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This page is for how Warcraft and World of Warcraft Warrior-class 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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Warcraft Universe Warriors

Tanks

    Anub'arak, Traitor King 

Voiced by: Darin De Paul (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/anubarak_hots.jpg

Once the ruler of Azjol-Nerub, Anub'arak stood as the helm of one of the most ancient and indomitable kingdoms on Azeroth. This was until the War of the Spider, a conflict between the Nerubians and newly-born forces of the Lich King. Despite the powerful army he commanded, Anub'arak and many of his people were slain and resurrected as minions of the Scourge. Anub'arak served as Arthas' guide through the hostile lands of Northrend while the Lich King Ner'zhul was losing strength. He did not serve out of loyalty however, and Anub'arak was quite happy to be rid of the Lich King's influence when adventurers slayed him during the events of Wrath of the Lich King.

Anub'arak is a melee Tank with strong disables and diving capability who especially excels at countering mages. His trait, Scarab Host, summons an attacking scarab every time he uses an ability. His basic abilities include Impale, a row of spikes that stuns all enemies in a line, Harden Carapace, which grants a small shield and a large amount of Spell Armor on a short cooldown, and Burrow Charge, tunneling in a direction before emerging to stun enemies nearby.

His first heroic ability unleashes a Locust Swarm which deals damage to enemies near Anub'arak and heals him based on damage dealt. His second heroic, Cocoon, encases a target enemy in webbing, rendering them unable to act until the web expires or allies help to break them out.

His current skins are Underking Anub'arak, Cyb'arak, Love Bug Anub'arak, and Anub'alisk.


  • All Webbed Up: His Cocoon heroic wraps an enemy target in web, preventing them from contributing into the fight. Although their allies can attack the web to break them free, at 8 seconds it's the single longest disable in the game and can be improved further to 12 seconds. Target a Tank or Healer and go to town on their squishy Assassins and Specialists.
  • Anti-Magic: Harden Carapace gives him a very high 40% resistance to ability damage (upgradable to 60% with a talent) as long as the shield lasts.
  • Armored But Frail: Anub'arak's "armor" is his buttons, but otherwise he plays this trope deadly straight. He is what former pro player ishb00 calls a window tank, in the sense that he can only tank during specific "windows" of power; those windows are his buttons, which render him almost invincible. But while they're on cooldown, his ability to Human Shield is limited: half the game's Bruisers and every tank except Garrosh has more Hit Points than he doesnote . If you catch him while his cooldowns are up, he can basically survive anything. If you can catch him five seconds later while he can't do anything, you can squash him like a, well... a bug.
  • Badass Boast: "My might cannot be matched!"
  • Berserk Button: Anub'arak's a pretty even-tempered guy, on the whole. Just don't mention the word -
    Anub'arak: RAIDS?!
    • ...Yeah, that.
  • Big Creepy-Crawlies: A nerubian Crypt Lord, which is basically a gigantic beetle.
  • Bling of War: His Underking skin blings up his carapace.
  • Blood Knight: "I yearn for battle!"
  • Body Armor as Hit Points: One of his basic abilities gives him a temporary shield which is just his own carapace lore-wise.
  • The Dog Bites Back: In his trailer, Anub'arak punts his Lich King master away, declaring his independence in the process.
  • Dig Attack: Burrow Charge, natch.
  • Dynamic Entry: While the word "tank" usually brings to mind a bulky meat-shield that can soak up a lot of damage, Anub'arak instead specializes in the other role of tanks in Heroes of the Storm: getting into the opponent's face and causing as many problems as possible. The combination of Burrow Charge into Impale into Cocoon makes Anub'arak one of the better initiators in the game, allowing him to charge enemy teams from almost a full screen away while stunlocking multiple foes and instantly locking down the most threatening enemy.
  • Fast Tunnelling: Burrow Charge, which can be used as an escape or initiate a fight.
  • Giant Flyer: Instead of using a mount, he uses his tiny wings to fly and gain the same speed boost.
  • Healing Factor: While he is one of the less durable Warriors, one of his heroics makes him rapidly drain large amounts of health from all nearby enemies, he also has a talent that allow his trait to heal him for an mount of damage it does.
  • Large and in Charge: Still fairly large by Nerubian standards, and he was once their ruler.
  • Life Drain: An interesting variant, where he himself doesn't drain life, but has a swarm of locusts and scarabs to do so for him.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Subverted in that he's not that tanky but can be quite mobile with his Fast Tunnelling ability and comes packed with crowd controls, but with his Locust Swarm heroic and the right build he can become very hard to kill (if only by a few seconds).
  • Locked Out of the Fight: Cocoon prevents an enemy from fighting back or being targeted for a whopping 7 seconds, more than enough time to make them a non-factor for an entire teamfight; while they can be broken out early by attacking the cocoon, good luck doing that while Anub'arak's team is on top of you.
  • Mage Killer: Carapace gives him Spell Armor, which reduces damage taken from enemy abilities, and can take a talent for even more. His kit also allows him to terrorize a Squishy Wizard quite well, and the scarabs can block potential skillshots.
  • Magic Carpet: Similar to Azmodan and more to Zagara, normally he can't use mounts, instead he uses his wings to fly at the same speed of a mount as mentioned above. But if you purchase the carpet, he draws his legs in and flies with it.
  • Mecha: Cyb'arak, one of his skins, is a robot designed by Frozen Throne Technologies and built to fight Diablo's Kaiju skin in Africa. Although it's a Humongous Mecha in that universe, it's the same size as the real Anub'arak. In keeping with this, he replaces the organic spikes in his attacks with drills, and his beetles and locusts are mechanical.
  • Mook Maker: His trait allows him to spawn a scarab beetle every time he uses an ability.
  • Not as You Know Them: In Warcraft III Anub'arak was a loyal ally of Arthas in his Darkest Hour, and as shown in Wrath of the Lich King remains a loyal servant and friend to Arthas after he takes the frozen throne to himself. Here, his character introduction portrays him as a enslaved victim, although he's rather inconsistent on the matter, both exclaiming the usual "For the Frozen Throne!" battlecry and "All hail the Lich King" as well as less enthusiastic lines. Also, in Warcraft III, he's the tankiest of the Scourge's heroes, and a Mighty Glacier, whereas here, he's among the squishiest Warriors, reliant mostly on his superior harassment and mobility, ala Tyrael. Additionally, his Warcraft III incarnation specialized against basic attackers, while in Heroes he specializes against spellcasters.
  • Pun: Anub'arak fears raids. Is that the groups of WorldOfWarcraft players trying to kill him, or the brand of insecticide?
  • Rage Breaking Point: Anub'arak is annoyed by the player's poking and eventually threatens violence if they don't stop.
    Anub'arak: I am first among the Crypt Lords, and a servant of the Lich King! I don't have to take this from you!
    Anub'arak: Ten more minutes of this abuse and I will go berserk!
  • Ship Tease: Amusingly, he and Zagara have this in their intro quotes if they team up. Anub'arak admires her legs, which prompts her to call him a creep; she shyly offers him a place in the Zerg Swarm, which he declines because he's already got a monarch lording over him and doesn't need another. They eventually get together for real in the Valentine's Day promotional video for his Lovebug skin.
  • Status Effects: Deals in stun and is generally the most crowd-control oriented hero in the game.
  • Tough Beetles: Downplayed; while Anub'arak is a tank, he's the squishiest of his class. His survivability comes from interrupting enemies with stuns and body-blocking with beetles.
  • Tunnel King: Burrow Charge allows him to sink under obstacles and stun his victims, and many talents make it even more impressive.
  • Wormsign: His burrow ability leaves this, not that'll help much due to its speed.

    Arthas, The Lich King 

Voiced by: Michael McConnohie (English)note 

Crown Prince Arthas Voiced by: Patrick Seitz (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/arthas_hots.jpg

Arthas Menethil was a young paladin, son of King Terenas of Lordaeron and student to the legendary Uther the Lightbringer. During this time, a plague broke out in the kingdom, ravaging the land. Arthas soon learned that this plague was meant to transform its victims into mindless undead. The prince's desperate attempts to stop this plague grew darker and darker - he disbanded the Order of the Silver Hand so he could purge the infested city of Stratholme, burned down the ships of his men so they'd be forced to stay in Northrend, and eventually sacrificed his soul to wield the runeblade Frostmourne. However, this entire time he had been manipulated by Ner'zhul, the original Lich King, into becoming The Dragon for the Scourge. Upon equipping Frostmourne, he became the first death knight.

Arthas served as the Lich King's champion in conquering much of the Eastern Kingdoms. After raising Kel'Thuzad as a powerful lich, the fallen prince led the Scourge against the city of Dalaran, where Kel'Thuzad summoned Archimonde unto Azeroth. After the Legion's fall, Arthas returned to purge the last of the humans from Lordaeron. However, Illidan, under the command of Kil'jaeden, cast a powerful spell that nearly destroyed the Lich King, weakening Arthas and severing his connection to many of the undead. Although he was nearly destroyed by Sylvanas and her newly freed Forsaken, Arthas was saved by Kel'Thuzad, allowing him to return to Northrend. With no options left, Arthas donned the Helm of Domination and became the new Lich King, destroying most of Ner'zhul's soul. Now he leads the Scourge on a march to turn the entire world into his undead slaves.

Arthas is a melee Tank hero who specializes in disabling his target before getting in close for the kill. His activated trait, Frostmourne Hungers, makes his next basic attack strike immediately for double damage and also restore some mana. His basic abilities include Death Coil, a bolt of dark magic which can either harm an enemy or heal Arthas himself, Howling Blast, a ranged area attack which roots enemies in ice, and Frozen Tempest, a cold aura which damages, slows, and reduces the attack speed of nearby enemies as long as it's toggled on.

His first Heroic ability, Army of the Dead, raises ghouls that follow Arthas and attack enemies. By reactivating the ability, Arthas can cannibalize the ghouls one at a time to restore his health. Summon Sindragosa, his other Heroic, calls forth the Dracolich Sindragosa to breathe ice across a long distance, temporarily slowing down enemy heroes and freezing all other enemy units and structures, preventing them from moving or firing for a long period of time.

His current skins are Death God Arthas, Crown Prince Arthas, Frost Wyrm Arthas, Crimson Count Arthas, Mystic Kingdoms Arthas, and King of Blades Arthas.


  • And Now for Someone Completely Different:
    • Downplayed — Crown Prince Arthas is still a baddie, but his quotes reference the differences between his place in the timeline and that of his standard Lich King self, including his attitude and the state of Azeroth then compared to now.
      Anub'Arak: All hail the Lich King...
      Lich King Arthas: All will serve in death.
      Crown Prince Arthas: Come, the Master demands our service!
      Zeratul: I sense in you a darkness that would consume us all.
      Lich King Arthas: How perceptive of you.
      Crown Prince Arthas: I don't know what you're talking about!
    • Marquis Arthas Du Menethil likewise is a vampire from the Raven King's court, and not remotely related to the Lich King. Likewise, Mystic Kingdoms Arthas is a Guan Yu Expy unrelated to the Lich King at all.
  • Anti-Magic: One of Arthas' Storm talents is Anti-Magic Shell, which will temporarily render him immune to Spell Damage and actually heal himself for a percentage of the nullified damage.
  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Crown Prince Arthas is rather full of himself.
  • But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The number of people who act as if they're his Arch-Enemy is nearly too long to list. His general disposition towards them generally tends towards mocking snark instead of taking them seriously.
  • Casting a Shadow: Arthas can cast the dark aligned Death Coil spell to either damage enemies or heal himself.
  • The Chew Toy: In several Warcraft character trailers, Arthas is on the receiving end of a beatdown from the character in question; he generally has it coming, as most of the characters who attack him are only taking revenge for something he did to them in Warcraft lore that went unavenged in World of Warcraft and its expansions. Thrall is currently the only exception, as he has no personal connection to or personal grievance with Arthas.
  • Close-Range Combatant: Arthas's kit makes him a beast for melee heroes to take down, with Frozen Tempest slowing their attack speed to basically nothing while he grinds away at them with his comparatively high damage and self-sustain. On the other hand, he has no gap-closer aside from trying to land Howling Blast and no means to turn Unstoppable to shrug off stuns and (more importantly) knockback, so he struggles against most long-ranged opponents. As a result, Arthas works better as a Tank against dive teams (since the enemy will have to come to him, putting them in reach of his abilities) than against long-range poke and burst teams (who can take out half his HP before he can do anything to them).
  • Cool Sword: Frostmourne, figuratively and literally. A number of his talents can improve the basic free ability Frostmourne Hungers as well.
  • Death of a Thousand Cuts: Frozen Tempest inflicts this on anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in it for more than a few seconds. Even worse, Arthas has a talent that causes continued exposure to increase this damage dramatically.
  • Devour the Dragon: Does this, rapid-fire to his summoned Ghouls for a very powerful heal over time after casting Army of the Dead.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: His standard voice uses the very deep voice given by the Helm of Domination he wears. Even then, Arthas' regular voice is deep as well — just not that deep.
  • Evil Weapon: Frostmourne. It already looks the part, but it goes even deeper than that: the blade has the power to absorb souls and does so to both its wielder and anyone killed with it, which is why Crown Prince Arthas is now evil after barely grasping it by the handle.
  • Expy: His Mythic Kingdoms skin basically turns him into Guan Yu. Bonus points for initially being bundled with a Crimson Hare mount.
  • Ghostly Chill: Frozen Tempest invokes this, with a group of wraiths circling Arthas while he has it activated.
  • Hearing Voices: Mentions that this is happening to to him as the Lich King. Presumably, he's talking about a Not Quite Dead Ner'zhul.
  • Hostile Weather: Frozen Tempest invokes the cold, howling winds of Northrend, constantly dealing damage and slowing enemies caught within its effects.
  • I Am a Monster: Non-angsty variant. Although not a servant of the Lich King per se, Crown Prince Arthas still acknowledges and revels in in his status as a Fallen Hero, and admits that many of his deeds can't be forgiven. As the Lich King, Arthas has evidently made peace with what he has become and feels zero need to hold back the villain clichés he's been saving up.
  • An Ice Person: Arthas wields a whole host of ice magic befitting an undead king - Frostmourne Hungers' visuals is coating the target hit in ice, Howling Blast will encase enemies' legs in frost to root them to the ground (...even if it's a flying/levitating hero like Falstad, or Tassadar) and prevent them from moving voluntarily, Frozen Tempest (name aside) uses icy colors for the circle it makes around Arthas, and Summon Sindragosa has the frost wyrm breath a freezing blast over a line.
  • I Regret Nothing: Played straight by the Lich King when Jaina declares she'll never forgive him for what he's done; he scoffs that forgiveness is for the living. Averted by Crown Prince Arthas, who instead mournfully replies that he'll never ask her to forgive him with the implication that he does regret some of his actions.
  • Jerkass: Arthas wasn't always evil, but he was never exactly a totally nice guy either. In Warcraft III and Arthas: Rise of the Lich King he was more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but given that even by his Crown Prince skin's time he has already taken Frostmourne (but hasn't slain Mal'Ganis or returned to Lordaeron as a Death Knight) and was already Slowly Slipping Into Evil, not to mention his quotes, it's fairly clear he's more of a straight-up jerk by now.
  • Magic Knight: He hits hard when he swings and has some Death Knight abilities, including ice magic, the Blood Tap talent and Death Coil. He is also a necromancer and can summon either a small army of ghouls or his pet frost wyrm Sindragosa.
  • Man of Kryptonite: Against heroes reliant on Attack Speed in particular those without a boost to counteract his reduction, his constantly 40% reduction to their speed can be crippling, especially to Illidan.
  • Mighty Glacier: Lacks in mobility, but makes up for it with a good deal of damage, staying power, and crowd control. Odds are pretty good Arthas will beat pretty much any other Tank in a straight fight, and he's even capable of pulling off the same against a number of Assassins.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Both Anub'arak and Sylvanas Windrunner get their chance to turn against him in their introductory trailers.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Invoked in-universe, when you put together his Crown Prince Arthas quotes. The Culling of Stratholme is evidently considered this; Jaina refuses to forgive him for it, even in his not-Lich King skin. Arthas apparently agrees that he's crossed that line and there's no going back and no forgiveness to seek.
  • Mythology Gag: The wraiths circling Arthas during his Frozen Tempest are clearly inspired by the ones you see around the Scourge's structures in Warcraft III.
  • Necromancer: Both of his heroics involve summoning undead creatures — an army of zombies in the first case, and his pet frost wyrm Sindragosa in the second.
  • Not as You Know Them: This is not Warcraft III's Arthas, and even Crown Prince Arthas is Flanderized from being an Anti-Villain who did what he had to do to a generic asshole. Even his post-corrupt self was originally The Good King to the Scourge and a Deadpan Snarker. Not so here.
  • No-Sell: Anti-Magic Shell grants him 125% Magic resistance while active. Not only will your best nukes not hurt him, they'll heal him.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: He has a skin called Crimson Count which is him as a vampire — one Marquis Arthas du Menethil, a suitor of Sarah von Kerrigan and another skin in the Raven Court series of shared theme skins.
  • Pet the Dog: None for the Lich King, but Crown Prince Arthas, who is otherwise an arrogant, entitled ass, is surprisingly kind towards Jaina.
  • The Rival: Towards Leoric the Skeleton King, as both are evil, undead kings.
  • Some Dexterity Required: Playing Arthas in the middle of a teamfight is not easy on one's fingers. You need to keep healing yourself with both your ultimate (if you have it) every 2 seconds, and Death Coil, which is best done with self-casting...not an easy feat if you're playing Arthas correctly (ie. neck-deep in enemies and his own ghouls), time Frostmourne Hungers to go off immediately after a normal autoattack, aim a delayed root and keep track of your rapidly-dropping mana all the meanwhile.
  • Status Effects: Practically the game's flagship Freeze and Slow character, with a wide variety of skills and talents that lock down enemy movement.
  • That Man Is Dead: Jaina has this attitude towards him; as far as she's concerned, he's not Arthas. Even Crown Prince Arthas gets this treatment.
  • Troll: Arthas enjoys getting a rise out of Uther.
    Arthas: If you fail, Uther, know that I can always use another Death Knight.
    Crown Prince Arthas: Try not to fail, Uther, as you did in service to my father.
    Uther: Shut your mouth, before I shut it for you!
  • Walking Wasteland: His Frozen Tempest ability turns him into one while active. Its damage isn't that high, but getting caught in it slows you down, making that much harder to get out of it. Without any mobility abilities or stuns, all Arthas needs to do is just walk next to you while your health goes down.
  • Wolverine Publicity: One of the most publicized heroes in the game. He's in the Tutorial, the Testing Grounds, the Trailer, the front art for the game on Battle.net, and shows up in more reveal trailers for other characters than anyone else. Though not always for a 'good' thing, because this means he gets more time to be beaten to crap by others for hilarity.

    Cho'gall, Twilight's Hammer Chieftain 

Voiced by: Patrick Seitz (Cho) and Grant George (Gall) (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chogall_hots.jpg

Cho'gall is one of the ogre-magi, rare ogres born with two heads. Such mages tend to assume positions of leadership within their clan and so it was with Cho'gall, who killed the chieftain of an orc clan, became chieftain himself and erased its original name from existence, renaming it Twilight's Hammer. He was a powerful ally of the Old Horde and answered to the orcish warlock Gul'dan. After Gul'dan's demise and the Old Horde's dissolving, Cho'gall and the Twilight Hammer Clan went into hiding on Azeroth. In secret, they had turned the clan into a cult that worshipped the horrific Old Gods, and returned during the Cataclysm to herald their masters and the end of the world.

Cho'gall is a unique two-headed hero, controlled by two players. The first head, Cho, is a Tank, while the second head, Gall, is a Ranged Assassin. Cho'gall's trait is shared between the two heads. It can be toggled between Ogre Hide, which grants bonus armor, and Ogre Rage, which increases Gall's spell damage, by Cho and Gall respectively.

