Patch Notes v1.23

HERO IMPROVEMENTS

Orochi

Storm Rush

• Input is unchanged (Dodge Back + Hold/Release Heavy) but the options coming out of it have changed:

  • While charging “Storm Rush” and during the run portion, you can change your stance to determine which attack you will perform.

  • Right Stance is a 500ms attack (The indicator appears at 300ms).

  • Left Stance is a 600ms attack (The indicator appears at 400ms).

  • Top Stance is a 700ms attack that is Undodgeable (The indicator appears at 500ms).

  • Each attack deals 17 damage.

  • When you release a Heavy Attack, the Orochi will start running towards the target and automatically attack when close enough or after 400ms, whichever comes first.

  • “Storm Rush” is Feintable at any point before attacks start.

  • Removed Guardbreak cancel from charge and run.

Developer Comment: These changes to “Storm Rush” are intended to make the move much more competitive, as the opponent may have difficulty defending, and the Top version should catch opponents who try to Dodge away from all options.

Riptide Strike

• NEW INPUT: Dodge Backward + Light
• Now deals 22 damage (down from 30) and costs 6 stamina (down from 15).
• Is interrupted if Normal Blocked.
• Strike is now 600ms (down from 700ms).
• Now counts as the first hit of any Chain.

Developer Comment: These changes remove the exotic input for “Riptide Strike” while making the ability faster and initiating chains. The changes should bring increased pressure from the Orochi and let him counterattack with Riptide Strike much more efficiently.

Chain Starter attacks

• Side Light chain starters are now 500ms (down from 600ms),

Attack chains

• The 2nd Light in the Chain is now 400ms (down from 500ms).
• Top Light Finisher is now 400ms (down from 600ms).
• Side Light Finishers are now 500ms (down from 600ms).

Developer Comment: Light attack chains were too slow and too easy to react to. These changes make them a real threat.

New chain attacks

• The following chains are now available for the Orochi:
  • Light > Light > Heavy
  • Light > Heavy
  • Heavy > Light > Heavy

Developer Comment: This new ability to reach the Heavy Finisher at any point in the Chains makes it difficult for the opponent to identify a Light.

Finisher recovery cancels

• “Light Finishers” and “Heavy Finishers” may now cancel their recovery into Dodge starting at 100ms.

Developer Comment: This allows Orochi to maintain pressure, both in-group fights and in 1v1, and raise the usability of his Finishers.

Side Dodge Attacks

• Increased the range of the Side Dodge Attacks to 2 meters (was 1.25 meters).

Damage value changes

• “Light Openers” now deals 15 (down from 17).
• “Light Chain 2nd Strike” now deals 12 damage (down from 15).
• “Side Light Finishers” now deals 17 (up from 15).
• “Top Heavy Finisher” now deals 35 (up from 30).
• “Side Heavy Finishers” now deals 30 (up from 25).

Bug fixes

• “Wind Gust” now links to Light chains at 300ms (previously at 0ms)
• “Hurricane Blast” no longer links to attacks after a miss.
• Stance change to attack now takes 100ms (is no longer delayed to 300ms).

Peacekeeper

Dagger Cancel

• “Dagger Cancel” always hits from the Top Stance instead of the same stance as the Heavy Attack Cancelled.
• “Dagger Cancel” from the 2nd strike of the Zone Attack is now done at 400ms (up from 100ms), and always hits from the Top Stance.

Developer Comment: The Peacekeeper’s “Dagger Cancel” did not really bring anything to her move set – since it always came from the same side as the attack and had a similar block/parry timing. Now, as the Dagger Cancel strike always comes from the top, it should make Heavy Attack, Heavy Finisher, and Zone Attack’s 2nd Strike more viable options.

Heavy Finisher Cancel

• “Heavy Finishers” can now be cancelled into a Guardbreak or a Dodge.

Developer Comment: The Peacekeeper’s “Heavy Finishers” are rarely used outside of feinting. These new mix-ups combined with the “Dagger Cancel” make her Heavy Finisher more threatening which allow the character to complete her chains more often.

