. The fact that it now provides unbreakable Stealth instead of Invulnerability means it gives Tassadar an ability of the Dark Templar unit.
  • His basic attacks becoming stronger the longer he is able to attack uninterrupted is similar to the Void Ray unit. Though Tassadar himself has no idea what a Void Ray is, the unit is the result of combining Nerazim and Khalai technology, much like Tassadar's own use of Void and Light energies.
  • The new Black Hole ability is a combination of several others: First, it visually resembles the Mothership's Vortex ability from Wings of Liberty, and shares its effect of dragging units towards its center. Its effect of slowly travelling forward is similar to the Tal'darim Ascendant's Psionic Orb ability, especially if upgraded with the level 20 talent Kugelblitz, which causes a Psionic Storm to appear on any hero stunned by Black Hole.
  • Finally, Force Wall is a bigger version of the "Force Field" ability belonging to the SC2 Sentry. (Amusingly, they inherited "Hallucination" from the High Templar during the intermission between games, which may be why the original Tassadar referenced even more Sentry abilities: his old Plasma Shield is related to their Beehive Barrier "Guardian Shield" ability.)
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: His old Oracle, Dimensional Shift, and Plasma Shield abilities still exist, but are now talents with very different properties. Oracle reveals a target area instead of the area around Tassadar, Dimensional Shift was renamed Shadow Walk and no longer provides invulnerability, and Plasma Shield passively applies to Tassadar when he has maximum Resonance.
• Not as You Know Them: Tassadar was originally a shield-based Support for years. His rework was the most extensive in the entire game, turning him into a Ranged Assassin with a completely different playstyle.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Black Hole is fairly slow, but has devastating effects if it manages to hit enemies.
• Power Floats: Levitates instead of walking. Curiously, he still rides a horse/lizard/whatever-have-you as a mount.
• Psychic Radar: His Oracle talent, which lets him channel to reveal any area on the map.
• Rule of Cool: In-universe. Mecha Tassadar's secondary function is, "Looking really damn cool!"
• Shock and Awe: Psionic Storm appears this way, as do his basic attacks in Archon form. Shock Ray subverts this - despite the name, it's more of a generic energy beam.
• Spam Attack: Tassadar is given several talents that cause his cooldowns to recharge faster. He also can create multiple Psionic Storm fields at the same time, if he attacks with his other abilities.
• Stand Your Ground: Resonance Beam encourages Tassadar to minimize his movement in teamfights, since he must be standing still to basic attack. Multiple talents also aid in this, such as Plasma Shield granting shields and the secondary effect of Oracle giving him spell armor while still. With the right build, Tassadar can turn fights around completely by holding position.
• Super Mode: Can turn into an Archon as one of his heroics. It boosts his offensive and defensive capabilities, while also letting him basic attack on the move. At level 20, he can take a talent to stay in Archon form indefinitely, so long as he keeps attacking.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • He was always a badass, but he gets a special mention in this game. Normally, forming an Archon is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that requires two High or Dark Templar to undergo a permanent Fusion Dance; the two rarely last long. That Tassadar can form one solo and revert at will is impressive, the mythical Twilight Archon notwithstanding.
  • On a more meta note, his old kit as a Support made him one of the weaker damaging heroes in the game for a long time. His new Assassin kit boasts tonnes of damage and insane area control tools.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Black Hole launches one of these.

Tychus, Notorious Outlaw

Voiced by: Neil Kaplan (English)^note Other Languages: Philippe Dumond (French), George Martirosyan (Russian)

"Hell, it's about damn time."

An old friend of Jim Raynor's, accompanying him in his old adventures before Raynor became entangled with Mengsk and Kerrigan. Tychus became a convict until he was eventually taken in by Arcturus, and suddenly released to be employed with the Moebius company, and leaving to help Raynor out as a mercenary. Only after their encounter with Kerrigan was Tychus' purpose revealed: Mengsk sent him to Raynor to get close to Kerrigan and kill her when she was at the most vulnerable state, and if he didn't obey, the marine suit would kill him. For good or bad, before any of those two happened, Raynor shot him dead.

Tychus is a Ranged Assassin hero that specializes in killing Tanks. His activated trait is Minigun, which causes his basic attacks to deal additional damage based on the target hero's maximum health for a short time. His abilities include Overkill, which turbo-charges his minigun, allowing him to move while spraying lead at a target for heavy damage and dealing moderate damage to other nearby enemies, a Frag Grenade that inflicts moderate damage and knocks enemies away from the area, and Run and Gun, a short-range dash.

His first Heroic ability, Commandeer Odin, summons the Odin, granting him a new ability set and 25 Armor. In the Odin, his abilities are Annihilate, which blasts the ground in front of Tychus; Ragnarok Missiles, a volley of missiles in a target area; and Thrusters, which is a dash with a shorter cooldown than Run and Gun. His second Heroic ability summons the Drakken Laser Drill at the target location, a destroyable and immobile turret which fires a powerful laser that deals sustained damage at either the nearest enemy or whoever Tychus commands it to.

His current skins are Custom Rig Tychus, Infested Tychus, Prisoner Tychus, Power Drench Tychus, and Power Briefs Tychus.

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• Affectionate Nickname: He's still calling Raynor "Jimmy".
• Armchair Military: Not him, but one of Tychus' acknowledgement quotes addresses the player as "Armchair General". It's a carry-over from his unit quotes in StarCraft II.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Summon Odin. Calling in the Odin also means Tychus loses access to his default kit in favor of the Odin's new abilities, which lean towards AOE damage rather than single-target percentage-based damage (essentially forcing Tychus to give up his main schtick). Additionally, Tychus is forced to stand still for a few seconds when the ability is cast (often enough for the enemy to either run away or kill him), and most of his talents don't benefit the Odin's abilities. Finally, there's the fact that, while getting the Odin around Tychus will free him from any CC he might already have, its Hit Points meter is, counter-intuitively for a giant set of Powered Armor, the same as Tychus's: if you use it when you're already low, the Odin comes in... already low, meaning your 100-second cooldown gets you nothing. When protected, though, it allows you to zone out enemies like no other, which is why it sees play. (It's also really gratifying.)
• Bash Brothers: When teaming up with Raynor. They even laugh about how it's like old times.
• BFG: His minigun.
• Blood Knight: We'll let his own words speak for him:
  Tychus: When the Nexus came a-callin' there was only one thing to say: 'Hell, it's about time!'
• Catchphrase: His now-memetic line "Hell, it's about time!". It now comes in several varieties. Diablo even steals it for his vs Tychus kill quote!
• Chainsaw-Grip BFG
• Cigar Chomper: Which can lead to a hilarious Cluster F-Bomb moment if you poke him enough. Though his in-game model doesn't feature his cigar due to censorship laws (much like Graves in League of Legends), and in his Power Drench and Power Briefs skins, one can spot a nicotine patch on his back.
• Converging-Stream Weapon: His Drakken Laser Drill heroic summons one of these, which can deal massive damage if left unchecked.
• Close-Range Combatant: Tychus has one of the shortest ranges in the game for a ranged character, which combined with his inability to actually stutter-step, and overall high damage and health, make him play almost like a melee assassin, or even an anti-tank bruiser with a gun.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: A single basic attack from Tychus is among the weakest. However, he attacks very quickly, starting at 4 attacks per second, and able to ramp up to ~5 with the Master Assassin talent. He was actually the first to dethrone Raynor's position as "highest DPS in the game".
• Divergent Character Evolution: Tychus was just a souped-up Marine, just like Raynor, in the original game. When he appears here, he's instead a minigun-toting dude, because the Marine kit has been taken by Raynor.
• Eating the Eye Candy: It seems he appreciates Nova's, ahem, good looks. She does not reciprocate:
  Nova: Keep your eyes on the battlefield, Tychus!
  Tychus: I never make promises I don't intend to keep.
• Expy: Much like the Team Fortress 2 Heavy, he carries a minigun, and deals a large amount of short/medium range damage. With his powered armor, Tychus also looks a bit like a heavy.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: One of his poke lines has him asleep and muttering, "I love you, mama..."
• Flat "What": When speaking to Murky, this is his response to whatever was said to him.
• Gatling Good: Fires very fast, and certain talents allow him to fill more empowered shots into his minigun window.
• Glass Cannon: Tychus is fairly soft (after all, his armor is built as a prison first and protection second) and suffers from short range and a lack of self-sustain. But ignoring Tychus for even a few moments can have disastrous results as your core's health mysteriously goes from full to half with little warning. Or several of your towers and gates going missing from the map. And that's not even going into what he can do to high-health, low-damage Tanks...
• HA HA HA—No: When asked if his big gun is Compensating for Something, this is his response.
• Kill Streak: His Master Assassin talent increases his attack speed for every takedown he scores, up to a total bonus of 20%.
• Mood Whiplash: Infested Tychus. Except for a little bit of Black Comedy, this skin is completely devoid of humor. It's Tychus after the events of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, where Raynor shot him; only here, once he died the Zerg Swarm infested him and brought him back. Unlike Alexei Stukov in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, who was able to retain his humanity and was mostly unaffected by his infestation, Tychus has already been partially assimilated; he remembers Raynor shot him, but doesn't seem to realize he's dead/infested, though he does realize he's in a great deal of pain and suffering. On top of that, many of his quotes make it clear that whatever sentience he still has left is being worn away by the Swarm Hive Mind, as well. It's only a matter of time until whatever is left of Tychus Findlay is completely gone.
  Tychus: I sure hope she was worth it... Jimmy...
• More Dakka: He's using a gatling gun so this is a given, but his Overkill ability has him spray bullets everywhere.
• Percent Damage Attack: His Minigun trait lets him deal 2% of the target Hero hp with each shot, for 3 seconds. He attacks 4 times a second. This won't normally merit an entry, but the Word of God said that they reworked him as a specialized Assassin against high-health heroes like Stitches or Azmodan.
• Powered Armor: His armor suit.
• Shouting Shooter: Also Laughing Shooter when he uses his Overkill ability or Odin heroic.
  Tychus: HAAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!
• Summon Bigger Fish: One of his heroics calls in the Odin for him to ride in. It doesn't look that much bigger than regularly-sized characters however, due to Units Not to Scale.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: One of the Odin's abilities. Can be upgraded so it also include a nuke.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: He has frag grenades as one of his basic abilities, which carries a pretty hefty knockback.
• Units Not to Scale: Both of his Heroics. The Odin and Drakken Laser Drill in Starcraft are a Humongous Mecha and a giant Wave-Motion Gun respectively, both of which are several stories tall at the very least; in Heroes, the former is small enough to pass for a second suit of Powered Armor, while the latter is closer to a human-sized Sentry Gun.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: His Prisoner skin, complete with Tattooed Crook. The skin's description suggests it's Tychus from an Alternate Universe in which he really did break out of prison.
• Walking Swimsuit Scene: His Power Drench and Power Briefs skins have him in, respectively, swimming trunks and a banana hammock, and both replace his minigun with equally giant water gun.

