Brawl Returns To Heroes Of The Storm Thanks To 2025's First Sneaky Patch

While Brawl was brought back to Heroes of the Storm's PTR in early January, now it's official. Blizzard's MOBA has brought the previously retired mode back into the game proper in the first sneaky update of 2025. If you played Heroes back in the day, you likely remember this mode and how it mixed up the normal gameplay via map changes, special rules, or modifications to the way heroes were selected.

We haven't seen Brawl in the game since about 2020 when the team replaced it with All Random, All Mid (ARAM). This was mainly the result of players just enjoying the ARAM cycle of Brawl more than they enjoyed playing all the other Brawl modes made available.

The patch notes don't detail exactly which Brawl modes will be running and when, but the notes do call out that Brawl modes will rotate on the 1st and 15th of each month. Yes, each month as in "this is a steady thing now." You can check out the Wiki, which recaps all the previously existing special rules for Brawl, to get an idea of what could be coming at rotation time.

In addition to balance and ability changes, the update also adds new shop items and bundles, and a new home screen and startup music.

Here's the Brawl trailer from 8 years ago to get that nostalgia going.