Version 1.17 - Dawn Marshall Valorian

Minion Masters!

Valorian

The hero of the Empyreum, Valorian, has landed in the arenas starting today!

Dawn Marshall Valorian is the wearer of the legendary Armor of the Sun and the supreme commander of the Chapter of Light. He is the greatest soldier in the Empyreum. A superhuman warrior enhanced by the light, powerful beyond mortal reckoning and tempered by centuries of war. He is a shining beacon for his people and the greatest hope for the survival of the Empyreum.

To celebrate the release of Valorian, we've made a special post on Imgur detailing his development process. Check it out here!

Basic Attack: Valorian uses his heirloom blade for a slow but powerful attack.

Damage: 40 

Cooldown: 2 seconds 

Range: 10

+5 damage for each Empyrean card in hand.

Perk 1: Holy Light

Valorian heals up to 5 injured friendly Minions for 15 health.

Cooldown: 5 seconds

Perk 2: Searing Light

Add the card Searing Light to Valorian's deck.

Searing Light - 1 Mana Spell

Valorian does 5 attacks in an area, each attack targeting a random enemy Minion.

Perk 3: Divine Light

Double Valorian's Damage as well as Healing from Holy Light.

You can get access to Valorian through Tier 6 of the Premium Season Pass, Tier 49 of the Free Path, or unlock him instantly through the All Masters Upgrade DLC! If you unlock him via the DLC and obtain him from the Free Path afterwards, you will be refunded 300 Rubies.

Also comes with 2 new cards:

The Season Pass will end on October 29th.

Balance

Border Patrol

• Mana Cost 6 -> 5

• Mana Freeze 1 -> 2

Bridge Shrine (REWORK)

• No longer passively generates XP

• Increased decay rate during Mana Frenzy removed

• Mana Cost 4 -> 3

• Duration 45 -> 60

• Now generates an additional XP every time you gain XP from the bridge in the same lane as Bridge Shrine

• If Bridge Shrine is placed in the center of your arena, only one bridge will be affected. There is a visual indicator that points towards the relevant bridge.

• Developer Comments

• Bridge Shrine has been a problematic design for quite a while. While the card wouldn’t see a lot of success in regular gameplay, strategies involving it would feel uninteractive to play against, and the card was utilised far more effectively in Competitive gameplay due to the more control-orientated metagame. In general we felt the card just wasn’t fun to play around, too. We hope that with this redesign Bridge Shrine can be involved in far more active strategies that rely upon you to aggressively fight over a bridge, rather than passive rely on it as your primary source of XP.

Gor’Rakk Sacrifice

• Duration 5 -> 4

• Now only targets minions you control. (Does not affect allied minions in 2v2)

• Developer Comments

• Much like with our changes to Lone Scout and Lone Wolf, we want to make this card more usable in 2v2 gameplay, as well as give it a general buff.

Grasping Thorns

• Radius 2.5 -> 3.5

Illusory Cleaver

• Mana Cost 1 -> 2

• Damage 10 -> 30

• Now has Voidborne Wound: Reduce cost by 1

• Developer Comments

• This change serves two functions. Firstly, we wanted to find a way where we could restore Illusory Cleaver’s 30 damage value, as the card just wasn’t seeing any effective usage beyond bridge grabbing since it was changed. Secondly, with the new Illusory Dragon releasing this patch, we were having difficulty tying it to the existing mechanic without it being a straight downgrade due to the small damage values.

Jungle Jumble

• Mana Cost 6 -> 5

• Now only creates Minion cards

• Can no longer give you the same card more than once

• Developer Comments

• We felt Jungle Jumble needed major changes in order to be effective, as it would put you significantly behind in the game no matter what the mana cost was, and getting Zen-Chi spells from the card wasn’t good enough since the addition of Growthburst Shrooms, as you would lack the bodies to effectively utilise them.

Mar’Dred, Prince of Nightmares

• Now cancels his attack if the target dies during it

Sugilite Shield

• Mana Freeze 2 -> 1

Void Altar

• Now spawns the first Soul immediately

• Developer Comments

• Void Altar was simply too slow of a card, offering no immediate value, making it very easy to push into as soon as the card was played. While it’s still a significant risk to play the building, the immediate soul should enable you to get the board presence required to stay in the game.

Sacrifice Reworks

As there are a number of reworks relating to the Sacrifice mechanic in this patch, we’re grouping them together in the patch notes.

The main goal with these changes is to significantly buff the Sacrifice mechanic in general. Currently the reward for incorporating Slitherbound synergies into your decks just isn’t good enough, both due to the steep costs and the lack of viable cards that can utilise the effect. While we hope these changes will be enough to make the faction relevant, we intend to monitor it closely and adjust as necessary going forward.

Sacrifice (Mechanic)

• Now only Sacrifices the amount of Slitherbound necessary for the card’s effect

• For instance, Slithering Summons can’t sacrifice more than 6 Slitherbound, and Rabid Prowler will only sacrifice 1 Slitherbound.

Empowered Soul Stealer (REWORK)

• Rage activator removed

• No longer spawns with base souls

• Now has Sacrifice: Gain 1 Soul for each Slitherbound Sacrificed.

Gambler’s Ball (REWORK)

• Faction Empyrean -> Slither

• Chance of firing both spells is now 0% at base

• Now has Sacrifice: Gain a 20% chance to fire both spells for each Slitherbound Sacrificed.

• Developer Comments

• Gambler’s Ball was a card that proved difficult to balance, and equally frustrating to play against. At lower chances of firing both spells the card wasn’t seeing much play, but since it was buffed its unpredictable nature made it feel like a very “cheap” card to go up against. We hope that with this change we can make the card’s powerful effect feel much more controllable and expected, but require setup to achieve its powerful results.

Misc

• The Now It’s A Party! Adventure relic has been changed to summon Stoutheart Cards. Previously it would only summon Minions, which led to some bugs.

• The Twitch Memotes have returned in this patch's Tri-Team Tourney!

Bugs

• Fixed Black Hole still resetting targets.

• Fixed Deck Slots breaking after Page 17 - Thanks LordJulius!

• Fixed Wheel of Doom missing some of its sfx.

• Fixed a visual bug with Stormbringer’s ready animations.

• Fixed Spirit Infusion missing its Accursed Ascension description in other languages.

• Fixed Mythic units having the Mordar Resurrection indicator.

• Fixed Masters facing away from the camera in the post-game screen.

• Fixed Mordar’s second perk in Adventures still referencing Frenzy.

• Fixed Raging Reinforcements using the old Warrior art.

• Fixed the notification of unclaimed rewards being missing.

• Fixed an issue with the Shadowbringer skin’s stun animation.

• Added missing search tags for some Expansions - Thanks Jackeea!

• Fixed the Jahun description being broken in German.

• Fixed Xiao Long missing a Fear symbol.

• Fixed the Fear symbol being inside of Mar’Dred when he was affected by it.

• Fixed Shadowbringer attacking from the base of the Master tower.

• Fixed Jade Flingers being absent from the placement preview of Jadespark Watchers.

• Fixed Blaze Volco using the default Volco’s ragdoll.

• Fixed some clipping issues with the Mar’Dred avatar in 2v2.

• Fixed Scott not having a placement preview.

• Fixed Morellia disappearing if you went to the Shop while queuing.

• Fixed Bridge Buddies’ activation counter not decreasing if you lost a bridge.

• Fixed a prototype Stoutheart card being summonable by the Now It’s A Party! Adventure relic.

Cheers from BetaDwarf!