Emerald Hero Spotlight

Another Blacksmith Censored hero, i tried to play the video slower until it moved frame by frame, and I think there's a purple effect like Defiler's Silence, so maybe this new hero still in placeholder.Maybe that's MasterOfArms, remembering Ra, Parasite and now Warden, i speculated all of those 3 and its all correct.The next new hero should be Ranged with Blue Colored Attack Animation.

By the way this is Warden Skill Description :

Massive Alt Avatar Sale! (Ending 6/30/2011)

Merrick, the goblin shopkeeper, is feeling generous since the shop has been relocked and has placed Adventure Gladiator, Grim Reaper, Pimp Slayer, and Pollywog Chieftain on a 50% sale for both gold and silver prices! In addition, all premium alt avatars now temporarily have a 2,000 silver cost, so if you've been saving those free coins, you can now purchase one of these hard-to-get avatars without spending a dime! The sale starts now, and ends at 11:59 PM EDT(-4 GMT) tomorrow, June 30th!

Thanks to everyone for their dedicated support over the past few weeks, and I hope to see you in-game !

[S2]MsPudding

S2 Staff Member

Next Upcoming Hero Teaser?

 

original img if its not moving, its a .GIF file : http://i.imgur.com/xsleo.gif

S2Nome mention tweet to S2Warchamp7 and said who is this, I think its the next hero after Warden(MasterOfArms?) with placeholder model.

PCGamer : Exclusive Look at Emerald Warden

The Emerald Warden has got to be one of the most WTF heroes I’ve ever seen…and I love him for it. This centaur-bodied, ram-headed caster/summoner hybrid is coming to Heroes of Newerth this Friday, but we know you want to get a look at his abilities now. Check out what this mysterious hero has to offer to crafty players, and why your enemies’ balls may soon be in grave danger. Yes, we said it: balls.


Now, when you think of a hero described as being a summoner, you might call Tremble to mind. On the contrary: the Emerald Warden summons beasts to aid him, but you can’t directly control these animal spirits to do your bidding. The Emerald Warden plays like the perfect intelligence hero pest, constantly interrupting the opposing team’s plans while staying well out of harm’s way. With his auto-attack that can hit from beyond 600 range (more than Flint Beastwood’s default range), you’ll be harassing heroes like no other while you sit back and try to comprehend how the Warden got to looking so awesome. His abilities only compound his pestering potential; let’s give them a look, shall we? Here’s the description of the Emerald Warden’s spell toolkit, straight from S2.

Skills description :

Possible Leaked 2.0.38 Changelog by Problem_S2

General Changes:

• Compendium reworked into Herodex
• When you join a game, Chat wont steal your focus as much anymore
• Pause interface tweaked a bit
• Vast and unending interface memory reductions
• Fixed the quickslot items
• Fixed account switching not clearing clan / buddy list
• Added Baby Taunt
• New Hero: Emerald Warden
• Blacksmith Alt Avatar
• Emerald Warden Alt Avatar

S2Idejder's Drunken Master Dev Blog : Episode 2

Hey guys, it's been a while and we want to apologize for the delay on this. I have wanted to write this for a while but never had the time to sit down and do it. Today I closed my office door and told everyone to go away until it was finished, so here it is! Part 2: Scripting the hero.

This is the second step to any hero that we design internally and usually involves me since I know the ins and outs of the scripting system better than anyone else. We have to get a version of the hero working that matches the design so we can do internal 1v1/2v2 games to make sure nothing obvious breaks. We tweak it a bit and then push it to test client, but that is for the next blog.

This will be a more technical blog laying out a rough outline of our hero/mechanics system. It will also be much longer. I will put all pictures and examples of scripting in spoiler tags so you can just skip all of it if you want to.

So onto Drunken Master.

[S2]Idejder

S2 Staff Member

Read the full article in this thread : http://forums.heroesofnewerth.com/showthread.php?t=290127

New Hero : Emerald Warden Coming this Friday !

Four legs and attack with 2 claws
So its true just like my speculation post, it called Emerald Warden, maybe he will have a pet?
Next hero should be named MasterofArms

Interview with S2DetonatoR

Ever wondered what’s next for HoN's competitive scene? Detonator sheds light on the current HoN competitive scene and also discusses a bunch of big upcoming events including the highly anticipated competitive circuit and a massive event planned for the Australian scene. He talks about S2Games' love for esports and how it’s working to allow the HoN competitive scene to thrive.