Cho is treated as the main body of the duo, controlling their movement and attacks. Surging Fist has Cho winding up for a punch, before throwing it in a designated direction to damage and knock aside anyone in his path. Consuming Blaze ignites nearby enemies for damage over time and heals Cho'gall for each enemy ignited; if he attacks an ignited hero, both the burn and the heal are re-applied. Rune Bomb is thrown in a direction, dealing damage on contact with enemies, and can be detonated by Gall for area damage. Cho's Heroics are Hammer of Twilight, which passively increases basic attack damage and can be activated to knock back and stun all enemies in a wide arc, and Upheaval, which pulls enemies in a large conical area towards Cho'gall after a short delay, slowing them and dealing damage.

Gall has no control over the duo's movement, going where Cho takes them, and is immune to stuns and silences. As he obviously cannot use a mount, he instead gets to Shove Cho a short distance, which also grants a temporary speed boost. Shadowflame deals damage in a line on a very short cooldown, essentially functioning as Gall's basic attack. Dread Orb deals damage in an area and then bounces twice in a straight line, dealing further damage on each bounce. Runic Blast detonates Cho's Rune Bomb for a huge amount of damage. Gall also has a fourth ability, Eye of Kilrogg, which places an eye that provides vision over the surrounding area. Gall's Heroics are Twisting Nether, which channels to slow nearby enemies and can be released for heavy area damage, and Shadow Bolt Volley, which unleashes a flurry of projectiles that can be aimed with the mouse cursor.

Their current skins are Warlord Cho'gall, Corruptor Cho'gall, Pump'kin Cho'gall, and Greed Cho'gall.


  • Acrofatic: Don't let his size fool you; Cho'gall is surprisingly quick on their feet with Surging Fist and Shove. With said mobility tools, they can engage, disengage, or even pursue enemies as they see fit.
  • Actually Pretty Funny: When Lunara fumbles while passing comment on their multiple heads, Gall thinks it's funny. Cho not so much.
    Gall: Ahahahahaha!
    Cho: Don't laugh at that, you idiot!
  • The Archmage: For the Ogre race at the very least, but he is an insanely powerful Ogre Mage in his own right.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Cho and Gall took aspects of the generic Ogre units, being the two heads that tends to bicker with to each other, in fact, a recurring trait of his in the trailer is both heads playing rock-paper-scissors with the winner punching the loser's head. But when they put their minds together, Cho'gall is still the classic, dangerous and villainous Ogre with sights for world destruction he's known for.
  • Black Mage: Gall uses solely offensive spells of The Dark Arts kind, in contrast to Cho's Magic Knight moveset.
  • Brains and Brawn: Zig-Zagged. The physically-inclined Cho is the duo's brains, while the magically-inclined Gall is the brawn. It's Cho's responsibility to get the two into a prime position for both survival and to let Gall deal damage, while Gall's primary goal is to output as much damage as possible. This is even reflected in their personalities, with Cho being the more serious and focused of the two while Gall is an eccentric kook with an itchy trigger finger, as one of their Stop Poking Me! quotes point out:
    Gall: You may have the brawns, brother, but I've got the brains! [Insane laughing]
    Cho: [Flatly] We both know that's not true.
    Gall: [Dejected stammering] I don't...
  • Brick Joke: His mere existence. Back in 2004, as an April Fools joke, Blizzard pretended to release two-headed Ogres as a new playable race in World of Warcraft, claiming they would be controlled by two players. Now... well, you get the idea.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Whenever Cho throws his Rune Bomb, he'll shout something of the "Fire in the hole!" kind. This is a cue for Gall players to get ready to detonate it as it goes.
  • Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Cho largely has to do all the thinking and decision making, what with Gall having gone out of his mind. Reflected in-game by having Cho make most of the large-scale decisions such as where to go and focusing on keeping the two alive, while Gall mostly just blasts everything in sight and focuses on killing as many enemies as possible.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: While Cho can be stunned or disabled, Gall is outright immune against most crowd control effects. The only exceptions are Stasis and Anub'arak's Cocoon.
  • Combination Attack: They're made for this. Cho can throw a Rune Bomb, but only Gall can detonate it for massive damage. Cho's Upheaval heroic pulls enemies next to him and massively slowing them while dealing a pittance of damage. Gall can follow up with his Twisting Nether heroic, which slows the enemy around him for a little bit before exploding for massive damage.
  • Defog of War: Gall's Eye of Kilrogg effectively gives him Scouting Drones without needing a talent for it.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Cho'gall boasts the moveset of an Assassin and a Warrior in one character, two characters in one, both of them having devastating effects on its own. The catch? He's controlled by TWO players, so the players better be on good sync in both command, skill and resource management or else they end up fighting each other instead of facing the enemy and thus rendering Cho'gall The Load, so God help you if your other head decided to Troll you on purpose. Good teams, however, will wreak havok among the enemy.
  • Dying Curse: Gall can take the Psychotic Break talent, allowing him to use his abilities for 10 seconds when they die.
  • Elemental Powers:
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: Cho's Surging Fist, basically a combination of Vi's Vault Breaker and Assault & Battery: Wind up for at least 1 second to charge while moving, then dash to a direction, but Cho'gall will toss aside anyone caught in the path, even other Heroes, until he reaches his target, and it's aimed like a skillshot, not a point and click.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: By default, Cho uses his fists to fight. When you're as strong as an Ogre you don't necessarily need a weapon to fight.
  • Humongous-Headed Hammer: If he takes the Hammer of Twilight heroic, Cho wields a massive hammer that increases his melee damage and can be used as a Ground Pound, and can be upgraded further so it shoots Hammer Beams that also slow enemies.
  • "Knock Knock" Joke: Played with. Defied and and Double-Subverted really. In their Stop Poking Me! quotes, Gall tries to make such a joke, but Cho refuses to indulge him. He relents on the third time after realising Gall isn't going to stop until he lets it happen.
  • Lightning Bruiser: This huge monstrosity of an ogre has high durability and damage output (which can be boosted further with Ogre Hide or Ogre Rage), coupled with 2 mobility tools to engage enemies, disengage, or pursue escapees.
  • Magic Knight: As a whole. Cho uses ball-busting physical attacks augmented with elemental magics whereas Gall is the Black Mage.
  • Magic Missile Storm: Shadow Bolt Volley unleashes a torrent of shadow bolts. They follow the mouse cursor but have a pretty severe turning lag, giving the impression that Gall is firing them everywhere madly.
  • Master of All: A properly built Cho'gall can have great self-sustain, extremely high durability, long ranged poke, and high damage both physical and magical, with burst and sustained damage of both varieties, a medley of crowd control options, combined with high mobility. But to utilize it all requires heavy coordination from both players.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: Again, two players control Cho'gall; the Cho player uses more physical abilities and controls the character's movement, while the Gall player uses ranged magical abilities, with a single shared ability in Rune Bomb, which Cho can throw and Gall can detonate; they even have independent heroics. It's basically the inverse of The Lost Vikings.
  • Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: The armor bonus from Ogre Hide is removed if Gall activates Ogre Rage for increased spell damage, and vice versa. Additionally, the two effects are activated by different heads, meaning that they have to be exceptionally well-coordinated to get the most out of both.
  • Play as a Boss: The developers likened him to a playable Raid Boss and it shows. He has the second-highest base health of any hero, and ridiculous damage output from both his Warrior and especially Assassin aspects. Taking him on one-on-one will fail simply from his sheer overwhelming stats and damage output, so it's best to bring your teammates to take him down. But even then, his abilities deal good AoE damage on their own, so it's not as simple as dog-piling on him. To top it all off, Gall is outright immune to crowd control effects, to fully hammer down his boss-like nature.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: Invoked as an in-game mechanic for how Cho'gall is "Named" over his health bar. The first three letters of Cho's player's name are mashed onto the last four of Gall's, with an apostrophe in the middle. So if one player was "Dictator" and the other was "Rokpic", you'd end up with, err, "Rok'ator".
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: This exchange:
    Cho: What do you expect from us? 'Two heads are better than one' jokes?
    Gall: Better than none!
    Cho: Ahh, shuddup, will ya?
  • Shoulder Teammate: On their Greed skin, which turns Cho into a massive but one-headed treasure goblin, and Gall into a regular treasure goblin emerging from the duo's sack of loot.
  • Spam Attack: They don't use any mana, so all that matters is cooldown management. Cho can't really spam his skills on account of them having at minimum 9-second cooldown, but Gall is very much this, with Shadowflame being a spammable nuke at 3-second cooldown.
  • Stance System: Ogre Hide and Ogre Rage grants him 25% damage resistance and 25% damage boost respectively. The twist is that they're Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups, and each player can only activate their corresponding stance.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: Cho and Gall, respectively. A sizeable amount of their funny moments involve Gall saying or doing something stupid and Cho doing his very best to not lose his cool. Despite this, Cho will occasionally join in on the antics.
  • Sword Beam: Cho can pick C'thun's Gift as a level 20 talent if he took Hammer of Twilight as his heroic, which gives him a ranged basic attacks in the form of beams fired from the hammer.
  • Viral Unlockable: Two players are needed to control both his heads. If one player in a party picks either Cho or Gall, any teammate can pick the other, even if they haven't unlocked Cho'gall already; if that's the case, they will unlock Cho'gall after the game.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Gall has clearly gone out of his mind as a result of tampering with Old God magic.
  • You Will Not Evade Me: Cho's Upheaval heroic pulls every enemy heroes caught in its effect next to him. It does minor damage but majorly slows them. Gall can then follow up with Twisting Nether to cause major damage to the opposition.
  • Your Mom: The ultimate punchline of the aforementioned "Knock Knock" Joke is... "Cho Mama". Cho... is not amused.
    Cho: We have the same mother, you idiot!!

    E.T.C., Rock God 

Voiced by: Jess Harnell (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/etc_hots.jpg

E.T.C. is the Power of the Horde incarnated by brutal rhythms and blistering guitar riffs into the form of the most elite tauren chieftain to ever headbang across the surface of Azeroth. Don't bother putting on socks. He's just going to rock them off anyways.

In reality, Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain is a band made up of Blizzard employees, who perform Heavy Mithril songs about Warcraft and StarCraft. His appearance in Heroes of the Storm is a massive tribute to the group, as well as an excuse to make lots and lots of rock n' roll jokes.

E.T.C. is a diverse melee Tank hero with the ability to disable enemies and sustain himself. His trait, Rockstar, grants him Armor for 2 seconds after using an ability, reducing incoming damage. His abilities include Powerslide, which has E.T.C. Dash Attack forward, stunning any enemy hit on the way; Face Melt, a loud guitar jam that applies Knockback to nearby enemies; and Guitar Solo, a quick guitar riff that causes him to heal for a small amount over time.

His heroic abilities are Mosh Pit, a channeled guitar performance which forces enemies to Involuntary Dance, and Stage Dive, a global range Dynamic Entry from the sky, massively slowing nearby enemies upon impact.

His current skins are Black Metal E.T.C., Glam Metal E.T.C., Pure Country E.T.C., L800 E.T.C., and El Mariachi E.T.C.


  • Admiring the Abomination: He thinks Abathur would make for a cool album cover. He also declares Deathwing "the most heavy metal thing [he's] ever seen," although Deathwing seems to miss the point.
  • Armored But Frail: Like Anub'arak above, ETC is a window tank. Therefore, he's on the relatively squishy side, with his comparatively weak Guitar Solo and low health pool reliant on Rockstar's armor bonus. However, he's still packs an utterly massive area stun in the form of Powerslide, a hefty knockback to follow it up, and, of course, the best crowd control ability in the game, bar none.
  • Ascended Meme: Named for Blizzard's own metal band.
  • Bland-Name Product: Doubling as a Punny Name, his axe guitar's label is "Bison".
  • Blood Knight: Implied by one of his attacking quotes: "Rage... is a blessing."
  • Combat Medic: He can take a talent to let his Guitar Solo heal in an area. It's not much, but when you have no support, it works better than nothing.
  • Composite Character: ETC represents several different things: the band Elite Tauren Chieftan, who sang several songs for Warcraft (such as The Power of the Horde) and made several cameos in World of Warcraft; the Tauren race in general; and the Tauren Chieftain Hero unit from Warcraft III specifically.
  • Difficult, but Awesome:
    • His Mosh Pit is far and away the most powerful crowd control in the game. In a game where a coordinated team can pick off a target in less than 1 second, four whole seconds of stun is perilously unhealthy. It can be interrupted both before it starts up — and there's a 0.75-second wind-up, during which time there's a sound effect of 3 bonks on a cowbell, alerting observant opponents that the show is about to start — and while it's going off, if anyone has some sort of ranged stun or knockback. But if you land it, you can win entire teamfights... as long as your team actually bothers to take advantage of it.
    • An extension is the Tour Bus talent, which lets E.T.C. cast Powerslide during Mosh Pit, which also extends Mosh Pit's duration by 2 seconds for a 6-second area stun. While the fixed range on Powerslide makes it difficult to keep an enemy pinned for the whole duration, the ability to reposition while channeling Mosh Pit allows E.T.C. to dodge stuns, catch enemies that avoided the initial cast, or if you're feeling particularly adventurous and are confident the enemy can't stun you, cast a Mosh Pit that doesn't hit anyone and then Powerslide onto your intended targets to make use of the full 6 seconds.
    • ETC's entire kit exemplifies how the principles of teamwork are baked directly into the game. He suffers from Crippling Overspecialization: he's an absolute boss at controlling fights, either by starting them when the enemy isn't ready or by stopping them when the enemy is — you know, all the things a tank is supposed to do. In trade-off, he can do... Literally nothing else: he does no damage, he has no waveclear, and the tiny side-dish of party healing he gets from his Lv.1 quest is negligible. Therefore, he's an incredibly useful training character for his teammates, who learn that, if they aren't paying attention to him and exploiting the openings he creates, he is 100% useless. (Or don't learn it, and then whine afterwards.)
  • The Dreaded: In gameplay. Simply having Mosh Pit avaliable can cause significant changes to an enemy team's behavior, such as always holding a suitable interupt or two back just in case, staying scattered, again, just in case, and even immediately using escapes to gain distance if ETC walks or Powerslides towards them. The threat of it's use, as much as it's actual use, is a key part of ETC's gameplan.
  • Dynamic Entry: His Stage Dive heroic allows him to jump and land anywhere on the map.
  • Expy: Literal axe? Check. Multiple references to famous metal and rock artists and albums? Check. Uses The Power Of Rock in battle? Check. Has abilities called Powerslide, Facemelter, Solo? Eddie Riggs, is that you?
  • Heal Thyself: His 3rd ability, Guitar Solo. Although it doesn't heal that much, it can make a difference over time, and it triggers his trait to give him a quick boost to survivability.
  • In a Single Bound: Stage Dive heroic allows him to jump and land anywhere. Can be used as a Dynamic Entry, escape mechanism, or a nuke. League of Legends players may notice the similarity with Pantheon's pre-nerf Grand Skyfall.
  • Instrumental Weapon: Its simultaneously used as an actual axe and an actual guitar.
  • Instrument of Murder: His guitar is both a musical instrument and an axe.
  • Involuntary Dance: Can force the enemy into this with Mosh Pit.
  • Mythology Gag: His L800 skin turns him into the Tauren Marine, which started as an April Fool's joke then became an Easter Egg in Legacy of the Void. It's also named after the stage name name the band uses when they make Starcraft music.
    • He has four separate possible lines to say while using Mosh Pit. These different lines are the four separate parts of the chorus for "Power of the Horde", the first song ever made by his namesake band, Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain.
  • Never Heard That One Before: In his Stop Poking Me! quotes, he's scripted to make a "We need more cowbell" joke but refuses because he hates it.
Elite Tauren Chieftain: Oh come on, that's all you got for me?! How old is that joke, man? "We need more cowbell..." What we need are better writers!
  • Oh, Crap!: Is very nervous around some heroes, enough so that he tells himself not to make eye contact with them while starting a game with them.
  • Our Minotaurs Are Different: He's a Tauren, who are basically discount minotaurs without the evil and copious amounts of Native American influence — but really that's just an aesthetic thing.
  • The Power of Rock: Kind of self-evident really.
  • Pretender Diss: In a mirror kill he expresses his dislike of tribute bands. If you're using his announcer while playing as him, he dismisses you as either a copyright infringer or a lame cover band.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Only a real stud would rock a pink goatee.
  • Status Effects: Specializes in stuns and knockbacks.
  • Support Party Member: One of the least capable of Tanks at actually doing damage, but that's no problem when he's sliding into the enemy team to stun them and toss them a direction they'd much rather not be going, and then healing off the enemy's attempts to kill him back. He's also one of the very few non-Healers in the game capable of healing his allies, after completing the Prog Rock talent's quest.
  • Taking You with Me: The Lv.20 upgrade to Mosh Pit, Death Metal, allows ETC to cast it again when he dies, regardless of its current cooldown. Additionally, since stuns, silences and so on do not work on dead characters, this Mosh Pit cannot be stopped. Therefore, when dealing with anyone who does melee damage, being slain will guarantee that they get caught in the ability and dance themselves silly while being killed. ...As long as your team actually bothers to take advantage of it.
  • Too Awesome to Use: Mosh Pit has a massive 120 second cooldown, one of the longest in the game, and is simultaneously an incredibly powerful 4-second stun. As such, it's very tempting to hold onto it until a major fight breaks out.

    Garrosh, Son of Hellscream 

Voiced by: Patrick Seitz (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/garrosh_hots_art.jpg
"Lok'tar ogar!" Translation 

Garrosh Hellscream, former Warchief of the Horde, is as battle-hardy as is he egotistical. He is the son of the legendary Grommash, although he never drank the demon's blood. He stayed behind on Draenor, shunned by the role his father played in damning the orcs. This was until Thrall arrived through the Dark Portal and informed Garrosh of his father's great courage - how he had defeated Mannoroth and freed the orcs. Reinvigorated by this knowledge, Garrosh became Thrall's protégé and eventually the commander of the Warsong Offensive in Northrend.

His new demeanor brought along his father's fighting spirit, but also his hotheadedness. Thrall believed Garrosh would soon level out however, and appointed him as the new Warchief after the Cataclysm shattered the world. Thrall was very wrong, however. While Garrosh's rule brought new wealth and territory into the Horde, it also caused bloody conflict with the Alliance and revealed his Fantastic Racism as he grew ever weary of the trolls, tauren, Forsaken, and blood elves. This reached its boiling point in Pandaria, when Garrosh unleashed an Old God's power in an attempt to reform the world in his image. While the Alliance and Horde intervened, this was hardly the end of Garrosh.

Garrosh is a hard-to-kill melee Tank with many crowd-control options. His trait is Armor Up. Garrosh gains Armor based on his missing health, gaining 1 Armor per 2% health missing. His first basic ability, Groundbreaker, slams the ground, dealing damage in a small cone. Enemies on the very edge are knocked into the air, stunning and slowing them. His second ability is Bloodthirst, quickly slicing a target for a small amount of damage while healing himself for a percentage of his missing health, which is doubled when damaging heroes. His final basic ability is Wrecking Ball. Garrosh picks up the nearest enemy and throws them to the target location, damaging and slowing the thrown unit as well as any other enemies in the area. He also has a fourth ability, Into the Fray, which lets him throw the nearest ally to a target location and grants them Armor.

Garrosh's first Heroic is Warlord's Challenge. Garrosh unleashes a battle cry, Taunting all nearby enemies into attacking him for a short time. His other Heroic is Decimate, an ability with 3 charges that causes Garrosh to spin, cleaving all enemies in a radius around him, dealing damage and slowing them. Heroes take double damage and reduce the ability's cooldown slightly.

His current skins are Mad Axe Garrosh, El Jefe Garrosh, and High Warlord Garrosh.


