Once again, we thought "this patch won't include that much", and then a month and a half later, we've got a revamp for War Mode, Leaderboard Support for Map Variants, adjustments to Teams & Co-op Modes, various improvements and bug fixes, and of course, a bunch of Balance tweaks. You know, the usual Element TD 2 treatment. Enjoy the big update!
Yes. Cows are in War Mode now. Moo.
War Mode Revamp
This is a fast-paced 1v1 mode where both players build towers in the same build area. Waves are split between enemy and allied creeps; your towers damage enemy creeps while they heal allied creeps. As you acquire and level up elements, you gain access to various abilities that can turn the tide of the battle. It's a constant push-and-pull where counterplay is the key to victory!
Over the past month, we've applied a number of changes that makes the mode much more accessible, as well as improving its pacing, flow, and counterplay. If you've never played it before, we encourage you to try it out! And for those of you that have played it, here's the list of changes below.
War Changes:
- Activating a War Ability now triggers the cooldown for all War Abilities.
- Existing Cooldowns have been decreased to 20 Seconds.
- Two new War Abilities added, Summon Mega & Summon Swarm. You have both of these from the start, and each has a 30 Second Cooldown.
- Game now starts from Wave 1 with 1 Element Pick and 300 Gold.
- Waves reduced from 55 to 45 (before transitioning to Boss Waves). HP & Bounty Scaling has been increased to compensate.
- You now gain a New Element every 4 Waves, unlike the standard 5.
- The opponent's element picks are now only hidden on the Scoreboard before Wave 1 starts, instead of the whole game.
War Abilities:
- Summon Mega: Default Ability. Spawns a Mega Creep of the current wave with 500% HP, half move speed, takes 5 lives, and it's immune to War Abilities.
- Summon Swarm: Default Ability. Spawns 6 Creeps of the current wave with 75% HP and with decreased spacing.
- Hyper Boost: Light Ability. Creeps in an area of 400 AoE are sped up by 200% / 266% / 400% for 2 seconds.
- Dimensional Rift: Darkness Ability. Place creeps in 450 / 550 / 750 AoE into stasis, turning them invulnerable and removing them from the current wave for 30 seconds. The same creep can't be Rifted twice.
- Frost Zone: Water Ability. Disables build locations in a 300 / 400 / 500 AoE for 15 seconds. Any towers in the area lose 30% / 40% / 50% Attack Speed and cannot be sold or upgraded during that time.
- Flare Up: Fire Ability. Increase the damage of all towers in 200 / 300 / 400 AoE by 100% / 166% / 300% for 7 seconds.
- Rejuvenation: Nature Ability. Creeps in an area of 500 AoE are healed by 25% / 33% / 50% of their Maximum Health.
- Explode!: Earth Ability. Damages creeps in an area of 350 / 450 / 600 AoE for 50% of their Maximum Health, stunning the survivors for 5 seconds.
In addition to this, Ranked War Mode has been added!
- Rules are set to Pick + Very Hard
- Maps are randomized between Wasteland, Autumn, Desert, Winter, & Temple, aka all the symmetrical maps.
- For those of you that enjoy Ranked Pick but want something with more interaction and counterplay, we highly recommend you try this out!
A special feature of War Mode is the use of War Abilities, which are tied to the elements you have.
Leaderboard Support for Map Variants
Map Variants are now submittable to the Leaderboard!
- To be clear, this doesn't double the Leaderboard count. Instead, next to each Leaderboard entry, it now denotes if it's a Variant or not.
- While most Variants are harder than the standard maps, it'll be interesting to see if any Variants end landing top spots on the Leaderboard!
- This also includes Reversed versions of Co-op Maps.
- That said, the Reversed versions of Grand City & Atlantis have had certain build locations blocked off, so that all the top entries aren't just Runic entrance camps.
See all these confusingly designed maps? They're now eligible for Leaderboard!
Improvements
- You can now only get a max of 1 Income in Random
- Ranked Notifications has been split out between Ranked Pick, Ranked Random, & Ranked War
- The Lobby List is now disabled while you have Ranked Search going.
- Co-op has been adjusted:
- Creep count reduced by 20%
- HP increased by 20% towards the start of the game and roughly 10% by the end of the game
- Bounty rescaled so you get 10-20% more gold early but 10-20% less gold late
- In general, these tweaks should make Co-op more active early, while trying to reduce the end-game lagfest.
