Agents,
With the launch of the Misery Empire update only days away (there are only so many left in April, agents!) we wanted to brief you on (Work In Progress - subject to change) upcoming balance changes, and perhaps a sneak peek at the latest fashion trends.
We’ve got a pretty massive list of balancing tweaks we are bringing into this update. Our overall goal with these changes is quite simple: Make more agents and more builds viable. To do so, we are slightly toning down top performers and raising up low performing agents. This means that some middle of the pack characters are not getting as much changes in this update since the top and bottom will move around them.
We’ll keep watching how these changes affect the game and adjust balancing to keep the playing field more diverse and interesting.
We are also introducing a new background system with this patch that allows to update the balancing of the game live, without a client update. This is a huge step forward for us and will enable us to take action with more agility than ever before. With that all said: let's dive in!
Agents
Squire
Squire is doing great in the current meta. With his recent tweak to max ammo on his base weapon, we are now focusing on tweaking his other weapon options a bit to calm him slightly in combat scenarios. These are by no means huge changes, but we feel they will help level the balancing playing field and give space for other agents to be more viable this update.
- Weapons
- Weapon Mod 1: Trident
- Reducing headshot crit damage modifier from 1.5 to 1.3 to reduce the very high dps output of burst headshots at close range.
- Weapon Mod 2: Javelin
- Reducing damage per shot from 22 to 20
- Reload time changed from 1.65 to 1.7 seconds
- Weapon Mod 1: Trident
Ace
Our changes around Ace in this update are focused on two core aspects: Making her weapons feel more different and viable and improving her passives. Cover flush in particular is getting a major buff as we try to make it a more appealing choice to be a real thorn in rival agents’ sides.
- Weapons
- Weapon Mod 1: Jack of Diamonds
- Damage upped from 20 to 23 per shot.
- Fire rate upped from 1.35 bullets per second to 1.4.
- Reload time upped from 1.5 seconds to 1.75 seconds
- Weapon Mod 2: King of Diamonds
- Damage upped from 40 to 45 per shot.
- Reload time upped from 1.6 seconds to 1.75
- Reduced the zoom on the scope a bit.
- Weapon Mod 1: Jack of Diamonds
- Passive
- Passive Mod Base Version: Diamond’s Bet
- Reduced charge time from 1.35 to 1.30 second.
- Passive Mod 1: Crippling Shot
- Reduced charge time from 1.35 to 1.30 second.
- Slow effect upped from 35% to 40%
- Passive Mod 2: Cover Flush
- Reduced charge time from 1.35 to .9 second.
- Exposed duration increased from 7 seconds to 14 seconds.
- Passive Mod Base Version: Diamond’s Bet
Chavez
We’ve received quite a bit of feedback about chavez. In this update, we are targeting a specific set of aspects that have been identified as overperforming in the current meta. We’ll keep an eye on the effects of these changes, but we hope they make more builds viable for Chavez and reduce his oppressiveness in combat a bit. We still have our eyes on endurance training for more tweaks beyond this update.
- Weapons
- Weapon Mod 1: Vigilante
- Limb damage modifier lowered from .9 to .75.
- Weapon Mod 1: Vigilante
- Expertise
- Expertise Mod 1: Unshakeable Fortress
- Reduced the zone’s size significantly to reduce Chavez and his team’s mobility when using it. This will also make the zone far less efficient in closed off rooms where it used to occupy almost the entirety of the space.
- Expertise Mod 1: Unshakeable Fortress
- Passive
- Passive Mod 2: Endurance Training
- Reduced incoming damage turned into gray health to 50% max down from 60%
- Chavez now heals for 25% of the damage he deals down from 40%
- Passive Mod 2: Endurance Training
Larcin
Larcin is getting pretty sizable tweaks with this update. We are tweaking his weapons a bit to make them more distinct and create more diverse playstyles and we are changing the pickpocket ability quite fundamentally with the addition of the heat system.
We hope to see Larcin not only perform better overall, but be simply more interesting to play in varied configurations.
- Weapons
- Base Weapon: Silence
- Fire Rate raised from 5.5 to 6 bullets per second.
- Changed under the hood base damage to change headshots calculations. Same modifier, but will now deal 15 damage on a headshot instead of 13.
- Thrown weapon now deals 10 damage up from 8.
- Weapon Mod 1: Cadence
- Changed damage from 9 per shot to 10.
- Shot delay between bursts raised from .27 seconds to .4.
- Weapon Mod 2: Violence
- Changed damage per shot from 10 to 15.
- Changed fire rate from 4.5 bullets seconds to 3.5.
