Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Update 90

Minion Masters!
After much anticipation, Stormy will be joining us in the flying arenas of Minion Masters! We’re also introducing a number of Balance Changes to this patch as well as some general bug fixes.

New Card: Stormy

Stormbringer’s trusty sidekick from Forced Showdown arrives to Minion Masters! This clumsy cloud shoots Chain Lightning as its attack, dealing damage to itself in the process. It comes with the new Zen-Chi Flow affinity, where if your last played card was from the Zen-Chi faction, he gets double the health! Stormy is available to be crafted for 2000 shards or can be earned from Power Token spins.

Balance Changes

  • Walking Blind Date
    • Now has Taunt
    • No longer has Summoning Sickness
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • Walking Blind Date is a card that has been very weak for a long time, but also a challenge for us to buff. Rescaling it risks the cycle potential of the card being too powerful, so we decided an interesting direction to take the card would be to give it additional utility by being able to redirect and “kite” enemies through the Taunt ability.

  • Sniper Scrat / Bounty Sniper
    • Attack Speed improved from 4.0 to 3.5 seconds
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • While the Sniper Scrats were decently powerful for a short period of time, they fell off soon after, and we feel a moderate buff like this can give them the boost they need to compete.

  • Howling Moon
    • No longer gives units Lycanthropy
    • Now summons two Werewolves where the spell is cast after the effect of the spell has been applied
    • Is now a Defensive Spell
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • Howling Moon is a card that has been fairly problematic to play against on multiple skill levels due to its explosive combo potential. Often decks that used the card felt uninteractive or somewhat unfair when you would die to two Raged and Frenzied Werewolves dealing thousands of damage to you in the manner of a few seconds, even after previous nerfs to the Werewolf unit. We explored several different iterations on how we could change this card yet its ability to be comboed so effectively only served to make it more powerful in the end, so we settled for a solution that still kept the spirit of the card.

  • Combustion
    • Now only does 10% damage to Masters
    • Explosion Delay decreased from 3 to 1 second
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • Combustion is a card that was often featured exclusively in “cheese decks”, which revolved around detonating a large number of small minions at the Master tower to do extreme amounts of damage in a short period of time if it wasn’t reacted against. The volatile nature of this playstyle often felt unfun to play against. At the same time, we felt outside of those situations it was hard to effectively use Combustion, but its usage as a face damage spell was a limiting factor in any adjustments we wanted to make. We hope that this change can solve both of those conditions.

  • Propeller Horde
    • Unit Count reduced from 6(12) to 5(10)
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • Propeller Horde is a card that has felt somewhat overtuned since its buff after the release of the card. We feel its original values of having 5 and 10 Propeller Scrats still leaves the card in a useful state, while being less overwhelming to play against in decks that buff all of the units.

  • Chain Lightning
    • Cast delay reduced from 1.5 to 1 second
    • Stun Duration increased from 1 to 2 seconds
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • To tie in with the release of Stormy, we’re choosing to further reinforce Chain Lightning’s ability to stun the battlefield rather than make it directly compete as a damage dealing card with other options such as Fireball.

  • Shieldguard of Light
    • Damage decreased from 70 to 60
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • Shieldguard of Light was a popular card from the new Battle for Light’s Reach Battle Pass, and we ultimately feel it was a bit overtuned in terms of what it was capable of. With its capable DPS and large Health pool combined, it was more of a “One Man Army” than the Tank role we initially planned for it. We’re opting to reinforce the latter with a small damage tweak to the card without risking making the card feel too weak.

  • Guardian
    • Can no longer protect units from self-inflicted damage (Stormy attack, Combustion, Screaming Scrat)
  • --- Developer comments ---
  • Guardian’s ability to protect against self-inflicted damage was an ability that restricted design space on cards like Stormy, as well as future cards that we may intend to damage themselves as a drawback to a particularly powerful effect.

Misc.

  • Adjusted the look of Conquest Cards in the Deckbuilding menu to prevent confusion about ownership of the cards.
  • Adjusted the Lobby icons to avoid confusion regarding the Premade 2v2 queue.
  • Tweaked the visual effects of Shields so that it fades out towards the ground.
  • Updated VFX for Boomer, Fireball and Armor of Light explosions.
  • Updated VFX for Colossus’ attack swing.
  • Collection View will now remember that you had it open when you re-enter Deckbuilding.
  • A guild that has pending applications but reaches its maximum member count will now delete all pending applications - Thanks Zundmaster!
  • Made Teleport interactions with roots consistent. All teleport effects (Succubus, Incubus, Netherstep and Trick Swap) break immobilizing effects such as roots or bear traps - Thanks Khazlariko!

Bugs

  • Fixed Currency totals disappearing from the bottom right of the menu if you bought an item - Thanks DerpSmashed!
  • Fixed golden donator name not being given out to Streamer puffs if they donated on the Watch & Win screen - Thanks Zundmaster!
  • Fixed Hypnotised Xiao Long keeping the spell indicator above your cards after it is dead - Thanks Ty!
  • Fixed the KPI3 skin missing its link in the description - Thanks Kishin!
  • Fixed Cursebearer being able to curse units while in Black Hole - Thanks Memfisto!
  • Fixed Morgrul the Swarmer King not roaring or summoning swarmers on death if it was being healed - Thanks videogamer77 and Julaiwnl!
  • Fixed an instance where scores on the Guild Leaderboard could be missing a “K” on the end - Thanks Kishin!
  • Fixed the Twitch chat link from betadwarfbot being broken - Thanks RynoRanger ACTUAL!
  • Fixed Master skins not using the correct dialogue when previewing them at the power tower - Thanks GReY WolF!
  • Fixed Master dialogue playing when opening any rewards at the power tower.
  • Fixed Stormbringer gaining perk 2 removing marksmanship from enemy units.
  • Fixed Arcane Golem’s new vfx not being Worldspace.
  • Fixed the Versus screen being too bright in the Day Snow skybox.
  • Fixed the updated Empyrean models not being highlighted by spell effects.
  • Fixed the Werewolf unit not being highlighted by spell effects.
  • Fixed Plasma Marines’ guns not being highlighted by spell effects.
  • Fixed the search term for Conquest Cards incorrectly being Guild Cards.
  • Fixed Fireball and Healing Fireball nested tooltips saying Scrat Horde in the Gambler’s Ball description.
  • Fixed Werewolves receiving Mana Surge.
  • Fixed the bloom on Power Towers when you are low HP being too high.
  • Fixed Spectator Puff Emotes being too dark.
  • Fixed Guardian shield being hard to see on Day Snow skybox.
  • Fixed being able to place Diona traps on top of Mordar tombstones.
  • Fixed switching avatars off of an animated avatar causing all avatars to be dark until you restarted the game.

Cheers from BetaDwarf!