A point of note before I start: broadly speaking, Structures are immune to statuses unless a given effect is explicit that it specifically affects Structures. eg Muradin's Storm Bolt cannot Stun a Structure, but there are effects that do Stun Structures. The one exception is the often-counterintuitive point that damage over time is classed as a negative status and Structures are fully vulnerable to such, even though several damage over time effects are conceptualized as effects that you would expect to not work on buildings. (eg Qhira causing targets to 'bleed')
Also, I mentioned that some things can Stun Structures, and I should explicitly clarify that I mean that any effect that disables a Structure is fully treated as a Stun per se. Including the Raven Lord's Curse) This is mostly a curiosity, but for example The Butcher has a Talent that causes Hamstring to do extra damage if a target is currently Stunned (Among other possible triggers) and this absolutely does trigger against disabled Structures!
Revealed
A Revealed unit is visible to the Revealing team even if out of sight unless removed from the ground plane entirely. Revealed also negates the targeting-blocking property of Stealth and makes Stealthed units less transparent, but it does not terminate the Stealth state. Forts, Keeps, and Cores passively Reveal enemies within their sight range.
This is one of the more easily overlooked statuses, which is part of why I'm covering it first. The game itself doesn't draw strong attention to it, it doesn't get text when it's occurring, it's not covered by tutorialization, and a lot of Abilities and Talents that talk about 'Revealing' very obviously provide vision advantage, making it easy to misunderstand what they're referring to.
When a Hero is being Revealed, they always get the above red eye icon hovering over them; notably, it's not using the same 'slot' as the 'major' statuses, and so is never hidden by some other status being active. It does actually share a 'slot', but specifically with a blue eye icon that displays when standing in Brush to convey that you are hidden by the Brush; this 'competition' is natural and good, as being Revealed by definition means that Brush is not hiding you. My main complaint is that since neither icon is explained and they're literally the same aside color, it's easy to not realize the red eye appearing is a reason to be concerned.
If you do know what it's about, it's very useful, but the learning curve issue is not ideal.
Structure Reveal larger than attack range?
Revealed is a widely relevant status due to Forts, Keeps, and Cores applying it around them. Ravens on Braxis Holdout and Warhead Junction make it even more widely relevant, the Dragon Knight's Savage Charge on Dragon Shire is another source, and the kill zone on Towers of Doom applies it as well.
Abathur, Gall, Zeratul, Xul, Tyrande, Malthael, Hanzo, Probius, and Malfurion all have baseline access to Revealed. Kael'thas, Artanis, Stukov, Mephisto, Rexxar, Nova, and Kel'thuzad can all take a specific Heroic to gain it.
Kharazim, Lunara, Brightwing, Illidan, Qhira, Tassadar, Rexxar, Tracer, Chromie, Deckard, and Murky can all Talent to gain access to Revealed. (And Tyrande can gain another source)
Special mention to Murky, who becomes Revealed if his egg is destroyed.
Damage Over Time
The unit takes damage intermittently for some duration, with a portion of their HP meter turned yellow to show the predicted HP loss. Damage over time ticking does not interrupt 'weak' channels (Though effects that apply damage over time can interrupt 'weak' channels), such as Mounting, and does not trigger a Cry For Help where applicable. Friendly Stasis and Invulnerable cleanse damage over time, removing it. (Hostile Stasis blocks any damage ticks that attempt to occur, but does not cleanse the status)
Damage over time (often referred to as 'poison' damage by the game and especially by players) has a nice convenience feature where a victim's current HP meter has a differently-colored portion (By default: yellow) representing how much HP they are set to lose to any ongoing damage over time effects. Heroes that apply damage over time often have additional UI elements for tracking the state in a bit more detail, though not always. (eg Nazeebo has two different damage over time effects, and no custom UI elements for either of them) Do note that said UI elements are only ever visible to their own Hero/player, though, which can be kind of unfortunate when multiple enemy Heroes that use such effects are on the enemy team: there's an important difference between 'I'm poisoned by Lunara' and 'Qhira has me bleeding'!
Damage over time itself is, by default, not really meaningfully different from regular damage, aside that it's being delivered... over time. That is, in a lot of games effects like poison damage work on very different rules from regular damage, such as bypassing some defensive effects, but in Heroes of the Storm it's just... regular damage, but slow. This is particularly easy to get confused on because the HP meter preview doesn't try to account for effects like Armor being in play: if Lunara puts enough poison on full-Plate Deathwing that the game predicts he will just barely drop below 75% HP and lose his Plate, in actuality he will only take 60% of that predicted damage.
The one exception is that heal-over-time effects also get accounted for, where the game shows what a unit's HP is expected to be once both the heal and damage fully play out. It's, uh, kind of an unfortunate exception. It feels very much like the game is lying if eg you use a Healing Fountain with a lethal amount of damage over time on you, resulting in the game predicting you'll be at 25% HP when all is said and done, and then you die instead.
The primary ways damage over time is different from regular damage is what I put in the summary: that 'weak' channels are not broken by damage over time ticks, that Forts/Keeps/Cores don't get provoked by ongoing damage over time effects, and that (friendly) Stasis and Invulnerable instantly cleanse them. (So eg Jaina can activate Improved Ice Block with 9 seconds of Lunara's poison on her, and thus negate 9 seconds of damage even if Improved Ice Block was active for only 0.5 seconds)
One aspect of their behavior I suspect surprises a lot of people is that Stealth is not included in this purview: a Stealthed Hero will in fact lose their Stealth in response to a damage over time tick occurring. As such, damage over time is a pretty good way to mess with Stealth-using Heroes. Some of them have their own answers to this, such as how one of Valeera's Heroics cleanses all damage over time on her when activated and her other Heroic can grant her Unrevealable for several seconds, but eg Nova really can't do anything except wait it out.