Zagara, Broodmother of the Swarm

Voiced by: Nika Futterman (English)^note Other Languages: Marie Zidi (French), Marina Bakina (Russian)

"The Swarm endures."

An ambitious zerg leader, Zagara, as with all the other broodmothers, is an upgraded version of a queen. They were engineered by the Queen of Blades as replacements for Cerebrates and, in her absence, were the de facto leaders of the zerg. Introduced in Heart of the Swarm, Zagara is challenged by Kerrigan for control of her (Zagara's) brood, and loses, after which she becomes Kerrigan's Number Two. She serves in that capacity throughout the campaign against Amon, and assumed leadership of the Swarm after Kerrigan's departure.

Zagara is a Ranged Assassin hero, based on summoning a variety of units to fight for her or serve various purposes. Her trait lets her spawn invisible Creep Tumors which generate zerg Meat Moss, Creep. Creep provides vision of the surrounding area, and lasts for a long duration or until the tumor is killed. On Creep, Zagara has increased attack range, and both her and her summons move faster. Her active abilities are Baneling Barrage, a spammable ability with multiple charges that spawns a rolling Baneling that explode on the first enemy it hits; Hunter Killer, summoning a Hydralisk that chases down and shoots at a single targeted enemy, and Infested Drop, calling down a Drop Pod that spawns two Roachlings.

Her first Heroic ability, Devouring Maw, calls a massive zerg... something to emerge from the ground and eat everything in an area, dealing light damage and taking them out of the fight briefly. Her second Heroic, Nydus Network, passively increases the range of Creep, allowing it spread farther, and also causes Zagara's basic attacks to reduce her cooldowns while on Creep. When activated, it creates a Nydus Worm anywhere there's Creep on the map and can store up to 2 charges. Zagara can enter it to quickly regenerate health and mana and instantly transport to any Worm.

Her current skins are Overqueen Zagara, Insectoid Zagara, Desert Queen Zagara, and Crypt Queen Zagara.

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• Action Bomb: Banelings. They can be upgraded to deal more damage to minions and structures.
• Arch-Enemy: She really doesn't like protoss, and has unique kill-quotes for slaying protoss heroes. Specifically, this means Tassadar, Zeratul, Alarak, Artanis, and Fenix.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Looks vaguely insect-like, and "mounting" gives her insect-like wings instead of using a regular mount. Her skins make her more like actual insects.
• Boring, but Practical: Her Nydus Network heroic, compared to Devouring Maw. Nydus Network's three main functions are cooldown reduction on all her abilities through her basic attacks, grants a Healing Factor while inside a Nydus Worm, eliminating the need to return to the healing fountain, and a shortcut from one point to the other. Said shortcut and easy regeneration is given to one of the strongest split-pushers in the game. A well-developed network can rip through 3 forts in only a few minutes if not dealt with. The Storm Talent for Nydus Network doesn't even buff the Nydus. What it does do is massively increase the cast range for her tumors, make Creep last ten minutes, and further boosts her movement speed on Creep to almost mount speed. Good luck tracking down that.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: If she kills Kerrigan. It serves as a Call-Back, as Zagara originally planned to usurp Kerrigan's position at the first sign of weakness, changing her mind later down the line.
  Zagara: [after killing Kerrigan] Now I am the Heart of the Swarm!
• Cannon Fodder: The Roachlings summoned by her Drop Pod aren't very strong or tough, but they can take a few hits and make good distractions. Talents can turn them into Goddamned Bats instead.
• Eaten Alive: Her Devouring Maw heroic does this, taking enemies out of the fight for the duration. Although, enemies are also made invulnerable (aside from Devouring Maw's own damage) and untargetable while being eaten. This can throw off allies' attacks if they aren't expecting it.
• Fantastic Racism: Holds nothing but disdain for terrans. The only real exception is Kerrigan, who doesn't quite count anymore. She hates protoss even more.
• Giant Flyer: The wings mentioned above that she uses as her "mount".
• Glass Cannon: Her Hunter-Killers aren't very durable and automatically die if their target does, but they can do a LOT of damage if ignored, and will themselves ignore everything except their target.
• Home Field Advantage: Zagara is heavily dependent on Creep to be effective, as the increased movement speed and attack range allow her and her minions to easily poke enemies apart. Nydus Network's passive component grants the additional benefit of reducing Zagara's ability cooldowns with each attack, and a talent allows Zagara to gain armor while standing on Creep.
• Lightning Bruiser: As long as she's on her creep, she moves at mounted speeds, and can easily keep up with fleeing enemies.
• Magic Carpet: Similar to Azmodan, she can't use a mount and flies instead. But if you purchase the aforementioned carpet in the store, Zagara can select that mount, complete with custom animation where she rides it.
• Meat Moss: Her main gimmick is spreading Creep all over. A lane with a well-situated Zagara will be completely covered in the stuff.
• The Minion Master: All her skills except Baneling Barrage and Devouring Maw involve summoning a killable creature, and even then both of those skills still summon something.
• The Rival: An odd case with Kerrigan, with their quotes towards one another reflecting equal parts The Mentor and The Starscream. She also doesn't care much for Abathur, though this is largely because he's a Non-Action Guy.
• Scary Scorpions: In her Desert Queen skin, she's her the queen and seemingly broodmother of the Scorpid Swarm, a scorpion-based counterpart to the zerg seeking to overtake Luxoria.
• Scorpion People: Her Desert Queen skin makes her the queen and seemingly broodmother of the Scorpid Swarm, a counterpart to the zerg in Luxoria, making her Zagara into a centaurine scorpion-woman in ornate armor, complete with stinger tail.
• Secret Underground Passage: Her Nydus Worms serve this purpose, letting her instantly transport to anywhere on the map provided she set up a Creep Tumor there previously.
• Ship Tease: With Anub'arak, if the trailer for his Love Bug skin wasn't obvious enough. Plus their intro quotes to each other suggest Belligerent Sexual Tension.
• Squishy Wizard: Zagara's not very tough on her own. Her damage output is decent (and Talents can make it better) but without her summons to back her up, she typically won't be able to survive a direct fight.
• We Have Reserves: The way she sieges enemy bases — as all of her abilities summon minions, the enemy towers will fall before long at no risk to her. This can make her a very annoying opponent in vs. AI games, because as soon as the AI realises that the hero damaging her is a legitimate threat, it often calls in all the back-up it can, runs off to the healing fountain/hearthstones back to the Hall of Storms and comes back for more at full health and mana.

