[img=http://forced2.com/mm/MMUpdate_40.png]

Minion Masters!

We want to start by thanking you all for the feedback you’ve provided during the Beta, and most recently regarding the draft changes.
We quickly realized that something was wrong, and have made another iteration of the system which aims to accomplish the good parts of both of the previous versions.

Besides that, we figured it was time to celebrate our 40th update by shaking up the meta a little more than usual, and finally getting around to changing the Defenso Chopper model so new players won’t be horribly confused by the fact that it looks flying but isn’t.

Draft reward rework redux!

• Increased and reshuffled the random rewards for all wins, guaranteeing cards in many situations
• The guaranteed gold reward has been increased.
• Removed Rubies from random rewards. Overall the rewards are more dependable now, and you should never end up in a situation where you got less value out of the draft than you paid to enter, or that the time spent wasn’t worth it. It’s also possible to play drafts continuously if you do well, although the mode no longer allows you to farm premium currency or massive amounts of gold with them.

Defenso Chopper rework

• New model! The Scrats were tired of the chopper, so they decided to make it a chopper instead. The new chopper has a chopper attached for chopping up enemies.
• Stat changes: Speed down from 5 to 4. Range up from .6 to 2 (still technically melee, but just longer) Damage up from 30 to 50 Attack speed from 2.2 to 3 (dps up from 13.6 to 16.7) Return damage up from 80 to 100
• Updated card art

Balance

• Blood Imps
  • Changed to be “Their Master loses health equal to the damage they take. Even Overkill”.
  • Damage down from 20 to 10, Attack speed from 1.2 to 1.

  --- Developer comments ---
  The Blood Imps have been in our sights for a while, as they’ve been popular in many strategies because of their versatility and unique mechanic of costing no mana but sacrificing health.
  In general they warranted a change so the card gave less value on the board, but the ability for some Masters to specifically avoid the drawback entirely enabled some strategies that quite clearly weren’t doing any good for the game.
  This change converts the damage the Blood Imps take into health loss for the Master, bypassing shields.
  They still synergize quite well with Masters that are able to avoid other damage sources, but the Imps themselves will now always carry a cost for the immense value they can provide.

• Milloween - Arcane Missiles damage per missile up from 30 to 40.
  --- Developer comments ---
  Milloween still hasn’t reached her full potential, and we believe in part it’s because her early game presence suffered under a costly spell that didn’t necessarily provide much value.
  Other changes in this update should give her more powerful tools, but we felt the Spell should at least have the potential to give an advantage when played right.

• Daggerfall
  • Damage up from 50 to 80
  • Cast delay down from 2 sec to 1.5 sec

  --- Developer comments ---
  Daggerfall quite clearly wasn’t as powerful as you’d expect of a 3 mana card. The damage increase helps it deal with a larger set of Minions, which makes it an actual alternative to Fireball, Chain Lightning and Shock Rock.
  It also brings the spell into a range where it can kill priority targets like Xiao Long, allowing you to remove him from the board without a mana loss.
  The delay on the spell also made it feel oddly unresponsive, despite being just as fast as fireball. Lowering the delay makes it feel better, but also allows it to react faster, killing things such as Boomers in the hands of a skilled player, which should further provide some nuances to decisions around which lower cost spells to include in your deck.

• Styxi - Health up from 70 to 90
  --- Developer comments ---
  A necessary change because of the Daggerfall increase, but also a small increase to a very costly minion, making it harder to kill with smaller chip attacks like Shock Rock.

• Prowler
  • Pounce cooldown up from 1 sec to 3 sec
  • Pounce minimum range up from 2 to 4.

  --- Developer comments ---
  The Prowler’s pounce has been nice and impactful, but it felt unnaturally quick to resume pouncing once it had killed things. It also had the ability to pounce on things that were very close, which didn’t feel right in most cases.
  This change emphasizes the opponent’s ability to place things in front of the Prowler to avoid the initial damage, while still maintaining the strength of the card in most places.

• Dragon Nest
  • Changed to “Summons a Dragon Whelp when its Master plays a 3-cost or higher Spell”
  • Health up from 150 to 250, Duration up from 20 to 30, Mana cost down from 4 to 3.