Moderately common: Nazeebo, Qhira, Lunara, Malthael, Alexstraza, Chen, Ana, Gul'dan, Cho, Stitches, Sylvanas, and Valeera all have baseline access.
Xul, Murky, Blaze, Gazlowe, and Mal'ganis all have Heroics that apply such.
Tychus, Ragnaros, Anduin, Morales, Erik of the Lost Vikings, Deathwing, Garrosh, Zagara, Zeratul, Thrall, Sonya, Murky, Blaze, and Abathur can all Talent to gain access.
The Junk Swarm Host on Warhead Junction can also apply a damage over time effect.
Living Bomb on Kael'thas displays like a DoT, and can be cleansed by Friendly Stasis and some other cleanses, but interrupts weak channels.
Healing Received Penalty
The unit receives less healing from all sources (including natural Hero regeneration, percentage healing, and leeching effects) by the percentage of the specific penalty. This is specifically applied at the moment a heal tick actually occurs, where a delayed heal may be unaffected if the penalty times out before the heal actually executes. Healing Received modifiers (both penalties and boosts) all stack additively with each other, aside that if total Healing Received goes past -100% it is treated as exactly -100%. Friendly Stasis and Invulnerable remove any Healing Received Penalty on the unit.
Healing Received modifiers are used by the game fairly rarely overall, and are explained pretty poorly by the game... possibly in part by the devs themselves not properly understanding it, given that Gul'dan has a Talent that long worked very differently from what the coder(s) clearly expected. (And still doesn't fully work as intended, honestly)
It probably doesn't help that the game has multiple cases where it would be reasonable to expect you're looking at a Healing Received modifier, and surprise! Its Healing Dealt! For example, Ana's Biotic Grenade suppresses healing on enemy Heroes, but increases healing for allied Heroes: the former is a Healing Received penalty, so obviously the latter is a Healing Received boost? Right?... right?
Nope, it's a Healing Dealt boost. Surprise!
Anyway, the short version is thus: Healing Received modifiers are Armor, but for healing. You have a -50% Healing Received penalty? You only get half the healing you ought to. You have +20% Healing Received? You get 20% more healing than you otherwise would. This 'it's Armor' comparison only has two divergences: firstly, Healing Received modifiers all fully stack, where Armor mostly uses only the highest penalty and highest boost. eg -50% Healing Received, from two different sources, is -100% Healing Received, where +50 Armor from two sources is still +50 Armor. Indeed, the game actually has a graphic specifically for 'multiple Healing Received modifiers are active'! Second, Armor is bounded in its reduction: if a unit really ought to have over 75 Armor, it stops at 75 Armor, where Healing Receives can go all the way up to -100% healing.
This 'it's Armor' comparison is particularly useful for understanding what happens when Healing Received modifiers start interacting with Healing Dealt modifiers: just as a Hero with 50 Spell Armor halves Deathwing's incoming Spell damage, not caring that he has a +100% additive boost to his Spell damage to Heroes, so too does a -100% Healing Received penalty result in absolutely no healing happening no matter how large of a Healing Dealt bonus might be involved.
An element the game itself seems to be particularly poor at understanding is that Healing Received modifiers affect all healing. (With one exception) Ana hitting an enemy with Biotic Grenade not only prevents Anduin from increasing the victim's HP, but it also prevents Regeneration Globes and Healing Fountain ticks from increasing their HP, prevents Hearthing from healing them if they somehow Hearth while carrying that penalty and even shuts off their innate HP regeneration! (This last point is usually pretty whatever, but Murky has very high innate regeneration, and multiple Heroes can acquire very high passive regeneration within a match, making it potentially very relevant)
The one exception to all this is that the Hall of Storms rapidly healing friendly Heroes in its confines is never affected by anything that modifies healing. This is mostly a technicality since entering the Hall of Storms also cleanses more or less all negative effects, but is noticeable with Gul'dan, whose Hunger For Power Talent imposes a permanent Healing Received penalty on him that continues to display even in the Hall of Storms, and can also come up through the game's handful of Healing Received boosts.
Overall, Healing Received penalties are something I feel like players tend to underestimate the value of. To be fair, this is probably in part because it's an uncommon status:
Ana is the only Hero in the game with baseline access.
Malthael, Johanna, Varian, Xul, Garrosh (Can Talent to upgrade as well), Deckard, Stitches (Twice, actually), Cho'Gall (Via a Cho Talent affecting a Gall Ability), Valeera, Rehgar, Dehaka, Lúcio, D.Va, and Nazeebo can all Talent for this. (Lúcio and Nazeebo can each only do so if they took a specific Heroic)
Gul'dan uniquely can Talent to inflict this penalty on himself, permanently.
Mei, Cho, and Hogger can Talent to gain a Healing Received boost. Li Li can Talent to give allies a Healing Received boost, as can Varian.
That's a total of 18 Heroes that can bring in Healing Received modifiers (Well, 19 if we count Cho'Gall as two slots), only one of which has baseline access. It's notably never a fundamental part of a Heroic Ability, and a pretty good fraction of these effects are all restricted to somewhere past Level 10, including all the way up at Level 20! (And I don't just mean the Heroic upgrades: Xul has to wait until Level 20 as well) And honestly, the Talents trend unpopular, some of them quite deservedly... so overall, I suspect a lot of players mostly meaningfully understand the mechanic as 'Ana can hard-deny heals'.
But even aside all that, heals are a really strong part of Heroes of the Storm: the game is skewed heavily toward an assumption of each team being backed by a Healer, and a lot of Heroes can self-heal, often quite heavily as a fundamental part of their kit. Every hit point you deny with a Healing Received penalty can and should be thought of as damage added, and this can add up really fast! While a good portion of sources can only be applied intermittently and so have to be timed well for them to deny a lot of healing, this isn't true of all of them: Johanna and Varian can both sustain such penalties forever so long as nobody interferes with them sticking to a victim.