Damage Value Changes

• “Light Opener” now deals 13 damage (down from 17).
• “Heavy Opener” now deals 20 damage (down from 33).
• “Heavy Finisher” now deals 25 damage (down from 30), and now costs 10 Stamina (down from 12).
• Zone Attack’s first hit now deals 15 damage (down from 20).
• “Riposting Stab” now deals 20 damage on strike (up from 15). The Bleed portion of “Riposting Stab” still deals 15 damage, as it did before.
• “Heavy Finisher” now costs 10 Stamina (down from 12) and deals 25 damage (down from 30).
• “Deep Gouge” now deals 10 bleed damage (down from 15).

Bleed Damage

• Bleed attacks now stack with other Bleed attacks (from any source).

Developer Comment: The Peacekeeper’s Bleed attacks were not consistent – they stacked with Bleeds from other characters, but not from her own. This meant that when she caused a Bleed, then struck and caused another Bleed, the first would be replaced by the second – which dealt less total damage. This meant Peacekeepers were not rewarded for staying and attacking, this may have incentivized them to hit, and them dodge away from combat while the Bleed slowly did full damage, before applying a new Bleed.

Now, because Peacekeeper will cause full damage from successively-applied Bleeds, we hope this incentivizes some Peacekeepers to play more aggressively.

Dodge Recovery

• Side dodge recovery is now 600ms (from 500ms).

NEW MAP

Beachhead

• Inspired by the popular “Up the Beach” campaign map, Viking attackers storm the beach in an attempt to breach and control the Samurai stronghold. Fight your way along the treacherous no man’s land before climbing up to capture the Samurai's ballista workshop and armoury.
• Available in Dominion, Duel, Brawl, Elimination and Skirmish.

VISUAL COLLECTION

• The Change Look functionality has been greatly improved with the Visual Collection feature. Players can now apply any visual that they have previously acquired, of rarity equal or below the gear being modified.
• While applying visuals at the same rarity as the selected gear costs the same as before, the cost of applying visuals acquired at a lower rarity than the selected gear scales according to the gap. The closer the rarity of the visual is to the gear being visually changed, the cheaper the fee is.
• Event visuals can be applied on any rarity and have a flat fee.

Unlocking Visuals

• Visuals are automatically added to the Visual Collection once acquired through end of match reward or scavenger crates.
• The rarity of the visual is at the highest rarity at which the player looted the visual.
• Event visuals have no rarity since they are available for a limited time.
• At feature launch, players will have unlocked all the gear they have received since December 15th 2017 (Patch 1.17). This includes all regular gear as well as the exclusive Winter Event weapons and Apollyon Event gear that the players looted.

Apply Visuals

• By Selecting a gear and going to the Change Look menu, players can preview:
  • All visuals you have acquired and their associated maximum gear’s rarity are available.
  • All gear that has not been acquired visuals that can currently be looted:
  • Does not show visuals that cannot drop, ex: Event Visuals when the event has ended.
  • Some high-rarity visuals appearance is hidden and will only be shown when acquired.

Developer Comment: We know that inventory size has been a big topic for the community for a while now, with Visual Collection you will not need to hoard gear for their appearance. This also lets you see everything available and keep track of which ones you are missing. As a bonus, since we’ve been tracking player’s loot since December you’ll have access to all the gear you’ve looted over the last few months, including any Event visuals you dismantled by mistake.

CHAMPION STATUS UPDATE

• XP Bonus was increased from 25% to 40% for the player.
• XP Bonus Aura was increased from 10% to 20% for all players of the match.
• XP Bonus Aura from other players stacks with our own Champion Status but only once, bringing your total XP Bonus to 60%.
• XP Bonus and Aura also stacks with Strategic Points, Extra XP Fest and other XP modifiers.
• Champion Status now increases the loot chances of getting an event loot.
• It applies to players that have already purchased Champion Status and new activations.

Developer Comment: We are increasing the benefits of having Champion Status for both personal and shared effect!

NEW REPUTATION REWARDS

• Heroes will unlock a new ornament “Seal of Mastery” at Reputation 40.
• Heroes will unlock a new outfit “Semantic Triple” Reputation 50.
• When a player reaches Reputation 50 with 1 of their heroes, they receive a new emblem outline.