Tanks

Blaze, Veteran Firebat

Voiced by: Kevin Michael Richardson (English)

"Need a light?"

Miles Lewis developed a fascination with fire at an early age. When given the opportunity to serve Raynor's Raiders as a firebat, he accepted the offer. His natural prowess and love of fire had earned him the nickname "Blaze". Blaze is an Original Generation character that represents the Firebat unit.

Blaze is a ranged dual-incinerator cannon wielding Tank who excels at area-of-effect damage and locking down an area of the battlefield. His activated trait, Pyromania, grants him armor and deals periodic damage to nearby enemies for several seconds. Flame Stream fires two streams of flame in a single direction, dealing damage and reducing the cooldown of Pyromania for each hero hit. Oil Spill throws down a slick of oil in the target direction which slows enemies. The oil can be ignited with Flame Stream, which damages enemies and heals Blaze if he stands in it. It stores up to two charges. His final basic ability, Jet Propulsion, is a Dash Attack with a short windup. He collides with the first enemy hero in his path, stunning them and nearby enemies.

His first Heroic is Bunker Drop, which calls down a bunker that he and his allies can use to take shelter from enemy attacks and fire flamethrowers from for a short duration. Leaving the bunker temporarily grants the hero Armor. His second Heroic, Combustion, allows Blaze to channel a massive explosion that slows and deals damage over time. The slow and damage duration increase based on how long it was channeled for. However, during the channeling, his speed is greatly reduced.

His current skins are Fel Reaver Blaze and Firestorm Blaze.

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• Charged Attack: Combustion charges up to deal damage in a large area. If he lands a fully-charged explosion on the enemy team, you basically win the teamfight.
• Canon Immigrant: After being introduced in HotS, Blaze was added as a mercenary unit that Tychus can hire in StarCraft II co-op missions.
• Censored for Comedy: One of his attack quotes is "They do not know who they are *fooosh*in' with."
• Combo:
  • Drop an Oil Spill on an enemy, charge in with Jet Propulsion, block their path with another Oil Spill, then light the whole thing up with Flame Stream. For extra damage, mix in Pyromania or even Combustion.
  • If you took "New Habits" as your Lv.1 talent and have completed the quest, Pyromania now grants Blaze Unstoppable, allowing him to No-Sell crowd control for two seconds. This leads to a very big combo: D for Pyromania and, more importantly, the Unstoppable; Jet Propulsion to Dash Attack in and land a stun; Oil Spill and Flame Stream; and then, finally, Combustion. D - E - W - Q - R. The enemy isn't going anywhere because of the chained Stun & Slow; Pyromania will land all 5 stacks because it continues to run even whilst Combustion is channeling (the opposite is not true); you're healing because you're standing in fire; and the enemy is running about in a panic.
• Composite Character: While obviously a Firebat, Blaze's Soul Brotha voice is more based on that of the Marauder unit. This is probably a Mythology Gag: it's stated in Starcraft games that Marauder armors were created out of repurposed Firebat gear, to explain their design similarity.
• Concealment Equals Cover: Heroes that are inside of a bunker summoned by the Bunker Drop cannot be harmed from enemy attacks. The Bunker itself must be depleted of Hit Points or have its duration expired before the heroes inside may be harmed.
• Deployable Cover: His Bunker Drop heroic.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: His dual incinerator cannons.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: A variant; while enemies in his way won't actually get pushed out of the way, enemies near his target do get stunned from the impact.
• Heal It With Fire: Standing in a burning Oil Spill heals him over time.
• I Love the Smell of X in the Morning: Averted. Unlike other Firebats, Blaze actually hates the smell of napalm in the morning.
• Incendiary Exponent: Pyromania involves lighting himself on fire.
• Jumped at the Call: Took the opportunity to join Raynor's Raiders when he realized he could be a Firebat, and therefore, use fire.
• Jump Jet Pack: Jet Propulsion, which rockets him forward.
• Kill It with Fire: A standard for all Firebats.
• Let's Meet the Meat: Seems to view ETC, Murky and (to a lesser degree) Abathur as food.
• Mellow Fellow: Blaze typically addresses everyone with an even tone.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: If someone's calling themselves 'Blaze', there's a good chance they're either a Pyromaniac or fond of Kill It with Fire tactics. Or both.
• No-Sell: The main advantage of Bunker Drop is hiding you and your teammates behind a wall, potentially nullifying powerful heroics. If someone is about to be hit with something problematic (Nova's Triple Tap, Chromie's Temporal Loop, Butcher's Lamb to the Slaughter), dodging into the Bunker makes the ability just fall off.
• Non-Standard Character Design: The arms of a standard Firebat suit end in their signature flamethrowers, with the operator's hands inside; Blaze's flamethrowers are on wrist mounted swivels and he has armored hands much like a marine.
• Not the Intended Use: Back in the days of the original "Assassin, Support, Warrior, Specialist" system, where tanks and offlaners were bundled together as "Warriors," Blaze was played as a offlaner, as he has all the tools he needs to excel in the role. Oddly, Blizzard has officially classified him as a Tank, even though he doesn't have the one thing a Tank truly needs — a reliable way to engage, as Jet Propulsion is simply too easy to dodge. That said, his main utility as an offlaner is his crowd control in teamfights; offlaning relies heavily on who wins the 1v1 matchup, and the answer is basically never "Blaze".
• Oil Slick: His Oil Spill ability. He can also talent Jet Propulsion to leave one behind.
• Original Generation: What Sgt. Hammer is to Siege Tanks, Lt. Morales is to Medics and Probius is to Probes, this guy is to Firebats.
• Pungeon Master: Carried over from the original Firebat units, almost all of his voice lines are some kind of fire pun. Even innocuous things like "well done" tie into his theme.
• Pyromaniac: A common trait among Firebats. Blaze's pyromania led him to become a prolific Firebat, and his trait is even named Pyromania.
• Scary Black Man: We can't see him normally due to his armor, but his Resistance skin shows him as this. Which kind of make sense, considering his Soul Brotha way of speaking.
• Soul Brotha: Blaze's voice makes him sound like this.
• Stone Wall: Blaze has one of the highest health totals of any hero, as well a self-heal and activated armor. As a trade-off, he deals extremely low burst damage (although his damage over time - particularly against grouped enemies - is actually quite decent for a Tank, especially if he took Combustion). He also has no hard engage if he misses his Jet Propulsion — and no ability to retreat if anyone is blocking its way.
• Super Serum: Three of his four Tier 1 talents are activated Stimpacks that boost either attack and movement speed, grant a shield, or reduce cooldowns.
• Tiny-Headed Behemoth: His big, mechanical firebat armour is considerably larger than his body, in contrast to his helmet which isn't much bigger than his head. It gives him a slightly disproportionate appearance.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: His pyromania stems from childhood.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: While he is ranged (a pretty unique trait for a hard-engaging Warrior), his range is slightly shorter than other heroes. His flame cannons also don't deal much damage, although they have a small splash radius.
• Violation of Common Sense: Blaze's own fires heal him. Yes, this is one time you should stand in the fire.
• Worthy Opponent: Blaze is the only other terran aside from Raynor to treat the protoss with at least some modicum of respect. Unless it's Alarak.

Bruisers

Artanis, Hierarch of the Daelaam

Voiced by: Patrick Seitz (English)^note Other Languages: Alexander Dzyuba (Russian)

"Our time has come!"

In the aftermath of the zerg invasion, the Protoss Conclave made Artanis executor of the Templar caste following the disappearance of Tassadar. Artanis spent his days as executor defending Aiur from the invading Zerg Swarm. When Tassadar was declared a traitor, Artanis and Aldaris were sent to hunt him down, but Artanis instead joined with Tassadar to find the former executor's newfound ally, Zeratul. Even though Tassadar sacrificed himself to destroy the Overmind, the zerg still remained on Aiur. The Khalai protoss were forced to flee to Shakuras, where Artanis worked alongside Aldaris and the Dark Templar to secure a future for their race. While Zeratul sought the fragments of a mysterious prophecy, Artanis built up the protoss military to retake Aiur from the zerg. Unbeknownst to now-Hierarch Artanis however, there was a graver threat to face — Amon, the last of the xel'naga.

