Ragnaros

Ragnaros, the Firelord, is a melee Bruiser Hero from the Warcraft universe. Ragnaros is a powerful Bruiser who can sow the seeds of destruction in a team fight or simply when defending his team's forts. Ragnaros is a unique addition to the Nexus Hero pool thanks to his ability to take over allied Forts or destroyed Forts with his trait, Molten Core. Seizing control of a Fort grants him a new set of Abilities that allow him to defend against the enemy's siege or lay waste to an enemy Town in an allied push.

Ragnaros is a Bruiser who can nullify enemy pushes against his Forts and Keeps.

Background
Ragnaros is the of Fire - like a flame, his only desire is to watch everything burn. The Firelord and his brethren once held sway over the entire world. As a servant of the, he fought against the for domination over the planet. The victorious Titans banished him and his brethren to the — there to remain imprisoned until the end of time. It was then and there that the elementals turned on each other. For five millennia a battle was fought at the core of this world, with Ragnaros biding his time in the.

Ragnaros returned to the surface when the, in a desperate attempt to fight back against the other dwarven clans, summoned him into Redridge. His emergence permanently scarred the land and created the volcano known as. Ragnaros swiftly proceeded to enslave the Dark Iron clan, and remained inside the of the volcano to gather his strength. Now, he has turned his fiery gaze toward the Nexus in his quest to bring about the end of days by purging all life in flame and ash.

Harness the volcanic wrath of the Firelord to call down flaming meteors, crush foes with the explosive might of, and summon lava waves that will incinerate an entire lane's worth of enemy minions. When faced with a counter-attack, Ragnaros can empower a fort or keep, becoming a towering inferno over the structure and gaining a second set of abilities that will help you engulf assailants in the fires of doom. Ally yourself with Ragnaros to bring about a new era of destruction in the Nexus and show your opponents the true meaning of the words "raid boss".

Gameplay
Ragnaros is a Bruiser who can nullify enemy pushes against his Forts and Keeps.

Strength

 * Defend a push against a Fort or Keep
 * Burst Damage
 * Waveclear
 * Self-Sustain

Weaknesses

 * Poor Mobility
 * Heavy Poke
 * Crowd Control

Abilities

 * See Data page for a table of scaled values at key levels.

Development
Ragnaros was an immense challenge for the Heroes of the Storm team. They wanted a hero that can manipulate the battlefield, and one of the very early prototype ideas was having Ragnaros replace the core. He had a global set of abilities and these abilities would allow him to rain destruction from the sky with meteors, send lava waves, throw Sulfuras into the air - a lot of the abilities you actually see on his kit today, but he also had the ability to summon a Son of Flame. The Son of Flame was controllable by the Ragnaros player and gave him a lot of his team presence. However there was an overwhelming amount of feedback from our their team saying: "I don't feel like Ragnaros". The first problem was that the players were controlling that Son of Flame the majority of the game. That was kind of the avatar they saw, that was the hero they were playing. Number two, the only time you ever saw Ragnaros was when you were losing. He was a stationary core hero, so you never saw him except for his global abilities, and that felt horrible.

The next idea was to give Ragnaros the ability to submerge and move the core. Jade Martin explained: "As you can imagine, this is a terrible idea. Terrible. There are so many things wrong with this. I mean, What gets left behind when he moves the core? The team realized that this wasn't going to work as many problems came up with it (like "Is he invulnerable?", "Is he taking actual core damage?", "Does he move away other heroes in that space?", "Can he block that space?")." So they cut the idea, but they did learn something from it: It was really cool to see Ragnaros in the battlefields despite all the problems it caused, and they wanted to chase that fantasy of the raid boss being summoned in. Finally the idea came up that he could take over forts and keeps. They knew the space is large enough, he's not just showing up in random chokepoints, and forts and keeps are all over the map.

The next idea was to summon Ragnaros on those chokepoints by, who actually did it in the Molten Core raid. Majordomo got a set of abilities, but his primary goal was trying to summon in Ragnaros. The developers took this to the test team and the feedback was: "I still don't feel like Ragnaros, I love playing as the raid boss, it's cool when I summon him in, but when I lock-in Ragnaros as my hero, I don't want to play as Majordomo."

The final idea was "What if we just let the player play as Ragnaros the whole time?" So he has that hero form, and then the Molten Core form. The hero form is kind of like his weakened state. He is not quite as powerful, but when he takes over that fort, he becomes this gigantic raid boss that enemies fear.

Trivia

 * Firelords debuted in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (July 2003). Ragnaros made his video game debut in World of Warcraft (November 2004).
 * Ragnaros is voiced by in World of Warcraft and  in Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone (March 2014).
 * Ragnaros was one of the two heroes revealed at BlizzCon 2016.
 * The biggest hurdle for new Ragnaros skins is the heavy load of FX work associated with him.
 * The Sulfuron skin was inspired by the armor Ragnaros wore in the.
 * The Lil' Ragnaros skin is a reference to the pet from World of Warcraft.
 * Ragnaros's ability animations were designed to look distinct from the fire abilities used by Kael'thas and the Butcher.
 * Ragnaros's hammer,, can be obtained in World of Warcraft both as a drop in the , and as a blacksmithing plan.
 * Ragnaros's signature line, "By fire be purged!", is sometimes said by Kael'thas.