Even for the Heroes who have to bother with good timing... part of what confuses me here is the consideration of Quickmatch trends. Specifically, Quickmatch players overall trend toward prioritizing the ability to work toward victory without being reliant on teammates cooperating. Which is understandable, given how spontaneous cooperation with Quickmatch strangers plenty often just... doesn't happen. But I'm mentioning it because Quickmatch players overall love to pursue Armor penalties when able, when Armor penalties are much more dependent on ally coordination to maximize value compared to Healing Received penalties: Healing Received penalties just need to be applied when you notice an enemy is doing poorly such that they will die soon if they don't heal and/or respond to telegraphed heals, no need for ally support. It's especially baffling to me how rarely I see Colossus Smash Varians take Mortal Strike, given how often such Varians are playing very firmly as 'I jump in and make a target die', which Mortal Strike does a lot to support.
Slow
The unit's Movement speed is lowered by a percentage of its base value for the duration. If multiple Slows are applied to a target, only the highest penalty is used at any given moment. If a Movement speed boost is applied simultaneously, the strongest Slow and strongest speed boost are added together to arrive at the final modifier. (eg a -40% Slow and a +20% Movement boost would result in 80% Movement speed) Cleansed by Unstoppable, friendly Stasis, and Invulnerable.
As a category, Slows are never explicitly announced, though they have a standard visualization of purple lights swirling around affected units. Individual Slows sometimes have personal visuals tied to them, but a lot of them don't, and even the purple swirls are pretty easy to overlook. This is all a bit unfortunate given that Slows can be pretty high-impact, yet even pretty heavy Slows can be non-obvious.
Oddly, movement speed boosts have clearer visual effect, utilizing a 'wind' effect 'blowing' along the beneficiary. This is odd given most such effects are personal and so generally eg Samuro will know he's faster because Wind Walk is active just because his player will know from the tooltip and/or long experience that it does that. Slows are the effect that really needed to be obvious.
Slow itself is by far the most common status in the game. So much so that I'm going to be listing the people who don't have Slows rather than everyone who does!
Sonya, Hanzo, Kharazim, Greymane, Anduin, Samuro, and Kerrigan have no ability to apply Slows to enemies.
That's 7 Heroes who completely lack Slows, out of the game's 90. (So less than 8% of all Heroes lack Slows) It's worth pointing out that Samuro, Greymane, and Kharazim are the only ones in that batch that don't have other ways of impairing mobility: the others have a Stun and/or Root. So for one thing it's actually impossible to be in a match where Unstoppable has no possibility of having value. (Outside ARAM, where repeats are allowed)
Now, some other Heroes have poor access to Slows, like only having one Talent that's placed fairly late, but seriously, this is the single most common status in the game.
Attack Speed Penalty
The unit's Basic Attack speed is lowered by a percentage of its base value.
Surprisingly, while Slows to movement speed are everywhere, attack speed slows are very rare. The following three Heroes have baseline access:
Arthas, Muradin, and Xul.
Only 6 Heroes have Talents for it:
E.T.C., Mei, Varian, Rehgar, and Rexxar can Talent to gain access. Muradin can also Talent for a second source on top of his baseline access.
That's it. 8 Heroes total.
It's also one of the more poorly-communicated negative statuses in the game. I'm not sure it has a standard visualization at all, and if it does have such, it's clearly not very obvious. I suspect a lot of players are regularly left frustrated and confused by how their Basic Attack's tempo changes, especially since several sources are late Talents that impose the effect partially passively.
Also, I should explain Basic Attack mechanics a bit more, as they're perhaps the most glaring example of Heroes of the Storm preferring simple communication over providing complete and correct explanations of the under-the-hood mechanics, and in a manner that is directly pertinent to Attack Speed modification. That is, you have a Hero who has an Attack Speed of 1/s, who gets hit by a -50% Attack Speed penalty 0.5 seconds after they Basic Attacked: what happens? Given the framing of Attack Speed, it would be reasonable to guess that their next Basic Attack will be delayed by 0.5 seconds since their Attack Speed is halved -but it would be incorrect.
Fundamentally, Basic Attacks operate on cooldowns, just like Abilities do. A unit with an attack speed listed of 1/s just has a cooldown of 1 second before they can Basic Attack again. This cooldown is itself defined at the moment the Basic Attack connects: Attack Speed modifications only matter at the moment of impact. Thus, our prior example of an Attack Speed penalty being applied halfway between Basic Attacks doesn't delay the next Basic Attack any: it delays the one after that, assuming the penalty is still on the victim at the moment they finish their Basic Attack. Notably, it is mechanically possible for a Hero to suffer such a penalty right after Basic Attacking and then have the penalty time out before they can Basic Attack such that the penalty does literally nothing.
The game is designed so this is not quite possible to have actually happen in a match, as all Attack Speed penalties last at least 1.5 seconds and no Hero has their Basic Attack cooldown longer than 1.5 seconds. Notably, Frozen Tempest on Arthas is the only Attack Speed penalty that can time out that quickly, and it will only do so if it only provided the lightest of penalties: a 5% reduction to Attack Speed is minor enough that a Hero with a 1.5 second cooldown who got clipped by Frozen Tempest once right after Basic Attacking and then waited to Basic Attack until the penalty timed out would miss out on about as much Basic Attack uptime as if they attacked while under the penalty.
