5.05: Golden Buckler, Royal Guard

04 Apr 2020Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

5.05b Hotfix

- Fixed a bug where Green Devil counted as a flying unit with Leviathan
- Ocean Templar
-- Resonance: Healing: 2.5% -> 2%
-- Health: 1900 -> 2000
-- Attack speed: 0.83 -> 0.85

5.05a Hotfix

Fixes
- Fixed some UI bugs with the new inbox system
- Reverted some sound effects changes (which had some edge cases where sounds would play too softly or be muted)

Matchmaking
- Fixed a bug with Classic matchmaking/shuffling where it was unintentionally penalizing parties by inflating their party rating. In Classic, your party rating will no longer be increased for partying with friends who are lower-rated.
- Matchmaking improved for players rated 2100+. Players rated 2100+ should expect longer queue times but higher-quality matches.

4v4 Equalizer
- Significantly reduced / partially reverted
- Now scales with how far behind the poorest player is
- All players now always get gold for enemy leaks

Based on feedback, we have made this mechanic more reasonable. We believe a small equalizer is good for helping players who get significantly behind but agree it was too extreme before. As with any new mechanic, tuning is required, so thank you for your patience and understanding.

Classic queue has players of all skill levels, from 600 to 2900 rating, which is the difference between a novice and the world rank #1 chess player. Getting destroyed in your first few games of any competitive game is highly correlated with quitting, and I think everyone here wants the game to grow. The goal of this mechanic isn't to completely even the playing field, but to make the experience slightly less miserable for players who fall significantly behind. This applies both to new players and to any player who makes a mistake that sets them behind.

After these improvements, you'll no longer see slingshotting/overcorrecting that causes a player who is behind to get ahead. If everyone on your team is roughly equal in wealth, even if one player is slightly poorer, everyone will get their fair share of the pie (~25%). You'll also always be rewarded with gold for leaking the enemy team, even if you're 100x richer than the poorest player on your team.

Friendly note that a suicide/no-build strategy often causes you to be identified as the richest player on your team because of your high income, so don't expect to get extra benefit from this strategy. A no-build strategy requires permission from a majority of your teammates.

Announcements

Known Telekom Login Issues
There is a known issue preventing some players from logging in, primarily Telekom users. These networking problems are widespread and may affect many games and services. If this affects you, please use a VPN or log in during lower traffic times. Call or create a support ticket with Telekom and explain the issue. The more players that do this, the better. We're doing everything in our power to expedite a solution with Telekom.

Legion TD 2 In-House League
Mick and Seraphin, two longtime members of the community, have organized the Legion TD 2 In-House League (LIHL), a competitive league spanning 5 weeks. A commitment of two games per week is expected. In-game rewards for all participants and winners. Sign-up ends April 12. See thread for details and sign-up instructions.

NEW! Divine Tier 2

Golden Buckler
- Cost: 50 gold
- Health: 570 (Natural)
- Damage: 21 (Impact)
- Attack speed: 0.79
- Range: Melee

Deflection
Takes 15% reduced damage from ranged autoattacks

Royal Guard
- Upgrade cost: 135 gold
- Health: 2080 (Natural)
- Damage: 67 (Impact)
- Attack speed: 0.91
- Range: Melee

Deflection
Takes 15% reduced damage from ranged autoattacks

Golden Buckler and Royal Guard are both intended to be simple and versatile natural tanks

New Features

- You can now mouseover tower icons in tab to see unit stats, kill count, and buffs
- You can now right-click a player’s name in Global Chat to interact with them

Game Improvements

Stability
- Lobby stability improvements (Smarter Global Chat/profile caching and sharing lookups, throttler optimizations)
- Improved monitoring for Telekom bugs

Gameplay Fixes
- Fixed a bug with Pawn Shop when playing Hybrid where it wouldn't add Pawn to currently-built towers
- Fixed a bug where Dark Mage would accidentally buff Soul Gate/Hell Gate

Pathing & Targeting
- Fixed a case where units would target an enemy before higher priority targets (most commonly noticed when targeting a full-life Brute on wave 3 while Hoppers were still alive and in range)
- Revived Units (Guardian Angel, Hydra, and Eternal Wanderer/Samurai Soul) on ranged waves: Tanks are now targeted slightly sooner, while DPS units are targeted slightly later
- Sea Serpents/Deepcoilers are now targeted slightly later on ranged waves

Matchmaking & Ratings
- Duo rating penalty increased when the higher-rated player is 2200+ if the two players are different ratings. It is now impossible to smurf boost past 2200. If the two players are <2200 or if they are the same or very similar rating (e.g. 2300 and 2315), there is no change.

In an ideal world, we could have perfectly fair duo penalties; however, it's impossible to reliably differentiate between a real player and a smurf. To prevent smurf boosting to the top of the ladder, we have to ramp up duo penalties or disable duoing past 2200. We've opted for the former.

