See What Makes Heroes of the Storm's Next Character an Artillery Assassin

Blizzard revealed the first details about Heroes of the Storm's next two characters last week, and now it's released a new video that offers our best look yet at the one coming on May 17.

As explained in the video, Chromie looks like a gnome, but is in fact a bronze dragon and the Keeper of Time. As such, she's a rather time-oriented character, as best exemplified through her trait, Timewalker. This allows her to select talents one level before other players do, which also means getting your Heroic at level 9 (rather than 10, as is the case with everyone except Tracer).

Chromie is described as "a fragile, yet devastating artillery assassin." You'll need to keep your distance to best take advantage of her, which is something her abilities lend themselves to. Sand Blast is a fairly basic ability that shoots a long-range attack in a straight line, hitting the first enemy hero it hits. The attack will move through anything--including gates and minions--to reach an enemy hero, though the casting animation for this is a tad lengthy. That makes it easy to dodge when used out in the open, but you can snipe targets by hiding in the bushes or aiming for those in tight spaces.

Dragon's Breath is also a somewhat standard ability with a longer-than-usual casting time, this one doing area damage after 1.5 seconds. What makes this different from others in the game is the fact that enemies aren't given an indicator showing where the attack is going to land. Chromie also has Time Trap, allowing her to place an enemy in stasis for two seconds. Timed properly, this could be used to guarantee a hit with her other abilities.

On the Heroic side, the first of her options is Slowing Sands, which slows all enemies in an area. This effect becomes more effective the longer it's active, and it's able to stay up until it's canceled or Chromie runs out of mana.

The other option, Temporal Loop, is an intriguing one. You target an enemy at a specific location, and three seconds later, they're teleported back to that spot. It doesn't matter how far they travel in those three seconds; they'll always be pulled back.

Chromie is now available for testing on PTR servers ahead of her official release next week. Today's PTR update makes a number of other changes to specific characters, but one adjustment affects all players. 25 percent of the health offered by healing wells now comes in the form of a shield. This is intended to help mitigate how frequently players are able to snipe someone headed to a healing well, a situation that presumably would have only become more commonplace with Chromie's introduction.

You can read the rest of the patch notes here. For a look at the other upcoming HotS character, Medivh, check out our previous coverage.