But for one thing this has some janky implications with heavier penalties. Muradin activating Imposing Presence is a -50% penalty for the next 2.5 seconds: if a Hero with an Attack speed of 0.67/s (The slowest attack speed, which is a 1.5 second cooldown) attacks right after being hit by that effect, this will delay exactly one attack, because their next one will occur 3 seconds later. Even funkier, a Hero with an Attack Speed of 0.83/s (Base cooldown: 1.2 seconds) who attacks right after Imposing Presence hits them can wait a fraction of a second past their Basic Attack being ready again to minimize the consequences. So eg Ragnaros can slightly delay his Basic Attack to minimize the consequences. (Because he waits slightly over 0.1 seconds to avoid having to eat a 1.2 second delay on his next hit)
So I'm pretty glad the game has moved away from Attack Speed modification over time: the current implementation is okay with Heroes who already have high Attack Speeds, but has a lot of wonkiness against Heroes with lower Attack Speeds. Not even getting into how a lot of Heroes can reset or otherwise modify their Basic Attack cooldown and most such effects do not care about Attack Speed modification...
Oh, and you might be wondering if this means that Attack Speed modification works differently from intended or claimed in regards to percentage modification, as for one thing I harp a lot in this series on various examples of Talents not having the mathematical impact the game says they do because clearly somebody involved didn't properly understand the behavior of the math they used. To the best of my awareness, though, Attack Speed modifications behave as intended as far as '-50% Attack Speed results in the cooldown being doubled'. I wouldn't be surprised if they do misbehave in some circumstances, but so far I'm not aware of a specific example of such.
Also note that Attack Speed modifiers stack more fully than Movement speed modifiers. They don't do the 'only the highest penalty/increase is applied' thing.
bizarrely, Unstoppable neither cleanses nor blocks, period
Root
The unit is unable to move. Most Abilities that cause movement of any kind are also disabled for the duration of the Root. (But not all such Abilities). Root will also interrupt/cancel such movement Abilities if successfully applied in the middle of the movement. Unstoppable, friendly Stasis, and Invulnerable all block and cleanse Root.
Root is an uncommon status. Have a list:
Innate access: Kel'thuzad, Arthas, Deckard, Anduin, Malfurion, Junkrat, Thrall, and Xul.
Heroic Ability: Jaina, Kel'thuzad, and Mephisto.
Talent access: Zul'jin, Whitemane, Stukov, Rexxar, Cho, Cassia, Jaina, and Arthas can all Talent for Roots, with only Cho and Rexxar specifically tying these to upgrading Heroics. (Though the earliest a Talent can add a Root is Level 13)
In total, that's 16 Heroes who have the potential to Root, meaning less than 18% of Heroes can be Root sources, with only 8 of them having access out the box. (So about 9% of all Heroes) As Rooting is never Talented earlier than Heroics, if a match doesn't involve one of those 8, Root will be irrelevant for a sizable chunk of a match even if one of the other 8 is present and does in fact elect to gain Root access.
always explicitly announced unless a different status is getting display priority
Blind
The unit's Basic Attacks Miss, doing no damage and usually failing to trigger effects tied to landing Basic Attacks. Cleansed by Unstoppable, (friendly) Stasis, and Invulnerable.
Note that Blind's timing for negating ranged attacks with a projectile is that if a unit is Blind at the moment of its projectile impacting, the attack Misses. Not when the attack was launched the way I suspect most people intuitively expect. As such, against Heroes with relatively slow visible projectiles, Blind can be used reactively instead of only proactively.
Also note that damage Blind negates gets added to a Hero's 'healing/shielding' score on the scorescreen. I really wish that was labeled 'damage negated' or something... it's easy to get confused, especially since this is only explained in one patch's notes. I do appreciate this existing, though; being able to concretely see that a well-played Johanna negated around 25% what her team's healer negated makes it a lot clearer that yes, she contributed with all those Shield Glare uses.
Blind itself is another very rare status. Only 5 Heroes have baseline access:
Johanna, Li Li, Cassia, Mei, and Valeera have baseline Blinds.
One Hero can grab it via a Heroic:
Artanis has a Blind-inflicting Heroic.
Two Heroes can Talent to add it to their kit:
Auriel and Deckard can Talent to gain Blind access. Deckard can only do so if he took Stay Awhile And Listen earlier.
So that's exactly 8 Heroes with Blind access.
Overall, I'm okay with this. Heroes of the Storm seems to have started out thinking the design would rely heavily on rock/paper/scissors type counters, where you'd counteract a Hero relying on Basic Attacks through bringing Heroes with Blind, Evasion, or Physical Armor, and while these elements aren't completely gone, they seem to have been pushed back from the core design.
Silence
The Hero cannot activate (Or deactivate) Abilities. This will interrupt Abilities that are in their windup, as well as interrupt ongoing Channels and Mobile Channels. The Hero's player cannot even issue Ability-based orders to their Hero until the Silence ends.
That wording about 'activating' Abilities is carefully-selected. The game itself will say variations on not being able to use Abilities, and this is mostly accurate enough, but some Abilities can be toggled on and off and generally such Abilities will continue functioning while Silenced, with the only loss of functionality being an inability to toggle them off. For example, Arthas has Frozen Tempest as a Basic Ability, and if he has it active when he's hit by Silence, it will keep running, only deactivating if he runs out of Mana to fuel it. Chromie's Slowing Sands is another example that continues to operate even if she's Silenced, only ceasing if she runs out of Mana.
That said, as noted in the description it will still interrupt a lot of Abilities if it gets applied in the middle of them being active, most obviously channels of any sort but also some movement effects like Varian's Charge.
An odd point is that Silence could theoretically be applied to non-Heroic targets and even meaningfully matter, but all sources of Silence only apply Silence to Heroic targets, even if it is valid for them to otherwise affect non-Heroic targets.
cleansed by friendly Stasis
variants don't clearly communicate they're Silences, but 'plain' Silence is always explicitly announced unless a different status is getting priority (This naturally happens with Mephisto's Unspeakable Horror, where the Root from Durance of Hate gets priority on being announced even though the Silence is active the whole time)
'plain' Silence is relatively rare; only Sylvanas, Malfurion, Dehaka, the Butcher, Valeera, Stukov, and Alarak have Basic or Heroic Abilities that inflict regular Silence, and only Alarak, Stukov, and Valeera have them as Basic Abilities.
