Climate Phenomena

Climate Phenomena was a Nexus Anomaly introduced in June 2020. Maps started having weather effects that affected gameplay.

Background
Strange weather disturbances have been spotted across the Nexus, with realms experiencing rain storms, snow flurries, and foggy mists! Mei's arrival is just in time to help analyze and study these strange weather conditions that have begun occurring.

Gameplay
Climate Phenomena is our newest Nexus Anomaly, bringing a variety of fun weather effects to the game. Each battleground has a specific type of weather event that will occur every 4 minutes, with the first event starting at the beginning of the match. Each weather event lasts for 2 minutes before clearing up. This cycle will repeat until the game ends. While these weather events are active, Heroes can gain a unique buff based on the type of active weather. These buffs are:

Rain Storms

 * Strike all heroes with lightning every 25-40 seconds, increasing Movement Speed and granting a Lightning Shield that damages nearby.
 * Movement Speed increased by 15%.
 * Damage nearby enemies for 46 damage per second.
 * Buff lasts 8 seconds.
 * Active on:
 * Garden of Terror
 * Sky Temple
 * Warhead Junction
 * Braxis Holdout
 * Dragon Shire
 * Blackheart's Bay

Snow Flurries

 * Heroes gain 28 Shields every 0.5 seconds, stacking up to 224 (8 stacks total).
 * Shield starts at 28 and slowly accumulates up to 224.
 * Shield lasts until destroyed or until the Snow stops falling.
 * Active on:
 * Cursed Hollow
 * Infernal Shrines
 * Volskaya Foundry
 * Alterac Pass

Foggy Mists

 * Allows Heroes to gain Stealth after standing in shrubs for a few seconds.
 * standing in a shrub for 1.5 seconds, Heroes gain Stealth.
 * Stealth lasts 40 seconds or until attacking, taking damage, using an ability, or until the Foggy weather dissipates.
 * Active on:
 * Tomb of the Spider Queen
 * Battlefield of Eternity
 * Hanamura Temple
 * Towers of Doom

All other Battlegrounds will use a random weather, including Brawls mode.

Development
After reading through the community's feedback and deliberating among themselves, the developers decided to remove the Climate Phenomena anomaly from the Nexus. According to them, with Climate Phenomena they wanted to play with two ideas. The first was introducing a new Hero to the Nexus with an accompanying theme, and the second was the prospect of changing game states throughout a match, with a minor impact on gameplay. Unfortunately, they found that these changes were too disruptive to the normal flow of the game, and they didn’t add enough fun factor to account for how much they impacted the player experience. Some players also reported frame-per-second (FPS) issues due to the Anomaly, which the developers found to be unacceptable.

Moving forward, the developers intend to finish the year with one more Anomaly, released alongside the final season of 2020. After that, they have decided that they will not be pursuing Anomalies at a set cadence like they did in 2020.