The loot system of Heroes of the Storm is being revamped with HotS 2.0. But how does it work exactly and what are the chances of obtaining epic and legendary items?
Heroes of the Storm receives a new reward and progression system with version 2.0, which is heavily inspired by Blizzard’s hero shooter Overwatch . The core of the new mechanic are loot boxes that you receive after each level up.
These work similarly to Overwatch, but they have a few interesting peculiarities.
HotS 2.0 – All loot boxes in detail
The basic mechanics of Heroes of the Storm 2.0 are similar to Overwatch. You receive a box at each level, which can contain four items. Unlike Overwatch, however, there is no guarantee that there will be at least one rare or better item. With a bit of bad luck, you might only pull mediocre items of common rarity.
At first glance, that sounds really dumb! However, there are two concepts that make the HotS loot system fundamentally cooler than in Overwatch:
- You will always receive a rare or epic box from time to time. This contains an item of the specified rarity or something better.
- You can re-roll the contents of the boxes for gold! This can be done a total of three times per box, costing 250, then 500, and then 750 gold. Be careful! The re-roll is completely independent of the previous roll and can indeed be worse, so don’t re-roll legendaries; it is unlikely a new legendary will come out!
Heroes of the Storm 2.0 – The loot statistics
Thanks to the guaranteed boxes and re-rolls, the chances of getting legendary items increase significantly. But let’s start with the basics. The colleagues at PCGamesN opened 524 boxes. Their result:
- 504 common items
- 401 rare items
- 148 epic items
- 43 legendary items
Since each box contains four items, the chance of at least one rare item per box is 76.53 percent, 28.24 percent for an epic, and 8.21 percent for a legendary item. According to this rule, PCGamesN suggests that every 12th to 13th box should contain a legendary item.
HotS 2.0 – Faster legendaries thanks to re-rolls
In reality, though, the testers at PCGamesN usually got their legendaries after just 8 to 9 boxes. The reason was the re-roll mechanic in combination with the boxes, which guarantee rare or epic contents. Because even if the re-roll recalculates all items completely anew each time, the guaranteed rare or epic item will definitely remain a rare or epic item.
So imagine, you open an epic box and, at worst, receive three lame common items and the guaranteed epic. You would be foolish not to re-roll, as each of the common items has a 28.24 percent chance of becoming something better. The epic item has a 97.95 percent chance of being another epic item, but there is also a 2.05 percent chance it could become legendary! Also, keep in mind that in HotS 2.0, there is an anti-bad-luck algorithm that guarantees you a legendary item eventually, which also comes into play during re-rolls.
Heroes of the Storm 2.0 – Gold is not the limit
With the new re-roll mechanic, gold in Heroes of the Storm becomes even more valuable, as anyone who already has many heroes can spend the 10,000 gold for a new character in up to 40 re-rolls, which should statistically generate four legendary items. But first, you need a stack of boxes, and those can only be obtained by leveling up diligently. So, you are likely to suffer from a shortage of boxes rather than gold.
Jürgen says: Wow, this all sounds pretty cool. However, I am curious whether these numbers will still hold true after the release of HotS 2.0 on April 25th or whether Blizzard will adjust them. What do you think about the new loot mechanic? Let us know in the comments!
Also interesting: Heroes of the Storm – All about the new hero Genji
