Season 2023

Expected patch release: January 6

News & Updates
- If you missed it, check out my (Lisk's) Reddit AMA from November!

Season 2023

Get ready for the second full season since Legion TD 2's official release!

• January 5: Season ends at 8am PDT / 5pm CET. Ranked disabled.
• January 5-10: 1v1 featured event is live
• January 6: New season patch is live (v10.00)
• January 7-10: Ranked rewards are given out. Player ratings are soft-reset.
• January 10: New season begins at 8am PST / 5pm CET. Ranked re-enabled.

1v1 Featured Event

Allies holding you back? This your chance to shine. It's time for 1v1 action!

• Skill-based matchmaking: Play with and against players near your skill level.
• Visible ratings: Used for matchmaking and bragging rights.
• Event Points (EP) leaderboard: Gain and lose EP by winning and losing games. Additionally, +2 EP each game, so play as much as you can to climb.
• Rewards: 2x rewards compared to last year! Gotta keep up with inflation.
  • Top 10 finish: 25,000 Essence
  • Top 100 finish: 10,000 Essence
  • Top 1,000 finish: 3,000 Essence
  • Reach 150 EP at any point: 1,000 Essence

Season Goals

• Achieve up to 3 season goals based on your current rating and previous season's rating. Season goals reward players who play early in the season and keep climbing throughout the year.
• Goal 1 must be achieved by April 1. Earn 5,000 Essence.
• Goal 2 must be achieved by July 1. Earn 5,000 Additional Essence.
• Goal 3 must be achieved by October 1. Earn 5,000 Additional Essence.
• If you achieve any 2 goals, you immediately unlock the seasonal Pack Leader of the Horde skin, which won’t be offered in the shop until next year (January 2024).

New Progression System: Masteries

Every game you play, you gain

Mastery Points (MP) for the fighter you opened with. The fighter you opened with is the fighter type that makes up the most of your value on Wave 1. After earning enough MP for a fighter, you unlock higher mastery levels. Each mastery level grants a new mastery symbol and

Bonus Essence.

Your mastery level will be flexed on Wave 1 in a new "versus" popup that reveals everyone's openings.

Visit your Profile --> Masteries to view mastery level progress for all fighters as well as collect rewards.

At the end of each game, you'll earn MP based on the numbers below.

+50 MP per game*
+25 MP if you win the game
+25 MP if you're the MVP
+25 MP if you beat higher rated opponents
+3 MP per equipped Monument matching your opening fighter

*Ranked and Classic always count. For Play vs. AI and Campaign, it must be wave 6 or later for it to count.

New Units

New Mercenary: Needler

Needler

• Cost: 360 mythium
• Role: DPS
• Ranged / Pierce / Fortified
• HP: 3700
• DPS: 128 x 3

Needle Spray
Fires 2 additional needles at enemies near its attack target. Multiple needles can hit the same target. Ability damage. Also, gains 1 mana when it kills a unit.

Rapid Fire
Gains 50% attack speed for 5 seconds. Stacks with itself.

New Fighters: Shadow Dancer & Dread Knight

Shadow Dancer

• Tier 6 (Cost: 270g)
• Role: Versatile
• Melee / Pierce + Magic / Fortified
• HP: 1600
• DPS: 86

Shadowbreeder
Has a 15% chance with every attack to create a clone of itself that deals 25% damage as Magic damage and spawns with 25% health. Clones cannot clone themselves.

Dread Knight

• Tier 6 Upgrade (Upgrade Cost: 415g)
• Role: Versatile
• Melee / Pierce + Magic / Fortified
• HP: 3520
• DPS: 189

Hatebreeder
Has a 20% chance with every attack to create a clone of itself that deals 25% damage as Magic damage and spawns with 25% health. Clones cannot clone themselves.

Improvements & Fixes

Improvements

• Client Backgrounds: Added a "Randomize on Startup" option to allow you to randomize your client background every time you start up the game.
• Audio: Improved various cases where some sounds would be muted when there were a lot of sounds playing at once. Big battles should sound more alive, now.
• Damage Taken Tracker: Now takes into account damage reduction & evasion. This should more accurately display which tanks are doing most of the work, as well as make Battle Scars more reliable to use.
• Spectator Mode: Improved win probability formula. It continues to evolve.
• Classic: Rating badge thresholds have been tweaked to better reflect the Classic elo distribution. [Learn more]
• Client UI: Friends list should now be displayed in-game even if your Steam profile is set to private.
• Client UI: Added a new option: "Hide from Friends List" which allows you to toggle your visibility to your friends' in-game friends lists, even if you are invisible on Steam. The setting can be found in Options > Social.

