Happy Monday, Heroes!
Today’s update that’s bringing a Spell re-balance is kicking in! As we’ve mentioned in yesterday’s post, this update is primarily focused on Heroes and their Spells after seeing trends in data and community feedback. To make sure these changes have the proper effect and to understand the outcome and bigger picture adequately, we’re introducing a more comprehensive update instead of smaller patches across the board.
To give more context and reasons behind the specifics of the update, continue reading for developer comments coming straight from the team who worked on these changes:
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Account level cap has been raised from 10 to 13. Any experience players have acquired so far since reaching the level cap was recorded and will automatically level up your accounts.
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Spells level cap was raised from 10 to 13. The costs of upgrades from 1 - 10 remain the same, where the cost for leveling spells up to 13 will scale accordingly. Players will keep their current spell levels. Players will also keep their current hero levels, and the evolutions they had - there were no changes to the Hero leveling system.
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Initially, during soft-launch, we’ve had both minions and spells go up to level 10, and scale up by 20% per level. When we released the game globally, we’ve revamped the minion leveling system to scale up to 13, and changed the scaling to 10% per level, to allow for a more granular experience of more frequent, smaller upgrades. We realized it makes sense to have the spells follow this scaling as well, to make their scaling follow minions, rather than be weak on early levels, and then too strong on later levels. Alongside this, we felt this was a natural moment to up the scaling of Accounts as well, since we now have more sources of experience with having more levels for spells.
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Most damage spells have had their damage somewhat reduced when compared to the minions of the same level or their cooldowns increased.
Data on usage, as well as user research we’ve done shows that players mostly prefer playing area damage spells over any kind of spell. While damage spells are fun, and help create back-and-forth games, we felt they were hurting variety in terms of strategy. Most of them were strong enough to kill even late-game tanks, reducing the distinction between weaker and stronger units. We also want to create more variety in terms of gameplay experience by making more utility based spells viable to be used. -
5 spells (4 epic and 1 rare) have been reworked, 2 of which have been renamed (you can read the details on spells in the patch notes down below).
Most of the spells we reworked had less than 0.1% usage in battle. We wanted to make sure every hero had a cool epic spell that fit their character but was also on par with other abilities in terms of power. In case of Spirit Call we’ve added the change where spirits will slowly decay - putting them on a timer. This will make sure that there is a cap to how much you can actually achieve with it, while still allowing for powerful offensive plays. We got lots of cool community suggestions surrounding Spirit Call, which played a major part during our rework! When weighted against many other options we’ve considered and tested we figured this felt like the most natural way to make Spirit Call more balanced. -
Hellfiend Special Ability and Meteor will no longer damage the portal.
The only two area damage effects that could deal damage to the portal were Hellfiend and Meteor. This felt inconsistent with other area damage effects that couldn’t do that. We want to keep portal damage exclusive to minions, and spell effects that were made with the purpose of being able to damage the portal (currently, Ice Spears).
All those things being said, we will continue to monitor how these changes affect the play experience, and act accordingly.
Spell Changes:
Meteor
- Cooldown: 35 > 40 seconds
- Starting Cooldown: 15 > 20 seconds
- No longer damages the Portal
- Base Damage: 950 > 1700
- Max Damage: 4902 > 5335
Fury
- Max Duration: 15.51 > 16.00 seconds
Scorched Earth
- Cooldown: 40 > 35 seconds
- Base Damage: 700 > 1000
- Max Damage: 2508 > 2594
Fire Blast
- Base Damage: 2420 > 3300
- Max Damage: 8671 > 8558
Prey On > Soul Burn
- Cooldown: 40 > 50 seconds (can be lowered down to 40 with levels)
- Area increased
- Description:Slowly decays the health of enemies down to near death. Ignores shields.
Evo 1: Affects the whole lane.
Evo 2: Instantly decays the health of enemies down to near death.
VALEN
Sacred Mallet
- Base Damage: 390 > 660
- Max Damage: 2014 > 2071
- Base Stun: 4 seconds > 3 seconds (scales with levels all up to 6 seconds)
Phalanx
- Max Duration: 7.76 > 7.40 seconds
Hammer of the Gods
- Cooldown: 35 > 40 seconds
- Starting Cooldown: 15 > 20 seconds
- Evo 1: Stun duration 4 → 3 seconds
- Evo 2: After the hammer clears the lane, it returns, striking all enemies again for 50% of the original damage (down from 100%).