Artanis is a Bruiser hero, based on the Zealot unit. His trait, Shield Overload, places a large shield on him whenever he takes damage while below 75% health. There is a cooldown between activations, which is reduced by hitting enemies with basic attacks and Blade Dash. His first ability, Blade Dash, causes him to charge forward, dealing light damage, and charge back to his starting position for moderate damage. Twin Blades empowers Artanis' next attack, allowing him to charge at his target and attack twice in quick succession. Phase Prism is a skillshot which he can activate while moving or using Blade Dash that swaps his position with the first enemy hero it connects with, granting him a brief period of Unstoppable.

His first heroic is Purifier Beam, revealing a target enemy hero and calling down a laser that chases them, dealing massive damage to any enemies it contacts. His other choice, Suppression Pulse, blinds all enemy heroes in a large area for a lengthy duration. Both of his Heroics have global range.

His current skins are Hierarch Artanis, Purifier Artanis, Shogun Artanis, Daelaam Artanis, and Draenei Executor Artanis.

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• Achilles' Heel: Artanis is pretty much unkillable in a fair fight, since his trait will just keep proccing and giving him more and more shields. However, anything that impedes his Basic Attacks will put a stop to his constant shielding, letting you easily finish him off. You can get around his trait with blinds, stuns, or even simply making sure he can never get in melee range.
• And This Is for...: If he kills Kerrigan, which itself is very poignant because his last attempt in Brood War horribly failed:
  Artanis: That was for Fenix!
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Artanis embodies the Zealot's creed of 'Fear is for the enemy' - once engaged, the best thing you can do with him is throw yourself at the enemy with reckless abandon. He does not have a way of safely disengaging, and his trait will ensure he tanks way more punishment as long as he keeps attacking.
• Barrier Warrior: Artanis' survivability hinges on keeping his Shield Overload up. Taking the first 25% of Artanis' health away is relatively easy, but from that point onward he will make you fight tooth and nail for every additional point of damage you wish to make stick. Taken even further if he takes Shield Surge, which increases the shields he gets from Shield Overload by almost double if he drops below 25% health, giving him much more health than his HP bar might suggest. He can also upgrade his trait to give him Spell Armor while Shield Overload is up.
• Bash Brothers: With Zeratul, Tassadar, Fenix and Raynor. Like with Tassadar, they also double as Odd Friendships.
• The Berserker: Fittingly enough for the game's Zealot representative, Artanis's kit means that the best thing he can do in a fight is to continuously throw himself at enemies until there's nothing left to kill.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: His primary weapons.
• Blinded by the Light: One of his Heroics is essentially a powerful flashbomb that leaves his opponents blinded for some time.
• Bling of War: He is equipped with his Hierarch armor, which certainly fills the quota.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Artanis very nearly does this when he wonders if his gods, the xel'Naga, created the Nexus.
  Artanis: This realm poses many questions, and few answers. Were the xel'Naga involved in the creation of the Nexus? If so, they have left no temples; no new life forms. Unless, those life forms were unseen... controlling us through some complicated digital mechanism. Some sort of "Battle Net", as it were. Maybe even thousands of these life forms all manipulated our lives at once! Ugh, all right, this is giving me a headache...
• Cherry Tapping: Suppression Pulse does meager damage, but its global range and large AoE makes it a workable way to finish off enemies with basically no health left.
• Continuity Nod: Artanis's Daelaam skin is his appearance from Legacy of the Void, with nerve cords cut short and a warp blade previously owned by Zeratul on his right wrist. He's also covered from head to foot in zerg blood, implying that this is him right after the events on Shakuras.
• Cooldown Manipulation: The crux of Artanis' survivability - while his ability to move in such a way to actually flee the enemy is unlikely (he might be able to swap with an enemy tank behind him if he's lucky to get out of trouble), every basic attack he lands reduces the cooldown of Shield Overload by 4 seconds (the two attacks caused by Twin Blades included!). Unless the enemy has enough damage cut through Artanis' shield and then his health before the roughly-4-second cooldown his trait will actually have as long as he's attacking (or just prevent him from attacking), Artanis will seem unkillable.
• Cool Starship: The Spear of Adun definitely counts. We don't see it directly in this game, but it's the origin of both of his Heroic Abilities.
• Deadpan Snarker: Has a passive-aggressive line for when he receives a negative quote.
  Artanis: I see you're still at an... early stage of evolution.
• Death from Above: Both of his Heroic Abilities, courtesy of the Spear of Adun, his command ship.
• Death or Glory Attack: Artanis has almost no escape and his durability is tied to a constant offensive, making every fight this. Either you bring your enemies down or they bring you down - without the help of your team, just attempting to flee as Artanis will probably lead to defeat anyway, except the enemy team is less damaged for it.
• Deflector Shield: His trait grants him a shield when at low health.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Blade Dash into Phase Prism combo has numerous possible applications, from yanking enemies into his team from a full screen away to jumping on enemies to even running away by swapping to a more favorable position. However, not only does this require you to land a slow-moving skillshot while Artanis is in motion, but you also need to know where to dash and when to cast Phase Prism during the dash to get the result you want.
• Disaster Dominoes: Upgrading his Purifier Beam Heroic ability makes dying one for the enemy team; normally, if you die, it's bad but you might have weakened the opposition enough for your team to clean house, but if you die while being the target of the upgraded Purifier Beam, the beam will single out your closest, visible-to-the-enemy-team ally and recast, for free, on them as well. Considering your team is likely already weakened, occupied with the fight, and that the Purifier Beam does plenty of damage, this can easily result in another kill, which repeats the process. It's not unheard of for Artanis to have died during the fight, only for his Purifier Beam to clean up house along with his team.
• Dual Wielding: Artanis wields two psi-blades attached to his wrists.
• Expy: His Purifier skin is basically an android created to serve, turned against its creator after coming to the conclusion that living beings are flawed and now wants to eliminate all organic life.
• Fantastic Racism: As with the rest of his people, he regards the zerg as abominations.
• Flash Step: His abilities allow him to close the distance with his adversaries and/or get behind them.
• I Can Still Fight!: Normally, getting to 75% health is when you should be more cautious. With Artanis? Unless he's about to be in the middle of the entire enemy team, then staying at 75% is likely the better choice because of his trait. In a manfight, Shield Overload often makes even a low-health Artanis exceptionally durable, letting him shred the opponent with his deceptively powerful attacks while they have to fight tooth and nail just to remove tiny slivers of health from him.
• Kill Sat: Both of his Heroics have the Spear of Adun firing on enemies from orbit.
• Lightning Bruiser: Zipping and charging around the battlefield while being tanky and able to deal incredible amounts of damage (especially for a Warrior hero) qualify him for this.
• Made of Iron: His trait, Shield Overload, makes him into this trope. It doesn't activate until his health drops below 75%, but as long as he keeps attacking, his shield will keep regenerating. If not focused down by multiple people or stunlocked, he can outlast an opponent in a fight in spite of being a few HP away from death. Lampshaded in the reveal trailer for the map Warhead Junction, where an exchange of nukes from both teams kills everybody except Artanis.
• Magikarp Power: Early on, Artanis isn't terribly difficult to bring down due to his relatively low HP pool and the weak shield granted by Shield Overload. As he gains levels and talents, however, he can potentially get a shield that extends his health bar by a third every time it triggers and recharges almost instantly off a single Twin Blades cast, on top of being able to tear through enemies quite quickly.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Phase Prism swaps his current location with that of an enemy...so frequently, to put an enemy in danger, Phase Prism will also put Artanis in a position that would have been safe for an enemy e.g. among the enemy team. Of course, Artanis' trait gives him uniquely good odds to actually survive such a dangerous position unlike the unfortunate swapped enemy.
• Odd Friendship: With Garrosh, seeing as they're both young Proud Warrior Race Guys thrust into positions of leadership, and that Artanis is one of the few races Garrosh doesn't hate. One would think Garrosh's Fantastic Racism would put Artanis off with his ideals of unity, but there's a chance Garrosh may just remind him of Alarak, another racist tyrannical overlord who nevertheless proved to be a useful ally.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: He is a protoss, so it's a given.
• Really 700 Years Old: He's lived for a couple of centuries. As he points out in one of his poke responses, he's young for his people, not young in general.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: In Starcraft lore, the Purifier Beam is a protoss superweapon that vaporizes just about anything it touches and is used to render entire planets inhospitable. For obvious reasons, you wouldn't be able to tell that based on the tiny beam he gets to call down in this game.
• Swap Teleportation: Sort of. Artanis will switch places with any hero hit by his Phase Prism. This can be used while casting Blade Dash, giving him more reach to drag an enemy to an unfavorable position. It can also be used as an escape, if Artanis is overextended and an enemy hero is blocking the way.
• Weaponized Teleportation: Phase Prism switches places between Artanis and an enemy hero, which can be used both offensively and defensively.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Or rather; 'You Will Not Evade My Team'. Phase Prism causes Artanis to swap positions with an enemy hero if hit and is best used to yank enemies into convenient bludgeoning range of his team. The downside is that Artanis will likely be in the middle of the enemy team as a sort of Equivalent Exchange, but given that this is where Artanis generally wants to be, this is not at all undesirable. And since he can cast Phase Prism during Blade Dash, timing it well allows Artanis to pull enemies in from ridiculously long range.