  • Achilles' Heel: Percent-based damage ignores armor, completely bypassing Garrosh's trait and ripping him to shreds. The rarer entirely Armor-Piercing Attacks are also very effective against Garrosh since his health pool is rather low for a Tank.
  • The Apunkalypse: Mad Axe Garrosh, mixed with a bit of All Bikers are Hells Angels.
  • Bald of Evil: One of the biggest bads of modern Warcraft, with perfectly a shaved dome.
  • Berserk Button: Stealth heroes, Alliance heroes, Sylvanas, Thrall, demons, Gul'dan, uhh... well, pretty much anything that's not an orc warrior, Alarak, Hanzo, or Artanis.
  • Blood Knight: As to be expected.
  • Chairman of the Brawl: El Jefe Garrosh swaps out Gorehowl for a chair.
  • Combos:
    • Use Groundbreaker on a priority target, then Wrecking Ball them to the middle of your team or behind a wall. This is the basic game plan of any Garrosh, and it is extremely effective. (It actually used to be more so when Groundbreaker, instead of popping foes into the air, yanked them towards you, making the Wrecking Ball follow-up basically impossible to prevent. If you wanted to survive, your only real option was "Don't get hit by Groundbreaker", so Blizzard nerfed the ability into its present state.)
    • Before Groundbreaker was reworked to stun and slow instead of pulling enemies, at level 16 with Earthshaker, Garrosh was able to throw an enemy hero into his/her teammates, pull them all back with Groundbreaker and lock them in place with Warlord's Challenge. Case in point.
    • A more common combo nowadays is to throw a target with Wrecking Ball away into Garrosh's teammates and follow it up immediately with Groundbreaker, as both abilities' max range match, guaranteeing a stun, slow and damage. If it's followed up afterwards with Warlord's Challenge, most heroes will fall under the focus damage.
  • Cooldown Manipulation: He's got potential access to plenty in the In for the Kill, Thirst for Battle, Mortal Combo and Death Wish talents. They respectively instantly refresh the cooldown of Bloodthirst if it kills the target hit (including minions), reduce the cooldown of refresh by 2 seconds if Garrosh basic attacks a hero, reduces the cooldown of Wrecking Ball by 10 seconds if Garrosh uses both it and Groundbreaker's stun on the same hero within three seconds of each other regardless of the order, and reduces the cooldown of Warlord's Challenge by 45 seconds if an enemy hero is killed while affected by it. The Decimate ultimate also inherently reduces its own cooldown by a second for each enemy hero hit by it.
  • Critical Status Buff: His passive Armor Up and the ability Bloodthirst provide progressively more armor and healing the lower Garrosh's health is.
  • Damage Reduction: the whole point of his Trait. Effectively, he has 50% more HP than the max value on his bar claims.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: As mentioned above, Wrecking Ball involves Garrosh picking up the nearest foe and throwing it to wherever you clicked the mouse. This means you control the target's destination but not the target itself: Garrosh will yeet whatever enemy entity is nearest him, be it the Hero you're aiming for or a minion who happened to be in the way. The good news is, there's a Horde icon underneath whoever Garrosh is planning to throw, so given time and patience you can just kill every other target. Of course, "time and patience" can be at a premium in a game where being in the wrong place for half a second can cost you your life and your team any chance of victory. Consequently, constructive use of Wrecking Ball involves proper positioning, super sharp eyes, Nerves of Steel and a "Just Frame" Bonus level of Some Dexterity Required. But if it works, you're able to catch your opponent when they're in the wrong place for half a second... And that's all it takes to win.
  • Draw Aggro: Warlord's Challenge forces Garrosh's opponents to focus their attacks on him.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Garrosh was part of the roster of Fighters of the Storm 2 in the universe of Overwatch, which was meant to be a fighting game parody of Heroes of the Storm, despite the roster consisting of only those already in the latter. When Overwatch featured Player Icons from Heroes of the Storm, one of them is Garrosh. These become the eventual cues that Garrosh would make it to the Nexus.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: He made it clear that he doesn't like Sylvanas for being like the Lich King, or Gul'dan for corrupting the Horde and his father.
  • Fantastic Racism: His hatred of the trolls, tauren, Forsaken, elves, and anything in The Alliance hasn't died down in the Nexus.
  • Fastball Special: Into the Fray can be used for this trope, although it's generally used to throw allies to safety. Don't be a Griefer - try not to use it to kill your teammates.
  • Good Counterpart: His High Warlord skin's description states that this Garrosh stayed loyal to Thrall, whom he views as a mentor and friend.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: His Wrecking Ball ability, if he hits another enemy. The Titanic Might talent can also cause this to two unfortunate enemies that have been thrown at once.
  • Hot-Blooded: That's putting it lightly. It's hard to find a voiceline where he isn't screaming at someone about how superior he is or just how mad he's getting.
  • I Can Still Fight!: Because of his trait making him gain armor as he loses health and thus take less damage, it can be surprisingly difficult to kill a low-health Garrosh. With the aid of Bloodthirst used to restore his health when it's as low as possible (or worse yet, when he has the Thirst for Battle talent to dramatically reduce part of its cooldown whenever he basic attacks an enemy hero) or allied healing, a Garrosh without much health can survive for ages while even other Tanks would have died.
  • In the Blood: If he kills a demonic character, he'll reference his father.
    Garrosh: Looks like killing demons runs in the family.
  • I Shall Taunt You: His Warlord's Challenge, which forces nearby enemies to attack him.
  • Large Ham: He may actually be the hammiest hero in the game. Every single thing he says is shouted at the top of his lungs, no matter what it is.
  • Life Drain: His Bloodthirst, which damages an enemy to restore a portion of Garrosh's health.
  • Mighty Glacier: The Decimate ultimate practically lets him take a page out of Arthas' book, allowing him to slow enemy heroes for quite a while and doing some surprising damage over that time. He also has some ability to do this with the Unrivaled Strength and Titanic Might talents, as he'll do over 2000 damage divided amongst the two people thrown from doing his full combo (more if they're thrown into more enemies).
  • No Indoor Voice: Most of his lines has him shouting at the top of his lungs.
  • No-Sell: Garrosh has access to the Indomitable talent, which grants him Unstoppable for a few seconds.
  • Odd Friendship: With Alarak. It makes sense; they're both cruel leaders who rule under the edict that might makes right. He's apparently also befriended Hanzo, due to both being tattooed warriors seeking to honor their family's name.
  • Patriotic Fervor: Is unabashedly loyal to the Horde, or at least his own vision of it. While he despises Gul'Dan (for corrupting the Horde) and Thrall (for making the Horde weak from his point of view), he has favorable reactions from seeing other notable Horde members, including E.T.C., Rexxar, and Samuro.
  • Punny Name: Mad Axe Garrosh.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: He makes a very clear distinction between the orcs under Thrall's Horde, and his "ideal" orc. Given Garrosh's personality, it's pretty clear what his perception of ideal is. Ironically, his kit is one that concentrates on survival and sustain, not quickly killing his opponent. However, it may mean lasting in the battle long enough until he can kill his opposition. He also takes a liking to Alarak, given the latter is essentially the Token Heroic Orc of Legacy of the Void.
  • Screaming Warrior: He certainly lives up to his surname, throwing out primal war-cries in combat and even having one as a Heroic.
  • Shoulders of Doom: He's adorned with the tusks of Mannoroth, which have also been covered in Spikes of Villainy for good measure.
  • Spam Attack: Decimate has an extremely short cooldown, which is reduced each time it hits an enemy hero, and carries three charges.
  • Spin Attack: Decimate.
  • Stone Wall: Garrosh is exceptionally hard to kill thanks to Armor Up and Bloodthirst, and he has several displacement and crowd control skills. He can also — contrary to his personality — be incredibly protective of his teammates, using Into the Fray to heave allies out of harm's way. To counter-balance that, he doesn't deal much damage and lacks any mobility tools.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: He's wearing nothing at all above the waist save for on his shoulders.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The Power of Friendship. No, seriously. Garrosh absolutely excels at grabbing and isolating lone heroes, culling them from the herd and counting on the victim's allies to play passive and safe. If, instead, the opposing team decides to go all No One Gets Left Behind, the story can be very different.
  • You Are a Credit to Your Race: When seeing an ally gets a kill he'll compliment their fighting as "almost like a true orc's".

    Mal'Ganis, Nathrezim Lord 

Voiced by: Michael Gough (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bust_7.jpg

Mal'Ganis is one of the nathrezim, or dreadlords, who served as Ner'zhul's elite jailers. He aided the Lich King in his task of preparing Azeroth for the Burning Legion's second invasion, spreading a plague through Lordaeron that would turn the population into mindless undead. Posing as the leader of the Scourge, he confronted Prince Arthas at Stratholme, and watched him purge the city before its citizens could turn. Impressed by Arthas' resolve, Mal'Ganis goaded the prince into following him to Northrend. In a desperate attempt to defeat Mal'Ganis, Arthas sought and found the runeblade Frostmourne. However, this was Mal'Ganis' plan all along, as Arthas forfeited his soul to the Lich King when he claimed the weapon. When Arthas finally confronted Mal'Ganis with Frostmourne in hand, Ner'zhul betrayed his jailer and commanded Arthas to slay the dreadlord.

However, being a demon, Mal'Ganis was not truly dead. After reforming his body, he returned to Northrend, where he manipulated the Scarlet Onslaught - an elite branch of the Scarlet Crusade - in the form of Barean Westwind. When his cover was blown, Mal'Ganis retreated, but eventually came back when the Legion invaded Azeroth for the third time.

Mal'Ganis is a melee Tank with high sustain and strong crowd control, representing the Dreadlord hero from Warcraft III. His trait is Vampiric Touch, which heals him for a portion of all damage he deals, increased against heroes. His first ability, Fel Claws, causes him to lunge forward and damage enemies up to three times, with the third lunge also stunning. Necrotic Embrace unleashes a pulse of dark energy, damaging nearby enemies and briefly giving Mal'Ganis a large amount of Armor. Finally, Night Rush allows Mal'Ganis to hover off the ground after a brief channel, gaining increased movement speed. Any enemies he passes over while the ability is active are put to Sleep.

His first Heroic option is Carrion Swarm, which transforms Mal'Ganis into an invulnerable swarm of bats that deal area damage. The healing of Vampiric Touch is heavily increased while the ability is active. His other Heroic, Dark Conversion, targets an enemy hero and channels. Once the channel is complete, Mal'Ganis and his target swap health percentages over a few seconds.

His current skins are Dreadmachine Mal'Ganis and Mal'gaucho Mal'Ganis.


  • Absurdly Sharp Claws: Mal'Ganis uses his claws to tear his enemies apart.
  • Armored But Frail: Another window tank, Mal'Ganis packs a lot of stuns, some self-heal and a way to escape. If you manage to run those out, he can be blown away in short order.
  • Ascended Meme: Several lines of Mal'Ganis have him flub his Catchphrase or actually declare himself to be a turtle. Explanation 
    Mal'Ganis: For the last time, I am Mal'Ganis. I am not eternal! I. Am. A turtle! (Beat) Well, technically a tortollan... but still!
  • Badass Boast: Incidentally one of his most famous lines, as it is his entrance quote in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft.
    Mal'Ganis: I am Mal'Ganis. I AM ETERNAL!
  • Back Stab: Nightmare Fuel is a Talent that increases Mal'Ganis' Basic Attack damage after emerging or staying inside a bush.
  • Barrage of Bats: He can pick up a lategame talent called Plague Bats which causes Necrotic Embrace to fire a wave to bats that deal damage in a cone in front of him. This is a callback to Warcraft III, where the Dreadlord's version of Carrion Swarm fired bats in a similar cone.
  • The Berserker: Blind as a Bat talent removes his vision for 6 seconds in exchange for removing the mana cost and cooldown of Fel Claws. Mal'Ganis will be able to deal tremendous damage and stun enemies during its effect, but if the player doesn't know where they are, Mal'Ganis will be swiping blindly at nothing.
  • Casting a Shadow: Dreadlords are masters of necrotic shadow magic, with Mal'Ganis utilizing it in-game with abilities like Necrotic Embrace and Dark Conversion.
  • Close-Range Combatant: Mal'Ganis thrives in the heart of a fight, where his Area of Effect abilities can hit as many heroes as possible, surviving through Armor and high sustain. When he's out of the thick though, his options are limited - he has very poor tools to engage with (Fel Claws is rather short range even with all three swipes, and Night Rush has a brief duration and is too crucial to waste), and absolutely no way to poke at enemies from afar.
  • Compelling Voice: His voice sounds hypnotic when he puts his enemies to sleep with Night Rush.
    Mal'Ganis: You seem tired.
  • Composite Character: Mal'Ganis' personality and skillset are taken from his Warcraft III and World of Warcraft incarnations, and some of his abilities are also inspired by other nathrezim and demon lords.
    • Personality-wise, he resembles his more hammy version from World of Warcraft compared to his calmer and more calculating self in Warcraft III, although he has also shown traits of Tichondrius.
    • Vampiric Touch is a Shadow priest ability, which Mal'Ganis also uses in his World of Warcraft encounters. The Vampiric Aura Talent was one of the basic abilities of a dreadlord from Warcraft III. Fel Claws is actually an ability used by Kil'jaeden in Legion, while Necrotic Embrace is an ability Varimathras displays in his Legion boss fight. Carrion Swarm and Night Rush are inspired by the classic Carrion Swarm and Sleep abilities dreadlords displayed, and while Dark Conversion was actually a unique ability of Mal'Ganis' in Warcraft III, it only shares the name, and functions completely differently.
  • The Corruptor: He belongs to an entire race of them. In-lore, Mal'Ganis was responsible for turning Arthas into the Lich King's champion, and manipulated the Scarlet Crusade further after Balnazzar's death. He also intends to corrupt angels (due to their similarities to the naaru), orcs and other mortals in the Nexus.
  • Deal with the Devil: He offers mortals eternal life, knowledge and power if they serve the Legion, though no one (not even Zul'jin) takes him up on his offer.
  • Death or Glory Attack: Dark Conversion can be used this way. Pop it on death's door while targeting a full-health enemy hero, and pray it goes off. If it fails, well, you tried and you're likely to be bursted down by your opponent. If it succeeds, you'll be at full health that that enemy will probably be dead.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: Mal'Ganis is one of the highest ranking demons in the Burning Legion.
  • Energy Absorption: Mal'Ganis has access to a talent that heals him for each attack he receives while under the effect of Necrotic Embrace. This means that heroes who rely on Death of a Thousand Cuts (e.g. Li-Ming's Disintegrate or Tassadar's Distortion Beam) will actually heal him instead of dealing damage.
  • Evil Is Hammy: Mal'Ganis always sounds hammy, no matter what he says and who he addresses.
  • Forced Sleep: Night Rush will put to sleep all enemies Mal'Ganis passes over while Night Rush is active. Carrion Swarm can also be upgraded to put nearby enemy heroes to sleep.
  • Freudian Slip: His poke quotes imply that the whole "I AM A TURTLE" thing has had some sort of effect on him. Many of them are him practicing the line over and over again, flubbing it constantly.
    Mal'Ganis: For the last time, I. Am. Mal'Ganis. I am not a turtle. I AM ETERNAL!
    Mal'Ganis: I AM MAL'GANIS, I AM A TURTLE! I AM MAL'GANIS, I AM E-TER-NAL!
  • Genius Bruiser: Mal'Ganis is both a powerful frontline fighter and a Manipulative Bastard who turned Arthas to the dark side.
  • Hate Sink: Mal'Ganis is a demon of the Burning Legion, and the Legion is almost universally hated, including by undead like Stitches and Scourge. Teeth-Clenched Teamwork with anyone who is not of demonic nature (excluding Illidan) or doesn't serve the Legion is a given. Add up with how he loves to Kick the Dog within the Nexus and being a part of how Arthas fell to evil in the first place, and it's clear that Mal'Ganis is made to generate revulsion.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: He has a number of these, which pairs well with his trait since he gains more life as more targets are hit. Mal'Ganis lunges forward with Fel Claws and swipes all enemies in a semi-circle. Necrotic Embrace is an Area of Effect attack that hits all enemies nearby. It can also be talented to pulse a second time and unleash a wave of damaging bats in a cone. Carrion Swarm deals area damage to anyone that is hit by Mal'Ganis' swarm of bats.
  • Life Drain: His trait grants him high sustain at all times. The effect is massively increased by Carrion Swarm, and Dark Conversion is an even more extreme one of these. Mal'Ganis also can grant a Vampiric Aura to his allies, allowing them to heal for a percentage of the Physical Damage they deal to enemies.
  • Kick the Dog: A big fan of this.
    • When Garrosh declares that he doesn't require the help of demons, Mal'Ganis points out that Garrosh's father, Grom, whom Garrosh tries to imitate, said the same at first, but eventually gave in.
    • When Samuro says that allying with a demon brings disgrace to him, and that he's ready to use his blade against him, Mal'Ganis notes that this blade slayed many innocents, and that he's not to blame for that.
    • He laughs at Whitemane's declaration that the Scarlet Crusade will annihilate him, as he knows that they are led by dreadlords.
    • He sarcastically thanks Maiev for providing the Legion with powerful minions (after her vault was assaulted and its prisoners were freed by the Legion).
    • He rubs it in Yrel's face how many draenei/eredar were swayed to the Legion's side by the nathrezim.
    • If he encounters Uther, he thanks him for forming Arthas into such a gullible man. If he kills Uther, he'll also note how Uther's "failure is complete" now.
    • If he is teamed up with Jaina, he tries to guilt-trip her for failing to save Arthas from him. If he kills her, he also cruelly tells her how she can be Together in Death with Arthas now.
  • Mistaken Identity: A frequent occurrence, since all dreadlords kind of look the same. Mal'Ganis is often mistaken for Varimathras, so he just started signing his autographs when people ask for one. He also makes it clear to beings of the Light that he is not Lothraxion.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • People keep mistaking him for fellow dreadlord Varimathras (because all dreadlords look the same). Note that in Hearthstone the art that is used for Mal'Ganis actually depicts Varimathras.
    • Mal'Ganis promised Arthas in Warcraft III that he would be the end of Arthas' journey. He repeats this statement verbatim if he gets a takedown on Arthas.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: He tries to invoke this on Uther, as both were betrayed by Arthas. Uther immediately brushes him off.
  • One to Million to One: Carrion Swarm transforms him into a swarm of bats while it's active, and he reforms once the ability is over.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: Nathrezim are a bizarre fusion of vampire and demonlord tropes. They feature fangs, bloodthirst, pale skin, and Pointy Ears, but have demonic features like wings, horns, and hooves. This is emphasized by his skills, which use Vampiric Draining as a central theme.
  • Pet the Dog: Subverted. He does show gratefulness if he is healed, but if he praises a mortal, he only does so to manipulate them and make them serve the Legion.
    Mal'Ganis: I acknowledge your power, mortal. Take pride in it, revel in it, use it for the Legion!
  • Puny Earthlings: Mal'Ganis doesn't hide his contempt towards mortals and calls them small and weak. He sees himself and the Legion as more powerful, wiser and immortal, though he promises the same to anyone who wishes to join the Legion.
  • Running Gag: "Darkness" calls, again asking for the demon hunter's number, which is a callback to a Warcraft III joke line.
  • Slain in Their Sleep: Nightmare Fuel not only increases Mal'Ganis' Basic Attack damage when he comes out of a bush, he also deals more damage to enemies that are sleeping.
  • Stone Wall: Mal'Ganis is good at exactly one thing: decreasing the "uptime" (IE, the amount of time in which someone is doing something productive) of the enemy team by constantly stunning them, putting them to sleep, getting in their faces as a swarm of bats (he is untargetable during this time), or using Dark Conversion to heal himself back to full after soaking a bunch of damage. His biggest weakness is crowd control: without mobility, he's basically useless. But if you can't pin him down that way, he can be all but invincible.
  • Technicolor Death: If Mal'Ganis dies, he explodes into a cloud of bats, leaving only his armor behind. This is consistent with the way dreadlords die in Warcraft III and World of Warcraft.
  • Temporary Blindness:
    • At level 16, the Talent Blind as a Bat removes the mana costs and cooldown of Fel Claws temporarily, but in return Mal'Ganis is robbed of all vision, depicted by (most of) the computer screen going dark.
    • The Storm Talent, Alone in the Dark, allows Mal'Ganis to take the vision away from enemies that were put to sleep by Night Rush.
  • Three-Strike Combo: Fel Claws can be used up to three times, stunning all enemies on its third strike.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Blind as a Bat literally makes Mal'Ganis erupt with blind rage, as he loses all vision temporarily, but can in return Spam Attack Fel Claws, as all mana costs and cooldowns are removed for its duration.
  • Wings Do Nothing: Averted. Unlike his Warcraft III incarnation where his useless wings were lampshaded, Night Rush makes use of his wings, increasing his movement speed and putting all enemies he passes through to sleep.
  • Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: A variation of this, as he offers to tell Varian how he will die.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He will literally say this to Whitemane, if he kills her. The Scarlet Crusade and its branches were corrupted by Mal'Ganis and fellow dreadlord Balnazzar.