Only Gall, Arthas, Deckard, Junkrat, Leoric, Mephisto, Qhira, and Stukov can Talent for Silences, and of those Junkrat and Arthas are the only ones who can do so before Level 16, and only them, Gall, and Stukov don't tie the Talent to upgrading a specific Heroic.
can't silence non-heroes, I think
Polymorphed
The Hero is unable to use Abilities and is unable to perform Basic Attacks, but retains control over movement. Classed as a variation on Silence, interacting with all effects that interact with Silence.
It's strange to me that Polymorph is classed as a form of Silence, given it's almost as complete a disable as a Stun. Victims can still move, but are otherwise completely helpless; it's basically like being Blinded and Silenced in terms of crippling a victim.
Polymorph itself is a very rare status, only found on two Heroes plus as one Core special ability: Brightwing has innate access via a Basic Ability, Medivh has a Heroic for it, and Garden of Terror's Core intermittently throws out a seed that detonates after a brief delay, Polymorphing any enemy Heroes caught in that detonation.
Polymorph is also one of the most obvious statuses in action, as it completely replaces a victim's model for the duration. It's less clear in practice than that might sound, though: Brightwing turns people into sheep, and Medivh turns people into sheep with wings fluttering off the ground, but the Garden of Terror Core turns people into basically Audrey of Little Shop of Horrors (Which is to say a befanged potted plant, so... kind of weird it can't attack?), and furthermore Brightwing's skin will change what animal she turns her victim into! So it can be pretty confusing; I was turned into a pig in this match, not a sheep, is that a different Polymorph effect or something?
cleansed by friendly Stasis
Fear
The Hero is forced to run away from a specific point, is unable to use Abilities, and is unable to perform Basic Attacks. Classed as a variation on Silence, interacting with all effects that interact with Silence.
Even more so than Polymorph, it's pretty weird to me that Fear is classed as a form of Silence, not a form of Stun. It literally shuts down all control over the Hero, just like a Stun. Why is it classed as a lesser form of disable?
This mostly isn't a big deal, because most effects that care about negative statuses do so in a pretty broad way (eg Unstoppable protecting against all the disables), but there are a few cases where this oddity really matters, such as how Kharazim and Ragnaros both have Talents that trigger very specifically off of Stuns.
cleansed by friendly Stasis
always explicitly announced unless a different status is getting priority
Fear is found on only 2 Heroes: Gul'dan can inflict it with his Horrify Heroic, and Deathwing can inflict it with Bellowing Roar, selectable at Level 10.
Mind Control
The Hero is forced to walk toward Sylvanas, is unable to use Abilities, and is unable to perform Basic Attacks. Classed as a variation on Silence, interacting with all effects that interact with Silence.
This is completely exclusive to Sylvanas. Like Fear, it's pretty strange that it's classed as a Silence, as it's a complete disable. Why isn't it classed as a Stun?
cleansed by friendly Stasis
always explicitly announced unless a different status is getting priority
Taunted
The Hero is forced to try to Basic Attack the Taunting Hero. They cannot use Abilities, will walk closer if out of range until they are in range, and cannot be issued orders by their player. Classed as a variation on Silence, interacting with all effects that interact with Silence.
Taunt is another very rare status, only available via Heroic and only on two Heroes: Varian and Garrosh.
I'm of mixed feelings about it being classed as a Silence. On the one hand, its mechanical impacts are pretty firmly in Silence territory: victims can still move and still use Basic Attacks, after all, unlike Polymorph, Fear, and Mind Control shutting off Basic Attacks. On the other hand, usage of it tends to work out to being functionally a Stun, as victims will generally stop moving and are aiming their Basic Attack at a target that can probably shrug off the hit pretty readily. Varian especially has innate Parry allowing him to completely negate Basic Attacks if he's at all concerned about his target's Basic Attack damage output.
cleansed by friendly Stasis
always explicitly announced unless a different status is getting priority
Stun
The unit is completely unable to act, and for Heroes their player cannot even issue orders to their Hero for the duration. This interrupts Abilities in their windup, as well as Channels and Mobile Channels. Stuns do not affect Structures unless specified otherwise. Stun is cleansed and blocked by Unstoppable and (friendly) Stasis.
Stun is usually explicitly announced to the victim (With a progress bar) and typically is accompanied by the victim employing one of several Stun-specific animations while a swirly yellow bit hovers over their head, as well as being explicitly listed in Ability/Talent descriptions, but the game is willing to have Displacements incorporate Stuns without mentioning them. This thankfully has been substantially phased out, where it used to be more common, but there's still a couple of examples. (Specifically: Hook/Helping Hand on Stitches and Wrecking Ball on Garrosh) This is a Not Great Decision, since normally a Displacement cannot interrupt a mobile channel, but then if you activate Bladestorm expecting it to be impossible to interrupt because Garrosh took Devastate and nobody else on the enemy team has a Stun or Silence, you're going to be very unpleasantly surprised when Garrosh puts a stop to Bladestorm with Wrecking Ball.