Dehaka, Primal Pack Leader

Voiced by: Steve Blum (English)^note Other Languages: Edward Dvinskikh (Russian)

"Change is upon us."

The last of the primal zerg pack leaders, Dehaka's gigantic stature boasts tremendous physical strength as he scours for more essence to absorb. After meeting the Queen of Blades, Sarah Kerrigan, he recognized her strength and joined her. As a primal zerg, Dehaka lacked the psionic link with the Overmind unlike any other zerg, which proves to be vital during Kerrigan's final assault against Arcturus Mengsk, immune to his mind-overriding device, and his contribution becomes one of the reasons Kerrigan was able to kill Mengsk.

Dehaka is a Bruiser based on quick regeneration, allowing him to stay in the fight longer. His trait is Essence Collection, which allows him to collect essence from fallen foes, with heroes dropping 10 essence and minions dropping 2; he can have a maximum of 50. Dehaka can consume all collected essence to restore health over five seconds based on the amount stored. His basic abilities include Drag, which lashes out his tongue, stunning the first enemy hit and allowing Dehaka to drag the target with him; Burrow, which lets him tunnel underground to become immune to damage but lower his movement speed and make him unable to attack; and Dark Swarm, which deals damage around him and allows him to move through units for three seconds, and is usable during both Drag and Burrow.

His Heroic abilities are Isolation, which fires a biomass attack that damages, silences, slows, and greatly reduces the vision range of the first enemy hero it hits; and Adaptation, which heals Dehaka for 100% of the damage he takes within a five second delay, essentially negating all damage if he isn't killed.

Dehaka cannot use mounts. Instead, he can activate Brushstalker, which allows him to burrow to any bush or vent on the battlefield. Brushstalker also passively increases his movement speed while inside a bush or vent and for a short time after leaving.

His current skins are Pack Leader Dehaka, Mecha Dehaka, and Dehakasaurus Rex.

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• A Handful for an Eye: His Isolation Heroic ability flings a chunk of biomass into the target's eyes, blinding them (among other things).
• Bold Inflation: He does this on every single word he speaks.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: His mouth looks like its permanently smiling, probably due to the fact he doesn't have lips.
• Close-Range Combatant: All of Dehaka's abilities barring Isolation have a fairly short reach, barely longer than melee range. This is also one of his biggest weaknesses, as he needs the speed bonus and Fast Tunnelling from Brushstalker to get the drop on his foes. If he can catch up to them, he can deal some serious damage, but without Brushstalker he's hopeless at chasing.
• Fast Tunnelling: Similar to Abathur, Dehaka can burrow to nearly any location on the map. While he does not require vision of his destination, he can only burrow into bushes or vents. At level 20, he can upgrade this ability to reduce cast time and cooldown significantly.
• Foreshadowing: Similarly to Li-Ming and Xul, but harder to spot. In the arena promotional picture◊, there is a burrowed claw behind Morales. At that point, the only possibility of a burrowing hero is concluded to be at least a zerg, and it turns out to be Dehaka.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: He cannot mount up, but he can immediately burrow to any steam vent or bushes.^note it's a mirror to Abathur's; Abathur can only burrow to visible area, Dehaka can only burrow to invisible spots There's also a talent that significantly reduces the cooldown and time needed for his burrow. Which means, anytime Dehaka is about to die, he can just run away to any invisible spot in the map.
• Handicapped Badass: He's missing two of his four arms, but that doesn't stop him from tearing people apart.
• Healing Factor:
  • His Adaptation Heroic ability allows him to regenerate 100% of the damage he takes in the five seconds after casting it. Its upgrade at level 20 changes it to regenerate 200% of the damage he takes.
  • His trait Essence Collection gives him 10 essence upon killing a hero or 2 essence for being nearby when a minion dies. He can stack up to 50 essence, and he can activate it to heal based on how much essence he has.
  • He will regrow his large right arm, small left arm, and his right mandible when you choose either one of his Heroic abilities, though the change is purely cosmetic.
• Hell Is That Noise: Players that are about to be ambushed by a Dehaka burrowing into a bush or vent will hear a sound warning them.
• Hyperspeed Ambush: Despite being a tank Dehaka can be pretty good at ganking, Especially with his passive that increases his speed in bushes and his Drag ability.
• Interface Screw: Isolation significantly reduces the target's vision, preventing them from seeing anything that isn't directly next to their character.
• Mighty Glacier: Dehaka has respectable damage output by Warrior standards and can soak up a lot of damage. His mobility, however, is tied to Brushstalker, which he uses in place of a mount; as such, he's relatively sluggish if there aren't any bushes around.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: He regrows his two missing arms upon taking a Heroic ability.
• Multipurpose Tongue: His tongue can grapple onto opponents and drag them along as he moves.
• So Long, Suckers!: If all else fails Dehaka can us his dig to escape from sticky situation as long as he isn’t bursted down or stunned during his animation.
• The Sneaky Guy: Unusually for a Bruiser hero, courtesy of his Fast Tunnelling ability. Almost-kill him, and he'll just burrow away to safety. You never know if Dehaka might be lurking in the next bush/steam vent. Then you're wounded and have to run, and you can be sure Dehaka will be in the next bush/steam vent.
• Tunnel King: Can burrow across the map in seconds.
• What a Drag: Not unlike Batrider, his Drag ability utilizes his tongue to stun and drag an enemy along with him. Excellent to force a squishy Assassin or Healer out of position.
• You Don't Look Like You: He looks far different from both his in-game and hub/cutscene models in Heart of the Swarm. He also Lampshades it in one of his Stop Poking Me! quotes, stating he's changed and evolved a lot since he left Zerus to follow Kerrigan.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Drag not only stuns the target for a long time, Dehaka can also drag his victim back to his team and in melee range.

Healers

Lt. Morales, Combat Medic

Voiced by: Yeni Álvarez (English)^note Other Languages: Svetlana Malyukova (Russian)

"Let's save some lives!"

Lt. Rosa Morales is a former member of the United Earth Directorate and has seen action on many battlefields — including the climactic battle on Char where the new zerg Overmind was captured. While she doesn't originate from any Starcraft game, Morales represents the classic Medic unit of the Terran faction.

Lt. Morales is a Healer, adept at keeping a single target alive through high sustained healing. She uses Energy instead of mana, which has a static pool and drains quickly, but recharges just as fast. Her primary ability, Healing Beam, allows her to continuously heal a targeted ally. While using this ability, Morales is free to move and follow her target and it can be switched around at will. It is the only ability that costs Energy, with everything else being cooldown-based. Her Caduceus Reactor trait is tied directly to Healing Beam, healing her for a percentage of her max health while the beam is active. Her second ability, Safeguard, buffs a targeted ally, decreasing damage taken by a significant amount. Her third ability, Displacement Grenade, fires a grenade along a straight line. Upon exploding at the end of its path or being manually detonated by Morales, it will push away everything within the blast radius.

Her first heroic is Stim Drone, which attaches a stim to an ally, greatly increasing their movement and attack speed. Her second heroic, Medivac Dropship, calls in a Medivac, allowing her and any allies who hop in to quickly redeploy to any point on the battlefield. It also grants access to the Reinforcements ability, which summons a Medivac at the Altar that flies to Morales' position.

