Bot & Balance Patch — Sep 7, 2026

07 Sep 2026Developer post

Per-loadout combos, smart target selection, a leveling & AD/AP overhaul, and towers with a spine.

Per-Loadout Skill Combos

Every bot skill loadout now has its own designed combo — a real cast sequence with tuned delays (CC/utility setup → main damage → finisher; defense builds shield first, ults lead with follow-up timing)
Before, only ~1 in 4 desktop loadouts (and ~1 in 10 mobile) matched any combo — the rest spammed one or two random skills
Failed casts (out of mana, a missed roll) no longer burn the cast window: the combo retries instead of dead-airing

Bots rank enemy heroes by how long they take to kill — mitigation factored in — instead of raw current HP, so a half-HP stacking tank no longer looks like an easy kill
Zero-threat standoffs are broken: when neither side can kill the other anytime soon, the bot drops the duel and moves on — even mid tower defense
The same kill-time rule now applies inside the bot's own target acquisition, so an abandoned tank latch can't silently re-form

Bots defending a tower fight the wave chewing it instead of standing and watching — they switch fire to minions in range and farm through the defense
Fixed the "parked behind my wave" bug: minions latched just out of reach left bots frozen for 30s with zero gold — they now close in and farm
Fixed "watching the brawl" parks: bots that stood frozen next to an ally duel now latch onto the nearby enemy and join
Bots ejected from a tower soak walk out and come back to finish the nearly-dead tower instead of getting pinned empty-handed inside the hold
Wave-hold positions are capped at the enemy tower line: no more run loops between two enemy towers, no more strolling past live towers toward the base, and no more shuttle-bouncing between the wave front and home
False stuck-rescues while farming or acquiring a target are gone — teleports are reserved for genuine terrain wedges

Gold leads win games now: a team +2000 gold ahead triggers the all-in team push (it used to take an 8-kill lead) — no more +3000 gold teams wandering the jungle for four minutes
Pushers evicted from a tower by a defender wave walk back to the structure instead of brawling midfield
Bots stop starting "quick kills" they won't survive — every trade is checked against how fast the enemy group can delete them
Doomed bots take the tower with them: a recall next to a standing structure breaks off, and a bot dying in tower range spends its last HP on the building

Damage over time (red buff, fireball burn, flame wall) now registers as danger — heroes sense the ticking damage even when the shooter is hidden in a bush, and retreat or heal in time instead of standing still and melting
Incoming lethal shots are anticipated: a fireball that would kill triggers the retreat reflex before it lands

Bots stop wasting stuns, slows and pulls on towers and the enemy base — crowd control is saved for champions (the damage from those skills still hits buildings normally)
Fleeing bots fight back: a low-HP hero retreating under attack hooks or stuns its chaser (Iron Grip and friends) while disengaging, instead of dying quietly at 9% HP

Fixed the bot "poverty trap": bots saving for a tier-3 item no longer drain their bank on junk basics at every stall — they hold gold and finish the real build
Mages shop like mages: AP-leaning bots route to tier-3 magic items (Arcane Burst, Flame Tome, Void Prism), and Magic Penetrator now grants +8 AP on top of its pen
Damage roles stay damage: an AD bot that dies a couple of times early no longer pivots its whole build to tank items
Bots no longer re-buy completed items they already own (unless a recipe genuinely needs a second copy)

New leveling pace: the XP curve is flattened and income is ~1.5x higher — a full skill build lands around minute 8-9 (on the old curve it was mathematically out of reach)
Auto attacks deal bonus magic damage equal to 20% of your AP: spell power now boosts every hero's basic attacks
AP grows +0.35 per level (mirroring AD), and nine mage skills no longer secretly scale with AD — magic builds finally pay off
Armor and Magic Resist tuned down (one Armor Plate: 50% → 40% reduction) — fully stacked tanks are killable again
Laners level faster: minion XP raised 32 → 40
Jungle XP table fixed: the stegosaurus jackpot is gone (252 → 45 XP), Blue buff pays par with Red, and HERALD (182) / EPIC (252) finally award real XP — objectives are worth contesting, and runaway junglers come back to the pack

Every tower tier got tougher: outer towers 250 → 400 HP with a damage-reduction shield and real return fire (the burn ramps the longer you stand in it), inner towers 400 HP + shield, base towers 800 HP + shield, MainHome 380 HP
Killing a tower no longer supercharges that lane's minions — the old damage-snowball on tower death is decoupled
The full tower chain is ~60% harder to race through: matches target 8–12 minutes — long enough to build, short enough to finish

Found a bug? Report it in the community hub. See you on the battlefield!