Alternative Master Perks

ALTERNATIVE MASTER PERKS FEATURE

With the 2.6 update we have released the Alternative Master Perks feature!

This expands the possibilities available to each master by giving them options for which perks to use during matches! With this initial release we are releasing one new perk for each master and we will be releasing more perks in future patches.

The new perks aim to do a variety of things. Some are meant to be options available to the master as a response to enemies decks or the specific situation. Some are meant to make deckbuilding with the master more flexible. Some are meant to shake up the play style by letting the master be more proactive and aggressive or more controlling and defensive.

You can select which perk to use by swapping which perk is your preference for any given master in the main menu, this selection will then be saved to your currently selected deck in the customization menu.

But if you get into a match and realise that your perk choice simply won’t work against your opponents deck you can also swap your perks out in the middle of the match, up until the point where you get enough XP to activate the perk, at which point your selected perk will be locked in for the rest of the match.

SELECTING PERKS

In the customization menu when viewing the details of a perk, if an alternative perk is available a second perk icon will be visible at the top. Clicking this icon will switch your selected perk to the alternative and let you see the details of the alternate perk.

Similarly in matches you can click on your perks and if an alternative perk is available for that perk you can click the perk icon for the perk to switch to it. Whichever perk you have selected when reaching the XP threshold to activate the perk will then be activated and you can no longer change it.

NEW PERKS

Diona Perk 2: The Black Potion

• Every 22 seconds, Ruffles will run to an enemy Minion killed in your arena or on a bridge to dig up a potion. Once picked up, Ruffles turns into a Werewolf. Cooldown starts when Werewolf Ruffles gets killed.

Ratbo Perk 2: Squeak Attack

• Scrats summoned by Ratbo's Perks spawn as Burrowed

• Burrowed: Burrowed are untargetable. They unburrow when they are in melee range of an enemy. Their first attack after becoming unburrowed deals +15 damage.

Tronveir Perk 1: Runic Attunement

• Each time you've spent 25 Mana on Minion Cards, gain a Rune of Frost card.

• Each time you've spent 20 Mana on Spell Cards, gain a Rune of Ancestry card.

• Each time you've spent 15 Mana on Building Cards, gain a Rune of Wind card.

Morellia Perk 1: Rites of the Dead

• Add a random one-use Book of the Dead Page to the top of your deck every 18 seconds.

Mordar Perk 1: Tomb of the Deathless

• Add a one-use "Tomb of the Deathless" card to your deck every 38 seconds. At perk 3 this gets upgraded to “Sepulchre of the Deathless”

• Tomb of the Deathless Accursed Building card

• Enemy Minions that die are resurrected after 5 seconds under your control with 50% health and damage. They deal 20% of their max HP damage to Tomb of the Deathless.

• 400 health.

• Sepulchre of the Deathless Accursed Building card

• Enemy Minions that die are resurrected after 5 seconds under your control with 50% health and damage. They deal 20% of their max HP damage to Sepulchre of the Deathless.

• 1000 health.

Milloween Perk 2: Xanian Spellbook

• Add a one-use "Xanian Spellbook" card to Milloween's Deck every 20 seconds.

• Xanian Spellbook Crystal Elf Ability card

• Reveal 4 random Spells. Cast one and discard the rest. It costs 2 less Mana.

• The 4 spells are chosen from different lists with each slot in hand picking a spell from a different list:

• Buff spells: Armored Escort, Rampage, Glenn’s Brew, Spirit Infusion, Sun Burn, Gn4ts 

• Summon spells: Blind Date, Morgrul's Mark, Cheese Date, Raging Reinforcements, Infiltration, Restless Dead, Bridge Buddies 

• Control spells: Shock Rock, Impetus Blast, Grasping Thorns, Snap Freeze, Leiliel's Vortex, Black Hole, Hypnotize 

• Nuke spells: Daggerfall, Fireball, Chain Lightning, Bladestar, Scratillery, Beam of Doom, Bearvalanche

Apep Perk 1: Slave Driver

• Slitherbind every 18 seconds.

Valorian Perk 2: Fervor

• Add a one-use "Fervent Warrior" card to your deck every 25 seconds.

• Fervent Warrior Empyrean Minion card

• Warrior with Divine Shield and Armor of Holy Fire. Costs 3 mana.

King Puff Perk 2: Mimic Magic

• Whenever an unbuffed Minion you control deals damage to another Minion, copy one of their buffs. 1 second cooldown.

Volco Perk 3: Endless Rage

• Add a one-use "Endless Rage" card to your deck.

• Endless Rage Voidborne Ability card

• Gain 10 mana over 10 seconds. Spawn both Embers - Embers are not consumed while Endless Rage is active.