Her current skins are First Lt. Morales, Apothecary Morales, Love Doctor Morales, and Paramedic Morales.

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• Anti-Villain: Of an unknown stripe. She happens to be part of the United Earth Directorate Expeditionary Force, but claims she joined them to make the galaxy a better place. Even so, she's racist towards protoss and zerg, and tells terran characters she kills that they picked the wrong side.
• Armor Is Useless: Also Shields Are Useless; she wears highly advanced combat armor and a shield, yet she has one of the lowest base health pools in the game.
• Been There, Shaped History: Apparently, she was one of the Medics who pacified the zerg Overmind on Char.
• Combat Medic: To the extent of being her job description. She's far more Medic than combat-oriented, though.
• Cool Plane: How else would you describe a Drop Ship that could be used to carry the whole team around the field, and even be used as a getaway vehicle in case of a battle gone sour?
• Crippling Overspecialization: Is an absolute monster at healing and support, capable of keeping an entire team going far longer then they otherwise would have. However, her squishiness combined with her almost complete lack any offensive capability means she needs a competent team to protect her from being focus-fired down.
• Deadly Doctor: She can blast her enemies away even as she heals up her allies. However, don't expect much damage, she's a lot better at healing.
• The Driver: With her Medivac Dropship heroic, she can zip the team around the battlefield, and in case of a battle gone south, call one to land at the back, wait for everyone to get in and get the hell out of dodge. Also great for split pushing, or ganging up on a boss merc without having run the whole team there. A Morales with good map awareness can frustrate the hell out of an opposing team that has to keep repositioning itself.
• Drone Deployer: One of her Heroics deploys a Stim Drone that boosts her ally's attack and movement speed.
• Drop Ship: Her other Heroic ability summons a Medivac, which can zoom the Medic and her whole team (if they're present) around the map very quickly.
• Expy: Of The Medic. A fire-and-latch healing beam which can be talented to grant Overheal (read: Shield), and one of her Heroics significantly buffs the offensive capability of its recipient, not unlike Kritzkrieg. Add the fast-paced nature of the game, and veteran Medics would feel right at home.
• Loophole Abuse: Caduceus Reactor heals Morales while her beam is active. However, it technically only requires an active beam, not one that's healing a target. If she targets a full-health ally, she'll rapidly heal herself while not spending any energy.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Still lugging around a shield for protection. Unfortunately for her, it doesn't help much.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Not as bad as some heroes are, but as a healer she is quite unusual. Most Healers in this game focus on burst healing—restoring a large amount of HP on a periodic basis. Morales' restoration is more in the line of Death of a Thousand Cuts. This opens up a weakness for the other team to exploit: if they focus down one member of Morales' squad at a time, there's only so much she can do to stop them.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She's a fan of pandas, so she expresses severe regret if she ended up killing either Chen or Li Li.
  Lt. Morales: I can't believe I just killed a panda!
• Nanomachines: At least, that's the in-lore explanation for how Starcraft Medics heal.
• No Self-Buffs: Just like in Starcraft, Morales can't use the healing beam on herself. Hilariously lampshaded with her Stop Poking Me! quotes:
  Lt. Morales: 'Side effects may include nausea, dimensional displacement, stomach irritation, and sentient discharges. Always consult a doctor before using healing beam.' Hmm, maybe I'll just stick to using this thing on other people.
• Original Generation: Again, she is to non-character Medics what Sgt. Hammer is to the Siege Tank.
• Regenerating Health: Her trait regenerates her health during Healing Beam.
• Remember the New Guy?: She knows Sgt. Hammer, apparently. This is a funny example of the new guy remembering the other new guy.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Her Paramedic skin has her with less armor on, revealing a rather attractive face and figure.
• Shoot the Medic First: One of the few Healers who are vulnerable against this tactic, as she has the third lowest base hp, no mobility options nor disables, and absolutely ridiculous healing power, making her a high-priority target. One of her annoyed quotes references this, ending with her asking if the Geneva Convention even exists within the Nexus. Of course, this can be weaponized via Batman Gambit. Wait for someone to overextend in an attempt to kill her, and collapse on them. Oops, you won the team fight.
• Spicy Latina: Much like the Brood War-era Medic, except that she sounds like one too. Surprisingly for a unit remembered for her highly flirtatious nature however, Morales never addresses the player in such a manner.
• Super Serum: Delivered by her Drone, it boosts her ally's attack and movement speed by 75% and 25% respectively. Not very good on spellpower-oriented Assassins such as Jaina or Kael'Thas (that's who Ana from Overwatch is for), but if you use it on basic attackers such as Valla or Thrall...
• Throw Down the Bomblet: She can throw grenades at the enemy. It deals decent-enough damage to put the 'Combat' back in Combat Medic, but it's best used as escape tool as she has no other escape option. This includes using the grenade to try and secure a kill on someone who is fleeing. If you miss and/or don't do enough damage, it will simply push the retreating enemy even further out of range.
• Unknown Rival: She knows Kerrigan by title and suitably hates her. Kerrigan doesn't have any clue who she is.
• Weaksauce Weakness: As of her 2017 rework, she lacks sustain because of how quickly her Heal Beam energy bar drains. It is entirely possible to simply apply so much gradual damage that she's forced to run dry. It doesn't help that Morales's trait was reworked to heal her while the beam is active, which means she can't regenerate energy while doing so.

Stukov, Infested Admiral

Voiced by: Victor Brandt (English)^note Other Languages: Kirill Radzig (Russian)

"Victory above all!"

Former Vice-Admiral of the United Earth Directorate, Alexei Stukov was the assistant of Admiral Gerard DuGalle in invading the Korprulu Sector. However, he grew suspicious with a certain Lieutenant Samir Duran. Duran influenced DuGalle into believing Stukov was a traitor and had him killed. In his last breaths, Stukov revealed Duran's treachery and convinced DuGalle to finish what they came for without further manipulation. Meanwhile, Stukov's corpse was infested by the zerg and resurrected. He was cured of his infestation by the protoss and sent to the Moebius Foundation where they hoped to replicate the protoss cure. However, he ended up experimented on by Emil Narud (actually Duran in disguise), negating the effects of the cure and embittering him further. Eventually he would escape and align with Kerrigan as a member of her Zerg Swarm.

Stukov is a Healer who relies on spreading infestations, using them to both help his allies and hinder his foes. His first basic ability is Healing Pathogen, which infects himself or an ally with a virus that heals them over time and can spread to other allied heroes. His second ability launches a Weighted Pustule in a straight line, dealing light damage and gradually slowing all enemies it hits, and dealing extra damage after expiring. Both abilities can be detonated using his trait, Bio-Kill Switch - Healing Pathogen will release a large healing burst while Weighted Pustule will deal a burst of damage and slow even further. His final basic ability plunges his Lurking Arm into the ground, creating a zone that damages and silences all enemies inside. It lasts until Stukov cancels it or is interrupted. Stukov can activate Bio-Kill Switch while channeling.

Stukov's first Heroic, Flailing Swipe, causes him to lash out three times, each hit dealing light damage and knocking back enemies. Each swipe covers larger area than the previous. His second Heroic is Massive Shove. Upon activation, Stukov gains a large amount of Armor and starts extending his arm. If he hits an enemy hero, he pushes them an unlimited distance until they collide with a wall, dealing damage and stunning them.

His current skins are Admiral Krakenov and Imperator Stukov.