    Muradin, Mountain King 

Voiced by: Carlos Larkin (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/muradin_hots.jpg

The middle brother of the dwarven Bronzebeard clan. While his older brother Magni was the King of the Dwarves, and his younger brother Brann was a great explorer, Muradin was a great warrior. Muradin led an expedition to acquire the runeblade Frostmourne from Northrend and was later aided by Prince Arthas in his endeavor. However, upon realizing that Frostmourne was cursed, Muradin sought to leave it, but Arthas chose to claim the sword, unleashing a shockwave that seemingly killed Muradin.

...but, as fate would have it, Muradin was only knocked unconscious and awakened after Arthas had turned on his own people. Muradin had lost his men but also his memories, as Muradin thought himself an Earthen and resigned himself to the Storm Peaks until he was discovered by the Alliance years later in the crusade against the Lich King. When the three Bronzebeard brothers reunited, Muradin regained his memories, and returned to Ironforge after Arthas was defeated. After his brother Magni accidentally petrified himself in an ancient ritual, Muradin became the new head of the Bronzebeard clan and now shares the Ironforge throne with the Dark Iron and Wildhammer dwarves.

Muradin is a melee Tank hero with a well-rounded skillset, able to start fights, disable foes, and absorb damage. Muradin's trait, Second Wind, causes him to rapidly heal after not taking damage for some time, increased when his health is very low. His first ability is Storm Bolt, which throws a hammer that stuns the first enemy hit. After reaching level 10, Storm Bolt also pierces one target and Muradin's basic attacks lower its cooldown. Thunder Clap is a ground-slam which reduces the movement and attack speed of nearby enemies. His third ability is Dwarf Toss, a long-range jump that grants Muradin bonus Armor for a short duration.

His Heroic abilities include Avatar, turning Muradin into a stony form and massively boosting his health, and Haymaker, a mighty punch that sends an enemy flying, dealing damage to the target and other enemies they get knocked into.

His current skins are Ymirjar Lord Muradin, Kandy King Muradin, Magni Muradin, Maraudin' Muradin, and Vanndar Muradin.


  • Attack! Attack! Attack!: Muradin is optimized for duels or ambushes. His In a Single Bound Dynamic Entry, high health, Regenerating Health and ability to deal extra damage to disabled targets makes him excellent at leading a hit on a single foe. What he can't do is protect his team from the same kind of ambush; his defensive abilities are mediocre at best.
  • Back from the Dead: Referred to for comedy, by himself and others.
    Crown Prince Arthas: [after killing Muradin] Wait, I thought Muradin was dead...
    Muradin: Look, I was never dead, alright? I was just restin' me eyes!
  • Bash Brothers: He and Falstad are just as friendly fighting together or against each other; Muradin even cracks a joke about hill dwarves having big talk and small hammers.
  • Battle Cry: Say it with me folks...
    Muradin (Using Avatar): KHAZ MO-DAN!
  • Boisterous Bruiser: From his trailer, for a start.
    Muradin: Alright lads, line up! It's HAMMER TIME!
  • Bond One-Liner: If he tags Tassadar or Raynor.
    Muradin: Clearly Tassadar has... failed!
    Muradin: Right in the Jimmy!
  • Boring, but Practical: As far as Heroics go, Avatar is fairly tame. Muradin becomes larger, making it easier to body-block skill shots, and harder for the enemy to click other targets near Muradin, increases his max health by a large amount, and heals for the same amount. A nice bail out move, but nothing extremely special. Then you realize that two of his talents, Stoneform and Healing Static, heal by percentages of his current max health.
    • A nice un-listed benefit is that it also raises Muradin's melee range from 1.0, one of the the lowest in the game, to 2.0, the highest (for melee heroes), which can mean a big deal for certain talents and reducing the cooldown of Storm Bolt once his quest is complete.
  • Brave Scot: Just what you'd expect from a Blizzard dwarf, right down to addressing the player and some of his foes as "laddie".
    Muradin: You got my attention laddie!
    Muradin: Next time, laddie, watch yer back.
  • Dual Wielding: Axe in one hand, hammer in the other. He normally swings them one at a time, but starts swinging both at once if Give em the Axe is activated.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: He's one of the famed dwarven Mountain Kings, among the best dwarven warriors in existence.
  • Elves vs. Dwarves: Minor case, but one of his kill quotes is, "I've met blood elves tougher than you!"
  • Healing Factor: His unique trait, Second Wind, heals him for free as long as he stays out of combat. Which can be further talented to be an active ability.
  • In a Single Bound: Muradin can cover a huge distance with just a single Dwarf Toss, also able to pass impassable terrain with it. He can even upgrade the distance with talents.
  • Kick Them While They're Down: Give em the Axe! is a unique, superior version of the standard Executioner ability, giving Muradin a greater boost than average for hitting disabled targets. Works quite well with the fact that he himself has a great supply of disables to begin with. Additonally, Bronzebeard Rage gains increased damage for some time after Muradin lands a Storm Hammer.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Don't let his dwarvish Stout Strength appearance fool you. Muradin is hard to take down, comes packed with crowd control, and can be surprisingly mobile with his jumps. Add in Give em the Axe at level 7 and he'll be hitting fairly hard too.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: If you kill him while he's in Avatar mode. Good luck with that, by the way.
  • Made of Iron: He can really take a beating and survive it because of both his trait and his ability to jump off to safety. Exaggerated with Avatar and Stoneform, giving him an absurd HP pool and the ability to heal about half of it on demand.
  • Megaton Punch: One of his heroic abilities, Haymaker. Doubles as both Grievous Harm with a Body and Launcher Move, and can be used to forcibly throw an enemy into your teammates, or worse, behind your fortifications.
  • Middle Child Syndrome: Seemingly played straight at first, only to be immediately subverted in his intro trailer:
    Muradin: We Bronzebeards are known across the whole of Azeroth. Me eldest brother, Magni, was King of Ironforge. Wise and fair a ruler as ever been. And Brann, well, he's a renowned explorer. Always uncovering secrets, being written about in Explorer's League Geographic. With brothers like that, I'd feel a wee bit overshadowed... [Record Needle Scratch] IF I DIDN'T KICK SO MUCH ARSE! HAHAHA!
  • Nerf: Originally, his Avatar ability had a second effect that stunned targets for a quarter of a second when he hit them. This was removed largely due to the introduction of Morales, who could amp his attack speed and let him spam miniature interrupts.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: He's a standard fantasy dwarf warrior. Bronzebeard dwarves like him combine the "shield" and "gold" dwarf cultures. Meaning most of his clan are smiths/engineers and minersnote , in fact his elder brother King Magni Bronzebeard forged the Ashbringer to oppose Frostmourne, and was renowned as the greatest smith in Azeroth.
  • Regenerating Health: His trait boosts his healing if he doesn't take damage for four seconds. It's not as fast as a Healing Well or healing spells, but it's significantly faster than everyone else, allowing him to claw back From a Single Cell. Given appropriate strategic withdrawals, there is no reason Muradin should ever die.
  • Stone Wall: Arguably the epitome of the trope within Heroes of the Storm. Muradin's biggest asset is that he's hard to kill: he has a ton of Hit Points, he can use his trait to stay alive and has additional self-sustain options available to him, and his Dwarf Toss gives him Armor when he lands, forcing the opponent to one-last-hit him 30% more. The flipside is that he can't do much: his only stun can be missed, his slow isn't super impactful (though it does last for a while — 2.5 seconds is a long time in this game), if he uses Dwarf Toss to attack he can't use it to escape again for another 10 seconds, and his only real playmaking ability, Haymaker, has a 40-second cooldown and is highly dependent on execution, as its angle is controlled solely by where Muradin is standing in relation to where the target is standing. That being said, Muradin has enough talents to boost his damage output that he's capable of putting out some serious hurt for a Tank if built that way.
  • Super Mode: One of his heroics, Avatar, boosts his health and size.
  • Super-Toughness: With Avatar Muradin has the highest health pool of all Warriors bar none. When combined with Unstoppable Force's bonus armor, he even exceeds the effective base health pool of Cho'gall, and even Deathwing.
  • Shock and Awe: His abilities revolve around throwing and slamming the ground with lightning-infused hammers.
  • Thunder Hammer: Used for his Storm Bolt and Thunder Clap abilities.
  • Walk It Off: His trait lets him rapidly heal up damage when not in combat.
  • We Used to Be Friends: He has a few choice words for his old buddy Arthas.
    Muradin: [after killing Arthas] That's for leavin' me in the cave!
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: His interactions with Murky imply murlocs are this to him.

    Stitches, Terror of Darkshire 

Voiced by: Isaac C. Singleton Jr. (English)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/stitches_hots.jpg

Once there was a kind alchemist named Abercrombie living in the town of Raven Hill in the Southern Elwynn Forest, now known as Duskwood. However, the death of his wife and his failed attempts to revive her with necromancy drove him mad. The man, now known as The Embalmer, tricked unsuspecting adventurers to help him create an abomination — Stitches — as a "gift" that would terrorize the citizens of Darkshire. Now, Stitches has wandered into the Nexus in search of new "playmates".

Stitches is a melee Tank with incredible durability and unique kill potential. He has two traits: Vile Gas inflicts a small Damage Over Time on enemies hit by his basic attacks. Shambling Horror can be activated to temporarily grant immunity to slows and spread Vile Gas to all nearby enemies. His main skills are Hook, throwing out a hook skillshot that pulls in the first enemy it hits, Slam, a cleaver smash for area damage that deals extra damage and slows enemies close to Stitches, and Devour, biting an enemy to regain health. Stitches also has a fourth ability; Helping Hand, which is identical to Hook except it can also pull in allies, refunding half of the cooldown.

His Heroic abilities include Putrid Bile, causing Stitches to run faster and spew acids everywhere he walks for a while that slow and damage enemies, or Gorge, gulping down an enemy Hero and allowing Stitches to disable and reposition them before puking them back out.

His current skins are King Stitches, Chef Stitches, Psycho Stitches, Bikini Stitches, Greatfather Winter Stitches, Snuggle Bear Stitches, and Hogmeat Stitches.


  • Acrofatic: For a pile of zombies in a vaguely humanoid form, Stitches can be remarkably mobile when talented; with an upgraded Putrid Bile and Hungry for More, he can dash around at 140% movement speed for 10 whole seconds while slowing his enemies down.
  • And Call Him "George": He just wants to play with you! He doesn't even seem aware that he's fighting people, sometimes saying that he "played too rough" or "playtime's over" when he scores a kill.
  • Belly Mouth: While all abominations have open stitching with their guts hanging out, Stitches actually has an especially gross functioning mouth as his, with ribs acting as teeth. It lets him chomp at enemies with Devour or gulp them down whole for his second heroic.
  • Body Horror: Goes without saying for an abomination, but Stitches takes it a step further. As noted above, the usual gash is also a working mouth, still full of dangling guts.
  • Chef of Iron: With the "Chef" skin, Stitches wears a toque and an apron, and attacks with a frying pan and a whole ham.
  • Composite Character: While his name and origin are taken from the original Stitches of the Duskwood region, his "want playtime" personality is actually that of the Naxxramas raid boss Patchwerk (a different abomination). For comparison, the original Stitches was simply a near-mindless hungering monster.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Stitches' yoink is incredibly powerful and can change the gamestate from "Oh, we're all safe behind our walls" to "Oh, Crap!" in very short order. In compensation, his defensive power is quite limited; if the enemy team decides to follow the erstwhile victim in, Stitches can't do much to slow them down, and if the hook misses or gets blocked, he's basically useless for about 12 seconds.
  • Dead Weight: He's a giant, lumbering zombie stitched together from bits and pieces of corpses.
  • Eaten Alive: That giant, gaping mouth in his stomach isn't just for show (of course, he still has to take a specific Heroic to use it).
  • Expy: Zig-zagged with regards to his relation to Dota 2's Pudge. The Abomination unit was introduced in Warcraft III, and was the basis for Pudge in the original Defense of the Ancients mod, which was later carried into Dota2. Stitches, meanwhile, was added to classic World of Warcraft in 2004, while Patchwerk (see Composite Character above), was added in 2006, long before Dota2 existed. In this way, the original Pudge, original Stitches, and Patchwerk could all be considered "brothers", descended from the same in-game unit, and the composite Stitches in Heroes a "cousin" of Pudge in the full-fledged Dota2. What pushes Stitches into full Expy territory is that the developers largely copied Pudge's Dota2 kit, which did not exist on either Stitches or Patchwerk.
  • Fan Disservice: Bikini Stitches. Of all the heroes to get a bikini-themed skin, this guy? Why, Blizzard, why...
    • It gets worse: Bikini Stitches was on the loading screen throughout summer 2017. Enjoy.
  • Fartillery: Prior to his first rework, his trait spewed Vile Gas whenever he took damage, poisoning enemies and damaging them over time.
  • Heal Thyself: Devour heals 20% of Stitches's maximum health on cast and can be talented to heal 10% more on top of that, one of his late-game talents lets him restore 5% of his health each time he attacks a hero, Vile Gas can be talented to heal Stitches every time it does damage, and he can get a talent that increases all healing he receives (but is mutually exclusive with the Vile Gas healing). Put several of these together, and watch as Stitches simply regenerates his hefty HP pool faster than the enemy can wear it down.
  • Hockey Mask and Chainsaw: "Psycho" Stitches is basically an amalgamation of Shout-Outs to the slasher horror movie genre. He has a hockey mask and a machete, a torn-off Michael Myers jumpsuit, a chainsaw and a slipknot/pickaxe combo to complete the horror movie theme.
  • Hooks and Crooks: He has a meat-hook on a long chain and a sickle as his other weapons.
  • Kevlard: Fitting for someone of his build, Stitches has the second-highest base health in the game, only exceeded by Deathwing and certain heroes with specific temporary health boosts (such as Diablo with Black Soulstone or Muradin with Avatar).
  • Magic Knight: Despite his appearance, Stitches is very dependent on his mana pool.
  • Magikarp Power:
    • Enforced by his Hook, which gains a 40% range bonus once he hits level 13. This was done as a compromise between his hook being too good in the early game but not scaling well into the lategame without a talent.
    • Also applies to him in general. At early levels, Stitches has no crowd control and his damage output against heroes is low even for a Tank, so the only thing he can do is hope the enemy strays out of position and lets him hook them into a fort or pray that his teammates follow up when he grabs someone. Once he hits level 10 and onward, he can start really causing problems with either Putrid Bile inflicting mass slow or Gorge to single out and eliminate key targets, and with the right talents he can become a much more significant presence in fights.
  • Mighty Glacier: Slow and plodding, with no way to boost his own speed in combat, but he has a grab and can gain extra crowd control to make it tough for enemies to get away from him.
  • Odd Friendship: With Junkrat, due to him being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for his pal Roadhog (and for Stitches just wanting a buddy).
  • Psychopathic Manchild: His idea of play time is hacking people with his cleaver. This tends to be the case with all the named abominations in the Warcraft universe though, so nothing particularly new.
  • Stone Wall: Stitches... doesn't do damage. At all. Most of his abilities deal minor damage, Vile Gas basically does nothing but annoy, and the main reason he can even kill minions with regularity is because Vile Gas and Devour deal bonus damage against them. He makes up for it with his hook and staying power, alongside some extremely disruptive heroic abilities. Stitches can avert this by building into Slam to deal fairly decent AoE damage at the cost of some late game tankiness. However, without building as a Bruiser, he fits this archetype to a tee.
  • Swallowed Whole: He can disable one enemy hero for a few seconds this way, carrying them wherever you want. Upgraded, you can do it to several.
  • Take That!: They actually made a jab at Pudge.
    Stitches: [killing another Stitches] Stitches greater than you, pudgy.
  • You Will Not Evade Me: Has every MOBA's quintessential grab-and-pull spell.

Bruisers

    Chen, Legendary Brewmaster 

Voiced by: Keone Young (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chen_hots.jpg

Azeroth's greatest brewmaster, Chen Stormstout is a wandering pandaren from the Wandering Isle. Chen took part in the founding of the orcish nation of Durotar by aiding Rexxar and Rokkhan in their journey throughout Kalimdor in the early days of the Horde. He also fought alongside the Horde when Kul Tiras forces under the command of Daelin Proudmoore waged war against the Horde, and was present at the Battle of Theramore Isle. When the mists surrounding Pandaria were uncovered, Chen took the opportunity to return to his ancestral homeland and adventured throughout the land with his niece Li Li. Later, he would aid his old friends Vol'jin and Thrall against Garrosh Hellscream's True Horde.

Chen is a surprisingly mobile melee Bruiser capable of jumping in and pinning down foes. Instead of mana, Chen uses Brew, which has a small static pool and doesn't naturally regenerate. To recover Brew, he needs to channel his Fortifying Brew trait, which roots him in place but also provides a massive shield. His first basic ability is a Flying Kick that positions Chen behind his target. Keg Smash, his second ability, throws a keg to slow down enemies in an area and soak them with booze. If the ability is recast within 6 seconds, it becomes Breath of Fire; belching out damaging flames that can ignite booze-covered enemies for additional damage over time. His final basic ability is Stagger, which makes him immune to all damage for 3 seconds, then causes him to take a portion of the prevented damage over the next 5 seconds.

His first Heroic ability is Wandering Keg, which turns Chen into a barrel, making him Unstoppable and allowing him to roll around at increased movement speed, damaging and knocking back enemies. His second heroic is Storm, Earth, and Fire, which temporarily splits him into three elemental spirits with different attack patterns. Each Spirit has an ability they can use once, and the third ability is empowered. Storm is a long-ranged attacker who can grant all three spirits a large shield, with his final cast also increasing the ability's duration. Fire is melee, and can grant attack and movement speed, and grants even more as the last cast. Earth is melee and can be commanded to leap to a target area alongside Fire, slowing enemies. If it's the final ability, it instead roots.

His current skins are Wanderer Chen, Warmaster Chen, Lunar Chen, and Brewmaster Chen.