Baseline access: The Butcher, Kerrigan, Tyrande, Kael'thas, Gazlowe, Kel'thuzad, E.T.C., Diablo, Johanna, Muradin, Blaze, Garrosh, Stitches, Anub'arak, Mei, Imperius, Yrel, Auriel, Dehaka, Sonya, Rexxar, Valeera, Uther, Qhira, Maiev, Hogger, Deathwing
Heroic access: Anduin, Tyrael, Cho, Ragnaros, Tassadar, Cassia, Gazlowe, E.T.C., Diablo, Johanna, Muradin, Arthas (Against Structures, Minions, and Mercenaries), Thrall, D.Va, Murky, Hanzo, Sonya, Illidan, Orphea, Valla, Uther, Qhira, Hogger
Talent access: Anduin, Gall, Sylvanas (Not against Heroes), Deckard, Muradin, Mei (Against Structures), Olaf of The Lost Vikings, D.Va, Falstad, Sylvanas (Not against Heroes)
So 29 Heroes with baseline access, 24 Heroes who have at least one Heroic option, and 10 who can Talent for Stuns. (3 of those Talent Stuns not working on Heroes) When you account for the repeats, the actual total of Stun-capable Heroes is 48 Heroes. (46 if you discount Arthas and Sylvanas entirely due to their inability to Stun Heroes)
Sleep
Sleep is a form of Stun. The only difference is that units that take damage will 'wake up', terminating the Sleep early, unless the damage either occurs within 0.5 seconds of Sleep being applied or comes from a damage over time effect that was applied before the Sleep was applied. This includes that all Talents that interact with Stuns will interact with Sleep.
Compared to regular Stun, Sleep is pretty rare. Only Ana and Mal'ganis have access to it via a Basic Ability, only Deckard has a Heroic Ability for it, and Malfurion can Talent at Level 1 for it; that's it for Sleep.
Also, while effects that interact with Stuns always interact with Sleep, the reverse is not necessary true: Mal'ganis can Talent for bonus damage against Sleeping targets, and this effect doesn't kick in against Stunned targets.
cleansed by friendly Stasis
always explicitly announced unless a different status is getting priority
(Hostile) Stasis
The Hero is unable to act, but is immune to hostile effects and friendly effects. Unlike friendly Stasis, this does not clear negative effects, and will prevent the resolution of friendly effects that end inside it. (eg delayed heals)
Hostile Stasis is a weird status that's basically hidden by the game, as every effect that applies it removes the victim from the ground plane, with no status announced. (Me using the Stasis icon for it never actually happens in-game) They basically all look like completely unique, distinct statuses. It's also odd for being a semi-common status that is only available via Heroics.
Specifically: Imperius' Wrath of the Angiris, Stitches' Gorge, Mei's Avalanche, Zagara's Devouring Maw, and Anub'arak's Cocoon all inflict hostile Stasis.
In several regards, hostile Stasis behaves just like friendly Stasis. It renders victims immune to most effects while they're inside, including that it can prevent them from taking damage from damage over time effects on them (Which is particularly counterintuitive with Devouring Maw since it applies its damage during the Stasis), prevents them from acting (Completely consistently, unlike friendly Stasis), shuts off passive damage aura effects, and notably disables Gall where most disables don't affect him. The main differences are that hostile Stasis doesn't cleanse negative effects and that delayed friendly effects can be blocked by it. eg Rehgar's Ancestral Heal can be applied to someone, and if they go into friendly Stasis before the heal is actually applied, they still get healed, whereas with hostile Stasis the heal is blocked, wasting it.
Time Stop
Affected units are frozen in place and their statuses and cooldown paused. Orders can be issued while Time Stopped and can be initiated from inside Time Stop, unlike other disables, though they normally won't do anything until the Time Stop ends. Time Stopped units cannot be interacted with by most effects: they cannot be targeted, Skillshots pass right through them, area of effect will not actually be applied to them, they do not contest Capture Points, and their collision with other units is disabled, allowing other units to walk right through them
Time Stop is notable for being the only standard disable Unstoppable doesn't block or cleanse. The only protections from it are Stasis and Invulnerable, which both prevent it from being applied -but they can't be used to cleanse Time Stop once it has been applied.
It's also very rare, the single rarest disable that isn't classed as a variation on another status: Chromie is the only Hero in the game with baseline access, only Medivh, Zeratul, Maiev, and Mei have Heroics for applying it, and no Hero can burn a regular Talent pick on gaining access to it.
Time Stop can mostly only be applied to Heroes, but Zeratul's Void Prison is an exception that works on basically everything (except himself), including even Structures and the Capture Points for Mercenary Camps.
always explicitly announced (Doublecheck: Ice Wall does announce it, right?)
Displacement/Daze
Affected units are moved at a specified speed for a specified duration. (The direction of this movement is defined by the effect causing the movement) If Daze is applied, this works as Stun, except it will not break Mobile Channels and will not trigger Talents that respond to Stuns. Most Displacements additionally disable the unit's collision with other units until the Displacement ends. When used on Rooted targets, removes the Root and then reapplies it once the Displacement is over, unless the Root's duration timed out during the movement. Unstoppable always prevents both Displacement and Daze.
Displacements/Daze never get tooltip descriptions of their duration. When I was first getting into the game, I didn't question this: real-time games that have mechanics for knocking targets around are often employing physics modeling solutions to such behavior, where 'how long is an enemy sent flying when my orc warlord uses his mighty thews to smash an enemy with his warhammer?' is a question whose answer is complex and contextually-dependent, involving mass vs force calculations, being affected by terrain conditions ("This target will be in the air for 1.2 seconds if struck on a flat plane... and 10 seconds if you smash them off that cliff over there"), affected by the momentum of a victim, etc...
... but at this point, I rate it as one of the most egregious examples of tooltips in Heroes of the Storm often being pretty uninformative, because the above is not at all what the game is doing. The majority of Displacements in Heroes of the Storm work thusly: they last a specific duration that is set internally and does not vary, they move the target at a fixed speed that does not vary, and they move the target in a fixed direction based on the Ability's mechanics. (By 'a fixed direction', I mean that shoving someone into a wall won't have them bounce off it, among other ways the direction could theoretically be variable)
Some Displacements are more variable than the above description, but that variability is still not any kind of physics solution. For example, Warden's Cage on Maiev shoves for a variable duration... by virtue of the fact that its goal is to shove victims to a specified point and its duration will terminate early once they reach that point. Similarly, Raynor's Penetrating Round sort of fakes physics behavior, in that its knockback is greater to targets closer to Raynor... but this is simply an internal check against three possible range values that each apply the Displacement for a different duration. Any target he hits beyond range 5.5 gets shoved for exactly 0.125 seconds, regardless of whether they're range 6 out or range 9, and regardless of whether they're Chromie's small self or Cho'Gall's towering form. So just as Hanzo's Dragon's Arrow informs you of its three different Stun durations based on distance, the game could absolutely just inform you of Penetrating Round's three different knockback durations.