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• Beneficial Disease: Healing Pathogen spreads an infection between himself and his allies. However, its only effect is healing over time (and Armor with a talent).
• Body Horror: Oh yes. His most notable feature is a massive, pulsating arm that fires viruses and globs of pus.
• Biomanipulation: He spreads zerg infestation to his enemies and allies, and can stretch his own arm out ridiculous lengths.
• Combat Medic: Stukov can plant Healing Pathogen on an ally and let it do its thing while debilitating his enemies with his other abilities. He also deals plenty of damage with his attacks, allowing him to weave punches in with his spells.
• Combat Tentacles: His arm functions just like this, contorting and stretching to strike foes. His Krakenov skin plays this completely straight.
• Combos: Stukov can empower the effects of his Healing Pathogen and Weighted Pustule by hitting the Bio-Kill Switch. Stukov's offensive combo relies on using Lurking Arm right when Weighted Pustule's massive slow is triggered. The talent Virulent Reaction takes this one step further and roots enemies that are inside Lurking Arm's area while they are affected by Weighted Pustule and Bio-Kill Switch is activated.
• Death Seeker: Referenced by more than a few of his quotes.
  Respawn: For a moment, I almost knew peace...
  Resurrected: Why will no one let me die.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Stukov requires a lot of careful positioning to spread his Healing Pathogen correctly and set up for his Heroics, as well as intense cooldown management. A lot of his power comes from Bio Kill-Switch, and it has one of the longest cooldowns in the game for a non-Heroic ability. Choosing when to detonate and maximizing your virus output for more coverage is key.
• Extendable Arms: Lurking Arm and both his Heroics have him stretching his zerg arm out. In the case of Massive Shove, it's potentially across the entire map.
• Evil Hand: Implied. He seems to wrestle with his infected arm sometimes.
• Fantastic Racism: While he’s not exactly thrilled by the protoss or zerg, Stukov has a special hatred for the Terrans, seeing them as traitors to Earth.
• Flanderization: Stukov's always had an infested arm, but it's normally only slightly larger than his untouched one◊. In Heroes however, it's been exaggerated to the point of being nearly half his body mass by itself and the crux of his fighting style, as opposed to the mostly "infested psionic" oriented kit he had in Heart of the Swarm
• Game-Breaking Bug: Stukov has a talent that increases Healing Pathogen's detonated heal by a massive amount on a tricky condition. On the PTR version, that talent was accidentally made permanently active on his base kit, meaning that he was healing his entire team for over 750 health at level 1 without talents.
• Get Out!: Stukov's most common voice line for casting Massive Shove is simply shouting "GET OUT!" It's especially appropriate if you succeed in shoving someone halfway across the map with it.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom
• Harmful Healing: Well, getting splashed by virus-filled zerg pus definitely doesn't sound particularly pleasant, even if it heals. It's not made clear whether it comes with any side effects.
  Stukov: Don't worry, I will keep you alive. But you may wish I had not.
• Healing Shiv: Healing Pathogen is as much an oxymoron as 'Healing Shiv', as Pathogen by definition causes diseases.
• Humanoid Abomination: He still acts and sounds relatively human, but, well...
• Hypocrite: He hates the terrans, seeing them as traitors to Earth, despite the fact that he helped the Swarm.
• Knockback: Both of his heroics involve knockbacks. Flailing Swipe knocks multiple enemy heroes away while Massive Shove just knocks one enemy hero away until they collide with unpathable terrain.
• Mighty Glacier: Stukov's attack speed is the lowest in the game, and he has no mobility skills; the only reason he'll ever manage to attack the same Hero twice is if they're a really bad player or have lagged out. However, each swing hits like a freight train.
• Muscles Are Meaningful: His zerg-infested arm is incredibly muscular. It shows in gameplay too: Stukov's basic attack does the most damage per hit in the game, period. Even though he also has the slowest attack rate in the game, period, he still has the 4th-highest Auto-Attack DPS there is, bested only by Tychus, Tracer and Alarak.^note If we want to be technical, he is also exceeded by D.Va if she is in her Pilot form, Varian if he has taken Colossus Smash and a Greymane if he is in Worgen form and has popped Inner Beast.
• Odd Friendship:
  • He talks about most people with indifference at best and disgust at worst, even his zerg allies, but he’s actually really friendly to Zarya mostly because she reminds him of his old home.
  • He also has this with Raynor, despite his general distaste towards terrans. This is likely due to the history the duo share following Stukov's infestation. In-game, they would greet each other with their generic positive greetings when on the same team.
• Patriotic Fervor: His dialogue with Zarya shows that he is pleased to meet someone else from the motherland after all these years.
• Plague Master: Played straight and inverted at the same time; his skills utilize the pus and pustules his body generates, and he also rely on said pus and pustules to spread from his target to his teammates. The inversion comes when you realize that this is his usual MO for healing his teammates.
• Power-Upgrading Deformation: His zerg arm is the source of all his abilities... and is also a horrifying blob of mutant flesh.
• Punched Across the Room: Massive Shove. Well, it's more like grabbed and shoved across the map, but the idea is the same.
• Remember the New Guy?: He has a few special quotes with Lt. Morales, as both characters once belonged to the same faction. Morales is of course an Original Generation character made for this game.
• The Right Hand of Doom: His zerg-infested arm provides the basis for one of his basic abilities and both of his heroics, and its size is even more exaggerated compared to his appearance in Heart of the Swarm.
• Spike Shooter: One of Stukov's level 1 talents lets him trade in his powerful melee swings for a much less damaging ranged spike attack that also slows enemies.
• Squishy Wizard: While Stukov can be deceptively tough with his burst healing, his base health is fairly low. He's also a sitting duck while channeling Lurking Arm.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: He still has his UED uniform on, with some of his zerg infection growing over it. Not that he can change clothes anymore...
  Stukov: I wish I could take off this jacket!
• The Virus: Healing Pathogen is a benign example. It spreads from ally to ally, healing them over time.

Supports

Abathur, Evolution Master

Voiced by: Steve Blum (English)^note Other Languages: Frédéric Souterelle (French), Mikhail Georgiou (Russian)

"Logical decision."

Abathur is an ancient creation of the Overmind, spawned for the sole purpose of improving and iterating newer and deadlier additions to the Zerg Swarm. His guidance lead to the integration of nearly every mainstream zerg species, up to and including the Queen of Blades Sarah Kerrigan, whom he personally created. Now he works under her, continually following his original directive: to make the Swarm "perfect".

Abathur is a bizarre Support who avoids direct combat, instead enhancing his teammates and subtly influencing the battlefield. His trait is Locust Strain, which automatically spawns a locust at regular intervals which pushes down the nearest lane. Unlike most heroes, he only has two basic abilities. Toxic Nest plants a mine and has three charges with massive range. The mine grows for a few seconds then becomes invisible, granting vision of the area and exploding for damage if an enemy walks on it. Symbiote is Abathur's most important ability: Abathur places a zerg creature that he directly controls on an allied unit or building. While the Symbiote is active, Abathur gains a new set of skills: Stab shoots out a spike and has two charges, Spike Burst deals damage in an area around his Symbioted target, and Carapace temporarily shields the ally and heals them over time if they're a hero.

His first Heroic ability, Ultimate Evolution, creates a copy of an allied hero which has access to all of their basic abilities, but no talents. The clone is directly controlled by Abathur and has extra attack damage, spell damage, and movement speed. It lasts for 20 seconds or until destroyed. His second Heroic, Evolve Monstrosity, turns a lane minion into a Monstrosity that gains health and damage for every kill it racks up; this Monstrosity pushes down the nearest lane and can be manually controlled by placing a Symbiote on it. It can also tunnel to any visible location on a lengthy cooldown. The Monstrosity lasts until destroyed, but is marked on the minimap with a special icon, alerting Abathur's enemies.

Rather than ride a mount, Abathur can Deep Tunnel to anywhere on the map as long as he has vision of the area.

His current skins are Swarm Abathur, Skelethur, Pajamathur, and Xenotech Abathur.