  • Acrofatic: Who would have believed someone twice the width of a regular man could move so acrobatically? Flying Kick is a ridiculously fast-moving dash with a decent range, and it has a low cooldown and minimal Brew cost.
  • All Monks Know Kung-Fu: Technically, Brewmasters are monks according to Mists of Pandaria lore, being an avoidance tank specialization for player character monks. That means Chen.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: He's very cheerful, even when kicking your ass.
  • Booze-Based Buff: Gains a shield when he drinks his booze. If you're alone, there's little chance for you to break his shield while he's drinking.
    • He also has a talent that grants bonuses based on how much Brew he has (basically, how drunk he is).
  • Booze Flamethrower: Enemies soaked in his brew will suffer more damage from his fire breath.
  • Breath Weapon: Chen is capable of breathing fire and doing so is more effective after soaking enemies in booze.
  • The Brute: Not regular Chen, but his Warmaster skin says he was this (or possibly became this) to Lei Shen the Thunder King, serving him as an Elite Mook. No information is provided, however, for how he ended up working for The Emperor or whether or not he's a willing servant.
  • Combo:
    • Keg Smash turns into Breath of Fire after the former is used, and enemies doused in booze by the former are ignited by the latter.
    • Because Stagger delays the damage taken by Chen over its duration (while also reducing it slightly), he can charge into a fight without much concern for his health and then shrug off the delayed damage by drinking once he's out of danger.
  • Cool Uncle: To Li Li.
  • Drunken Master: He powers himself up by drinking as is customary for a brewmaster. In-game, it's very common for Chen to start drinking in the middle of a fight to refill his Brew meter, letting him throw more abilities around. His gameplay is actually meant to emulate this, since he goes from clumsily standing still and not feeling any pain to suddenly jumping across the battle.
  • Epic Flail: Uses either a staff with a sake gourd tied to it, or a Peasant Flail, depending on the skin.
  • Feel No Pain: Stagger makes him immune to all damage briefly, but then take it back as a Damage Over Time. Presumably it's because he gets too drunk to be hurt.
  • Me's a Crowd: His Storm, Earth and Fire heroic splits him into three smaller versions of himself, each with its own attack style.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: A low-cooldown, low-cost (that can be talented to have none) mobility skill with Flying Kick, plus a slow with Keg Smash, plus a level 7 talent that boosts his walking speed if he's low on brew... it can be quite hard to get him if he decides to run away.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: His lines makes you think he's having a serious case of No Sense of Direction when he's in fact one of the most insightful and powerful Pandarens in Azeroth.
  • Pun: Not even Chen can avoid making an un-bear-able pun when he starts a match:
    I'll defeat you with my bear hands! Ha ha!
  • Spam Attack: All of his basic abilities feature pretty low cooldowns. It's kept in measure by his low Brew total, but can use one and a half cycles of his abilities before running dry. Stopping to drink doesn't take that long either. Taking a talent to remove the cost of Flying Kick allows him to go through all of his abilities twice.
  • Status Effect-Powered Ability: Breath of Fire will light enemies that been hit by Keg Smash on fire, and is otherwise an extremely underwhelming ability. This is why the two abilities were fused together in his rework.
  • Stone Wall: Chen is perhaps the single hardest hero to take down, but doesn't really have the damage or crowd control to back it up. His rework takes away some of his tankiness in favor of damage output, but he's still plenty tough with Stagger and Fortifying Brew letting him shrug off damage that would kill squishier heroes instantly.
  • Throw a Barrel at It: One of his skills is to throw a keg of booze at his enemies.

    Deathwing, The Destroyer 

Voiced by: Michael McConnohie (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/deathwing_hots.png
Neltharion the Earth-Warder was one of the five Dragon Aspects, beings empowered by the titans to be the immortal guardians of Azeroth. However, driven insane by the Old Gods, Neltharion turned on his siblings during the War of the Ancients. After this, he took a new name - Deathwing, the Aspect of Death. Deathwing was the most powerful servant of the Old Gods, and acted as their instrument of destruction. He manipulated both the Horde and Alliance during the Second War, but was ultimately defeated. He was not killed however, and retreated to the elemental plane Deepholm to recover.

Years later, Deathwing emerged from his realm, outfitted with elementium plating that barely held his crumbling form together. He began the Cataclysm, an event that nearly tore Azeroth apart. His ultimate goal was to begin the Hour of Twilight, an apocalypse where all life would end and the Old Gods would awaken once more.

Deathwing is an extremely versatile and unique melee Bruiser. He uses Energy instead of mana. His trait, Aspect of Death, has multiple parts. Deathwing is permanently Unstoppable, making him immune to almost all crowd control effects. However, he cannot be affected by any ally abilities, most notably healing. Additionally, his abilities deal 100% bonus damage to heroes. He also has four Armor Plates on him which each grant 10 Armor. Each quarter of his health he drops below breaks one, which can only be recovered using his mount ability. By activating his trait, he switches between two stances with different abilities: Destroyer or World Breaker.

His first ability is shared between both forms: Molten Flame has him breathe a torrent of high-damage flame in an area, draining his Energy while it's active. His Destroyer abilities are Incinerate, which unleashes a flaming pulse around him; and Onslaught, which lets him dash a short distance and chomp enemies on arrival. In World Breaker form, he instead uses Lava Burst, which creates a pool of lava at the target location, damaging and slowing enemies inside; and Earth Shatter, which slams the ground to create two lines of rock that stun enemies. Deathwing only has one Heroic ability, which is available at level one and shared between forms. Cataclysm allows him to take to the sky and fly forwards, igniting his wings and leaving a burning path that lasts for several seconds.

Instead of mounting, Deathwing can use Dragonflight to fly into the air and become untargetable. On command, he can choose a stance and land in any visible location on the map, dealing damage to enemies he lands on. While flying, Deathwing rapidly recovers health and Armor Plates, acting as his primary heal. However, attacking or taking damage puts Dragonflight on a short cooldown.

His current skin is Dark Nexus Deathwing.
  • Achilles' Heel: Deathwing's abilities are incredibly strong and totally uninterruptible, but they also all have a notable wind-up. This telegraphs his attacks and gives enemies time to avoid them. This also makes him exceptionally bad against high-mobility opponents like Tracer and Li-Ming. Additionally, Deathwing is a big target. If the enemy team can focus-fire him down, the fact that he has one of the highest Hit Points totals in the game still won't save him. He does even worse against Minion Master Heroes who can focus attacks on him from multiple sources by themselves.
  • Ascended Meme: Deathwing's reveal teaser was the same used to tease Hanamura Showdown - the same one everyone thought was going to be Deathwing back when it happened.
  • Breakable Power-Up: His elementium plates can be destroyed by dropping his health enough, permanently lowering his armor until he restores them with Dragonflight or a late-game talent. Even raising his health above the threshold the old-fashioned way won't return lost plates.
  • Breath Weapon: He has a classic dragonfire ability in the form of Molten Flame. It's the only basic ability that's shared between forms.
  • Cold Ham: Deathwing speaks mostly in long diatribes about his superiority and the encroaching Hour of Twilight, but does so always in an eerily calm and stoic manner.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: He is fully Unstoppable at all times, emphasizing his juggernaut nature and gameplay.
  • Death from Above: Upon landing with Dragonflight, Deathwing deals damage at the area of impact. At level 7 Deathwing can additionally rain down Flaming Meteors when doing so to lower Dragonflight's cooldown. As a bonus, Deathwing says this trope word for word when he lands from his Dragonflight.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: His World Breaker form uses mostly earth-based attacks rather than fire ones.
  • Dragons Are Demonic: Deathwing is basically the poster boy for evil dragons, especially ones using Satanic imagery.
  • Dynamic Entry: Dragonflight lets him go absolutely anywhere and can be channeled indefinitely. You can drop the dragon right in the most dynamic place when you want. The only caveat is that Deathwing needs to wait a few seconds to start casting abilities after he lands.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Deathwing had several portraits and sprays in the game as early as 2017.
  • Evil Is Angular: Compare Alexstrasza in dragon form to Deathwing, and you'll find that Deathwing not only carries plenty Spikes of Villainy, but his chest is adorned with rectangular armor plates, his claws are much more pronounced, and there's the whole matter of his mouthplate that goes into giving him what is essentially non-biological Villainous Cheekbones.
  • Flaming Meteor: Two of Deathwing's talents involve dropping meteors, but in different ways. The Firestorm talent makes several of these fall with Deathwing when he lands from his Dragonflight, while the Skyfall talent grants him 3 charges that allows him to drop a single meteor anywhere within vision during Dragonflight.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Back in Caldeum Complex, the description for the patch mentioned Chromie was having visions of a cataclysmic event coming to the Nexus.
    • In the weeks leading up to Deathwing's announcement, occasionally the screen would shake and turn orange at the start of the match.
  • Heal Thyself: This is very important for Deathwing, since his allies are unable to heal him. Dragonflight is his primary way of recovering lost health aside from regen globes and the fountain, and is his main way to recover lost armor plates. He also has multiple talents to help him maintain life.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: Molten Flame is the most obvious one, with an absolutely massive range that burns everything in a cone in front of him. All of his other abilities also deal area damage, but to a less extreme.
  • Hitbox Dissonance: His hitbox doesn't extend to his wings, tail or head, and is roughly the size of Azmodan's.
  • Hot Wings: His wings catch on fire while he uses Cataclysm.
  • I Work Alone: Deathwing rejects the notion of working together with other members of his team, which is why he cannot interact with his allies and thus cannot receive any kind of healing or buffs from them. Funnily enough, Deathwing works best alongside his team, benefiting from his World Breaker CC and/or helping him with their own CC to land Molten Flame and Destroyer's abilities. Plus, his global mobility makes him great at swooping in and saving the day.
  • The Juggernaut: Deathwing is permanently Unstoppable, which makes it impossible for a tank to peel him away. If he wants to dive someone, he will get there. Unfortunately this is also his greatest weakness, since allies cannot bail him out if he overextends.
  • Kaiju: He's bigger than Alexstraza's dragon form and rivals Ragnaros in Molten Core form. And he's like that permanently.
  • Lantern Jaw of Justice: Inverted. He's a Omnicidal Maniac with a giant metal chin the size of a small house. He even perceives ETC calling him "heavy metal" as a crack about it.
  • Long-Range Fighter: In World Breaker form, Deathwing has the advantage of being able to hit enemies from afar, using Lava Burst and Earth Shatter to poke and disrupt while still having high burst with Molten Flame. In fact, a Deathwing talenting heavily into Molten Flame will often stay in World Breaker form for pretty much the entire game, essentially playing like a very beefy artillery mage.
  • Man Bites Man: Deathwing bites enemies struck by the end of Onslaught's lunge, which deals much more damage than the actual lunge itself.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: Oh boy, where to begin. Deathwing is more-or-less a permanently playable "Vehicle" like the Dragon Knight or Triglav Protector rather than a traditional Hero.
    • Deathwing uses Energy instead of mana, which alone is usually enough to net a spot here.
    • His model is gigantic, and unlike Alexstrasza he's always that big.
    • He cannot be interacted with by allies. At all. No healing, no protection, no Medivh portals, no Abathur clones, not even an Abathur hat or healing at base. He can only sustain himself using Dragonflight.
    • He's permanently unstoppable.
    • He's a stance-based character, with 5 unique basic abilities and changing ability ranges.
    • He has a special mount ability, which is also used to interact with his trait.
    • Like Tracer, he only has one heroic and it's unlocked right out the gate. Unlike Tracer, it's actually cooldown-based (although it starts on cooldown, of course).
  • Mighty Glacier:
    • Once Dragonflight has been used, Deathwing's mobility options are limited. However, you better run once he gets in range.
    • It also applies to his abilities. They hurt like a dragon just landed on you, but every single one of them has windup and telegraphing; if you know what you are doing, you can relatively easily mitigate a lot of his damage just by simply not standing in the fire.
  • Mighty Roar: His Bellowing Roar talent lets him do this. Upon activation, it inflicts the Fear status on enemy Heroes that are near Deathwing.
  • Multiform Balance: Destroyer is his preferred damage mode, and is locked to melee for the most part. This is in contrast to World Breaker, which doesn't pack as much damage but lets him poke from range. The general game plan is to set up the teamfight with World Breaker, then switch to Destroyer and engage with Cataclysm or Dragonflight.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Deathwing features a unique health bar, which has the same dragon curled around it that World of Warcraft's elite mobs do.
    • The level 20 upgrade for Cataclysm is named "Stood in the Fire". That's the same name as the now unobtainable achievement for being killed by him in WoW during one of his random flybys.
    • The Ancient Deathwing skin tints him green, which was the same colour he was back in Warcraft II.
  • No-Sell: Don't bother using stuns or other crowd control on him - he'll simply shrug them off. (As mentioned above, the exception are Time Stop abilities.)
  • Papa Wolf: He's not amused in the slightest by Varian cutting off his daughter's head and mounting it on Stormwind's city wall.
    Deathwing: (killing Varian) That... was for Onyxia!
  • Play as a Boss: He's basically a playable raid boss. He even has the giant health bar. Like any boss, he's extremely durable and has devastating abilities, but cannot recover health nearly as well as his opponents and his attacks are also very telegraphed.
  • Playing with Fire: On top of being partially made of the stuff, Deathwing utilizes fire for most of his abilities.
  • Purposefully Overpowered: Deathwing is a veritable Lightning Bruiser, with a kit that includes insane damage, global mobility, a full heal, good crowd control skills, and tonnes of health. This is all very much on purpose, to make him feel like an actual Raid boss. Ultimately though, he's balanced by his various unique weaknesses that give his kit plenty of counterplay.
  • Skill Gate Character: Being a playable boss with high health, armor, and permanent Unstoppable makes it extremely tempting for Deathwing players to Leeroy Jenkins into opposing teams and heroes, and in a one-on-one fight, it might just work out. On the other hand, he's not nearly as good at tanking as an actual Tank since his teammates can't heal him or bail him out of a bad situation in any way and his Destroyer form lacks crowd control and has long cast animations, so anyone who actually does try this against a coordinated five-man team will get blown up extremely quickly. Savvy Deathwings will thus fall back on World Breaker form to poke and prod enemies from afar, capitalizing on the fact that there's nothing they can do to stop him aside from coming to him... and promptly getting piled on by his team.
  • Squishy Wizard: Despite the above, his litany of weaknesses can actually make it practical for him to hang back and poke from afar. If his opponents can't see Deathwing's wind-ups because Deathwing's team is bullying them out of sight range, it's waaaay harder for them to dodge. Part of being an effective Deathwing player is knowing which playstyle fits the given moment.
  • Stance System: He chooses between Destroyer for close-in damage or World Breaker for long range crowd control. Stances can be swapped either with the trait on a short channel, or chosen when landing with his mount.
  • Take That!: Deathwing gets a Stop Poking Me! line mocking the infamous King's Landing incident in the controversial final season of Game of Thrones and, by extension, the fanbase. For some insult collateral damage, the line could also be interpreted as a jab at Alduin in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
    Deathwing: People keep saying they're outraged at another infamous black dragon for burning an entire city full of innocent people to ash. One city. Pfft, amateur.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Deathwing's damage output at the end of a game can often outpace even that of dedicated DPS heroes like Raynor or Kael'thas. However, the way he does this damage is rather inefficient. Deathwing unleashes huge, Herd Hitting Attacks with only moderate damage repeatedly, while also dealing constant area damage with Cataclysm, allowing him to incessantly grind down at multiple enemy heroes with a storm of fire and magma, but lacks the ability to really selectively focus his damage on specific targets or do high bursts without significant setup.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Deathwing has one of the highest health pools and 40% passive damage reduction. However, this makes him ridiculously weak to percentage-damage attacks, which chew through his health bar and ignore his armor.

    Gazlowe, Boss of Ratchet 

Voiced by: Travis Willingham (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gazlowe_hots.jpg

For Gazlowe's original version as a Melee Assassin, see his folder on this page.

The leader of the goblin city of Ratchet, Monte Gazlowe designed the foundations for the orcish and Horde capital of Ogrimmar. Being a goblin, one of his greatest natures is tinkering and designing, inventions and creations that always don't tend to be 100% safe.

Gazlowe is a Bruiser hero, representing the Goblin Tinker hero unit from Warcraft III, who excels at guarding a location. His trait is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Gazlowe uses Scrap instead of mana, which he gains over time or salvaged from his destroyed turrets. He can also activate his trait to instantly dismantle a turret. Rock-It! Turret allows him to place a stationary turret in a target location, which prioritizes firing at heroes. It is the only ability that costs Scrap, with everything else being cooldown based. Deth Lazor fires a laser after a delay that heals him for a portion of the damage it deals. Xplodium Charge places a bomb that explodes shortly after to deal damage and stun enemies caught in the blast. Also, Gazlowe has a fourth ability called Focus Turrets!, which makes his Rock-It! Turrets focus on a single target if possible.

His first Heroic is Robo-Goblin, which passively adds a stacking Damage Over Time to his Basic Attack and can be activated to temporarily grant Unstoppable, making him immune to crowd control. His second Heroic is Grav-O-Bomb 3000, which pulls in enemies after a delay, dealing heavy damage. He also gains bonus Basic Attack damage for a short while after casting this.

His current skins are Chief Engineer Gazlowe, Mad Martian Gazlowe, Big Top Gazlowe, Paper Bag Gazlowe, and Mineral Harvester Gazlowe.
  • Awesome Backpack: He has an attack robot attached to his back. Proton Packs, eat your heart out.
  • Boring, but Practical: His Robo-Goblin heroic may not be that astounding, but in maps where mercenaries, especially boss camps, are easily accessible, this heroic is definitely useful, and the bonus damage isn't bad for smacking around enemy heroes either.
  • Brown Bag Mask: His Hallow's End "costume" is a brown bag over his robot's head with something (which changes depending on the tint) drawn on it.
  • Chainsaw Good: More like Sawblade Good when he takes his Robo-Goblin heroic, but the feel is definitely there. Taking the heroic permanently replaces the clamps on his robot's arms with sawblades.
  • Damage Over Time: Robo-Goblin passively grants him this on his basic attacks, with stacks marked as up to three gears on his target.
  • Demolitions Expert: Turrets, bombs, and a big gravity-bomb heroic.
  • Epic Fail: One of the tints for his Paper Bag skin (aptly named "Awkward") has a penguin drawn on it... upside-down.
  • The Engineer: He attacks exclusively with machines. Even his basic attacks are performed by his backpack.
  • The Goggles Do Nothing: He wears a pair of goggles on his forehead.
  • Life Drain: Deth Lazor has a small lifesteal attached to it, acting as Gazlowe's main in-lane sustain tool. It can also be upgraded to sap percentage-based health and heal for even more.
  • Lightning Gun: His Deth Lazor shoots an electrified laser beam.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: If he lands a kill on Sgt. Hammer, he almost cries, since he had to blow up such a beautiful tank.
  • Odd Friendship: Seems to have this with Hammer "off duty" as implied by the 2016 Lunar New Year trailer. Also has this with Junkrat, with the two of them discussing explosives.
  • Our Goblins Are Different: Warcraft goblins are wacky inventor-types with Chicago accents and a mercantile bent.
  • Percent Damage Attack: Gazlowe can use this to be a decent tankbuster, with the right build. Hyperfocus Coils grants this to Deth Lazor and Xplodium Charge, while the later talent Overklock grants it to basic attacks.
  • Proud Merchant Race Guy: Plenty of his quotes reflect this.
  • Rich Boredom: While he's definitely not bored of being rich, he isn't a huge fan of his job.
    Gazlowe: You know what the best part of being boss of Ratchet is? Because I'd love to know. I mean seriously, it's so boring.
  • The Rival: If Gelbin Mekkatorque makes it into the game (his model was teased at BlizzCon '13) it seems likely the old Gnomes vs Goblins rivalry will flare up. It certainly does in an unused kill quote voice file.
  • The Scrooge: Unsurprising, as a Warcraft goblin.
  • The Turret Master: His main strategy. Unlike fellow turret master Probius, he focuses on several tiny turrets rather than one big one. Rock-it! Turret has no cooldown whatsoever, aside from a very tiny quarter-second animation time. This is normally limited by its massive Scrap cost (taking more than a third of his total for one turret), but can be spammed to hell and back with the right build. In particular, Big Game Hunter grants two extra Scrap and increases his Scrap regen while attacking. If Gazlowe has access to something to keep hitting, he can have up to thirty turrets at a time.
  • Weapons That Suck: His Grav-o-Bomb heroic sucks all enemies in its area and deal massive damage.
  • We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Amusingly, if you stun him, it's his robot that gets dizzy while Gaz presses the control repeatedly to try and get it back online.
  • Worker Unit: His Mineral Harvester skin turns him into a Terran SCV from StarCraft.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: All of his basic abilities are spelled like this, but particularly Deth Lazor. He also has this on a handful of talents, like EZ-PZ Dimensional Ripper, Ark Reaktor, and Kwik Release Charge.