All this is annoying enough on its own, but it connects very directly to the point that Daze is a disabling status. Normally, Heroes of the Storm endeavors to ensure tooltips correctly inform the player of exactly how long disables last, even if -as I just brought up with Dragon's Arrow- the answer has variability to it and so results in a larger-than-usual tooltip. Displacement/Daze being an exception is very bizarre of the game, and frustratingly consistent with a bunch of other elements strongly suggesting the devs conceptualized Displacement as Not A Disable At All, or at least as a very minor disable, so minor they don't feel the need to give you its duration.
This itself is one of the bigger and more bizarre design problems with the game: the game very clearly views knockback effects as lesser threats than Stuns, but mechanically they're largely greater threats than Stuns. Partly by virtue of knockback opening up the ability to pull enemies into danger and whatnot, but right now I mostly mean that they Stun a victim just as hard as explicit Stuns, but don't trigger Talents that attempt to responsively punish Stuns. Furthermore, as the game views Daze as a 'lesser' threat, it passes it out noticeably more casually than Stuns: of the game's 90 Heroes, 52 of them can perform Displacements on enemies (53 if you count Temporal Loop on Chromie, though it's not mechaniced as one), vs the 48 Heroes who can perform a Stun at all. Notably, multiple Heroes have access to Abilities that can apply Displacement/Daze multiple times in close succession, like Deckard's Lorenado and Chen's Wandering Keg, which can result in extended stun-locks in a way the game is much less willing to let happen with the Stun status per se.
There is exactly one circumstance Displacement/Daze is genuinely a lesser disable than Stun: mobile channels. If mobile channels were very, very common, I'd still disagree with the game's assessment of Stun vs Daze, but I'd understand how it happened... but mobile channels are actually rare. Only 19 Heroes in the game have access to a mobile channel that can be blocked by a Stun. (Multiple mobile channels incorporate Unstoppable, such as The Butcher's Ruthless Onslaught, or how Gall's Heroics are both classed as mobile channels but he can never be Stunned) Of those 19 Heroes, only 9 of them have a mobile channel baseline, and only 1 more is forced to take a mobile channel later in the match. Those mobile channels are:
-Azmodan's All Shall Burn is a Mobile Channel.
-Yrel's Basic Abilities are all Mobile Channels. (Except when backed by Divine Purpose)
-Genji's Deflect is a Mobile Channel.
-Sonya's Whirlwind is a Mobile Channel.
-Tychus' Overkill is a Mobile Channel.
-Lieutenant Morales' Healing Beam is a Mobile Channel.
-Dehaka's Drag is a Mobile Channel.
-D.Va's Boosters and Defense Matrix are both Mobile Channels. (As is Micro Missiles)
-Hanzo's Storm Bow is a Mobile Channel.
-Cho's Surging Fist is a Mobile Channel.
-Li-Li's Jug of a 1,000 Cups is a Mobile Channel, and her Water Dragon has a 2-second windup that is a Mobile Channel. (But past that it cannot be interrupted)
The Heroes who have optional access to mobile channels are...
-Valla has Strafe as a Heroic Mobile Channel.
-Blaze has Combustion as a Heroic Mobile Channel.
-Fenix has Purification Salvo as a Heroic Mobile Channel.
-Samuro has Bladestorm as a Heroic Mobile Channel.
-Lúcio has Sound Barrier as a Heroic Mobile Channel. (This is specifically the 1 second windup: the Shield HP persists afterward even if Lúcio dies)
-Kharazim can take Way of the 100 Fists at Level 16, which causes Radiant Dash to perform a Mobile Channel on the target.
It's worth pointing out that simply classing all of these mobile channels as 'immune to Displacement/Daze' is also fundamentally incorrect. All Shall Burn, Healing Beam, and Way of the 100 Fists all involve a leash range, where the channel will break if the Hero is moved far enough away from their target, and so Displacements can directly break them, just less unconditionally than Stuns. For most other mobile channels, they can't be broken by knocking the channeler around, but they can still be neutered with good use of Displacements: knocking Blaze far away from his intended victims in the middle of Combustion's channel can cause it to detonate on literally nothing. Knocking Lúcio away from his teammates before Sound Barrier fires can prevent him from saving the people he was trying to protect. Separating Li Li from her teammates (for Jug of 1,000 Cups) or from any Heroic victims (for Water Dragon) can substantially or completely waste her Heroic.
The main case where Displacements are genuinely reliably Not Helpful on a mobile channel is Genji's Deflect. Shoving him might prevent him from shredding someone with Deflect's damage response, but it won't let you circumvent his damage immunity the way a Stun or Silence would.
Outside Deflect, though, this notion that Displacement/Daze is less threatening than Stun is... extremely inaccurate.