- Changed headshot modifier from 1.5 to 1.3. (Do not let this fool you: headshots with this weapon hit harder now.)
- Thrown projectile body damage raised from 20 to 30.
- Headshot damage modifier on thrown weapons lowered from 2.5 to 2.0 (Still 60 damage).
- Reduced projectile speed a bit to make it easier to aim and predict a bit.
- Base Weapon: Silence
- Expertise
- Reduced the delay for Larcin’s expertise to trigger on all variants by half. Using the expertise to get away should now feel much more reactive.
- Passive
- Passive Mod 2: Pickpocket
- Now, meleeing a NPC when in cover won’t blow your cover anymore, but will build up heat everytime. This means you can safely try to pickpocket suspicious NPC without revealing yourself, but you will have to be careful not to build too much heat in the process.
- Passive Mod 2: Pickpocket
Following playtime in the alphas before launch, we tweaked larcin’s pickpocket ability to prevent it from being used as a spy check without any risk.
While the changes we made accomplished that goal, it left pickpocket without a clear use case and identity. Its downside largely outweighs its advantages.
With the introduction of the heat system, we are changing pickpockets once again. We feel this tweak will give back the main appeal of pickpocket while negating the aspect of having a 100% free spy check at melee range.
Madame Xiu
Madame Xiu has been doing well since launch and as such we don’t want to move her too much from where she currently stands. We are tweaking some minor elements on her weapons and we’ll keep watch on where she lands in the new reality of this update with all the changes around her.
- Weapons
- Base Weapon: Zhulong
- Fire rate raised from 5.5 bolts per second to 5.75.
- Weapon Mod 1: Longshen
- Reload time lowered from 1.75 seconds to 1.5.
- Base Weapon: Zhulong
Hans
Falloff range tweaks did Hans a lot of good with the hotfix. We are continuing some targeted tweaks to make him a bit more viable at range with his base weapon and give back a clear double barrelled shotgun identity on the Uppercut.
- Weapons
- Base Weapon: The Hook
- ADS headshot modifier raised from 1.75 to 2.
- Weapon Mod 2: The Uppercut
- Reload time reduced from 2.2 seconds to 1.35 seconds.
- Fire rate raised from .8 shot second to 1.8 shot second.
- Damage lowered from 50 to 45 per shot (all pellets hit)
- Base Weapon: The Hook
- Expertise
- The slow amount applied by all Hans' expertise is now 40% up from 30%, helping him close the gap with his victims.
Cavalière
We are pretty happy with the changes to the ammo pools on Cavalière from the hotfix, but we still find her base weapons to be slightly over-performing. We are doing some very light tweaks to them that should bring them more in line with the rest of the cast.
The other main factor in Cavalière feeling oppressive is really her tracking ability. To that end, we are tweaking some factors around it to make it less of a homing missile from anywhere on the map.
- Weapons
- Base Weapon: Dragoons
- Reduced damage per shot from 11 to 10.
- Reduced fire rate from 5.25 bullet seconds to 5.
- Base Weapon: Dragoons
- Expertise:
- Base version: Investigation
- Reduced duration of investigation stance from 15 to 12 seconds.
- Chase levels changed from 5/10/15 to 5/8/12 seconds
- Expertise Mod1 :It’s a setup
- Reduced chase time from 20 seconds to 12.
- Expertise Mod 2: Redemption
- Reduced duration of investigation stance from 15 to 12 seconds.
- Reduced chase time from 20 seconds to 12.
- Base version: Investigation
- Passive:
- Melee reliability work should help a lot with landing Cavalière’s charge melee in this update.
Yu-Mi
Yu-mi is a bit of a special case: While her pick-rate is relatively low, her win probability is quite good. A main aspect that has come out as frustrating when playing against Yu-Mi is the very high melt potential she has when landing headshots in rapid succession. To keep this in check a bit more, we are changing the time it takes to fully charge her slingshots a bit. We want to incentivize more quick shots in close quarter fights and keep fully charged shots as powerful fight starters or well-timed finishing moves.
Another aspect we are watching is Yu-Mi’s medi-field. It’s quite clear to us watching analytics that Yu-Mi win’s probability in teams is a big outlier in no small part thanks to it. We are adding a new wrinkle to this ability to make it less of a face tanking win button and add more strategic layers to its placement.
