Minion Masters!
Patch 1.29 is swarming into the Arenas and with it, a ton of balance changes, two new cards, and a bunch of bugs have been squished!
Cards Added:
All masters attacks have now special and true damage:
There were a couple of interactions in the game we disliked and wanted to solve, most notable:
- Sugilite shield protecting from master damage (we will look at a buff for sugilite shield in future patches)
- Stonebjorn tanking some masters for extremely long
- Confusion about Ravager being ranged
- Incubus jumping into your face (we will look if incubus needs a buff in future patches)
- Divine shield (chaining) in front of the masters
This change should solve all of these, and appropriate buffs to cards involved will be looked at once we see how big the impact is.
Balance Changes
Stormbringer
Dev comments: To make up for the global damage being true damage we make stormbringers attack slower.
- Attack cooldown 3.8s -> 4.0s
King puff
Dev comments: King puff is extremely strong atm, we want to lower his strength potential, but give him more flexibility in return.
- birthday cooldown -> 50 seconds
- Added 7 mana cards to his threshold
Guardian
Dev comments: Guardian has been a card that we had to balance several times and then became unbalanced again when new crystal cards came out. With this change, we hope to make guardian chaining more counterable and futureproof the card.
- Protectection 100 -> 75%
Haunting Hugger
Dev comments: Haunting hugger is a card currently only used to get some fast stacks for ascension and is basically useless outside of that. By giving him more damage, but lowering his attack speed we hope to give him more defense potency by killing units faster but without increasing his strength too much.
- Attack cooldown 1.8s-> 2.5s
- Damage 50 -> 100
Chisma boomstick
Dev comments: There were some weird interactions of Chisma attacking a unit and then running straight into that unit in fear. We have changed this so that it runs away from whatever unit it was attacking instead of running away from the enemy's base. We also donated him a small buff within the explosion radius as he felt a bit too weak.
- Runs away from the target
- Explosion Radius 4->5
Call to Arms
Dev comments: Call to arms has needed a rework for a long time, and with Sapphire Pebbles, it really became paramount to do it now. With this change, we hope to solve both the issue of buildings giving a lot of value before transforming and then still getting full value from transforming (i.e. an almost dead crossbow guild transforming into a warrior) and solving the problem of the limitations we have in buildings. With this change, we can create cheap buildings as long as they do not have a lot of health. The exception is wall, but considering wall is limited to one copy AND call to arms + wall is still not more valuable than two warriors are, it is an exception that should not be a problem
- Cost 6->4
Now spawns different Empyrean units based on the remaining health (always spawns a warrior at base):
- 100 or less -> spear thrower
- 200 or less -> legionnaire
- 201 or more -> warrior
Gor’ Rakk Gate
Dev comments: Gor’ Rakk Gate is not in a good place, and swarmers are easily the worst option in the gate, opening for tons of damage from spells, while also not being the best option to kill something, nor do face damage. With three elite swarmers, we hope to make it less risky, while giving an option to get a fair amount of tankiness with some damage on the field for a low price (outside of health).
- 7 swarmers -> 3 elite swarmers
Raging Reinforcements, Ahmun's Chosen & Gor'Rakk Gate
These cards now cycle through their options rather than being random. The starting point is random, but after that, it is consistently the same cycle.
We want to remove the randomness to the point that it can decide a game’s outcome (win or lose). With this change, we hope to make them more consistent, while keeping the fun of the alternating gameplay that they offer.
Border Patrol
Dev comments: Border Patrol has been bad and underplayed for a long time, and we hope that by making it cheaper more people will make use of the card.
- Shield no longer costs 1 Mana freeze
Zeppelin Bomber
Dev comments: We really wanna give this Zeppelin a small umpf because let’s be honest, it does really need a bit of love.
- Added: Scrat Swarm: Gain Haste
Empowered SoulStealer
Dev comments: Empowered Soulstealer has been rather weak, by giving him a stronger baseline he should feel better on the Arena.
- Starting stacks 3->4
Demon Warrior and Avea
Dev comments: Cards with a quest are really awkward to get from a random card like a blind date or walking blind date, as they can basically never complete their quest, so cards with a quest will generally be excluded from the random pool.
- Removed from randompool
Avea
Dev comments: Similar to Demon warrior it is generally a bad idea to triple Avea and to prevent confusion from people getting 3 to get the quest done faster, only to realize that is not how it works we limit Avea to 1 copy, which should have basically no gameplay effect.
- CardCount 3->1
Stormy
Dev comments: Stormy is a bit weak atm, and rarely gets its 2 hits off. By giving Stormy a bit more hp, it should be a bit more consistent.
- Health 125->150
Coax the Diplomancer
Dev comments: We have heard a lot of complaints about the Diplomancer, and when we looked at the stats we noticed that at high ranks coax was doing average to cards there, but in low and medium ranks coax was performing a lot better. By limiting the max value the Diplomancer can get with 1 minion (10 seconds) while also making sure he can get a minimum amount of value if played well we hope we solve the problem of the Diplomancer taking 1 big minion and hypnotised minion continuously destroying whatever is being flooded in while still keeping him as a viable card.
By reducing the health of the Diplomancer a bit as well we open him up a bit more for removal, making it a choice of fighting him with minions, or “overspending” on spells if you do not have the perfect cards.
- Health 400 ->350
- Hypnosis: while attacking -> 10s once per minion.
Bug fixes
- Fixed an issue with Hellfire not being removed when t.a.a.s. dies - Thanks Anno
- Fixed an issue with Akinlep and Morellia mistakenly removing cards from decks - Thanks The Mike 1979
- Fixed a visual bug with Adera attacking friendly units - Thanks me
- Fixed an issue with the Musketeer sprinting when hypnotize is used - Thanks Last_Elf
- Fixed Nyrvir’s description to better indicate attack range when initiating an attack - Thanks me
- Fixed an issue with Eeeek the sneak’s abilities in the patch match screen looking like Doomapocalypse’s abilities.
- Fixed an issue with the Wrecked walker spending tech even with 0 mana - Thanks Jackeea
- Fixed an issue wíth the Stonebjorn having excessively long spawn time.