Fixes

• Client UI: Fixed some cases where displayed rating would be not fully up-to-date after finishing a game
• Graphics: Fixed a bug where some missile impact VFX weren't showing up properly
• Level Up: Fixed some rare cases where an AFK player would mistakenly earned XP/currency when they weren't supposed to
• Game Coach: Fixed a rare case where Game Coach would mistakenly warn you about missing income, when you didn't miss income. This happened in some cases when you used Pack Rats.
• Sovereign: Fixed a bug where using the Sovereign of Death skin wouldn't play sound effects upon reaching max mana
• Client UI: Added a warning for players who sell/donate secret cards, to warn them that they lose the Monument slot that was unlocked by that card
• Client UI: Fixed a bug where player avatars would be incorrect in Global Chat
• Profile: Fixed a bug where Challenger trophies didn't show up
• Gameplay: Fixed another case where takeover bots in Classic were always sending every wave, even if all allies saved
• HUD: Fixed some rare cases with shift-building where the HUD would glitch and lock a unit to your cursor
• HUD: Fixed some rare cases where building fighters would become unresponsive
• HUD: Fixed a bug where chat messages from a previous game were occasionally displayed by mistake in the current game
• Campaign: Fixed a bug where restarting on Wave 10 would prevent you from picking a Legion Spell
• Stability: Fixed a rare case where the game was unplayable if the computer was unable to write debug logs to the system
• Stability: Fixed various other rare cases of instability

New Player Experience

• Improved new player Classic matchmaking/rating progression
• UI now warns low-level players against playing Classic and recommends to play Ranked instead for fairer matches

Localization & API

• Localization: New Feature! Translation previewer is now live at: https://developer.legiontd2.com/translate. This should be helpful with previewing markup to make sure there are no syntax errors.
• Localization: New Feature! Added a Last Updated column for translation fields. We will keep this updated from now on with any fields that have significantly changed and need a retranslation.
• Localization: Updated many more translations, especially for the Desert Ridge Campaign
• Localization: Added translation fields for Twitch integration
• If you are natively fluent in another language, we'd love to have your help improving Legion TD 2 translations. Please visit legiontd2.com/translate
• Join the Legion TD 2 Contributors Discord to stay up-to-date with Localization & API development! Even if you're not a dev, you can join to check out in-development projects such as paintsniffer's LTDMeta app, a fancy new app that automatically generates guides from player data.

New Shop Content

New Skin: Pack Leader of the Horde

Immediately unlock the Pack Leader of the Horde skin for free if you achieve any 2 season goals. Otherwise, you can unlock it via the shop when it's offered next year.

New Skin: Water Spirit Nekomata

The seasonal skin from 2022 is now available for sale!

Systems Balance

Ladder Points Rework

Congratulations to those who made it into the Top 100 Ladder Points leaderboard from Season 2022!

For Season 2023, the Ladder Points (LP) system has been reworked to the following:
- Gain 10-50 LP per win, maxing out at 7 wins/week. The higher your rating is, the more points you gain.
- The week resets at 12:00 midnight UTC (same time as Weekly Challenge reset).
- No more weekly LP gain (no passive LP gained).

Together, this encourages activity/discourages camping, without overly rewarding people who have more time to grind. This also makes LP available for everyone, not just the top ladder players.

Game Balance

Classic 4v4

Gold Rebalance
- After each wave, all players gain 1-400 gold depending on the wave. (WaveNumber^2 gold)
- Mercenaries and king upgrades give slightly reduced income.
- Mythium gather rate is now higher than when we ran the previous Gold Rush event

The goal of these changes is to make Classic queue feel a bit more casual, prevent players from falling too behind late game, and differentiate Classic from Ranked. We’ll keep a close eye on these changes and adjust them as needed.

We ran a similar Gold Rush style event last year. While most players liked it, it had some issues with too many games going to wave 21. We gathered a lot of feedback from a variety of Classic players, and this new iteration should be much improved.

Dual Building
- Fighters now wait 8 seconds before beginning to regenerate mana, making it comparable to solo laning
- Wave and mercenary AOE damage reduction: 37.5% --> 40%

These nerfs primarily hit AOE and dual builds that abused mana regeneration.

King

King

- Health decreased by ~35%
- Damage increased by ~100%
- Attack speed increased by 13%
- Giant Slayer: 24% → 20%
- Now has Tenacity: Gains 1.5% damage reduction per 1% damage taken this wave (Tenacity expires after the wave ends)
- Only uses Lightning Hammer now. Immolation, Chain Frost, and Judgment spells removed.
- Lightning Hammer projectile speed doubled to better handle mass units like Froggos
- Lightning Hammer damage decreased by ~30%
- Upgrade Attack: +19% → 11%
- Upgrade Spell: +7% → 9%

The king is now less susceptible to being 100-0’d in one wave. We now have a direct lever to tune this, rather than having to change AOE damage or Giant Slayer, which had other unintended effects.

Legion Spells

Battle Scars

- Damage reduced by damage reduction and evasion now counts in the Damage Taken tracker.

This change means Battle Scars is more likely to be applied to units with damage reduction and evasion, which is a buff.

Divine Blessing

- Health: 2400 → 2350
- Attack speed: 18% → 17%

High win rate.

Fighters

Nekomata

- Attack speed: 0.909 → 0.922

Low win rate.

Rogue Wave

- Delusion: Spell damage increase: 14% (7% against bosses) → 16% (8% against bosses)

Low pick rate. Giving players more reason to pick Aqua Spirit with spell damage-heavy comps.