- Weapons
- Base Weapon: Tactical Slingshot
- Changed full charge time from .9 second to 1.2 second
- Weapon Mod 1: Experimental Split Shot
- Changed full charge time from .9 second to 1.2 second
- Weapon Mod 2: Heavy Longshot
- Changed full charge time from .1.2 second to 1.5 second
- Base Weapon: Tactical Slingshot
- Expertise:
- The slow value of Yu-Mi’s EMP bubbles has been raised to 40% from 30% to help land these precious fully charged shots.
- Expertise Mod 1: Medi-Field
- The healing bubble now has a very short delay before starting to heal after taking damages. We want to mitigate popping the bubble to simply facetank any encounter and teams while still keeping its great support utility.
Field Upgrade Balancing Tweaks
We are making some changes to field upgrade values. Our effort with this one is making less valuable field upgrades a bit more desirable and making purple and gold upgrades more desirable as part of your gameplan.
We are not touching four field upgrades that we think are already either strong enough or have a clear enough role in a field upgrade deck in the current meta. These are: Bulletproof fabric, External harddrive, Exfiltration scanner and overclock chip.
We might revisit them in the future, but let’s focus on the changes in this patch:
Cover Accelerator
While the cover accelerator had a great place in some builds, we wanted to push its transformative nature in your playstyle a bit further. It’s now more useful at low ranks and will make you a true vanishing ghost at higher levels. Since we have a built-in delay before cover starts recharging, we wanted to give this upgrade a very powerful regen factor when you chose it as your top upgrade.
In % Reduction
- Old Values: 20-30-40-50-60
- New Values: 30-35-50-60-75
Extended Ammo Pouch
Extended ammo is a nice pick for some specific agents and weapons, but in the spirit of making it something that changes how you can play the game a bit more profoundly, we are raising values on it significantly. Not only does it open the opportunity to carry a lot of ammo, it gives a secondary utility of being able to remove more ammo from the map by looting much more.
In % bonus
- Old Values:10-20-30-40-50
- New Values:30-40-60-80-100
Nutritional Supplement
This one is lagging behind quite a bit in terms of usefulness. We are making every level more significant in an effort to make this a great pick to recover while on the run and be fight ready faster than your opponents. We are leaning on a more aggressive scaling at the highest level to make it a more attractive pick at the top slots of your loadout.
In HP per snack
- Old Values:10-12-14-16-18
- New Values:12-14-16-20-28
Social Battery
Social Battery is already a great pick, but it’s pretty much useless at lower levels and does not have much room to change at the current balancing. We are making it scale on a larger scale to make it more viable even in lower upgrade slots and a great boost at the gold slot.
In HP per second
- Old Values:0.5-1-2-3.5-5
- New values:1-2-3-5-7
Field Agent Kit
Field agent is a pretty solid pick especially for agents that lean heavily on their expertise in a pinch. We are making it a stronger pick as your top field upgrade to really drive that play style defining role we want from gold field upgrades.
In % reduction
- Old Values:20-25-30-35-40
- New values:20-25-30-40-50
Gadgets Balancing Tweaks
We’ve made some tweaks to gadgets in an effort to make more varied picks viable. This starts with some cooldown changes to make gadget use and picking back up more interesting considerations. We’ve split placeable gadgets in two cooldown categories:
Cooldown Changes:
- Bounce Mat, Umbrella Shield: 45 Seconds
- Drone, Scrambler, Tripwire, Goopod, Turret: 30 Seconds
In addition, we’ve made the following tweaks to specific gadgets:
- Goopod:
- Slow Value has been raised to 40% from 30.
- Auto-Turret:
- Shooting the turret is no longer considered a limb shot, which will lead to faster destruction time for a lot of characters shooting at it.
- HackTrap:
- Hack Trapping intel is now twice as fast to be able to do it regularly without losing time.
- Scrambler:
- No longer affect you or your teammates making it a powerful tool to get the advantage in gadget heavy fights.
All-new looks are hitting the shop with this upcoming update, with four new rotations added to the current existing four. These rotations will keep cycling on a 24h basis and will not expire, so don’t fret about missing the skin you want as it shall be back very soon!
Here’s a tease at the new looks:
Norfolk Ace
Tournament Arc Cavalière
Elite Forces Hans
Self-Care Xiu
The Misery Empire update also includes fixes for the following issues:
- Fixes for several gameplay exploits
- Fixed the vulnerable status effect being way too loud (sorry for your ears)
- [Xbox Series X/S] Fixed several cases where crossparty invites would behave inconsistently
- [PlayStation 5] Fixed an issue where some players were unable to form a party with PC players.
- Fixed an issue where Madam Xiu’s shift was causing camera issues when used on crouching or sitting civilians/staff.
- And more!
Be sure to let us know what changes (or looks) you are looking most forward to!