    Hogger, Scourge of Elwynn 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hogger_key_art.jpg
The leader of the Riverpaw gnolls, a gang of vicious hyena-men that ambushed merchants and other prey along the roads of Elwynn. Although many considered Hogger nothing but a pest, the Stormwind Army put out a bounty on his head, which hundreds of would-be adventurers set out to collect. Finally, he was apprehended and taken to the Stockades, where he led a revolt and made his daring escape. Now, having outleveled Elwynn Forest, Hogger has come to the Nexus in search of more easy prey.

Hogger is a chaotic melee Bruiser focused on area control. He uses Rage instead of mana, which he gains by taking and dealing damage. Every point of Rage increases his cooldown speed, but it quickly falls off if he leaves combat. His trait is Loot Hoard. Hogger throws a stash of loot that becomes a small patch of terrain. Once the hoard runs out, it drops a haunch of meat that Hogger can pick up to restore his health over time. His first ability, Staggering Blow, swings his flail in an arc, knocking back enemies it hits. Enemies who collide with terrain are stunned, giving Hogger extra Rage. His second ability, EZ-Thro Dynamite, chucks a boot full of dynamite which explodes after a few seconds to slow enemies. If a hero is hit directly, it explodes instantly and Hogger gains Rage. Finally, Hogg Wild has him become an Unstoppable whirlwind that moves in the targeted direction, damaging nearby enemies based on his current amount of Rage. He also bounces off of walls, which refreshes the ability's duration.

His first heroic is Hoardapult, which launches an empowered Loot Hoard with Hogger attached, damaging and slowing enemies. As Hogger remains near this Loot Hoard, it occasionally feeds him meat for its lengthy duration. His other heroic, Shockwave, slams the ground, creating an explosion near Hogger that damages and stuns enemies, as well as a long shockwave in its tail that inflicts less damage and a shorter stun.

His current skin is Shipwrecker Hogger.
  • All Animals Are Dogs: It can be inferred he likes going on walks with one of his movement lines. He also frequently mentions chewing bones as dogs are apt to do rather than outright eating them as hyenas actually do...but of course, he is a hyena which is a species that most would think of being like dogs at first glance (despite them actually being more closely related to cats). However, one of his Stop Poking Me! lines makes it clear he doesn't like being petted.
  • Ascended Extra: Downplayed, since Hogger was already quite an infamous character in the Warcraft community despite his small role. That said, it's still a pretty big jump from a random level 10 elite to a playable hero.
  • Beast Man: A hyena-man.
  • The Berserker: Hogger uses Rage as a secondary resource that automatically boosts his abilities' cooldown rate and increases Hogg Wild's damage as he accrues it, and he becomes more enraged upon taking damage or using basic attacks. Certain talents can also affect how Hogger obtains Rage and give him more boosts from having Rage.
  • Big Eater: Implied, based on the low cooldown of Loot Hoard and how eating meat from it heals Hogger. Fitting for a hyena (though he more describes it as chewing them rather than eating them as hyenas actually do), he also quite likes bones (and thus likes killing a boney hero). However, he hates the taste of Murloc.
  • Blood Knight: Hogger quite enjoys killing. One of his reactions for his announcer to the player's team killing an enemy hero is outright happily crying and declaring "Death dance pretty!".
  • Boring, but Practical: Most of the time, Loot Hoard will be placed then instantly cancelled to get the meat and help his sustain. Its other effects are useful, if a bit niche, but the healing really helps Hogger stay in lane.
  • Catapult to Glory: His Hoardapult heroic makes Hogger swing his flail with an enhanced Loot Hoard attached into a specific direction, dragging him along for the ride.
  • Cartoon Meat: The 'cylinder of mystery meat on a bone' variety, dropped by his Loot Hoard. It even gets eaten with a cartoonish "chomp" sound.
  • Cooldown Manipulation: His abilities do not cost an additional resource to use. Instead, he has a Rage bar that fills up as he takes damage, lands basic attacks, stuns with Staggering Blow and if Ez-Thro Dynamite directly lands on an enemy hero. Rage causes his cooldowns to come back up to 50% faster and can up to double the damage of Hogg Wild.
  • Composite Character: Instead of the stone axe he carries in WoW, Hogger has a huge flail like the gnoll creeps did in Warcraft III.
  • Death or Glory Attack: His level 20 talent "No Control" lets him cast a homing version of Hogg Wild that constantly pinballs off heroes instead of walls but can't be cancelled until the duration ends or Hogger dies, making it pretty likely, unless used when only one enemy player is nearby (which shouldn't be very likely at level 20), that using it will either end with the enemy team's slaughter or Hogger's player watching helplessly as Hogger spins himself into a bad position and dies.
  • Deployable Cover: Created by his trait and Hoardapult. Although the area is too small to be a reliable wall, he can use it to block narrow pathways or combo it with Staggering Blow and Hogg Wild.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: In general, Bruisers in Heroes of the Storm get to choose between: strong wave-clear, allowing for double-soak and getting camps; strong dueling skills, allowing them to bully out enemy laners; being easy to play: Pick two. Hogger's a Bruiser highly capable at very many things - wave-clear, camp-clear, self-sustaining, engaging, disengaging, zoning, durability, crowd-control, dueling, being Unstoppable even more often than Johanna... however, it is vital that he gains Rage by using his abilities effectively by simultaneously hitting with them and not taking so much damage in the meantime that he must completely disengage. Hogg Wild without much Rage isn't too threatening, while it will kill squishy heroes in the space of two seconds with full Rage... not to mention it'll take usually some geometry or particular positioning to expect much more than one bounce from it. Even just clearing a wave can be challenging: you have to drop your Dynamite, put down a Loot Hoard, and then aim your Hogg Wild so that it goes straight through the wave, hits your Loot Hoard, and goes straight back out again. Some Dexterity Required.
  • Epic Flail: One that's almost as tall as he is, with a giant iron head. His Shipwrecker skin swaps the ball out for a Painful Pointy Pufferfish.
  • Exactly What I Aimed At: Not canceling Hogg Wild from some angles and map positions can lead to some truly spectacular movements around the map. With enough practice, one could even use it to scout some positions fairly safely...but it'll probably be Accidental Aiming Skills for most.
  • Expy: His Hogg Wild ability turning him into a tornado with cartoonish additions, gameplay involving food and Cartoon Meat, and his broken english makes it hard to imagine that his designers didn't take at least some inspiration from Taz.
  • Geo Effects: Causing an enemy to collide with terrain with Staggering Blow gains rage, causes extra damage and stuns them, and bouncing off terrain with Hogg Wild causes the ability's duration to be refreshed. Hogger's trait accordingly is Loot Hoard which allows him to toss out a small square of terrain to work his magic with.
  • Heal Thyself: One of the effects of his trait, after his Loot Hoard pops out Cartoon Meat for him to eat. He can also take a Talent at Lv.1 that heals him based on the amount of Rage he has going.
  • Heinous Hyena: On top of being a wanted criminal, Hogger greatly enjoys looting and killing. According to him, "easy prey is best prey!"
  • Hey, Catch!: Landing EZ-Thro Dynamite directly on an enemy hero makes it instantly blow up, compensating for its otherwise lackluster effect if you wait out the timer.
  • The Hyena: Hogger breaks into cackles at every little thing, which makes sense considering he is a literal hyena-man.
  • Hyperactive Metabolism: Chomping down on meat generated when Loot Hoard has expired or is destroyed restores a decent portion of Hogger's HP over the next five seconds.
  • Improvised Weapon: EZ-Thro Dynamite is sticks of dynamite shoved into a discarded shoe and thrown like a grenade. It's implied to be stolen, either from the local kobolds or human miners, and put in a piece of scavenged armor that gnolls can't use anyway. His Loot Hoard is also basically a bunch of stuff and a barrel that he tosses out potentially onto people. However, it doesn't actually cause much damage on its own, but Hogger can easily work with it.
  • Large and in Charge: Hogger is king of the Riverpaw gnolls because he casts the biggest shadow.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: Hogger does not have mana and only has cooldowns preventing him from using his abilities constantly, but he also has a Rage resource that fills up as he takes damage, lands basic attacks, stuns with Staggering Blow and if Ez-Thro Dynamite directly lands on an enemy hero, but quickly decays out of combat. Having Rage causes his cooldowns to come back up to 50% faster and can up to double the damage of Hogg Wild. His ability to pinball himself as a major source of damage also makes him a particularly oddball among the roster to play.
  • Mythology Gag: Sometimes upon dying, Hogger will croak out "Not..take...Hogger...claw". This is because the the item he was guaranteed to drop that was used to complete the quest for killing him in World of Warcraft was one of his large claws. When getting a talent, he might say "Hogger feel elite!" since he was an "Elite" creature (and probably the first Elite creature Human players would ever see). Additionally, he has voicelines which have him say he needs more Rage to cast something, like the Warrior class from World of Warcraft, though they are unused since his actual implementation released does not require him to have a particular quantity of Rage to use any of his abilities.
  • Pinball Projectile: Hogger himself becomes one during Hogg Wild, which normally has a short duration but can bounce all over an enclosed space. Bonus points for occasionally actually making pinball paddle noises when he hits a wall.
  • Powerful, but Inaccurate: Hogg Wild can put out some crazy DPS, but tends to send Hogger all over the place, even in fairly enclosed spaces. Add the fact that Hogger cannot use any skills during it, and you need to put your faith in simple geometry to get the most out of the skill.
    • Exaggerated by his level 20 talent "No Control", which lets him cast a homing version of Hogg Wild that pinballs off heroes instead of walls and can't be cancelled until the duration ends or Hogger dies.
  • Revenge: Downplayed, since he does not actually outright state his need for revenge against the countless Human and Alliance players that have killed him in Elwynn Forest or the Stockades... but he does mention himself being good at revenge a few times to imply he's actually still angry about that.
  • Shockwave Stomp: Shockwave opens with one of these, with the area around the Ground Pound giving a big stun, and sending out a linear shockwave as well.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: Hogger is completely unaware of his general unimportance. He thinks he's the biggest, baddest dude in the Nexus, and has no idea that he's basically a meme that got Raided by level 1 gnomes for kicks.
    Deathwing: Ready yourself. Doom has come to this paltry realm.
    Hogger: (excited laugh) Yesss, I have!
  • Third-Person Person: Hogger call himself Hogger!
  • Throw Down the Bomblet: EZ-Thro Dynamite chucks a literal boot-full of dynamite as a makeshift grenade. A midgame talent lets Hogger thwack the dynamite with Staggering Blow, spilling the individual sticks out in an area in front of him.
  • Tornado Move: Hogg Wild has him become a literal whirlwind and spin uncontrollably at enemies. He bounces off of walls and refreshes the ability's duration every time he does, being unstoppable all the while.
  • You No Take Candle: He only speaks in fragmented sentences. He'll mock Anduin simply for using the fancy word "diplomacy" around him, though he'll be able to say "Time paradox "hurt Hogger brain." when Chromie's on his team.

    Ragnaros, The Firelord 

Voiced by: Matthew Mercer (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ragnaros.jpg

Ragnaros is the Elemental Lord of Fire - like a flame, his only desire is to watch everything burn. The Firelord and his brethren once held sway over the entire world. As a servant of the Old Gods, he fought against the titans for domination over the planet. The victorious titans banished him and his brethren to the Elemental Planes — there to remain imprisoned until the end of time. It was then and there that the elementals turned on each other. For five millennia a battle was fought at the core of the world, with Ragnaros biding his time in the Firelands.

Ragnaros returned to the surface when the Dark Iron clan, in a desperate attempt to fight back against the other dwarven clans, summoned him into Redridge. His emergence permanently scarred the land and created the volcano known as Blackrock Mountain. Ragnaros swiftly proceeded to enslave the Dark Iron clan, and remained inside the Molten Core of the volcano to gather his strength. Now, his full destructive potential is ready to be unleashed, and there has never been a realm more suited for it than the Nexus.

Ragnaros is a melee Bruiser, able to deal heavy damage with both abilities and attacks. He can use Empower Sulfuras to make his next Basic Attack strike instantly, deal increased damage in an area, and heal for a portion of the damage dealt; call down a Living Meteor which rolls in the target direction and damages enemies in its path; and place a Blast Wave on himself or an allied hero to increase their movement speed and cause an explosion around them when it ends. Ragnaros' Heroics are Sulfuras Smash, throwing his hammer to damage and slow enemies in an area and stun enemies hit by the very center, and Lava Wave, which travels from your core to the enemy's core along a targeted lane, heavily damaging any enemies it hits. Enemy minions are instantly killed by the wave, while the damage against heroes is doubled.

Ragnaros also possesses a unique trait, Molten Core, which transforms him into a temporary fort by taking over a fallen or allied structure and growing to massive size, empowering his abilities and granting a large amount of health but rendering him stationary for the duration. Empower Sulfuras becomes a Molten Swing that strikes and stuns enemies in a massive arc, Living Meteor is replaced by Meteor Shower, calling down multiple meteors in a line, slowing enemies, Blast Wave instead places an Explosive Rune on the ground that detonates after a delay, and the range of Sulfuras Smash is greatly increased. Ragnaros' health slowly drains while Molten Core is active, and the ability ends when his health runs out.

His current skins are Sulfuron Ragnaros and Lil' Ragnaros.


  • Adaptation Deviation: As his Heroic encounter in the Firelands would attest, Ragnaros does have legs he walks around on when he's not being a Pivotal Boss. However, as his Fog Feet appearance is by far the more iconic, he instead keeps it even while moving in Heroes.
  • Badass Adorable: Lil' Ragnaros is a child-like version of Ragnaros with a high-pitched voice, which makes his boisterous lines just sound cute.
    Lil' Ragnaros: YOU FOOL! WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT SUMMONING ME TOO SOON? I DESPISE BEING ADORABLE!
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: If you browse him in the shop for a while, he will remark 'CLICK TRY, INSECT!'.
  • Crippling Overspecialization: Lava Wave is an incredibly powerful tool because, for all intents and purposes, it removes one lane from the map: you don't have to send anyone to it, you just send the lava whenever it's off cooldown; and meanwhile you're still getting all the EXP from it and pushing it in. As compensation, Ragnaros is not able to accomplish much on his own; without his Q quest, he does negligible damage, and Molten Core has limited applications (the place you're trying to reach might be very far away from the nearest sittable building).
  • Death from Above: One of his abilities while in Molten Core lets him call down a meteor shower in a line. His second Heroic, Sulfuras Smash, has him dropping his hammer down from the sky.
  • Elemental Embodiment: Lore-wise, he's considered the most powerful fire elemental in Azeroth.
  • Fog Feet: His lower body is a solid mass of magma.
  • Heal It With Fire: Submerge has Ragnaros drop into a pool of Magma below his "feet" to become temporarily immune to all attacks. Being a fire elemental, this also heals him.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Both allied and enemy heroes will hear a voice line, when Ragnaros takes over a fort/keep or casts Lava Wave. The lines are different for allied and enemy Ragnaros; if you hear "BY FIRE BE PURGED!", that's your cue to push; if it's "DIE, INSECTS!", run.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: He has exactly two things he does that aren't some variety of area of effect damage ability. His regular auto-attacks and a level 20 talent.
  • Horned Humanoid: Thanks to Art Evolution.
  • Humongous-Headed Hammer: His signature weapon, Sulfuras, which is used for three of his abilities as well as his Basic Attacks. Said attack is both slow, and extremely powerful.
  • Large Ham: TASTE THE FLAMES OF SULFURON!!!
  • Life Drain: Empower Sulfuras heals him for a portion of the damage dealt.
  • Magic Knight: His basic attack damage is nothing to sneeze at and he's got the health pool of a warrior, but where Ragnaros really shines is in his abilities, which have the potential to be highly destructive in the right hands.
  • Magma Man: His attacks use lava and molten rocks more often than they use traditional fire. He even looks like a living volcanic eruption.
  • Make My Monster Grow: When he activates his Molten Core trait, Ragnaros becomes huge, and all of his skills are enhanced and their ranges are drastically increased.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class: His trait, Molten Core, allows him to take possession of a friendly fort (or a destroyed enemy fort) to temporarily become a high-powered stationary attack platform with massive bonuses to his health and damage. The trait also converts all of his basic abilities into more powerful attacks with enormous range, and his melee attack sweeps a semi-circle with almost the same radius as Sergeant Hammer's siege attack range.
  • Meteor-Summoning Attack: Living Meteor calls downs a single meteor while Meteor Shower drops three in a line.
  • Mighty Glacier: Ragnaros is a force to be reckoned with in close combat, with powerful attacks, a hefty health pool, and powerful spells. His mobility, on the other hand, is limited to Blast Wave's speed boost, which doesn't do a whole lot.
  • No Indoor Voice:
    Ragnaros: I'M NOT SHOUTING, THIS IS MY INDOOR VOICE!
  • One-Hit Polykill: Lava Wave does this to minion waves. All enemy minion waves on the lane.
  • Pivotal Boss: Invoked, with his Molten Core trait, which allows him to turn into one temporarily.
  • Playing with Fire: Him being a fire elemental, all of his abilities around purging enemies with fire. Fiery rocks, fiery magma waves, fiery explosions, fiery hammer...
  • Puny Earthlings: Ragnaros often refers to his opponents as "INSECTS!". On a more personal level, he looks down on dwarves (due to the Dark Irons once being his slaves), and sees anyone that uses fire (particularly Kael'Thas) as being little more than an extension of his will.
  • Run or Die: When he casts Lava Wave, it's better to get out of the lane he is targeting or else burn to death. Of course, the player can see it a mile coming, hears a warning from Ragnaros, and should not just run straight away from the wave...
  • Taking the Bullet: Ragnaros can use Molten Core to replace a fort temporarily. While mostly used to defend it directly with major waveclear, it can also simply be used to facetank incoming projectile objectives, such as Blackheart's Cannon barrages.
  • Units Not to Scale: Ragnaros is absolutely massive when compared to Varian in the Forged by Fire trailer, but in-game, he's not that much bigger than anyone else. He can, however, grow to such size using his trait, Molten Core.
  • You Shall Not Pass!: Trying to push a fort being defended by Ragnaros is an exercise in frustration with his massive wave-clearing power, especially if he has a Lava Wave ready. Additionally, any damage taken by Ragnaros in Molten Core form is not applied to the building he's taking over, effectively giving the fort a lot more HP that the enemy has to wear down.

    Rexxar, Champion of the Horde 

Voiced by: Steve Blum (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rexxar_hots.jpg

Rexxar is a descendant of the mok'nathal, the children of orcs and ogres. Rexxar and his wolf companion, Haratha, left their homeworld of Draenor to fight alongside the Old Horde during the First War. His father Leorokk was fiercely against this; when Rexxar went anyway, his father disowned him. However, Rexxar grew disenfranchised with the Horde due to their leaders' Chronic Backstabbing Disorder. After Haratha died defending him from a warlock, Rexxar declared he would only trust the beasts from then on, and traveled the world of Azeroth with his new animal companion, Misha.

This changed when Rexxar encountered a dying grunt with a message for Thrall. Coming to admire the Horde's new leader, Rexxar stayed in Orgrimmar and helped with its construction, later being caught in a violent conflict between the New Horde and Grand Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, ruler of Kul Tiras, who wanted to wipe them out. After Daelin's death, he turned down an offer from Thrall to return to Orgrimmar, instead wanting to remain in the wild among the beasts; Rexxar nevertheless promised that Thrall was now like a brother to him and if he ever had need of the mok'nathal's help, he had only to ask. He then left, seeking new adventure with Misha in tow, now bearing the epithet "Champion of the Horde".

Rexxar is a unique Bruiser who works in tandem with his bear companion Misha to control the battlefield. Rexxar himself is a ranged attacker, while Misha is a durable melee character. Misha is worth 25% of a hero kill, while Rexxar is worth the other 75%. If Misha dies, she will respawn after a cooldown, but Rexxar's death will kill them both. His trait, Misha, Focus!, can be activated to control Misha, sending her to guard a location, follow Rexxar, or chase an enemy. Rexxar's basic abilities include Spirit Swoop, sending his hawk to damage and slow enemies in a line; Misha, Charge!, which has Misha trample across an area to stun enemies in her path; and Mend Pet, healing Misha for a large amount of health over time.