You guys can read the full article in GosuGamer
Also another interview article in Cadred.Org

Tt eSPORTS Chooses HoN As Feature Title For July Challenge Series

June 24th, 2011 – Tt eSPORTS Challenge announces Heroes of Newerth as July’s Feature Title!

After a tremendous first season of the Tt eSPORTS Challenge, we are happy to bring our tournament platform to the Heroes of Newerth scene! After talking with our friends over at S2 Games, it was an easy decision for us to open up our gates to such an enthusiastic community. With a prize pot of $1,500.00 up for grabs, this event is open to all players from differing skill levels. Whether you play for a professional team or play a few games solely with your friends, the TeC is available for you to put yourself in a tournament environment and even have a chance to come out with some cash in your back pocket. The best part is, the event is completely FREE to enter!

The prize list for Season 1 HoN:

• 1st Place - $750.00
• 2nd Place – $500.00
• 3rd Place - $250.00

HonReplays.Org : Armor and Damage Types

Table of Contents :

1. Armor Types

1. Physical Armor
2. Magic Armor

2. Damage Types

1. Physical Damage
2. Magic Damage
3. True Damage

3. How to Use True Damage to Your Advantage

4. Countering Physical Damage

1. Reducing Damage
2. Reflecting Damage
3. Preventing Damage

5. Countering Magical Damage

1. Reducing Damage
2. Reflecting Damage
3. Preventing Damage

Read the full article in HonReplays.Org

Compensation, Apology, Explanation, & Commitment

Ebulus, Old Slither model for Parasite Model by S2Ari

Compensation & Apology

We realize there is nothing we can do to make up for the last five weeks of unacceptable performance. We would like to reward your loyalty, patience, and understanding with the following:

1. Every player will receive 2,000 silver coins.
2. Every item in the Goblin Store will be unlocked until Wednesday, June 29 at 12 PM EDT (GMT -4) for players to use in their games (This excludes Nickname Changes, Custom Account Icons, and items not currently available for purchase).
3. Leaves from Tuesday, May 17 through Thursday, June 9 will be removed from all players. This is in response to numerous server issues, reconnection issues, etc. for users who should not have received leaves.

We sincerely thank the entire HoN community.

IMPORTANT! Purchase Recovery Information

 
Players are now able to recover their purchases that were made during the rollback period by going to http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/recover. Any valid purchase from June 9th through June 21st can be recovered using this page. Players simply have to enter the required information and their purchase will be recovered. It is important for you to have your purchase receipt (sent via email) handy because you will be required to enter the Transaction ID or Invoice Number from the purchase.

We thank everyone for their patience as we prepared this recovery tool.

[S2]Konran

S2 Staff Member

Nomerology : What’s wrong with vector targeting?

Or a more accurate title, “How mechanical deficits that fail to accommodate for attention and cognition can obfuscate hero design.” Coming from a cognitive psychology background, with a significant portion of my time spent on attentional studies and spatial perception, it is extremely important for any hero designs that I am involved with to rest soundly with my academic expectations. After all, gaming in all its forms is a highly cognitive activity, a mental exercise of sorts. Perhaps the most important thing I picked up through undergraduate study wasn’t learned in a classroom, but through what I perceived to be a transcendental observation–that everything works systemically. 

Statement from the HoN Staff - 6/22/11

We have been working non-stop to get HoN back online for everyone and are happy to say the game is back up and running!

Unfortunately, due to the issue with our databases, we were forced to roll everything back to June 9th. This means everything- stats, store purchases with in-game coins, coin purchases, stat resets, sub-account purchases, etc. - since June 9th has been permanently deleted. *This includes passwords! Your password might be an old one if you changed it recently!* We are sorry for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused. We are definitely feeling it, too!

Maintenance Window Schedule and Patch Info

Maintenance Window

We will be having scheduled maintenance on June 21st from 7:30 AM - 8:30 AM GMT -5. We are going to be shutting the databases boxes down at this time and restarting them both approximately an hour later for some system configuration changes. Expect any games in progress or games started during that hour window to not record correctly. We do not anticipate this will take longer than one hour.