Friends List
- Fixed some cases where Friends List wouldn't show up (more common for players with larger friends lists)
- Added a "Refresh Friends" button (should generally be not needed, but might help fix rare cases where it still doesn't load)

Interface
- Mercenaries Received: Streamlined messages to combine mythium received from mercenaries and king upgrades. Also, cave icons show King Upgrades and total mythium received.
- Fixed a bug where the Ready button status didn't update properly if another player readied up before you picked your rolls

Quality of Life
- When a team agrees to -ff, it now shows a message that "Enemy team agreed to surrender!" or "Your team agreed to surrender!" in chat
- Shift+U now trains a worker (can configure in Options > Controls)
- Ctrl+U now cancels a worker (can configure in Options > Controls)
- Post-game Builds tab now shows income & net worth

Chat
- Fixed a bug in post-game Chat where the "left the room" message was displayed extra times
- Fixed a cosmetic bug where -ratings would show ratings of 1200 for open/closed slots

Profiles
- Fixed a bug where Fighter Stats weren't properly sorted in some cases

Options
- Graphics - Fixed a bug where Windowed mode setting wasn't loading properly after you restarted your game
- Controls - Now shows a tooltip to hint that you can right-click a binding to unbind it

FairPlay
- Fixed a minor bug where [R] wasn't showing up in some disconnection cases where it should have (but they were, in fact, being evaluated the whole time)

Custom Game Modes
- Fixed a bug where Prophet mode wasn't allowing you to Reroll
- Fixed a bug where All Mastermind mode wouldn't allow you to choose rolls

Spectator Mode
- Can now see Mercenaries Received messages (with icons), in addition to the usual "Received 20/20/20/20" style messages
- Disabled scoreboard icons changing colors when low health
- Fixed a bug where "Your team gained from enemy leaks" gold was showing up as 0

New Players
- Hybrid and Chaos legion selection buttons are now grayed out for players level 3-4 rather than hidden (so those players can see they can be unlocked)

Graphics
- Fog of War that covers workers/mercenary holding area is more transparent

Music & Sound Effects
- New Victory theme (starts off a bit quieter)
- Improved formula that decides whether to play the "King In Danger" theme
- Mouseover sound volume lowered a bit
- Regular UI button click volume raised a bit
- Now plays hover/click sounds for the Mastermind Rolls window buttons
- Higher-value units now have slightly higher audio prioritization compared to lower-value units
- Fixed Pollywog accidentally muting other sounds too much (its Attack sound had too much padding)

Discord
- Fixed a bug where games were being posted to #rooms at the end of the game instead of at the start
- Improved monitoring dashboards

Game Balance

This patch is nerf-heavy to fighters to compensate for power creep and has some minor wave buffs to slightly reduce average game time (which has increased over the past few months)

4v4
- New mechanic: the Equalizer
-- Only in 4v4, when your team receives gold due to the enemy team leaking, the gold now goes to the poorest player on your team, rather than split among the whole team. The poorest player is calculated at the start of each wave and determined through a combination of net worth, mythium, and income. All other forms of gold gain, including pillage from damaging the enemy king, are unchanged

The goal of this mechanic is to help players that get behind. It is a catchup mechanic for individual players on a team, not a catchup mechanic for a losing team. Especially in Classic, which has significant skill discrepancies and many new players, we often see one player on each team hard-leaking most mid and late game waves with no hope to recover. The goal is not to make everyone the exact same power level, but to slightly even the playing field. Good players who clear waves and push workers efficiently will still be rewarded and stronger than their teammates.

Hybrid
- Tier 6: Cost: 252 -> 257

To start with a tier 6 on wave 1, you must now roll and gain +7 gold from selling some combination of the following units:
- Nekomata: +5 net gold
- Peewee: +2
- Masked Spirit: +2
- Ranger: +1

Mastermind
- Aqua Spirit no longer satisfies the arcane tank guarantee
- Berserker no longer satisfies the pierce or magic guarantee
- Soul Gate no longer satisfies the magic guarantee

This means fewer rolls where you only have 1 "bad" unit of a certain attack/defense type

Buzz

- Health: 150 -> 170
- Damage: 10 -> 9

Consort

- Health: 850 -> 900
- Damage: 54 -> 50
- Paraphylaxis: Damage: 180 -> 300

Chained Fist

- Health: 250 -> 230
- Damage: 8 -> 7
- Unchained Rage: Attack speed: 125% -> 130%

Oathbreaker

- Unchained Rage: Attack speed: 125% -> 130%

Peewee

- Booster: Range: 300 -> 500

Veteran

- Stimpack: Range: 300 -> 500

Infiltrator

- Health: 760 -> 740
- Attack speed: 1.05 -> 1.03

Violet

- Lightning Strike: Damage: 120 + 1% (0.5% to bosses) max health -> 120 + 0.6% (0.3% to bosses) max health

Violet remains one of the best units in the game with both a high win rate and pick rate. This change nerfs its late game, while allowing it to remain as a viable opening