- Teams has been adjusted:
- HP Multiplier increased from x1.6 to x1.65.
- Team HP Scaling reduced to be about 5% less by Wave 55.
- Team Boss Wave Scaling reduced from x1.3 to x1.25.
- As a result of these changes, Boss Waves in particular should be easier for Teams compared to Solo players.
- Haste buff display now lists the bonus Attack Speed instead of a stack count that made no sense
- Dialed down brightness on Forest slightly. Also removed weird green smog on some plants.
Dimensional Rift (one of the War Abilities) is used to stall the creep wave, giving time to focus on the rest.
Bug Fixes
- Attempt number #940385 at correcting MMR calculations at the end of a game
- Fixed a rare bug that could freeze a Co-op game if Interest was disabled
- Fixed hotkey nullreference error that would spam up the player.log
- Fixed countdown timer stopping at 2 seconds for host when a Ranked Game starts
- Fixed the Turbo setting carrying over into the Campaign when loading a checkpoint
- Fixed Haste 2 having dark circles of doom
You can also Spawn Megas of the current wave. Time it to counter the opponent's weaknesses!
Balance
- Cannon damage increased from 75 to 80
- Atom adjusted:
- Consecutive damage bonus reduced from 13% to 12%
- Max stacks reduced from 11 to 9
- Carryover stacks increased from 30% to 35% (so that it still carries 3 stacks over when at max stacks)
- Carryover stacks now round instead of floor
- Fixed an exploit that let you keep max stacks just by manually switching targets
- Poison initial damage increased from 50 / 200 / 800 to 100 / 400 / 1600
- To clarify, this doesn't affect the DoT
- Ice adjusted:
- Damage increased from 575 / 2300 / 9200 to 775 / 3100 / 12400
- Range reduced from 1150 to 900
- Infernal adjusted:
- Damage increased from 600 / 2400 / 9600 to 900 / 3600 / 14400
- Attack speed reduced from 1.5 to 1
- Bloom damage increased from 350 / 1400 / 5600 to 375 / 1500 / 6000
- Mushroom damage increased from 135 / 540 / 2160 to 140 / 560 / 2240
- Howitzer damage increased from 160 / 640 / 2560 to 170 / 680 / 2720
- Geyser damage reduced from 1000 / 4000 / 16000 to 950 / 3800 / 15200
- Astral damage increased from 1700 / 6800 to 1750 / 7000
- Ethereal now gets damage stacks twice from Undead creeps
- Wisp adjusted:
- Damage now actually goes up by 5% per stack, not 4.8%
- Max damage increased from x4 to x4.3
- Flamethrower adjusted:
- Fixed a bug where Flamethrower wouldn't add a stack of Napalm if it landed the killing blow
- Napalm now triggers twice from Undead creeps
- Napalm AoE increased from 400 to 450
- Golem damage increased from 3000 / 12000 to 3200 / 12800
- Impulse damage increased from 2300 / 9200 to 2400 / 9600
- Money adjusted:
- Damage increased from 3200 / 12800 to 3500 / 14000
- Damage bonus from gold reduced from 20% / 40% to 15% / 30%
- Damage cap reduced from x2 to x1.5 / x1.7
- 1.1 Values: Damage was 3200 / 12800 and capped out at 6400 / 25600. Unspent gold required was 16000 / 32000.
- 1.2 Values: Damage is 3500 / 14000 and caps out at 5250 / 23800. Unspent gold required now is 11667 / 26500.
- Polar HP removal increased from 12% / 24% to 13% / 26%
- Incantation search radius for solo amp reduced from 300 to 250
That's a wrap for Version 1.2! Initially, we weren't planning on it being a balance patch (we try to keep them 2-3 months apart), but since the Quads update likely won't happen until later in October (at earliest), we decided to run some adjustments. As usual, Leaderboards have been reset. Ranked Leaderboards won't receive a reset until the Quads update.
In our next update, expect to see Specializations Mode as well as the Same Pick modifier. In theory, this should come out in the next 3-4 weeks, pending WindStrike-time (which is comparable to Valve Time, just 100% more random).
We are aware that localization is needed for the War Mode abilities. That will be coming soon via hotfixes. We also plan to finally localize achievements during the hotfix period before 1.3.