His first Heroic ability is Bestial Wrath, which grants Misha a massive attack damage boost for a short time. His second choice, Unleash the Boars, sends boars forward to track down enemies in a large area, damaging and slowing them once they reach their targets.

His current skins are Beastmaster Rexxar, Frostlord Rexxar, and Raider Rexxar.


  • Achilles' Heel: Rexxar packs a demanding amount of area control due to having two bodies at once. However, Misha can be killed and forced to sit through a respawn timer which scales with level, just like that of regular heroes, and Rexxar won't last very long without her, so make a point to keep your beloved bear alive as best you can.
  • Barbarian Hero: His traditional depiction in Warcraft lore. Not to mention that he's even more of a Barbarian Hero than the Horde, favoring the wilderness to the civilization being built by Thrall.
  • Bears Are Bad News: Misha the Bear, who's the most central to his playstyle.
  • The Beastmaster: His abilities center around creative use of his Loyal Animal Companions.
  • Boring, but Practical: Using Misha as a tank while Rexxar supports her is one of the key aspects of their playstyle, which enables them to solo merc camps and certain map objectives such as Ka's sun-powered Beam Spamming temples from Sky Temple.
  • Combat Medic: Almost entirely combat, but he can use the Mend Pet skill to heal Misha.
  • Composite Character:
    • His presence here represents not only himself, but also the mok'nathal Beastmaster mercenary Hero Unit Blizzard added in a late patch of The Frozen Throne, and the animals he summons are all ones he could call on during his debut appearance in the bonus campaign "The Founding of Durotar". However, he only threw his axes to attack air units, which the generic Beastmaster couldn't do; here, meanwhile, he focuses on ranged combat (via axe-throwing) with Misha remaining a melee fighter. Basically he's a World of Warcraft Hunter with the Beast Mastery specialisation. This is supported by his use of the Mend Pet skill, which debuted in World of Warcraft.
    • Also with his abilities. His Boar-summoning ability has been combined with his former Ultimate ability Stampede, which involved Kodos in Warcraft III.
  • Context-Sensitive Button: Misha, Focus is the same button (by default, D), but has different effects depending on where it's clicked. D a specific location to have Misha go there; D her while she's standing there to have her hold position; D a specific enemy to have her attack it; D Rexxar to have Misha retreat to you. To aid in control, Misha gets a little glyph above her head which changes color depending on which command you have most recently given (purple for "hold position", red for "attack", yellow for "retreat").
  • Death is Cheap: Misha has her own respawn timer for if she dies. Additionally, killing Misha counts as one-fourth of a hero kill, akin to Murky and the Lost Vikings.
  • Decapitated Army: A two-man version. Rexxar will survive if Misha gets killed but if he dies, so does she.
  • Difficult, but Awesome:
    • Rexxar is quite squishy for a Warrior hero, and Misha is such an important aspect of his playstyle that his utility will be hampered if Misha dies. Also, if Rexxar dies, Misha goes down with him. Finally, the fact that Misha must be controlled independently of Rexxar throws a massive multitasking wrinkle into the duo's playstyle. However, Rexxar is packed with crowd control skills and a surprising amount of DPS, and if he and Misha are positioned correctly, they can be the difference between winning and losing in teamfights.
    • One of his level 4 talents is this to the extreme. Once selected, Rexxar and Misha have their max HP raised by 2 per second, without an upper limit, potentially giving him and Misha more than a thousand bonus HP. The catch? Killing Rexxar (but not Misha) resets this bonus back to 0.
  • Expy: Zig-zagged. Rexxar used to be the Beastmaster from Defense of the Ancients, replaced by Karroch in Dota 2 to avoid copyright issues. In this game, Rexxar plays nothing like Karroch... but his gameplay with Misha as his companion draws similarities with another Dota hero: Sylla the Lone Druid.
  • Full-Boar Action: In one of his heroics, Unleash the Boars, he summons a herd of boars to damage and slow down enemy heroes.
  • Noble Bird of Prey: His Spirit Swoop skill, which lets him summon his hawk, Spirit, to damage and slow down targets in a straight line.
  • Nonhuman Humanoid Hybrid: Half orc, half ogre.
  • No-Sell: His Feign Death Talent usually is your typical 'Stasis Invulnerability' skill like Ice Block, but Rexxar's deserves special mention because everyone else uses something magical in nature to protect themselves. Rexxar just plays dead, and he'll block off every attack or harmful ability, even if it's a massive laser beam from the sky.
  • Odd Friendship: Has befriended fellow wanderer Hanzo.
  • Playing Possum: The Feign Death Talent puts Rexxar into Stasis.
  • Puppet Fighter: He's basically two units in one: Rexxar himself and Misha. Playing as him thus requires the player to keep an eye on both of them. Unlike with the Lost Vikings, though, Misha isn't controlled directly. Instead, Rexxar has abilities that give commands to Misha. On the Hanamura map, Misha counts as a separate character to escort the payloads, meaning only Rexxar and one other character are needed to escort the payload at full speed, instead of three characters.
  • Some Dexterity Required: Playing Rexxar to best effect means constantly positioning and re-positioning both himself and Misha. She should always be two or three body-lengths ahead of Rexxar, soaking up damage and providing him just a bit of advance warning. This requires manual "micro"note , as there is no control that simply says "Have Misha stay this far ahead of Rexxar".

    Thrall, Warchief of the Horde 

Voiced by: Chris Metzen (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thrall_hots.jpg

Thrall is the son of Durotan, chieftain of the Frostwolf clan. However, not long after his birth, his parents were slaughtered by assassins sent by Gul'dan. The lone survivor of the attack, he was found by Aedelas Blackmoore, a human lord who planned to raise him to lead an army of orcs against the Alliance. Renamed "Thrall", he spent his days fighting in a gladiator ring for entertainment and learning the ways of war and strategy, though he was also taught how to read and write in the human tongue. Thrall would eventually escape his imprisonment and find what remained of his people. He learned the ways of the shaman from the far seer Drek'thar of the Frostwolves, and the ways of the warrior from Grom Hellscream of the Warsong clan. After impressing Warchief Orgrim Doomhammer, Thrall, Grom and Doomhammer began a journey to reunite the orc clans now living in internment camps scattered across Lordaeron. In one of their attacks, Doomhammer fell, but he bestowed Thrall with his hammer, his armor, and the title of Warchief in his final moments.

At the behest of the prophet Medivh, Thrall then led the orcish Horde to Kalimdor, where on his journey he befriended the Darkspear trolls and Bloodhoof tauren. After defeating the Burning Legion with the aid of Jaina Proudmoore and the night elves, Thrall and his people settled in a desert he called Durotar and founded the Horde's capital city of Orgrimmar.

Thrall is a Bruiser hero built as a damage-oriented brawler and represents both the Far Seer hero from Warcraft III and an Enhancement shaman from World of Warcraft. His trait, Frostwolf Resilience, restores a portion of his Hit Points every fifth time he hits an enemy with one of his abilities. His basic abilities include Chain Lightning, which damages a target enemy and then bounces to additional enemies nearby; Feral Spirit, a wolf that charges forward and roots enemy Heroes hit by it; and Windfury, a temporary boost in movement speed and attack speed.

His first heroic, Sundering, splits the earth in a straight line, dealing high damage while knocking away and stunning enemies hit. His Earthquake heroic creates a massive zone that deals light damage and applies a heavy slow to enemies that stand in it, pulsing three times before ending.

His current skins are World-shaman Thrall, Hellhammer Thrall, and Earthbreaker Thrall.


  • Badass Longcoat: His World-shaman skin has him in his shaman robes but over top of Doomhammer's armor, giving it this look.
  • Big "SHUT UP!": One of his lines for activating Sundering is him shouting "ENOUGH!". Considering the main use of the heroic is breaking apart and stunning clumped up enemies, it usually has this effect.
  • Chain Lightning: One of his basic skills.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: Sundering is a fairly simple skill if you just use it to stun and nuke things, but landing it properly to split a healer or assassin off from their frontline is easier said than done.
  • Elemental Embodiment: His Earthbreaker skin shows him in a popular What If? scenario, where he became the new Earth-Warder after defeating Deathwing. Like Deathwing, his powers have torn his body apart and left him made of molten rock.
  • Elemental Powers: Fire, wind and lightning for his basic abilities; earth for both of his heroics.
  • Evil Counterpart: If artwork is to be believed, his Hellhammer skin. The image for the Battlefield of Eternity shows him on the side of the Burning Hells.
  • Glass Cannon: As he was originally designed as a melee assassin, Thrall has one of the lowest health pools of all bruiser heroes, with a greater focus on burst damage.
  • Glory Days: In his Stop Poking Me! quotes, he says he misses the days of Real-Time Strategy and recalls the 'joke thing' segment, but he clearly did not miss the poking.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Normally he's a Mighty Glacier (see below), but if he activates Windfury, he gains movement and attack speed for a short while. Combined with his huge base damage, this is his primary, and most dangerous source of burst damage. He also has a difficult-but-powerful talent that grants him a permanent 15% speed boost after finishing a quest.
  • Magic Knight: One of the straightest examples around. He's a melee bruiser who can use spells to augment his attacks, and also packs offensive magic to back them up.
  • Magikarp Power: Thrall has Questing talents available at every tier except 13, including some for which all progress can be lost under certain circumstances (particularly, "Thrall dies"). Most notably, he has a Lv.16 Quest, "Thunderstorm," that adds a Slow on his Chain Lighting but is reset if 1. You hit the same enemy Hero with the initial cast twice in a row, 2. Thrall dies, and 3. One of those things is inevitable because there is no completion criteria for the Quest.
  • Mighty Glacier: Thrall lacks any fast gap closers aside from running straight at the enemy with Windfury, but his attacks and abilities deal extreme damage once he gets in range. He hits incredibly slowly (0.91 atk per second), but every single blow hits hard. Late game, he can easily hit for 400+ damage per hit, without any other talents or buffs.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: As he's still the Warchief of the Horde, he still counts, as he maintains the personality of 'avoid unnecessary conflict, but if it's unavoidable, give them hell' and expresses his dedication to the faction with quotes like "For the Horde!".
  • Self-Deprecation: Pokes fun at the entire concept of the game, and especially that they paid someone to write lore for it, declaring it to be "precisely what fanfiction is for". He's voiced by Chris Metzen, who was basically in charge of all story developments at Blizzard.
    • He has an interaction with Falstad, who seems to be recounting the infamous occasion at BlizzCon 2010. Thrall is exasperated and says he wishes he'd stop telling this story.
  • Ship Tease: Toward Jaina. As shown in the trailer for Anub'arak's Lovebug skin, Thrall is on the game's version of Tinder and states in his profile that he likes "gorgeous golden-tressed wizardesses".
  • Shock and Awe: He retains his semi-signature Chain Lightning spell.
  • Three-Strike Combo: Windfury consists of this, first a sideways strike, then a jumping uppercut, and finally slamming down from midair. The Tempest Fury talent in particular adds in the "last strike does more damage" bit.
  • Thunder Hammer: Downplayed. The Doomhammer is traditionally associated with lightning, but it can channel any element, which Thrall makes full use of. It is what Chain Lightning is cast out of, however.

    Varian, High King of the Alliance 

Voiced by: Chris Metzen (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/varian.jpg

Son of the Alliance's first king Llane Wrynn, Varian witnessed his father's murder by the half-orc Garona Halforcen, instilling his dislike towards the Horde. He then grew up to be a respectable man, with good signs that he would become a good king of Stormwind one day. Unfortunately due to the plot by the black dragon Onyxia, Varian ended up being split in two, his diplomatic but more passive side residing in Stormwind, while his warrior spirit stranded to Kalimdor, amnesiac and picked up as a gladiator by Rehgar Earthfury. Befriending two other gladiators, Valeera Sanguinar and Broll Bearmantle, Varian would make a name of himself in the ring as "Lo'Gosh", but he soon broke away from his gladiator life. Accompanied by his two friends, he reclaimed his true identity and kingdom, slaying Onyxia.

Returning as the King of Stormwind and becoming the High King of the Alliance, Varian led the Alliance in many battles against the Lich King, Deathwing, Garrosh Hellscream, the Iron Horde and finally the Burning Legion. While at first his hatred for the Horde made him hotheaded, he managed to temper his ferocity and develop his diplomatic side thanks to the influence of his son Anduin. He ultimately died a hero, sacrificing himself during the assault of the Burning Legion on the Broken Shore to buy enough time for the Alliance to regroup.

Before he chooses his Heroic, Varian is a fairly generic Bruiser with straightforward abilities. His trait, Heroic Strike, periodically grants him bonus damage on his next basic attack, with further attacks reducing its cooldown. Lion's Fang deals damage and slows enemies in a line while also healing Varian. Parry makes him block incoming basic attacks and has two charges. Charge allows him to rush a short distance to an enemy, dealing damage and briefly slowing them.

His Heroic abilities are a different story. Varian has three of them, reflecting the three specializations of the Warrior class from World of Warcraft. All three Heroics alter his base statistics, redefining his playstyle and determining whether he acts as a Tank, Bruiser, or Assassin. Furthermore, Varian's Heroics are chosen at level 4 instead of 10, giving him a massive early power spike and allowing him to quickly adapt to the game.

  • Taunt increases Varian's maximum health. Activating it silences a enemy hero and forces them to attack Varian. This makes Varian a Tank who dominates the battlefield with crowd control.
  • Colossus Smash increases Varian's attack damage but decreases his maximum health. Activating it allows Varian to jump in with a crushing blow that reduces an enemy's Armor. This turns Varian into a hard-engaging, if somewhat squishy, burst Assassin who excels at putting pressure on his target.
  • Twin Blades of Fury is a fully-passive ability which increases Varian's attack speed at the cost of his basic attack damage, causes his basic attacks to greatly reduce the cooldown of Heroic Strike, and grants Varian a speed boost on hit. With this Heroic, Varian remains a Bruiser but becomes a Critical Hit Class with a lot of mobility, allowing him to catch and slaughter his enemies.


His current skins are Lionheart Varian, Lo'gosh Varian, Commandant Varian, Grand Marshal Varian, and Stormwind Footman Varian.