NEW REFINE LEVEL: REFINE II

• New pieces of gear can drop that can be refined 2 times.
• Refine II gear have a chance to drop whenever you loot a Legendary gear for a Hero of Reputation 10 or higher. The chances to gain a Refine II gear increases with their reputation level.
• Refine II crafting works the same as single Refine crafting and improves the gear stats further.
• Previous Refined gear cannot be upgraded to refine II. New gear with refine II potential must be looted.
• Refinable gear do not affect gear score, so the gear score cap is not affected.
• Refine II gear is displayed as 2 diamonds above the gear icon. When a full set of gear is upgraded to Refined II (all weapon and armor pieces), 2 diamonds are displayed in the Hero’s overall gear score.

Developer Comment: Added more options to upgrade gear for end game progression.

TOURNAMENT REWARDS

New tournament rewards introduced and past season reward retired

• New rewards for all tiers introduced.
• Also, note that starting this season, rewards from previous seasons will no longer drop on tournaments.

Developer Comment: With the arrival of dedicated servers, players that had Red NAT are able to participate in tournaments.

This was the main reason why we have not removed the tournament rewards from the previous seasons before and we chose to keep them a little longer to give a chance to get these rewards.

We are now ready to go on with the original reward plan for tournaments and introduce new set of exclusive rewards each seasons. We always wanted the tournament rewards to be a fresh new set of rewards that players come to get every new season.

That being said, we are always listening to your feedback and trying to find ways to improve the rewards.

Tournament rewards drop update

• Completing a tournament now gives one guaranteed reward from the current tier and one from the tier below.

Developer Comment: Following the community feedback, we removed the RNG to get rewards from the tier below. This applies to all tiers.

We saw some reports of playing tournaments and losing the finals on purpose to get engravings and color swatches, and we don’t believe that this is behavior is compatible with the tournament spirit.

The reward is still prioritized per hero. You should always get 2 rewards, unless you already looted everything from the current tier or the tiers below.

Tournament rewards unlock information

• Tournament Rewards unlock conditions are updated to show the season they belong to.

Developer Comment: A small quality of life update to better feedback the rewards.

RANKED REWARDS

• Regular ranked modes (i.e. Ranked Dominion) now has chances of dropping a cosmetic tournament reward of “Commander Tier” in addition of the normal rewards.

Developer Comment: On top of the previous XP and Steel increase for Ranked Modes, we are continuing our series of improvements for ranked modes. We are now adding an alternate way of getting lower tier tournament rewards that is not dependant of looting all the rewards from higher tiers or getting into big tournaments. All type of ranked play outside tournament now has a chance of dropping “Commander Tier” (4th tier) rewards.

EVENT ICON ON EVENT GEAR

• Event gear now have a distinctive Event Icon after the name to identify it.

IMPROVEMENTS

Added a new HUD icon to notify players of **“**Packet Cancel”

• “Packet Cancel” occurs when sent Input Data does not reach the server.

BUG FIXES

FIGHTERS

All Heroes

• [Adjustment] Reaction Block:
  • The Raider, the Orochi and the Conqueror had a branching to Dodge during the last 100ms of their Reaction blocks. This branching allowed them to Dodge earlier than other characters, which was not intended. This early branching has been removed.

Developer comment: We removed the 100ms branching to Dodge at the end of the Reaction Block to have better consistency on Reaction Block through all characters.

• [Adjustment] We changed the way bump combo works:

  • Since launch, being bumped while being already in a Reaction (Block / Hit / Bump) would put you in a specific shorter reaction with Super Armor and Damage Reduction. It will continue to happen but only if the player that bumps you is different from the player that put you in the reaction. The direct consequences of this is that some combos are now always guaranteed, for example:

  • The Light Attack of Centurion “Parry Counter” into “Kick” into Light Attack will now be guaranteed

  • The “Stab” of “Headsplitter” into “Headbutt” into “Stab” will now be guaranteed if the “Headbutt” hit

  • [Bug Fix] Fixed issue that caused the Peacekeeper, Aramusha and Shugoki's Guardbreak to be harder then expected to counter.