  --- Developer comments ---
  The Dragon Nest has had a few issues for a while.
  For one, when Spirit Infusion became popular it became very much a card centered around one big push that was extremely hard to deal with.
  Buff Spells and lower cost Spells also provided the Dragon Nest with a carefree way of producing dragons. Lower cost spells had an instant mana gain, no matter how you played the Spell, and Buff Spells like Spirit Infusion and Rampage almost always gave the player value since they could be used on the Dragons themselves.
  While we like the Dragon Nest’s ability to enable different strategies, the current versions were simply not fun to play against, mostly because they were extremely punishing for the unprepared.
  The change to Dragon Nest forces players to gain value from the Spells they’re playing in order to regain the investment in the Dragon Nest. Additionally, this change combined with the Spirit Infusion mana and spirit reduction below, results in Spirit Infusion simply not triggering the Dragon Nest.
  We targeted Spirit Infusion specifically because it made it extremely difficult to deal with the dragons, as any counter you would normally use was invalidated by the buffs.
  One last thing we’d like to mention, is that this change also aimed to reduce the stress of playing Dragon Nest.
  The previous version quickly ran out, which meant you had to fire off your combo quickly or lose the whole thing. This was rather stressful, and forced you to spend a lot of time setting up the Dragon Nest combo to get maximum value out of it. The new Dragon Nest still gains something from including smaller Spells through their utility and synergy, but not directly as a combo.

• Spirit Infusion
  • Number of Spirits down from 3 to 2
  • Mana cost down from 3 to 2

  --- Developer comments ---
  Spirit Infusion was changed for many of the reasons stated above under Dragon Nest, but additionally, we felt it was very hard to foresee how the board would be in 9 seconds time, so it was often very hard to gain any value from the last spirit.
  The Spell is also rather hard to counterplay, and while reducing the mana cost may lead to more possible synergies, this change makes it harder to grow a specific Minion to immense size, which in turn limits the effect it has on the opponent’s ability to counter the Minion.

• Call to Arms - Mana cost down from 3 to 2
  --- Developer comments ---
  Since the rework of Call to Arms before Team Battle, the card hasn’t seen as much play as we’d hoped. We felt it was very hard to use, because you were forced to gain value from the Buildings you had played. While our philosophy on what it should require to play hasn’t changed, we believe it was simply too difficult, and thus warranted a small reduction in cost. This makes it easier to gain the return on investment from the buildings and still use them as Warriors, rather than never getting to play the card.
  Aside from that, the recent mana reduction to Dragon Nest enabled an extremely easy combo where you could gain mana without any possibility for the opponent to counterplay it.

  Quality of Life

  • The Loading Icon on loading screens is now bigger.
  • A small sound now plays when somebody uses an emote.
  • Season Reset calculations now happen as players log in, making the downtime around Season Resets much shorter.

  Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a visual issue where the “eligible space” graphics would show when the teammate was placing units in Team Battle.
  • Fixed a bug where returning to the main menu after an error would lock the game.
  • The escape menu now properly opens the initial menu if opened after having seen the leave warning in Team Battle
  • Fixed a bug where the tooltip to inspect opponents’ cards wouldn’t disappear if you clicked the wrong opponent
  • Fixed a bug where the other Master would get Stormbringers Marksmanship buff in Team Battle.
  • Fixed a visual issue with the greyed out placement preview for your teammate applying to your preview instead.
  • Fixed an issue where Gax would not explode properly if protected by Guardian’s Shield and trying to kill himself.
  • Fixed a sound bug where the Master’s Voice Over would be panned to the left in the Main Menu
  • Fixed all accented characters missing in Italian - Thanks PixyLeeSwagger
  • Fixed a bug where Ravager would stop attacking other units because another unit was within his range plus the buffer range for staying on the same target. - Thanks Videogamer7777777_91
  • The Healing Shrine now properly plays SFX
  • Fixed the Battle Shi-Hou sometimes having a giant arrow indication for nearby Minions.
  • Corrected the formatting of the German translation of Damage
  • Fixed an issue where Tommy the Dummy would be up by default in the intro cinematic.
  • Fixed a bug where the Loading Tips would should prototype cards for a certain upcoming feature.
  • Fixed an issue where two Settsu’s landing at the same time caused one’s logic to stop
  • Gax’s World Damage string is now correctly localized.
  • Fixed a visual issue where Spiritmancer and Blastmancers attack VFX would sometimes disappear
  • The initial Draft menu with purchase options no longer shows the average mana of your previous draft deck
  • Fixed an issue where units would retarget away from the Troubadour when the Troubadour was stunned. - Thanks Greywolf
  • Fixed a UI bug where a locked Master would be displayed when you joined a friend lobby
  • Fixed a follow-up issue with the Musketeer’s parry cooldown sometimes running while he was stunned
  • Fixed a bug where the Musketeer would not perform his Riposte attack after blocking an attack
  • Fixed a bug with the Musketeer walking in place instead of moving - Thanks PakoMANIAC
  • The Musketeer can no longer target invisible units with his Riposte attack - Thanks Sinilil
  • Fixed a bug with the matchmaking in Team Battle that would match two higher ranked players against two lower ranked players.

  Cheers from BetaDwarf!