At the opening ceremony of BlizzCon 2026, something happened that many Blizzard MOBA fans could no longer believe. Company president Joanna Farris officially announced that Heroes of the Storm’s first new hero since 2020 – the main villain in the current World of Warcraft plot and the main enemy of the Dark Priest – Shala’tat, the Herald of the Abyss, is coming to the Nexus of Time and Space.
Its appearance means that the game is actually leaving the technical support mode it has been in since 2022. The developers even left an ironic Easter egg in the announcement trailer, in the form of Leoric the Gatekeeper, a nod to the community that has joked about the “sole gatekeeper” maintaining the servers for years. Zalatat is billed as a ranged assassin, focusing on sustained area damage and tight space control.
Xal’atat will be available for trial on the PTR on Monday, September 14, 2026, with a full in-game release on September 28. The BlizzCon Harbinger Bundle is now available for pre-order in the Battle.net store and includes the heroine herself, the Twilight Skin, the limited-edition Heartseeker skin, and the Sin’dorei Phoenix mount. Best of all: the developer has officially confirmed that at least one more new hero is in the works.