  • [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that allowed the player to snap to his target after launching an attack during the Snowball emote.

  • [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the level 2 and 3 bot to not be aware that they could be killed by chip damage.

Lawbringer

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the opponent to dodge backward regardless of the actual dodge input direction after the Lawbringer's The Long Arm.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that allowed the Lawbringer to successfully use “Impaling Charge” on a Shugoki with Passive Uninterruptible Stance

Raider

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that allowed the opponent of the Raider to get a free Guardbreak after being hit by a “Stampede Charge” that bumped into a wall.

Developer Comments: When the opponent bumps into the Wall, he has Uninterruptible Stance during all his reaction animation. We have removed the Uninterruptible Stance during the last 200ms of the Reaction.

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the axe of the raider to become offset during the “Pure Force” execution.

Warlord

• [Adjustment] “Headsplitter Leap” hit reaction is now 1000ms (from 800ms)

Developer Comments: With the changes to the bump combo, we had to increase the hit reaction of the “Headsplitter Leap” to prevent the possibility of an infinite loop.

Shugoki

• [Bug Fix] Fixed a cosmetic issue that caused the Shugoki and his opponent to not be visually synchronized after blocking or parrying an attack while the Shugoki is very close.

Nobushi

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that allowed the Nobushi to perform “Swift Recoil” by pressing the Dodge button after a counter-guardbreak. The Nobushi can now only perform Swift Recoil only after blocking.

Shinobi

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue with the Shinobi to stand up too quickly after having his Long Range Heavy attack parried.

Developer Comments: The falling to the ground animation was increased to 800ms (from 500ms). It is now the same duration than the Unbalance animation.

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the Shinobi to sometimes miss the “Teleport Light Attack” when performed against specific attacks, for example the “Headsplitter Leap” of the Warlord. The range of the “Teleport Light Attack” after a Deflect has been increased to 3m (from 2.75m).
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the Shinobi to become “Unbalanced” after being parried even if his opponent is interrupted and does not perform the parry.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that allowed the Shinobi to perform a “Deflect” into a “Teleport Light Attack” even after going OOS during the “Deflect”.

Highlander

• [Bug Fix] Fixed a cosmetic issue that caused the Highlander's Top Attack to play an incorrect animation when Interrupt Blocked.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused an animation stutter after unlocking during the first hit of the Highlander's chains.

FEATS

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the “Revenge Attacks” feat to feedback that the feat was giving revenge while using out of Locks attacks
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the “Revenge Attacks” to no longer reduce your attack damage by 10% which was unintended.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the cooldown for the Valkyrie “Javelin” feat to start later than expected.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue so that after shooting a projectile, players will gain back camera control as soon as their Hero can be controlled.

MAPS

Tower Ruins

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused projectile feats, like “Catapult”, to be able to hit opponents on the broken bridge that is covered.

Forest

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused some Trees to block the view while in “Tactical View”.

DUEL

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused a bot to spawn instead of the match immediately ending in a forfeit if the opponent left voluntarily.

TRIBUTE

Tower Ruins

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that allowed the “Offering” to be dropped outside the playable area.

USER INTERFACE

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused a Crash to Desktop when opening and closing the Social menu while previewing an execution assigned to X.

CUSTOMIZATION

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the Female Gladiator legs to actually use the male legs when equipping Age of Wolves gear.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused Apollyon Mask to not be properly fitted on all Heroes.

SOUND

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused a voice overlap when 2 zones were captured and/or lost at the same time.

CINEMATIC

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused Characters to be misplaced during Story Mode and Apprentice Trials cinematics.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the Peacekeeper bot to unlock and roll away after long range throws.

PC

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue where changing Voice Chat Volume in audio options would change the level of that capture device in Windows settings.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the 'Back' button to not work after left clicking on any territory on 'War Map'.
• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the clickable area to change game mode in any playlist to be offset.

[Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused extremely low lighting on Ansel Overlay if Ambient Occlusion is set to 'Off'.

• [Bug Fix] Fixed an issue that caused the description text for A or Square in the “Button Layout 1” to be cut off and overlapping with the text above it in some languages.