Heroes of the Storm hero rotation and Haunted Mines changes

It's a new week, which means a new rotation of free-to-play heroes in Heroes of the Storm's technical alpha. This week's heroes are as follows:

• Barbarian (Sonya)

• Illidan

• Malfurion

• Sgt. Hammer

• Demon Hunter (Valla)

• Tassadar

We've previously written a guide to playing Tassadar, and if you're interested in guides or previews for any of the above heroes, please let us know and we'll make it a priority! With this hero rotation, there were also balance changes to the Grave Golems of the Haunted Mines map announced. You can find those changes below.

• Skeletons now spawn in larger groups and continue to become more concentrated with each event.

• The number of Skeletons decrease in subsequent mine openings and the skulls are added to the Golem reward.

• The base health of the Golem has been increased by 37.5%.

• The scaling health of the Golem was decreased from 750 to 700 per minute.

For context, these changes are the result of a strategy that emerged over the course of the alpha so far -- a team that went into the mines to build up their golem often ended up at a disadvantage if the opposing team didn't go into the mines at all. The team in the mines left the entire rest of the map vulnerable to the opposing team's assault and movements. One team would forgo the mines in favor of taking all of the mercenary camps on the map. The team with an army of mercenaries came out far ahead of a team with a full-power grave golem. These changes are intended to make the grave golem a more enticing, less easily-ignored mechanic of the map.

This sort of thing is exactly what this technical alpha is meant to discover: what works and what doesn't. Expect more changes like this to come to other maps and even further changes to the Haunted Mines as the developers determine how best to approach these issues.