Azmodan gets some love too
Raynor strutted his stuff right away in the alpha of Heroes of the Storm, but was completely left in the dust due to power creep over time. Although he saw a small resurgence due to a glitch that took Blizzard several weeks to fix (his Hyperion ultimate/heroic could inflict massive amounts of bugged damage), he quickly fell off after that small rise to power and never really saw much play since.
Blizzard has promised a rework for ages, but now it has a date and some details. It’s arriving in July along with an Azmodan rework, and you can catch both in video form below. In short, Raynor’s Raider ultimate works more like a minion now (yes!), and his heal needs to be activated (and can be used at any time with a longer cooldown). He also has a few talents to help buff his auto-attack nature that should let him hang a bit with other assassins (and now he can effectively melt and slow tanks).
Azmodan is getting baseline damage increases for hitting minions and enemy heroes with his dunk ability, though that will get a longer indicator — allowing heroes to dodge it sooner (this can be combated by simply leading people into it or anticipating their movements, like Chromie). His W summon doesn’t have two charges baseline anymore, but he can buff the ability further with talents. Azmodan’s E laser is now a “set time” ability that does bonus damage upon completion — damn! I’ll really miss that constant laser threat for nailing out of position enemies. At least he gets a dodge/trample at level 20 for extra utility. On paper I’m not super jazzed about this one.
As always I’ll have to get some hands-on time before I make some final judgments, but Raynor should see more play, and that’s a win. These updates are coming in July.