A further layer to this 'the game doesn't treat Displacement/Daze as a nasty disable' is the twin factors of visual communication and visual impact. Some Abilities that have a Displacement attached appear to have it primarily or purely for visual impact, so that eg Tychus' Frag Grenade 'feels' like a 'heavy' impact, rather than to deliberately give Tychus a disabling Ability. By a similar token, Daze doesn't reliably come with a visual signal of helplessness: some Daze-inducing effects cause a Hero to play one of their helpless/freaking out animations (eg Falstad's Mighty Gust), but a lot of them just shove the model around, maybe lift it into the air briefly. (Once again: Tychus' Frag Grenade doesn't look like a disable, it just pops victims into the air and to the side very briefly)
Now, most Displacement/Daze effects do last very briefly, and it's worth mentioning that the game is willing to do a certain amount of unannounced, unmentioned brief disable behavior for other statuses. Stitches' Hook Stuns the target for a split second, breaking even Mobile Channels, which is not mentioned by the game itself at all, including that if you are playing the game and get hit by Hook the Stun duration meter won't appear for even a split-second. But this still boils down to dozens of Abilities in the game being super-Stuns the game doesn't bother to give the duration of (Even though in most cases it would be trivial to provide said duration), and a good number of Displacements last long enough that if they were Stuns the game would assuredly feel obligated to mention that you're locking a victim out of action for 0.375 seconds. For example, Junkrat's Concussion Mine can launch someone for up to a second, and will launch them for at minimum 0.75 seconds, making it directly comparable to Uther's Hammer of Justice in terms of disable duration!
This also touches on my single biggest complaint with core engine stuff: I really, really hate that Root, Stun, Silence, Daze, and Stasis all not only prevent the execution of relevant orders but 'drop' any current orders and, most obnoxious of all, prevent the input of further orders. Excepting Time Stop, all disables are even more disruptive than their raw durations suggest, because it takes the game a moment to give the player back input ability and then it takes a moment past that for the game to actually acknowledge and act on such input. In practice, all disables effectively last 0.125 seconds longer than stated (Or longer, if lag gets involved...) because it takes 0.0625 seconds past the disable ending to get controls back and then 0.0625 seconds to implement a registered click: that's a full eighth of a second of secret extra duration on disables! This results in absurd scenarios where you're playing a character with a teleport that casts instantly, and your Hero is visibly ceasing to be Stunned/Silenced/Dazed, but desperately mashing your teleport's button is not getting you out of the situation, and you die not because you were continuously stunlocked but because the implementation is such that the moments where you weren't actually suffering a disable were too brief to register the input.
This is exacerbated by the game's hierarchal preferences for resolving what happens if an input is implemented simultaneously to a Hero being pushed into a state that would register the input invalid: the input is simply ignored. That is, if you click Zeratul's Blink, and 0.0625 seconds later the game notices that Zeratul will be hit by a disable that would block Blink, instead of the game deciding that Blink's instant teleportation gets Zeratul out of the way of the incoming disable, it decides that Zeratul doesn't try to Blink at all and becomes disabled. Playing VS AI against Elite-tier AI is a particularly clear illustration of the issue, in that the AI will use instant-cast Abilities to interrupt your own instant-cast Abilities because it's reading your inputs and isn't dealing with input delay like a human player is, and so you click an instant-cast Ability while standing next to Lúcio and then your Hero gets knocked back by Soundwave and the Ability you clicked doesn't activate at all.
As a comparison point, the standard in fighting games has long been that the game will queue up inputs and implement them as soon as possible if your character is in the middle of a different animation, whether it's an attack animation, hitstun, them standing up after being knocked to the ground, etc. Being in hitstun doesn't cause these games to just completely ignore your inputs until the hitstun ends.
I hope this particular jank is a product of the awkward development cycle and the intent was to correct it, back before the game got put on life support. This awful approach to disables is inherited directly from Starcraft II, where it mostly wasn't intrusively problematic, but for example one of the Mutators for Starcraft II Co-op is hugely infuriating because your units can end up continuously juggled by displacements caused by enemy deaths and so you simply can't issue orders to any of them. Notably, Time Stop as a 'real' status effect in Heroes of the Storm is a comparatively late addition: Medivh and Chromie (And probably Zeratul, though this has been oddly difficult for me to confirm) didn't inflict Time Stop initially, they inflicted Stasis, which got swapped to Time Stop. (As far as I'm aware, Maiev's Containment Disc and Mei's Ice Wall were always Time Stop)
So it's possible it took them a while to get the engine to cooperate on the topic at all, and just didn't manage to get to implementing it outside Time Stop before development was terminated from on high.
In any event... well, first have a list:
Heroes that completely lack Displacements: Malthael, Ragnaros, Kharazim, Gall (Can Displace Cho, but not enemies), Illidan, Zeratul, Gul'dan, Tyrande, Lunara, Valeera, Kael'thas, Mephisto, Jaina, Nova, Genji, Valla, Samuro, Zul'jin, Azmodan, Sylvanas, Zagara, Fenix, Blaze, Mal'ganis, Anub'arak, Uther, Rehgar, Xul, Leoric, Imperius (Partial qualifier: the 'snapping' effect on Celestial Charge), Malfurion, Anduin (Can Displace allies, but not enemies), Li Li, Greymane, Abathur (Qualifier: Ultimate Evolution). The Lost Vikings, Murky, Hanzo, Ana, Sonya, Varian, Rexxar, Nazeebo (Partial qualifier: the 'suction' effect on Zombie Wall), Deathwing, Arthas, and Medivh
That's 46 Heroes in total, meaning 54 have at least one way to Displace enemies.
Yeah, I'm listing the people who lack Displacements, because it's more common to have them than to not: only Slow is more common. I'm deadly serious about the game passing Displacements out rather frivolously!
It's also worth pointing out that most Heroes who lack Displacements still have access to a Stun, Silence, or hostile Stasis, which I'm emphasizing because there are very few Heroes who cannot interrupt an immobile channel. Only Malthael, Kharazim, Zeratul, Lunara, Nova, Genji, Samuro, Zul'jin, Azmodan, Fenix, Rehgar, Xul, Li Li, Greymane, Abathur, and Nazeebo are completely unable to stop a non-mobile channel except by killing the target. (Which isn't necessarily an option: Anduin's Holy Word: Salvation is a non-mobile channel that renders him immune to harm, Cassia can turn Fend into the same....) That's only 16 Heroes who have zero ability to interrupt channels! (And Abathur's Ultimate Evolution makes him a bit misleading, and same for Zeratul's Void Prison)
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