DreamHack Summer 2011 Coverage by Honcast (UPDATED)

UPDATE : Read Complete DHS2011 Event Blog by HonCast

Honcast is now LIVE from Sweden covering the DreamHack Summer 2011 Heroes of Newerth Tournament. With 100,000 SEK on the line and most of the top tier teams in the world competing on LANs biggest stage, be sure not to miss a minute!

Grand Finals VODs (we uploaded the Grand Finals asap due to popular demand, we will of course be uploading the previous rounds as the day goes on as well)

Current status: Tournament finished!

Prize Purse:
1. 55 000 SEK + qualified to DreamHack Winter 2011
2. 30 000 SEK
3. 15 000 SEK


QUALIFIER BRACKETS - finished
IOL FINAL 4 BRACKETS - finished

Patch 2.0.36 Changelog - Parasite Patch

Version 2.0.36.1
-------------
- Fixed a crash with Custom Account Icons
- Fixed some tooltips (Parasite, Engineer)

Version 2.0.36
-------------
- Added a new hero: Parasite

- Added a new Alt Avatar: Mutant Parasite

- You can no longer touch things (teleporters, items, etc.) while stunned
- Updated some User Interface files with fixes to speed and reliability
- Fixed a bug with stats not displaying for people in a Clan
- Fixed Neutral Creeps in Caldavar stacking 3 times instead of 2
- Fixed a bug with Alchemist Bones' timer when it was dropped on the ground
- Fixed Barrier Idol's and Chipper's ability to properly absorb Superior Magic damage
- Fixed a bug with Keeper of the Forest's invisibility
- Fixed a bug with Silhouette's timers
- Fixed a bug with Corrupted Disciple's drain that made it last forever

Download links:
Windows: Click here

Parasite : Hero Spotlight

Prepare to be infested

Coming this Friday with 2 Alt Avt, Parasite Alt.Avt and Lepresmith Alt.Avt
*So this hero doesnt have any pet, but he infested a neuts or creeps as a host, cant infest Ancient and Kongor

Please Welcome "Bloodseeker"

So this is an announcement that I will go on a vacation to Ujung Pandang, having a culinaire trip with my cousins, and im afraid i cant bring my laptop with me, just Blackberry, but i dont know why i cant access the forum using blackberry.Please follow my twitter for latest update @HonBlog
I will go on a vacation from 18th until 23th June, I can back online on 23th or 24th.
Dont worry, this time I got Bloodseeker to help me update the blog, but please understand if there will be no screenshot for Parasite and other important changes in this friday patch(i will update the changelog post later when i come back).
Also Parasite Hero Spotlight will be released later tomorrow.
I think thats all, and please welcome Bloodseeker also sorry for this inconvinience.
Just FYI, im looking for good english writer to make his own article about HON, any topic, maybe hero guide or other good article to be posted in HONBlog.

US West Server Maintenance 6/16/2011

We have been informed by one of our server providers that their servers will be undergoing maintenance on June 16 from 3 AM to 8 AM EDT. During this maintenance, many of our US West servers will be unavailable.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

[S2]Konran

S2 Staff Member

Parasite : Next Upcoming Hero

 This Friday, the Parasite will infest Newerth as he worms his way into the game and our hearts.

Parasite is an Intelligence hero all about messing with your opponents. He boasts the ability to steal movement speed, hop in and out of creeps to confuse and evade, and is an excellent one-vs-one hero. Parasite is a very efficient “jungling” hero – he can get his experience and gold from neutral creep camps – and is a lethal ganker.

Most importantly, Parasite introduces an all new mini-game: Grand Theft Catapult: Newerth.

