Heroes of the Storm removes Unranked and brings Haunted Mines back to Quick Match

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Blizzard has pushed a new Heroes of the Storm live patch dated April 20, 2026, and the biggest changes are pretty straightforward. Unranked mode has been removed, Haunted Mines is back in Quick Match, and Arthas has been fully reworked.

The patch also trims mid-to-late game respawn timers, with deaths capping at 65 seconds by level 22. On the map side, Garden of Terror Classic has returned for Custom Games, while Warhead Junction’s nukes now take longer to channel, get interrupted by damage, and hit structures harder.

Haunted Mines has a few rule changes with its return. The Mine Golem now drops 10 extra skulls over its lifetime, teams only need 55 skulls to finish the objective instead of collecting all 100, and hero vision is reduced while inside the mines. That should make matches on the map move quite a bit faster than before.

Arthas is the headline hero update. Blizzard says he’s been fully reworked, with changes across his base kit and every talent tier. His trait, Frostmourne Hungers, now stacks permanently by killing minions or hitting heroes, boosting both its bonus damage and Arthas’ basic attacks over time. Army of the Dead has also been rebuilt into a charge-based heroic that summons ghouls depending on stored charges.

There are balance changes for a long list of other heroes too, including Chen, Deathwing, Falstad, Garrosh, Gazlowe, Mal’Ganis, Medivh, Muradin, Sgt. Hammer, Thrall, and Tyrande. Most of those are smaller tuning passes rather than full redesigns, though Chen and Mal’Ganis both got notable talent reshuffles and reworks.

The rest of the patch is mostly bug fixes. One of the more important general fixes corrects an issue where Unstoppable targets weren’t properly immune to Blinds. There are also map fixes for Blackheart’s Bay and Infernal Shrines, plus hero-specific fixes for characters like D.Va, Garrosh, Gul’dan, Jaina, Kael’thas, Medivh, Samuro, Stukov, and Thrall.

The update is live now. You can see the full list of changes here.