Minion Masters!
Did you enjoy the first season pass for the latest Uprising expansion? We hope you did, but now it’s time to go over the changes accompanying the second season pass.
For 1.20 we have some balance changes, two new cards, and a variety of bug fixes coming your way.
On to the changes!
Uprising - Season Pass #2
- A new Season Pass has arrived to Minion Masters!
- Tons of new rewards, including 2 cards, a Legendary Skin, bonus cards, and more!
- Two new cards have been added to the game:
- Shadow Viper has also been added to the game!
- The Season Pass will end on the 4th of February.
Card Balance
Accursed Ascension
- Threshold 60 -> 70
Accursed Ascension decks have been really strong for quite a while now. This is a small adjustment to delay the power spike moment a little. 10 mana is around half a cycle, and as it comes late game where mana generation is high, it shouldn't delay the ascension more than 15~20 seconds, for most ascension decks.
Arcane Ring
- Damage Per Projectile 25 -> 30
Ardent Aegis
- Remove Empyrean Army.
- Healing only applies to Empyrean minions.
With the introduction of the new Brutish Betrayer, Ardent Aegis could have been an amazing combo card, too good, it was found during testing. Added to the fact that it was never meant to be a card that fit into an aggressive style, we decided to remove the Empyrean Army effect and instead make the healing only apply to Empyrean minions. As Empyrean Minions for the most part have Slow-Medium movement speed and the healing should therefore be used more to turn fights rather than to maximize direct tower damage.
Akinlep’s Gong of Pestilence
- Cost 7 -> 6
AtG Drone x8
- Health 275 -> 250
Black Hole
- Duration 1.8 -> 2
- Cast Delay 0.2 -> 0
This card has been through a lot of changes, and we believe it's close to a good spot. It does have a tendency to flip quite dramatically. As soon as it's viable it can pretty much take over the meta. So we're taking things slow and doing small changes here to see if we can get it to a place where it can provide slightly more consistent value without taking over games completely. Combined with the recent change to Leiliel's Vortex, which has taken over a lot of Black Hole's utility use cases, we believe this should make the card see more play in the future.
Brutish Betrayer
- Remove Turncoat
- Give Blood Connection - Your master loses health equal to half of the damage they take, even overkill damage.
We've been working a lot with turncoat and tried out different variations but we haven't been able to find a solution that we really loved. So we're now removing the mechanic completely (It still exists in Adventures). Instead we're choosing to consolidate the Voidborne faction slightly more by introducing the blood imp mechanic to more cards. We think this is an interesting mechanic to play around with and we believe it retains the spirit of the original card designs quite well, as it still emphasizes the aggressive play that signifies the Voidborne faction.
Crystal Sentry
- Mana Cost 4 -> 3
- Gain Mana Freeze - 1
Elite Swarmer
- Health 225 -> 250
Gor’Rakk Gate
- Cost 3 -> 4
- Remove Turncoat
- Give Blood Connection - Your masters loses health equal to half of the damage they take, even overkill damage.
We've been working a lot with turncoat and tried out different variations but we haven't been able to find a solution that we really loved. So we're now removing the mechanic completely (It still exists in Adventures). Instead we're choosing to consolidate the Voidborne faction slightly more by introducing the blood imp mechanic to more cards. We think this is an interesting mechanic to play around with and we believe it retains the spirit of the original card designs quite well, as it still emphasizes the aggressive play that signifies the Voidborne faction.
Grenadier
- Attack Cooldown 2.1 -> 2
- Attack Delay 0.6 -> 0.5
Jolo the hero scrat
- Reworked his dodge mechanic, his dodge chance starts at 100% but decreases by 10% for each successful dodge.
- Mana 5 -> 4
Morgrul’s Ragers
- Health 225 -> 250
Morgrul The Swarmer King
- Health 225 -> 250
Mountainshaper
- Stack Delay 5 -> 4
Pincer of Dread
- Now deals damage through shields.
Swarmer Totem
- Health 350 -> 325
Wizard Puff
- Damage 60 -> 70
Master Balance
Stormbringer
- Marksmanship only applies to minions.
The heavy turret focused defensive strategy is very strong in particular with Stormbringer, as the added range removes many of the different buildings weaknesses. We believe there is a space for that playstyle in Minion Masters, but atm it's too strong and too uninteractive. With this change we believe these decks will have to supplement with more utility and/or aggressive cards to solve certain problems, and in doing so make the deck less hyper focused on pure defense.
Valorian
- Perk 1 healing halved for flying minions.
We're quite happy with the spot Valorian currently has within the meta, however he has developed a niche for flying minions as his healing ability can make them very difficult to remove. Particularly with flying minions those few additional HP can mean a lot in those cases where it brings it just out of range for a removal spell. We don't want to remove this playstyle completely, but we do believe that the perk synergizes a little too well with flying minions. This should help mitigate that.
As a footnote: we're currently considering making this a shared rule for all healing, a cross the board.
Bugs
- Free token notification dot is removed.
- Fixed an issue preventing searching in deckbuilding.
Fixed the refund symbol showing up on offers where the only duplicate item is cards.
- Fixed caber tosser getting stuck. Thanks mezlat.
- Fixed Mar'Dred constantly laughing.
- Fixed Akinlep with cost reduction issue. Thanks StarDrifter.
- Fixed Thelec failing to summon archers after summoning Akinlep. Thanks hinkyt25.
- Made Improvements to Boom Buggy targeting. Thanks DeathShoottOneyOoney
Misc
- Updated various avatars to reflect new card art.
- Christmas decorations have been turned off.
- Gave puff cards an indicator to show which bridge they will go towards.
And just one final note to end things off. Make sure you are on our Discord. We're going to be running some weekly giveaways for some Minion Masters codes!
Edits: Added a balance update for Jolo, which was initially forgotten.