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• Achilles' Heel: Abathur's Locusts form the majority of his lane presence, but also provide the enemy with a breadcrumb trail that leads directly to him. With good guesswork, heroes with global-ranged abilities (such as Tyrande and Kel'Thuzad) can blow him up from anywhere on the map, while stealth heroes can sneak up on him while he's occupied elsewhere and eviscerate him.
• Assassin Outclassin': Or, in his own words once he shuts down a killing spree.
  Abathur: Terminator... terminated.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Abathur's Evolve Monstrosity sees no play in the professional scene, as the ability has far too many counters, which makes it a rather niche heroic. The problem is that at the beginning it is remarkably weak and needs to kill minions to gain stacks, so one hero alone is no longer enough to finish it off. Since it automatically pushes a lane, it needs to be cared for and controlled by the Abathur player with his Symbiote sometimes, when it's possible that one of his teammates needs Abathur's support. Adding to this, the Monstrosity is permanently visible on the mini map, so people who do not lack in map awareness will immediately go and destroy it, leaving Abathur with a 90 second cooldown on his next Monstrosity. The Monstrosity itself also does not possess great mobility (Deep Tunnel does give it the same global mobility as Abathur himself, but has a fairly long cooldown) and offers no utility aside from being a big body that pokes things with melee attacks, meaning it's not a reliable factor in team fights, unlike Ultimate Evolution.
• Beige Prose: Short sentences. To point. No articles. Efficient.
• Big Dumb Body: When left to its own devices, a Monstrosity will just mindlessly push down the nearest lane. However, Abathur can use Symbiote to take direct control of it and make it do more productive things like fighting heroes or defending objectives.
• Body Horror:
  • He's the one responsible for all those lovely mutations the zerg go through. Fridge Horror kicks in when he uses his Evolve Monstrosity heroic...
  • Is also this himself. Just look at him!
• Boring, but Practical: Building Abathur around his support abilities is probably the least "fun" way of playing him. He won't push down lanes and won't deal much damage, however he becomes a highly effective at saving lives. Unlike a normal support he also can't be targeted directly meaning there isn't much the enemy team can do except overwhelm his defensive capabilities, which is a rather tall order if played well.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: One of his heroic abilities, Evolve Monstrosity, lets him create one from a minion or a locust, which grows stronger with each minion killed in its presence, and Abathur can even control the monstrosity directly using his Symbiote on it.
• Character Level: The Monstrosity, in addition to having its health scale with Abathur's level, gains up to 80% additional health and attack damage from combat in a more self-contained, simpler version of the game's normal leveling curve.
• Cherry Tapping: Abathur has virtually zero direct combat ability, with the second weakest right-click attack in the game in terms of DPS and a paper-thin health pool. As such, being slapped to death by Abathur (most likely the result of him burrowing in to finish off an exceptionally weakened hero) is pretty high up on the list of the most humiliating ways to die in this game.
• Creepy Monotone: As per his role in Heart of the Swarm, Abathur is not one for emoting. It gets exponentially worse with his Ultimate Evolution heroic, which gives his speech patterns (but not his voice) to any other character in the game should he clone them with it.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Abathur's locusts can put a bit of extra pressure on a lane, but they have a short lifespan so he'll have to remain nearer to the front lines for them to remain effective. On top of this, he has to monitor the entire field and strategically pick and choose where and when to assist, and it's easy to develop tunnel vision while assisting and lose track of the rest of the battle, missing critical losses that he could have prevented. Played well, Abathur can do anything any other hero could do — with the added advantage of literally being able to be anywhere at any time, jumping in to turn otherwise-losing fights to his team's favour.
  • Taking this further is Abathur tends to build around his teammates more then other heroes. He has the capability to be a lane pusher, damage dealer, pocket support or any combination thereof on a global level but he needs to know which one of those hats is best for him to wear to the party. This requires a lot of knowledge about pretty much every single hero in the game and the map currently being played on. Picking the wrong one can render Abathur useless, the right one can render his team nigh unstoppable.
  • Ultimate Evolution also works this way. The Abathur player has to know who to copy, when to copy them, and how to play the copy.
  • And finally, there's the fact that Abathur is one of those "easy to learn, hard to master" characters. His skills and buttons are pretty straightforward, and it's easy to grasp their applications. This, combined with his distance from the fight, can lure players into assuming that they can just take him out for a spin and automatically dominate the next match. Nothing is further from the truth. Abathur requires more map awareness than the rest of your team combined, as well as solid communication skills so that your teammates know what you're trying to accomplish and how to help you do it.
• Ditto Fighter: Of the "Tsungxpert" variety, thanks to Ultimate Evolution.
• Elite Mooks: His Locusts can be improved so they're tougher, deal more damage, gain cleaving attacks, explode on death, gain ranged attack, and more. Some of these are mutually exclusive though.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Responsible for "upgrading" the zerg in his home universe. Here in the Nexus he works to improve and empower his fellow heroes instead.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Courtesy of the reappearance of Steve Blum.
• Expendable Clone: One of his heroics creates a clone of a friendly hero, which can then be controlled. While the clone can be killed, they give little experience and don't count as a 'proper' death for Abathur, so you can send them to delay the enemy team for precious few seconds while your allies retreat without fearing the consequences. Also counts as a meta-example of Power Copying, as said clone can use all the heroes' abilities except heroics (they used to be able to do that too).
• Experience Booster: One of Abathur's biggest advantages is being able to soak experience better than just about anyone else. By parking himself near a minion clash and supporting allies with Symbiote, he can both gain XP for his team and contribute to fights at the same time, giving his team an edge in the experience race and forcing the opponent to play catch-up. This is especially significant on maps whose objectives demand a whole team's attention, since the enemy will usually prioritize the objective over contesting Abathur's lane.
• Fantastic Racism: Downplayed. He pities terrans, believing them to be genetically worthless and inefficient, and sees no value in collecting their DNA for experimentation. He doesn't hate them, he just sees them as a waste of good biomass. On the other hand, he absolutely despises primal zerg like Dehaka.
• Fast Tunnelling: His special ability: he can dig anywhere across the map which is visible to him instead of riding a horse to move fast. The Monstrosity also has a similar ability.
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Invoked in one of his intro quotes with Brightwing.
• Finger-Tenting: Does this constantly in his idle animations.
• Insistent Terminology: One of his joke lines:
  Abathur: Symbiote, not bug hat.
• Humanoid Abomination: To the extent that several creatures are thoroughly freaked out by the sight of him.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Toxic Nest is a 3-charged ability that plants an organic mine that when fully deployed, become invisible and grant small amounts of vision when fully deployed. When enemies step upon them, the organic mines detonate, dealing significant damage, slowing, and granting vision on opponents unfortunate enough to step on them.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Abathur is quite a unique hero, even when compared with other heroes across different MOBAs. Like Illidan and the Lost Vikings he doesn't make use of a mana bar or any other resource. Many of his abilities have global range, and he plays like a symbiote piggybacking on his allies rather than an actual hero. He can control this symbiote to assist his ally like a turret, or even to provide protection and healing. Finally, the Symbiote hat itself can collect experience points, making Abathur the only character in the game who can earn EXP without putting his body in the lane.
• Mission Control: His playstyle requires a great degree of map awareness, constantly monitoring your teammates who may need that extra help against an enemy, warding the area with Toxic Nests as early warning systems, tunneling to secluded spots to start spawning locusts, and looking for enemy escapees he might be able to pick off. A well-played Abathur is practically omnipresent on the map, and can assist his teammates and torment his enemies wherever they may be.
• Mook Maker: Has multiple ways to spawn Locusts. These little buggers will grind down enemy fortifications, given enough time. They can even be upgraded to explode on death or snipe at enemies safely from long-range.
• Non-Action Guy: Strangely for a MOBA character. See Mechanically Unusual Class above.
• Playing with Syringes: Rather than attacking directly, he places a benign parasite on his fellow player. Despite his protests (as listed under Insistent Terminology), the fanbase invariably describe his symbiote as an "Abathur hat." The fact that Blizzard are selling a defictionalized plushie version doesn't help.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Character. Abathur can't do much without teammates to help him. If he isn't telling them what he needs them to do, and vice versa, he's basically The Load.
• Remote Body: Both of his Heroics create one of these. Even if you take it out, the real Abathur is still safe behind the enemy lines.
• Remote, Yet Vulnerable: While controlling his Symbiote, Abathur is fully immobile. If the enemy finds him while he's fixated on the other end of the map, he won't last very long. Averted with Ultimate Evolution, which hides Abathur for its duration.
• Required Secondary Powers: His "clone a character" Heroic, Ultimate Evolution, is kind of useless if you don't how how to play said hero. As in any MOBA, there are numerous characters. Hope you've spent a lot of time messing around in Try Mode!...
• Rule of Cute: His Pajamathur skin. The Symbiote turns into a bunny doll and Abathur makes a bio-cradle for himself to snooze in, complete with a mobile, instead of simply encasing himself in a bio-cocoon.
• Science Cannot Comprehend Phlebotinum:
  • He doesn't understand how The Undead work because there are none in the StarCraft universe, so he finds the necrotized-yet-animated tissue of undead heroes "perplexing".
  • He's also curious as to where Brightwing's abilities come from.
• Squishy Wizard: Has no direct offensive abilities and minimal health. If he's caught, he'll usually die quickly.
• Terse Talker: To him, time spent speaking is time not pondering ideal zerg traits.
• Third-Person Person: Lampshaded in his bio. When he speaks, he doesn't use pronouns.
• Unskilled, but Strong: His Ultimate Evolution clone deals 20% more damage and moves 10% faster than the original, and its impermanence means you can play much more recklessly than the original, but it has no talents, including no Heroic Ability, limiting its capabilities and especially its versatility.
• What the Hell, Player?: Being the Non-Action Guy he is, Abathur isn't too thrilled when ordered to attack something.
  Abathur: Direct combat not advised.

Upcoming

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