NOTE: THIS PATCH WILL NOT BE LIVE UNTIL MAY 14, 2025 @ 8AM PT / 11AM ET / 5PM CET / 12AM KST
Salutations, SUPERVIVERS.
As we mentioned in our ‘Road to 1.0’ fireside chat, a lot of the work we’re doing for our official 1.0 release needs to be built (and shipped) all at once, so we’re heads down building it behind the scenes.
In the interim, we’ll be using these patches as preparation for 1.0, rather than shipping balance changes to address the current competitive landscape. Specifically, this means hitting systemic issues like Hunter kits we find problematic, tracking down bugs that have been haunting us since the dawn of time, or even shipping gameplay changes to preemptively account for our 1.0 world. We’ll also be adjusting our feedback channels on Discord accordingly - by pushing feedback more into a focused ‘major bugs/issues’ channel that folks can contribute to (but no essays on game state please!).
We appreciate your patience while we work - we’ll give an update on 1.0 as we get closer to it!
Hunters
Hudson Mini-Rework
Hudson has historically been one of the most frustrating Hunters to fight against, while also not really having the tools to live up to that “turret gun” gameplay fantasy. This mini-rework adjusts all of Hudson’s abilities in small - but meaningful - ways, while adjusting several stats and giving him quality-of-life changes to help him feel better in more combat situations. In the end, it should feel like Hudson can put up a better fight at close range; can really live that ‘suppressing fire’ dream when set up properly; and should ideally have more intuitive ways to play against.
- Passive: Hudson is a junkyard salvager who uses scrap from his surroundings to beef up his defenses. To reflect this, his passive now only focuses on armor regeneration. If you want on-hit healing… build omnivamp :^)
- Minigun (LMB): Minigun has a slightly smaller default range and fire rate, but it has increased base damage to compensate. You should find that using LMB without RMB is more useful in close ranges.
- Spin Barrels (RMB): Hudson can now continue to hold RMB after reaching his “Spun-Up” state to continue to gain bonus damage, fire rate, and massive range. However the trade-off while spinning his barrels is an immense slow and turn rate debuff. Hudson can still hold RMB for as long as he wants, but if he ever lets go while “Spun-Up,” he spends 1 second exhausting the steam from his barrels, briefly preventing him from firing his weapon. Hudson players will now always have to choose: commit to shredding an area, or take a break to reposition themselves. They can’t do both!
- Hover Jets (Shift): Pressing to dash a short distance now incurs a shorter cooldown than holding to hover.
- Barbed Wire (Q): Barbed wire has undergone several changes to help it feel less frustrating for both allies and enemies.
- First, barbed wire’s shape has been increased to more reliably block off chokes. With the larger shape, Hudson is now limited to only 2 charges of Barbed Wire, but he gets access to a third charge if he upgrades the ability to level 4.
- Second, once placed, barbed wire decays over time by losing health. Allies and enemies can see how long a barbed wire will remain on the map based on its decaying health bar.
- Finally, the damage behavior of barbed wire has changed, as it no longer deals damages to enemies for simply walking through the wire. Instead, enemies take damage if they are knocked into the barbed wire, or if they attempt to dash or glide through the barbed wire. This gives Hudson synergy with the knockback on his Hover Jets, and the yank from his improved Salvage Hook.
- Salvage Hook (R): Once Salvage Hook has hit an enemy, they are significantly slowed for a longer period, but they are also periodically yanked back towards Hudson. Hudson can still reel in the enemy if the hit enemy falls below 15% health while the hook is attached.
- Instead of spawning a health/armor pick-up for his allies, reeling in an enemy this way will automatically trigger Hudson’s armor restore passive for himself and all nearby allies.
Oath
Oath has dominated high-level play for a long time. One of the most exciting parts of his kit is his Ultimate. While we like the fantasy of being able to multi-hit with the ability, we think taking full damage for each instance of damage is… too much.
Earthshatter (R)
- Subsequent hits after the initial impact deal 50% less damage per hit
Felix
Felix’s mana costs often left him gassed in the early stages of the game—especially when he slams that Jetpack. With these adjustments we’re hoping the Fox is able to get in more of his rotations to turn fights around.
Flame Bolt (RMB)
- Mana cost decreased from 20 >>> 15
Flame Dash (Shift)
- Mana cost decreased from 20 >>> 10
Flame Shield (Q)
- Cooldown decreased from 14/12/10/10 >>> 13/11/9/9 seconds
Jetpack (R)
- Mana cost decreased from 40 >>> 25
Arena
We’re not investing a lot of resources into Arena (all eyes on 1.0!), but an intrepid non-designer on the team decided to get into Unreal to hit these community requests. Thanks to Khyzaro on Discord for the suggestions!
- You now spawn with Grey >>> Green armor by default
- Taking the base camp now grants Green >>> Blue armor for your team
- The Evil Chest can no longer be positionally swapped by Void
- The Evil Chest can no longer contain Guardian Arch Angel
- Several additional powers were added to the Evil Chest’s loot table (play and find out!)
Bugfixes
- Fixed getting matchmade to the wrong region after leaving a custom game/party
- Window Shopper Daily quest now increments correctly based on equipment tier purchased
- Changes to how we apply the “Floaty” state during some spells had inadvertent effects on Joule, so we tidied them up
- Surge (Shift) can once again reliably travel past ledges
- Surge (Shift) can once again mantle during its channelling phase
- Surge (Shift) no longer has difficulty climbing up highground
- Surge (Shift) once again applies “Floaty” status while above ground height
- Beebo’s Bee-bomb (Q) can no longer infinitely heal itself with Touch of Life
- Eva’s Orbs of Argos (RMB) can no longer be used to block AoE spells (this bugfix addresses exploits around hiding behind the orb to dodge things like Celeste’s Ice Crash (R)) - this one actually went out in the hotfix last patch, but is worth calling out specifically
- Eva’s Corrupted Tether (LMB) no longer marks allies as “out of bounds” when tethered during Glide.
- Saros’ Nova Orb (Q) detonation damage now correctly scales based on spell rank
- Carbine no longer uses their Dev name (Farshot) in several locations
- Hudson’s Barbed Wire (Q) no longer blocks aiming lasers
- Finally, here’s a couple fun ones:
- Minions no longer infinitely cast Express Delivery when spawning with it
- There is no longer an additional invisible train cart at the back of the train
QoL
- Carbine Bot now enabled
- Ping Wheel - reverting Ping Wheel back to four (4) options to help with muscle memory
- N: Retreat
- E: Moving Here
- S: AssistMe/"Help!"
- W: ?
- Fight! And Group Up! options are now equippable "Quick Comm" emotes, unlocked on every account by default
- VO QoL
- Recall to Basecamp plays normal line
- Recall to Ally plays Teleporting line
- Radius on Storm’s Closing Hunter react VO increased from 1000 >>> 2000 units to give a heads-up sooner