Description
Last week’s playtest gave us a lot of data to play with to help balance out our new gamemode and bring the Troopers in line with each other. So, a big thank you and without further ado let’s get to the patch notes!
General Balance Changes
Grouped Respawn Timers
In our last playtest we saw a lot of people running into the enemy team on their own and continuously dying. To address this, the Troopers will respawn in groups if they die within a short window of each other. The first Trooper from a team to die starts their team’s 8 second respawn timer, any other Trooper who dies in that 8s window will respawn with their teammates. The idea here is to get everyone grouping up and not running into an enemy team on their own (and getting merc’d).
Throwable Ability Preview
For a while now we’ve been seeing players throwing abilities into walls and not realising they had done so, resulting in confusion and annoyance that the ability had been wasted. The communication wasn’t there and this wasn’t terribly fun. We’ve changed the way that throwable abilities work and aim: now when aiming at something that would consume the ability, a red X appears on the cursor and the floor decal disappears. If you release the key while the X is up the ability will not cast.
This has been applied to everything apart from Sarge’s Cluster Grenade, as there are some plays to be made in hitting the environment and raining down grenades on the surrounding area.
This feature is still being worked on and refined, so if anything feels or looks wrong let us know so we can adjust the system!
Missile Strike Balance Changes
We found that attacking the missile silos was a bit too difficult, so we’re adding in some mechanics and tweaking some numbers to try and bring the attack/defend phase of missile strike into a more balanced state. We’re probably going to see the attackers have an advantage in this hot-fix but this will give us two ends of the spectrum to balance between, so bear with us as we test during our beta phase!
Relay Downed Window:
Relays now have a 6 second window after being destroyed where they are not repairable. This should give the attackers a bigger window to take the others down and abort the launch.
Relay Regen Speed:
To help defenders fight back against these tweaks, damaged relays will now auto-regenerate their health much faster.
Troopers Balance Changes
We’re making some quality-of-life changes to abilities in this patch, as well as giving our tanks some love to help them fit into their role a bit better. Let’s dive into the individual Troopers:
Crow
Overall Crow’s in a good spot at the moment – being very squishy but dealing all the damage. However, Hookshot’s cooldown was a bit too low, giving her too much safety in combat and allowing her to collect and hold keys better than everyone else in the game (apart from Tharlin).
Hookshot:
- The cooldown has been nerfed from 18 seconds to 20.
Skull Crusher
Skully and the rest of the tanks were feeling a bit squishier than we would like in our last playtest, so we’re buffing his Health and tweaking some of his abilities to make him a more viable pick.
Health:
- Health has been buffed from 1368 to 1618
Reserves:
- Damage stored has been buffed from 40% to 60%
- AoE heal has been nerfed from 70% to 60%
- Health trigger threshold nerfed from 20% to 15%
- Cooldown has been nerfed from 13 seconds to 18
Anchors Away:
- Anchors Away damage on stun has been nerfed from 150 to 130
- Cooldown has been buffed from 12 seconds to 10
Scorch
Scorch’s Rain of Fire was pretty useful to lock down areas of the map, but it was almost impossible to actually hit someone with it (unless the target wasn’t paying attention). To fix this, we’re bringing down the time between casting the ability and it hitting the ground.
Rain of Fire:
- Time between casting and fireball hitting the ground has been buffed from 2 seconds to 1.
Tharlin
Tharlin’s win rate and damage were both a bit too high. His gun damage and range were too much, the damage of Minor Inconvenience was too powerful, and Burrow’s cooldown was too short. All of this combined turned Tharlin into a powerhouse that not many other Troopers could compete with, so he’s getting nerfs across the board to bring him in line with the other Troopers. Sorry, Tharlin mains!
Gun Range:
- Range has been nerfed from 40m to 30m
Minor Inconvenience:
- Damage of each individual mine has been nerfed from 140 damage to 115
Burrow:
- Burrow’s cooldown has been nerfed from 15 seconds to 17
Fang
Fang and the rest of the Tanks were feeling a bit underwhelming, so his Health and Fetch ability are getting a buff. We also want to rework how Smoke Bomb works in the near future, giving Fang more utility.
Health:
- Health has been buffed from 1163 to 1413
Fetch:
- We’ve taken out the damage reduction which was given to targets as they were being dragged, so now they take 100% damage from all sources.
Glorgan
Glorgan was a bit of a hidden danger in the roster; though his pick rate wasn’t that great, his damage output and win rate were higher than they should be. We’re giving him a nerf across the board to bring him more in line with the other Troopers and giving his Health a buff to bring him in line with the other Tank’s new HP.
Health:
- Health has been buffed from 1196 to 1396
Move Speed:
- Move speed has been nerfed from 7.2 m/s to 7.0
Overcharge:
- Damage nerfed from 250 to 200
Rallying Call
- Speed increase nerfed from 20% to 12%
Xandark
Xandark was an absolute menace in last week’s test, with a win rate and damage output too high for everyone else to deal with. The main aspect of her kit that seemed to be unbalanced was the combined double DoT effects, as well as the teleport power of Back Stab. We want to try removing the DoT from backstab before we do any bigger changes to how her kit works to see what the numbers look like.
Backstab:
- The DoT effect has been removed from backstab, so now it’s just a burst of damage.
Hot Fixes:
- The Dodge should now end correctly when your Trooper is CC’d or dies.
- The Matchmaking Accept/Reject screen now has sound and an animated visual side to help players know when they’ve found a match. This will not play when the game is minimised, we won’t have this functionality until we have source engine files.
- Pressing J and K no longer instantly kills the Player’s Trooper (whoops!)