- Base Damage: 754 > 1150
- Max Damage: 2702 > 2983
Holy Shield
- Max Shield Health: 645 > 467
Divine Protection
- Cooldown: 30 > 35 seconds
- Duration of the effect now scales with levels instead of the protection
- Description: Reduces the damage done to your Portal and allies near it by 80%.
Evo 1: Enemies attacking the protected allies or Portal will take damage in return.
Evo 2: Protects all allies in the lane.
TERRIN RHII
Healing Wave
- Cooldown: 25 > 30 seconds
- Duration: 6 > 5 seconds
- Base Heal per second 14% > 22%
- Max Heal per second 35% > 32%
Chain Lightning
- Starting Cooldown: 20 > 25 seconds
- Base Damage: 1500 > 2000
- Max Damage: 7739 > 6277
Rhii’s Power
- Evo 2: Now finishes 33% the cooldown of your other spell (down from 50%)
Vortex
- Description: Pulls all enemy units to target location and slows them down for a duration.
- Evo 1: Stuns enemies for the same duration instead of slowing them down.
Earthquake
- Cooldown: 40 > 45 seconds
- Starting Cooldown: 25 > 30 seconds
- Base Damage per tick: 670 → 733
NOELLA
Chilling Wind
- Starting Duration: 6 > 5 seconds
- Max Duration: 9.31 > 8.98 seconds
Ice Spears
- Cooldown: 30 > 35 seconds
- Base Damage: 1650 > 1800
- Max Damage: 8512 > 5649
- Spears come with 1 second apart from each other (up from 0.6 seconds)
Ice Rift
- Cooldown: 35 > 40 seconds
- Base Damage: 1070 > 1150
- Max Damage: 3835 > 2983
Frozen Heart
- Cooldown: 40 > 35 seconds
- Health of obstacles and damage of the explosion now scale with levels
- Starting Health / Area Damage = 400 / 140
- Max Health / Area Damage = 1038 / 363
- Description: Spawns immobile ice obstacles in all lanes. When destroyed, obstacles explode for area damage.
Evo 1: When obstacles explode, they also stun enemies for a brief duration.
Evo 2: Spawns an additional obstacle for every 3 enemies on the field.
Ice Sheath > Deep Freeze
- Cooldown: 25 > 30 seconds
- Starting Cooldown: 10 > 15 seconds
- Description: Deep freezes enemies, making them take 50% extra damage for the duration.
Evo 1: Affects the whole lane.
Evo 2: Enemies take 150% extra damage while frozen - Starting Duration: 8 seconds
- Max Duration: 11.5 seconds
ALAY’NA
Statue
- Cooldown: 35 > 25 seconds
- Starting Cooldown: 15 > 10 seconds
- Max Health: 12383 > 8788
Giant Growth
- Cooldown: 25 > 30 seconds
- Base stats bonus: 35% > 27%
- Max stats bonus: 83% > 85%
Soaring Eagle
- Cooldown: 25 > 30 seconds
- Base damage: 1000 > 1350
- Max damage: 3584 > 3502
- Now no longer does 50% increased damage to targets behind the initial one hit
- Reduced the tick damage per second of the second evolution: 200 > 120
- Reduced width of the area of damage slightly, both for the vortex and the eagle
Rhino Charge
- Max Stun Length: 7.04 > 8.14 seconds
Spirit Call
- Description: Next cast Minion summons its spirit copy in another lane that has reduced health and damage. Spirit health decays over time.
Minion Changes:
Hellfiend
- Special Damage: Upon spawning no longer deals damage to the enemy Portal
VFX Changes:
- Soul Burn (old Prey On)
- Holy Shield - has a new, more flat yellow shield
- Divine Protection - except Portal shield, gives additional shield to lane Minions that looks like previous Holy Shield animation
- Deep Freeze (old Ice Sheath)
Back-end Fixes and Game Optimizations
As always, we’re looking forward to hearing your comments and feedback! Hapy battling! 