Heroes of the Storm designer invites the community to help design a Deckard Cain character

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Deckard Cain of Diablo fame is known primarily for exhorting would-be heroes of the realm to hang out and shoot the breeze during spots of downtime. He's also really old. Whipping a character like that into shape for inclusion in the Heroes of the Storm MOBA is not, as hero designer Nathan LaMusga told Polygon, an easy task. So he's looking for some ideas from the community.

"He is one of the hardest heroes to think of design,” LaMusga said. “When you really sit down and think about it, he’s a guy who loves to read books. What is he doing? Not to say it’s not possible, but it is one of the harder ones. Maybe he plays Hearthstone or something like that.”

"I love reading hero pitches on our main Heroes of the Storm forums and on Reddit,” he said. “If you’re a community member reading this right now: Send me your Deckard Cain pitches. Make a Deckard Cain. I’d love to see our community’s pitches on that one.”

His overture is obviously more community engagement than an official call for pitches, but who knows? If a good idea should come along, Blizzard may well run with it: Heroes of the Storm is a bit light on Diablo, after all, and aside from the Big Red Man himself, Cain is probably the most iconic character in the franchise. He even has his own rap song.

Separately, Blizzard rolled out a Heroes of the Storm balance update that makes changes to a number of heroes, including nerfs to Samuro, Malfurion, and Zarya, a slight buff to Murky, and a single, very specific bug fix that corrects an issue "that could cause Tyrael’s Sanctification ability to fail if Zarya cast Expulsion Zone at the same location." The full patch notes are available at battle.net.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.