Kingpin

- Health: 4700 → 4150
- Damage: 195 → 230
- Elite Fisherman: Bonus stats per mana: 2 damage → 15 health and 1 damage

Now grows bigger the more stacks of Elite Fisherman he has.

Sea Serpent

- Health: 640 → 660

Deepcoiler

- Health: 1950 → 2010

Low win rate and pick rate.

Gateguard

- Health: 600 → 570
- Chaos Hound no longer degenerates health

Harbinger

- Health: 1730 → 1640
- Cerberus no longer degenerates health

The doggos now survive longer and don't get quickly focused.

Elite Archer / Trinity Archer

- Now flying and can be buffed by Leviathan’s Aerial Command

Lost Chieftain
- Fixed a bug where it would sometimes mistakenly buff a summoned unit if the summoner was placed at the very front of the lane

Grarl

- Attack speed: 0.85 → 0.83

#1 highest pick rate. Recent buffs to Eggsack and King Claw, and the Ocean Templar rework have made Grarl too versatile of a pick, offering opening options, low risk shifting, a solid off-tank, anti-magic defense, and strong healing synergies.

Cursed Casket

- Health: 1580 → 1560

Cage of Pain

- Health: 2760 → 2740

Iron Maiden

- Health: 3930 → 3920
- Blade Storm: Damage: 45x3 → 43x3

High win rate and pick rate.

Starcaller

- Damage: 185 → 180

High win rate and pick rate.

Priestess of the Abyss

- Attack speed 0.99 → 0.97

Azeria

- Attack speed 0.99 → 0.97
- Reduced synergy with mana gain by 17%

High win rate and pick rate.

Radiant Halo / Arc of Justice

- Attack speed: 1.13 --> 1.15
- Solar Flare: Stacks up to 5 times → 3
- Reduced synergy with mana gain by 15%

This synergy was too strong, especially late game with multiple stacks.

Sand Badger

- Health: 2500 → 2530
- Damage: 75 --> 76

Iron Scales

- Health: 6730 → 6800
- Damage: 202 --> 204

Low win rate and pick rate.

Gatling Gun / Vulcan Cannon

- Attack speed: 2.08 → 2.13

Very low pick rate.

Great Boar

- Health: 3200 --> 3230
- Damage: 63 --> 64

Red Eyes

- Health: 8000 → 8170
- Damage: 157 → 162

Very low win rate and low pick rate.

Holy Avenger

- Aegis: Health gain per stack: 100 → 80
- Now gains main ~15% faster

Sovereign

- Final Judgment: Health gain per stack: 250 → 200
- Now gains main ~15% faster

More frequently pops off, which is more fun.

Millennium

- Attack speed: 0.595 → 0.606

Doomsday Machine

- Damage: 600 → 610

Low win rate.

Lord of Death

- Damage: 63 → 59
- Undead Dragon
— No longer degenerates health
— No longer gains health on kill
— Now procs Intellect (+15% mana) on Lord of Death

Hades

- Damage: 158 → 148
- Thanatos
— No longer degenerates health
— No longer gains health on kill
— Now procs Intellect (+15% mana) on Hades

Dragons now no longer steal kills from the summoners, which means more more mana and more dragons.

Mercenaries

Brute

- Damage: 57 → 58

Outshined by high income mercenaries early game and other power mercenaries mid and late game.

Centaur

- Attack speed 2.17 → 2.08

Still the #1 performing mercenary in the game with a high win rate and usage rate. Too oppressive against certain builds.

Ogre

- Attack speed: 1.43 → 1.41

High win rate and usage rate.

Kraken

- Ancient Power: Damage and damage reduction per wave: 0.85% → 0.9%

Low usage rate.

Desert Ridge Campaign

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the Desert Ridge Campaign! Like the first campaign included in the base game, Desert Ridge is playable with 1-4 players. It consists of 7 unique opponents, each increasing in difficulty. Among others, you'll face off against PennyTV - a British streamer who forces you to play T1-only builds, Bonny Flay - a salty chef who gives "balance advice" to the devs, and receives some "hotfixes" as a result, and Crashton - a high-octane goblin who pushes too many workers, but always seems to get away with it.

More info:

Legion TD 2 - Desert Ridge Campaign

Closing Remarks

With this new patch, we are excited to kick off the new year with tons of content to go along with the new ranked season!

It's been a long time since we had a new mercenary, so it'll feel good to see how the Needler affects the meta. As always, we'll keep a close eye on balance and release hotfixes ASAP whenever needed. Even more new mercenaries and units are already in the works, so it's going to be an awesome year for Legion.

Thank you again for playing Legion TD 2! We hope you continue to enjoy the game, as well as enjoy the wintry scenery for another month or two.

If you've enjoyed the game, but haven't left a review yet, please consider posting a short review for the game! It really helps get the word out there.

If you enjoy these updates, please give it a Thumbs Up, too!

And as always, if you have constructive criticism, let's chat about it. Discord is our main channel of communication, and aside from the development team, there are community helpers who can ensure your feedback is heard, as well as answer pretty much anything you've ever wanted to know about the game. We know there's still much to improve, so let's work together.

Until next time!

Sincerely,
Lisk, on behalf of The AutoAttack Games Team