  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Well, Shield-Piercing Attack. Shattering Throw causes so much extra damage against shields that few shields can hope to withstand it, probably just Johanna's Indestructible talent (which gives as much shields as her entire health pool).
  • Adaptive Ability: Varian's dual-role nature makes him extremely able to specialise against the enemy team.
  • Attack! Attack! Attack!: Varian is entirely offense-oriented. No matter what Heroic he picks, he excels at one job: picking a foe out of the pack and killing them, either via massive damage output (both Fury and Smash put him in the top 20% of auto-attack DPS) or locking them in place with Taunt. And what he can't do, no matter what Heroic he picks, is defend his own team: he has some of the weakest crowd control in the game, period. If you need a someone to lead an attack, you could do much worse than the High King of the Alliance. If you need someone to lead a defense of your team, almost anyone else would be better.
    • According to in-game quotes from Valeera, Varian thinks that standing back and watching him kill everything is a strategy.
  • Badass Boast: "Come, and see why they call me Lo'gosh!", "You are standing between the king of Storwind and his objective, a very unwise decision." or "I never lost a battle in the arena, and I don't intend to start now."
  • Barbarian Hero: Lo'gosh. He even has the classic Conan Headband.
  • Barbarian Longhair: A holdover from his days as Lo'gosh.
  • Bash Brothers:
    • With Rehgar, the orc he's the friendliest toward. Not what you'd usually expect toward one's ex-slave master, but the Happiness in Slavery there has a good reason.
    • He's also this to Greymane, Jaina and Valeera, the former two being prominent members of the Alliance and Valeera being a friend of his back in his days as an amnesiac gladiator.
  • The Berserker: With Twin Blades of Fury, Varian is designed to relentlessly and aggressively attack the enemy until one of them is dead.
  • Bifurcated Weapon: In an unorthodox example, his sword, Shalamayne, splits down the middle to form two smaller swords, Shalla'tor the Shadow Render and Ellemayne the Reaver.
  • Blood Knight: Varian enjoys a good fight, a holdover from his gladiator days.
  • Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Evidently, Varian hasn't completely acclimatized to how things work in the Nexus compared to how they work on Azeroth...
    Varian: (out of mana) Not enough rage! ...Uh, mana.
  • Canon Welding: While most of the heroes are merely 'picked up from different timelines', Varian's entrance is treated like the Nexus is basically his Warrior Heaven after his death at the Broken Shore.
  • Close-Range Combatant: As expected of a man holding one of the most famous BFSs to ever grace the realm of Azeroth, Varian does almost all of his fighting in close quarters. This is also his downfall against more experienced opponents. He can't really do a thing if his target is far away and well-protected (Lion's Fang is a useful ranged ability, but the slow and healing components of it are as vital as its damage - if these aren't helping him or his team, relying on Lion's Fang is probably just going to be a slow defeat for Varian), which is especially prominent with the Arms and Fury builds.
  • Composite Character: His heroic selection is meant to symbolize that Varian combines the three Warrior builds in World of Warcraft: Protection (Taunt), Arms (Colossus Smash) and Fury (Twin Blades of Fury).
  • Confusion Fu:
    • When you see an opponent playing Varian, you can't tell, just from the fact he's going to be played, whether he's intending to go Warrior or Assassin. You can make some guesses based on his Lv.1 Talents and what the other four people on his team draft, but not always — and in Quick Match, where there is no Drafting, you have no idea at all. This was exacerbated by the fact that, before the 2.0 Character Classes, Varian was explicitly marked as a "Multi-Class," the first ever in the game.
    • Exaggerated Trope: The fact that Confusion Fu is literally built into Varian's design has caused no end of headaches for the Quick Match matchmaker algorithm, since it too has no idea whether Varian is going Warrior or Assassin. If it assumes he's going to tank, he might go Twin Blades and leave his allies tankless; if it assumes he's going to go for DPS, he might choose Taunt and leave his allies in the lurch damage-wise. This was such a problem that Blizzard ultimately Took A Third Option and abandoned the entire "Multi-Class" concept, pinning Varian down as a Bruiser.
  • Cool Sword: Shalamayne, which he can wield in one-handed, two-handed, or even split it into its component blades.
  • Counter-Attack: At level 1, Varian can pick up a talent that resets Heroic Strike and makes it more powerful every time he parries an attack successfully.
  • Critical Hit Class: His Heroic Strike trait allows him to deal bonus damage via his next basic attack. The trait's cooldown is reduced with every basic attack, and he typically procs it every six attacks or so. Twin Blades of Fury increases the cooldown reduction to the point where it happens every third attack. (It also introduces a new attack animation with a Three-Strike Combo, slicing with first one sword in one hand, then with the other, and finally with both on the crit.)
  • Crutch Character: After Varian was rebalanced with his ultimate being chosen at level 4, his power curve is more toward this. His base stats are lower than before, and his ultimates don't match up to the strength of other characters' at level 10, but he's probably got his ultimate numerous levels before anyone else has.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: Varian has three distinct modes: Wielding a BFS, split said BFS into twin swords, or picking up a shield to fight with alongside his sword. The one he uses depends on his choice of Heroic, and all have very different playstyles.
    • This versatility makes Varian useful at all levels of play. Once you start getting on coordinated teams, Taunt is great for shotcalling: the receiving player loses control of their character for 1.25 seconds, and that's more than enough time for your team to pile on some damage and eliminate them. Of course, this level of coordination is not guaranteed at lower levels... but that just means you can break out Twin Blades of Fury, a quintessential pubstomp talent. Twin Blades Varian is sticky and has a lot of self-sustain, and individual characters typically can't stop him from messing up their day. Coordinated characters can... but at that point you switch back to going Taunt.
  • Draw Aggro: Taunt. Enforced, of course: you can't really Draw Aggro a human player because they'll just ignore you; therefore, the target/victim is forced to attack Varian, and not allowed to use abilities on themselves for the duration.
  • Foe-Tossing Charge: That's what his Charge skill boils down to. Varian simply dashes towards his target while ignoring everything else, slowing down the target on impact. He can even upgrade this with the Warbringer talent, which drastically reduces the mana cost and cooldown, allowing him to constantly charge at enemies. His Colossus Smash heroic is basically a bigger version.
  • Four-Star Badass: Varian has the strongest team-buffing abilities of any Hero, with his banners easily capable of flipping a teamfight by their lonesome, especially if upgraded with Glory to the Alliance. His entire Lv.16 Talent tier is devoted to these banners. He can also combo it with his Demoralizing Shout to further tip the scales in his team's favor.
  • Fragile Speedster: Twin Blades of Fury allows Varian to split Shalamayne into its basic components. This increases his attack speed tremendously at the cost of base damage, and also gives him bonus movement speed on every attack along with many more Heroic Strikes. This lets Varian deal heavy sustained damage and chase down fleeing enemies more easily, but doesn't do any favors for his burst damage or survivability. The latter can be remedied somewhat by taking the Second Wind Talent and by utilizing Varian's Banner of Ironforge and Glory to the Alliance Talents, which provide him with healing and armor.
  • Frontline General: As a classic World of Warcraft warrior, he leads his team into battle, especially if the player decides to make him a tank.
  • Gladiator Games: His Lo'Gosh skin represents Varian's time as a gladiator slave in Rehgar's ownership.
  • Glass Cannon: Colossus Smash makes Varian wield Shalamayne in two hands. It passively increases attack damage but decreases max HP, and allows Varian to deal a crushing blow that also reduces the target's armor, giving him high burst damage potential but weakening his staying power.
  • Hell Is That Noise: Unlike most heroes who spout an awesome or witty one-liner while performing their ultimate abilities, Varian lets loose a bloodcurdling howl when using Colossus Smash. Players learn to hate (or love) it very quickly, as a screaming Varian leaping at a wounded or squishy hero will usually kill them within the next second or two.
  • Jack of All Stats: At the early game, Varian's stat distributions are rather average for a Bruiser, but upon picking his Heroics, Varian fundamentally change his playstyle. Even then, he can use different talent combinations to give himself a balance of durability and damage.
  • The Juggernaut: Taunt Varian boasts one of the highest base health pools of any Warrior, and can be supplemented with an on-demand ability to No-Sell all damage he takes, making him one of, if the the most durable tanks in the game.
  • Lantern Jaw of Justice: It just wouldn't be Varian without a chin that puts every other chin in the Nexus to shame.
  • Life Drain: Lion's Fang has a small lifesteal attached to it, which can be improved by a talent. His Second Wind talent also gives his basic attacks a lifesteal effect. It's especially nasty when combined with Twin Blades of Fury, although because it scales with both damage output and maximum health, his other builds can get mileage out of it too.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Varian's kit gives him a respectable amount of damage and mobility, though his survivability takes a hit when he takes Colossus Smash. Twin Blades of Fury gives him a particularly high amount of DPS while also constantly improving his movement speed every time he hits something with his basic attacks.
  • Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Played with. He at his tankiest after taking Taunt as his Heroic Ability, granting him a huge bonus to his maximum HP, but he doesn't actually block with his shield most of the time, doing most of the parrying with Shalamayne. Played straight if you decided to take the Shield Wall Talent, which allows him to nullify any and all incoming damage (and shows him using both his sword and shield to block).
  • Magikarp Power: Historically, Varian probably had the worst case of this in all of Heroes of the Storm. When his Heroics were at Lv.10, he had to play extremely conservatively until then because he simply couldn't survive much in the way of aggressive play. Additionally, his most powerful Talents were Lv.4 and Lv.7, making for huge jumps in power. Once he got that Heroic, a switch flipped and the entire team could play differently to accommodate his new potential. This was lessened considerably by his rework, which swapped his Lv.10 Heroics and Lv.4 Talents, smoothing his power curve significantly, but he's still basically not a "real" character until he hits Lv.4.
  • Make Me Wanna Shout: At Level 20, Varian can learn the Demoralizing Shout talent, which upon activation will reduce the damage inflicted by nearby enemy heroes by 25% for a few seconds.
  • Meaningful Name: Also a Stealth Pun. His choice of Heroics gives several, distinct Variants in playstyle.
  • Mechanically Unusual Class:
    • Currently the only hero in the game to choose between three Heroics.
    • While we've had heroics with a passive component before (most notably on Malfurion and Brightwing), Varian's choice of heroic drastically changes his stats via passive components.
    • The only hero in the game to choose his Heroics at Lv.4. Everyone else chooses at Lv.10. (Tracer and Deathwing also have theirs from the start, but don't choose it.)
  • Mythology Gag: His heroics are patterned on the three Warrior specs from World of Warcraft and picking one basically turns him into a Warrior of that spec. He even used to unlock them at level 10, the same level that a Warrior in World of Warcraft gets to choose a specialization.
    • Try to cast an ability that Varian lacks the mana for, and he might get confused and tell you "Not enough rage" before correcting himself, "Not enough rage" being the vocal response Warriors of World of Warcraft would give if trying to cast abilities while lacking the required rage resource count for them.
  • No-Sell: Normally, Parry only reduces basic attack damage to 1% for 1 second, but with the Shield Wall talent, his Parry skill will completely block not only basic attacks, but also spells. Notably, Parry has two charges and its duration is the exact same as that of Taunt, effectively allowing Varian to force the enemy to attack him and then completely shrug off their attacks. (Shield Wall was later nerfed to remove one of those two charges, though it also lowers the Parry cooldown to "once every five seconds" instead of "up to twice in 20 seconds".)
  • Obvious Rule Patch: Heroic Strike formerly provided a direct increase to Varian's attack damage, except it made Varians with Twin Blades of Fury and Second Wind ridiculously hard to kill. It was changed to deal spell damage to limit the Life Drain of a Varian with that particular build.
  • One-Handed Zweihänder: Varian uses Shalamayne in one hand until level 4, at which point he can opt to split it into its component blades, wield it properly in two hands, or pick up a shield alongside it and keep using Shalamayne singlehandedly. Also, his damage output while playing this trope straight is at its lowest.
  • Parrying Bullets: Varian can parry any basic attack, including Tychus' minigun, Tracer's pulse guns, Hammer's 180mm artillery cannon, and Zarya's particle cannon. Upgrade it with the Shield Wall talent, and he can even parry spells. This isn't Intangible Man abilities like Xul or Illidan, this is straight-up Badass Normal skill. (Parodied inevitably by HeroStorm.)
  • Pun: One of his silly lines is actually him coming up with a new joke based on a pun. Considering how he wants to share it with Anduin, it's a textbook "dad joke".
    Varian: Oh, I just thought of the perfect joke to tell Anduin! "What do you call a Gnoll who won't share his forest? A Hogger!"Explanation  [laughs] Oh, he's gonna love it!
  • Screaming Warrior: Varian's quote for using Colossus Smash is an absolutely terrifying scream of fury. And then there's Demoralizing Shout.
  • Shoulders of Doom: Imported directly from World of Warcraft, of course, but his shoulderpads are still ridiculously ornate and big. They get even bigger for his Lionheart skin.
  • Skill Gate Character: When played as an Assassin, Varian packs either enough burst to blow up enemies nigh-instantly or enough sustain to make himself unkillable in 1v1 situations depending on whether he goes Colossus Smash or Twin Blades of Fury, letting him rip through uncoordinated Quick Match teams one member at a time. However, his predictable playstyle makes him very easy to play around and punish, especially with his extreme vulnerability to kiting and crowd control. When played as a Tank, Varian gains some utility with his access to point-and-click crowd control on a short cooldown and a surprising amount of burst damage potential for picking off his Taunt target (making Taunt the only Heroic you will see Varian take at even moderately high levels of play), but he still suffers from being linear and predictable compared to most Tanks and having limited teamfight presence.
  • So Proud of You: Varian has nothing but pride for his son Anduin when the two fight side by side.
  • Stone Wall: Taunt Varian. Other warriors may have more CC. They may have better mobility or higher damage. But none bar none can survive throwing themselves into the situations Taunt Varian could with his massive health pool and on-demand ability to No-Sell all damage.
  • Sword Beam: His Lion's Fang ability, which sends out a shockwave from his sword, dealing damage and slowing enemies caught in the shockwave.
  • Theme Music Power-Up: At level 16, Varian chooses between one of three banners, Stormwind, Ironforge, and Dalaran, each with a unique effect. Regardless of which he picks, placing it down causes the respective theme from World of Warcraft to play and override the normal BGM.
  • Three-Strike Combo: as mentioned, he gets this if he takes Twin Blades of Fury.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The Shattering Throw talent gives Varian the ability to throw a sword which does a ridiculous amount of damage to enemy shields.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: Varian's ultimates. Sure, Shalamayne isn't normally able to just split into two swords at will, but the ultimate requirement still otherwise means he's going to have wait some levels to just also pick up a shield, or hold his sword in two hands at once.

    Yrel, Light of Hope 

Voiced by: Erin Fitzgerald (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yrel.jpg

Raised as an acolyte in the Karabor Temple on an alternate Draenor, Yrel was taken hostage by the orcs after a mysterious stranger arrived and created the Iron Horde. Through a chance meeting with heroes from another reality, Yrel rose to become a paladin warrior, and a righteous leader of her people. Now, she returns the favour in the Nexus.

Yrel is a unique Bruiser with an entire set of basic abilities that can be charged to increase their power, but reduce her movement speed while she channels. Her abilities are Vindication, healing Yrel and damaging nearby enemies, with the healing and damage increased by the channel time; Righteous Hammer, knocking back enemies in a large arc, with the knockback and damage increased by charge time and a fully charged hammer also stunning; and Avenging Wrath, a heroic leap that slows and damages enemies she lands on and grows in range as she channels. Her activated trait is Divine Purpose, enhancing her next basic ability to cost no mana and be cast at full power with no charge time.

Her Heroics are Ardent Defender, temporarily shielding her from damage and converting damage taken into healing; and Sacred Ground, creating a blessed field that grants Yrel a huge armor bonus and lasts until she leaves it.

Her current skins are Mad Jester Yrel and Mecha Yrel.


  • Action Girl: Yrel wields plated armor, a gigantic hammer and can perform the role of a Frontline General in battle.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: Righteous Hammer can be upgraded to reduce the Armor of the enemy heroes she hits.
  • Barrier Warrior: Ardent Defender surrounds Yrel in a barrier that absorbs any damage she receives.
  • Bash Brothers: As a fellow paladin, she is especially thrilled to fight side by side with other followers or even beings of the Light, like Uther, Johanna, Tyrael and Auriel. She also is glad to fight with Alliance members and heroic orcs like Thrall.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Yrel is a genuinely Nice Girl and shows no grudge towards Horde members, after fighting together against the Burning Legion at the end of Warlords of Draenor. However, she absolutely shows no mercy towards demons, the Legion or any of its agents and does not hide her contempt for them.
  • Charged Attack: Type two. All of her basic abilities do this, and her Divine Purpose trait allows her to bypass it for one cast. This makes whatever she's trying to do very telegraphed, meaning she has to be clever with her positioning and trait usage to properly duel enemy heroes.
  • Combat Medic: Yrel is advertised as a Retribution paladin by the developers, but her role actually bears more a resemblance to Uther, who is a very tanky support. One particular talent build of hers has extremely high healing output, putting her firmly in this category.
  • Combos: Yrel has a lot of different options due to the fact that Divine Purpose can alter things, but her most basic combat utility is to take the "Holy Avenger" talent at Lv.7, charge Avenging Wrath and jump on an enemy (triggering the Talent and reducing Wrath[='s] cooldown to 1 second), Divine Purpose her Righteous Hammer, and then follow with an un-charged Avenging Wrath: charging it increases its range, but not its damage or Slow. With these abilities in quick succession, you can push an enemy far out of position and do quite a bit of damage to them.
  • Cute Monster Girl: Draenei are humanoids with hooves, horns, a tail and blue skin. Yrel still looks remarkably attractive.
  • Difficult, but Awesome: In general, Bruisers in Heroes of the Storm get to choose between: strong wave-clear, allowing for double-soak and getting camps; strong dueling skills, allowing them to bully out enemy laners; being easy to play: Pick two. Even worse, Yrel can multi-class into Main Tank, setting up kills with her In a Single Bound dive and Knockback hammer or defending her team with the hammer, and all of her Lv.4 Talents give her some mild Support abilities. To compensate, she's one of the most mechanically complicated characters in the game: her "skill floor" (the minimum amount of competence necessary to play her) is one of the highest, and every Talent has a pretty big impact on what she does. Play her poorly and she's just a punching bag for the enemy team. Play her well, and they become your punching bags instead.
  • Energy Absorption: Ardent Defender allows Yrel to No-Sell any incoming damage. She heals for half the damage she absorbs. Some casters and players mis-name it "Absorbent Defender."
  • Foil:
    • She is basically a counterpart to Uther. Both can, as paladins, be their team's Combat Medics, but while Uther's role is mostly focused on acting as a White Mage with several Stone Wall abilities, Yrel is a Stone Wall with a few White Mage abilities.
    • On a similar note, she shares a similar role with Tyrael as a supporting warrior.
  • Friendly Rivalry: Johanna attempts to mock any paladins, but Yrel is such a Nice Girl that she really isn't interested in any conflict or competition between followers of the Light. She doesn't mind a bit of fun between friends though.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Mad Jester Yrel sports these in place of her horns, going with the Harley Quinn Expy look.
  • Glacier Waif: A heavy frontline bruiser in plate armor who wields a massive hammer... with the physiology of a twig. Yrel's movement speed slows down when she charges her attacks, but several talents at level 7 attempt to mitigate this by granting her additional movement speed or allowing her to instantly mount up. She also has the 4th-slowest auto-attack speed in the game shared with Leoric, but the fifth highest damage per hit.
  • Herd-Hitting Attack: All three of her basic abilities do this, contributing to her monster waveclear. Vindication has a large radius and applies a small amount of Heal Thyself; Righteous Hammer hits everyone in a semicircle around her; and Avenging Wrath has the smallest radius but comes with a super jump and the largest amount of damage — and unlike her other abilities, its damage is flat so you don't have to charge it all the way.
  • Hidden Buxom: Her base skins come complete with a breastplate, but her Mad Jester skins show she's pretty stacked underneath.
  • Holy Ground: Sacred Ground creates a field that grants Yrel armor.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: Wields the power of the Light to smash her foes. She also can heal and support her allies, depending on her talent choices.
  • Horned Humanoid: As with all female draenei, as part of their subversive demonic look.
  • Humongous-Headed Hammer: She wields a crystalline two-handed hammer. It's the Hammer of the Naaru, which she inherited after her mentor Maraad fell in battle.
  • In a Single Bound: Avenging Wrath allows Yrel to leap to a location. If fully-charged, it has quite a significant range and comes with both a lot of damage and a hefty slow.
  • Jeanne d'Archétype: This was her character in World of Warcraft, and it's implied here by Divine Purpose.
  • Light 'em Up: Yrel unleashes the power of the Light for her abilities.
  • Light Is Good: A firm believer in the Light. That said, she is a valiant defender of her people and is not a pushover.
  • Magic Knight: Her kit has a large emphasis on magical abilities, with channel times making up a lot of her gameplay.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: She reveres beings of the Light like Tyrael and Auriel. Killing one of them will cause this reaction.
    Yrel: Killing a being of Light. What have I done...?
  • Mythology Gag:
    • She pities anyone who hasn't seen the beautiful island of Farahlon (but promises to take a selfie the next time she visits). Farahlon was a zone that was planned to be playable in the Warlords of Draenor expansion, but was ultimately scrapped.
    • Draenei have a jewelcrafting bonus in World of Warcraft. Yrel bemoans that this doesn't work on gems and shards (the other currencies besides gold in Heroes).
    • Yrel's biography states that she carries a "dark secret" within her, but players never learn in Warlords of Draenor what this secret is. A Stop Poking Me! line of hers reveals it. Or not.
      Yrel: You want to know what my dark secret is? I See Dead People. (Beat) Kidding! About that being my secret, that is; we draenei see dead people all the time.
  • No-Sell:
    • Her heroic, Ardent Defender, absorbs any damage Yrel receives. Worse for her enemies, she actually heals herself partially from the damage she absorbs. At level 20, she and her allies can fully heal from the damage she receives while Ardent Defender is up.
    • At level 20, Yrel can choose a talent that grants her the Unstoppable status, rendering her immune to any crowd-control effects for a short time.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • With Protoss like Artanis, as both protoss and draenei are blue-skinned Space Elves. (Appropriately, Artanis eventually got a draenei-flavored skin. Yrel never got a Protoss one, unfortunately.)
    • Surprisingly, she has a positive interaction with Imperius, due to being a non-human who serves the Light.
  • Out of Focus: Lampshaded in one of her Stop Poking Me! lines. Considering she was one of the more known living draenei paladins, it's curious how she didn't play any role in Legion for the paladin class order or the Army of Light that eventually invaded her people's home planet, Argus, and defeated the Burning Legion. She's not upset about it at all.
  • The Paladin: Yrel represents a Retribution paladin from World of Warcraft. However, she doesn't actually seem to hit the Nostalgia Level of a typical Retribution paladin, as she is described as a tank, which would fit a Protection paladin more. Yrel even lampshades this.
    Yrel: Am I dedicated to the protection of my allies? Or do I bring retribution to our enemies? Honestly, I'm not into labels.
  • Percent-Based Values: Yrel's Lv.16 W talent gives her 7% damage to victims of Righteous Hammer, in addition to a 20% Damage-Increasing Debuff.
  • Power Gives You Wings: A fully charged Avenging Wrath causes her to sprout a set of angelic wings.
  • Pungeon Master: She probably thinks they were all very clever, too.
    Yrel: Learning how to wield Holy Power effectively can be tricky. It requires a... light touch. (Beat) Eh? Ehhh?
    Yrel: I hate it when people make fun of my hooves, or my tail, or my horns. It really gets my goat. Explanation 
    Yrel: Oh great, now I'm running late. If I want to rejoin the fight, I really have to hoof it.
  • Screaming Warrior: Quite vocal when attacking, similar to Garrosh.
  • So Long, Suckers!: One of Yrel's talents grants her the infamous Bubble Hearth, giving her an uninterruptible teleport back home. What really puts it in this territory, however, is the cheeky wave she gives while teleporting away.
  • Sprint Shoes: One Lv.7 W talent gives her a flat 5% movespeed bonus, and an additional 15% when she is charging Righteous Hammer. Keep in mind that Mounted heroes only get a 25% speed boost, so this Talent can let Yrel catch up to almost anyone.
  • Stone Wall: Despite being called a Retribution paladin by the developers, Yrel is also advertised as a tank. Yrel is extremely tough and has access to healing and defensive buffs both for herself and her allies.
  • Super-Toughness: Yrel is advertised as a tank, and this is shown in her kit, causing her enemies to ask why she doesn't die if she isn't interrupted. She is not only extremely tanky, she can absorb large amounts of damage with either of her heroics and possesses a lot of self-sustain. Even if she is forced to retreat, she can instantly get away with Avenging Wrath or talents like Divine Steed and Bubble Hearth.
  • Tactical Withdrawal:
    • Divine Steed allows Yrel to instantly mount up and increase her movement speed by 80% (instead of 30%) for a moment. While if she uses this offensively, she would quickly get dismounted again; used defensively she can quickly run away once she has put some distance behind her.
    • Bubble Hearth is basically this. If Yrel can get the cast time off, she can safely make it back to base and avoid staying dead for over a minute.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: She buried the hatchet with any Horde members, but Yrel really can't stand working together with any kind of demon or people who associate themselves with demons like Gul'dan.
  • Token Wholesome: After Maiev, Yrel is the second female character from World of Warcraft brought to the Nexus with virtually no Fanservice in her default costume due to wearing heavy armor that only shows a bit of Breast Plate. Her "Mad Jester" skin, on the other hand...
  • Undying Loyalty: She is very eager to repay the debt that she and her people owe to the Alliance and happily engages in friendly conversations with any Alliance member.

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