Settsu Perk 3: Air Support

• After using Perk 1, Settsu gains a one-use "Air Strike" ability (discarded when Settsu returns to tower).

• Air Support Outlander Spell card

•  A H3LLF1RE fighter deals damage to enemies in a straight line across the field. Costs 1 mana.

R3KT Perk 3: Mass Illusion

• Add a one-use Mass Illusion card to the top of your deck every 20 seconds.

• Mass Illusion Outlander Ability card

• Create an illusion of up to 10 minions closest to the power tower you control in your arena in the opposite lane (illusion and real unit placement is random).

Stormbringer Perk 2: Cloud Cover

• Add a one-use "Cloud Cover" card to Stormbringer's Deck every 18 seconds.

• Cloud Cover Zen-Chi Ability card

• Lift a non-Mythic Minion on a cloud, giving it Flying and cannot move for 10 seconds. If it is ranged it also gets Marksmanship.

Ravager Perk 1: Overpower

• When you play a Melee Minion card that costs 5 or more, one of them gets Empowered Attack (first attack against a Minion deals 70 extra).

Game rule changes results

 We have an update about the game rules changes for you.

After receiving the results of the survey; analysing the response breakdowns, reading through the stacks of responses, then discussing and thinking about it for a while we have decided to keep both of the proposed changes to the rules.

• Minions cannot be played directly on bridges.

• Minions with summoning sickness cannot be pushed on to bridges.

Therefore both of these will remain in effect.

The primary basis for this decision is naturally the response breakdown which looks like this:

If we entirely ignore the people who did not notice or didn’t think they had sufficient experience(though some of these people still wrote good responses) there is a significant majority in favour of the changes. Even in the second closer poll there were a full 33% more people in favour than there were against.

When reading the responses it became clear that at least to some extent the changes actually had the positive effects we were hoping for with very few immediate negative effects. Though there is evidence that we may have somewhat overestimated the effects these changes would have, the general consensus is still that the effects were positive for the game.

There were however also valid objections to be found in the responses, as indeed there were valid objections raised in the discussions around this elsewhere.

Some central concerns that were brought up frequently can be summarised as follows:

• Over time these changes might have the effect of pushing the game further towards a rock-paper-scissors style of balance. This happens because the game has cards and strategies that require very specific counters, and there are few universal counter cards or strategies that are versatile enough to deal with a broad spectrum of threats. And these changes weaken one of the strategies which could consistently get wins against a broad spectrum of decks.

• This is a challenge the game is facing anyway, and we have some decisions to be made in the future about how we want to balance the game to address this. In fact you could argue that, even without these changes, if we didn’t find a way to address or at least mitigate this, we would still get rock-paper-scissors style balance, except one strategy would be noticeably stronger than the others. We don’t have any concrete decisions on this yet but one potential avenue could be to increase the relative strength of cards that don’t require specific counters and/or creating cards that are versatile without being difficult to counter.

• These changes have buffed the big units, causing decks to have higher mana cost averages and less card plays per match, which in turn reduces the amount of opportunities for skill expression. 

• We tried to pre-empt this with nerfs to some big units, but with the Mordar change high cost decks were all over the place. To address this we have nerfed several of the highest performing Mordar decks, and we are looking into design space for more skill expression in the future (think of more interactive low cost cards, alternative master perks you can pick during the match or alternative ways of winning a game (feedback on preferred ways to introduce more skill expression in the game is always welcome!)

• These changes removed a form of skill expression by reducing the importance of placement and timing.

• While it is true that backcapping has been (partially) removed, and that takes away that form of skill expression, the hope is that we did not remove skill expression as much as we moved it to another place, whereas you will have to do more fighting now, which could be ignored a lot more in the past.

Along with the nerf to high health minions we had also planned to increase the strength of low cost cards, but the stats have kept telling us that they are still strong, so we have not pulled the trigger on this. We are still observing, but for now it seems like, even with these rule changes, there are enough situations in most games where having a cheap card to capture the bridge is highly valuable. Because of this, their cycle efficiency, and generally being versatile traders, cheap cards are still stronger than average.

Thanks a lot to everyone who filled in the survey and contributed to this debate. We are dedicated to improving the game for years to come, so expect more initiatives to improve the core gameplay in the future!

<3 from the Minion Masters design team.

Removing premade Mayhem

In the upcoming patch we will also be removing the option to play Mayhem in premade teams. There simply are not enough premade Mayhem games being played to justify keeping it around, since it’s effectively splitting the Mayhem player pool in two and creating longer queues for everyone.

This is a triage solution, and we would love to be able to bring back premade Mayhem if/when Mayhem player numbers increase to the point where it is one again reasonable to have two separate queues.