Coming Soon™, Friday, June 17th

S2Nigma : 5 Easy Ways to Lose a Game of HoN

If you notice any constellation between this post and my previous one, it may be because I've been spending a lot of time playing HoN with groups of people who are new to the game. In many days of teaching HoN to people, I've found that while it can be productive for new players to observe higher tier players, it's equally important for the teacher to observe the student. Simply put, many veteran HoN players seem to forget that there isn't some magical school that teaches new HoN players important rules that, when ignored, can cost you a game faster than you would believe. To these neglected new players, I present to you my Top 5 ways to lose a game of HoN :

Read full article in Nigma's Blog

S2Nigma : Top 5 Worst Pub Heroes

Top 5 Worst Pub Heroes (That you need to stop Picking) 

These days, it seems like the only mode you can get away with in Matchmaking is Single Draft, which although I have advocated in the past as a good map for people learning the game, isn't very versatile. In lieu of not being able to see what Heroes your enemies are picking, as well as having a relatively restricted choice of Heroes yourself, playing Solo Matchmaking in Single Draft can always be a chore of trying to persuade your teammates to pick Heroes that actually fit into your team's makeup. For many players, such as myself, this exercise can be tiring to say the least, as players will often be hesitant to abandon their premeditated desires to play Heroes that won't help your team at all (or just ignore you completely).

So without further ado, here is my (not entirely serious) top 5 list of Heroes that you need to stop picking because it's making me sad (excluding Scout, which, honestly, I have not seen a lot of lately). Note that this list has nothing to do with Balance, but is really just Heroes that typical 1500-1600 players can't seem to get to grips with. Here we go!

Read full article in Nigma's Blog 

Periodic Outages 6/12/11

We are aware that users are experiencing periodic outages that make them unable to login and connect to matchmaking. We are able to restore services once we notice the issue occurring, but it takes a bit of time to fix this from the time we notice a problem till the time it gets cleared up. We are hoping once the slave DB is repaired tomorrow that we shouldn't see this issue any longer. We apologize for these outages and want to let you know we are doing our best to fix them.

[S2]JamesTowN

S2 Staff Member

2.0.34/35 Patch Analysis via ESFI World

Hero Changes:

Bloodhunter has been reworked in a number of ways. The most important changes are that his ultimate now does superior magic damage as opposed to true damage before, this means that you can ult somebody who has magic immunity. Bloodhunter will become a potent anti-carry because he can use the massive range on his ult to pin a ranged carry away from his team or the action regardless of their Shrunken Head usage. He also becomes a much more potent counterganker because he receives movement speed from his Bloodsense passive whenever any hero -friend or foe- is under the critical HP %. Due to the recent buff to hatchet, all melees now having 128 range, and even a buff to his base movement speed (from 305-320) you can expect Bloodhunter in a solo lane roll to be just as potent as ever.

Why was the Secret Shop removed?

The secret shop is a years-old vestige of what was formerly a positional requirement to buy items. With the advent of flying couriers, any tactical gameplay depth to the secret shop's location was effectively diminished to a mere inconvenience to players. While we do acknowledge that the secret shop served a unique purpose, we ultimately weighed the advantages of such a mechanic with the disadvantages. In this case, the marginal addition to the gameplay depth was far outweighed by the inconvenience of being forced to buy component items in two different locations, as well as the inherent learning difficulties presented to newer players. It is important to not misconstrue our intent as making the game easier to play, but rather, that we show a critical eye to obsolete mechanics that no longer serve a defined purpose. The Observatory is the result of these changes, and while it may seem sparse for now, rest assured that we have further, exciting plans for the building with the intended result of adding overall gameplay options, ultimately resulting in a richer, more strategic experience.

[S2]DOGKaiser

S2 Staff Member

Patch 2.0.34/35.1 Changelogs - KingRa, BH Rebalanced, KotF Rework and Many More !

Version 2.0.34/35.1
"Think of it as two for the price of one!"
-------------
Note: .1 version is just fixing textures for the taunts

- Added Custom Account Icons!
* Purchasable in the store. Upload an icon on the website at http://www.heroesofnewerth.com/icons to see it ingame
- Added Alt Couriers!
* Can now change the courier ingame into a different model
* Note: The "Goblin Farm" Bundle is not Gold Collection even though it has that label in the store. The Bundle deal is available for one week.

- Added Alt Taunt!
* Gore Taunt added
* You must purchase the original Taunt before you can purchase an Alt Taunt
- When downloading replays, the progress bar will now properly display a % sign
- Store UI significantly updated
- Updated some stringtables
- Fixed an issue with stat resets that incorrectly reset some fields