v3.13: Cannoneer, Custom Games 2.0

Friday, March 15, 2019 Discuss on the forums

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Masters Cup III

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Already 18 teams signed up! See the team list.

  • Sign-up is free / ends March 25
  • Tournament: March 30-31
  • $500 prize pool

Sign-up instructions

  1. You and your teammate must have an average peak rating in season 3 of 1500+ to qualify
  2. Have you and your teammate type /join <team name> (e.g. /join Snail Kings) in Global Chat to join a private lobby.
  3. Have one player type /signup while in the private lobby See the tournament thread for details.

Localization Update

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  • The game is now smarter about detecting default language for new players
  • Post-game screen and cards/items are now ready to be translated (they were previously missing from the translation docs)
  • All tooltips now use variables instead of hardcoded values. This means that when we change an ability from 90 -> 100 damage, you won’t have to update the translation (it automatically does it now)
  • We ran a script that automatically converted all existing translations to the new variable format. A small number of translations may have reversed variables ($1 and $2 swapped), so please help us correct those.

If you’re interested in helping, check out LegionTD2.com/translate. Any help is greatly appreciated and will allow us to significantly grow the player base (larger player base = better matchmaking, more featured game modes, etc.). Thank you to everyone who has contributed._

v3.13c

Final balance patch before the Masters Cup III. The goals of this patch are to:

  1. Ensure we see a variety of strategies to create an optimal experience for both participants and viewers

  2. Not disrupt the meta or ruin existing strategies, which is why we’re going light on the changes and mostly doing buffs


King
  • Fixed a bug where the king would sometimes get more than 10 upgrades

Peewee buff
  • Attack speed: 0.97 -> 0.99

Veteran buff
  • Health: 1410 -> 1430

Butcher buff
  • Health: 1300 -> 1320

Head Chef buff
  • Health: 3200 -> 3250

Tempest nerf
  • Attack speed: 1.11 -> 1.09

Zeus buff
  • Attack speed: 2.17 -> 2.2

Pyro nerf
  • Attack speed: 1.67 -> 1.65

Doppelganger buff
  • Health: 3700 -> 3800

Fire Lord buff
  • Attack speed: 1 -> 1.02

Fenix buff
  • Attack speed: 1 -> 1.02

Hades buff
  • Raise Imp: Mana cost: 16 -> 15

Waves


Mantis (12) buff
  • Health: 1170 -> 1190

Drill Golem (13) nerf
  • Health: 3200 -> 3170

Maccabeus (20) nerf
  • Damage: 160 -> 155

We’re very close to getting wave 20 in a decent spot. “Decisiveness” is the probability that the game ends on the current wave. In the past, wave 20 had 95%+ decisiveness. After recent changes, it currently has 72% decisiveness, and we believe a healthy number is between 60% and 70%.


Legion King (21) buff
  • Attack speed: 1 -> 1.02

v3.13b

  • Fixed a pathing bug

v3.13a

Reconnecting

  • Fixed a bug where you couldn’t reconnect

Not enough time has passed to make any major balance changes. Just doing a few tweaks based on preliminary data and feedback.


Hydra nerf
  • Health: 2850 -> 2820
  • Damage: 114 -> 111
  • Hydraling: Health: 950 -> 940
  • Hydraling: Damage: 38 -> 37

Kraken buff
  • Health: 6400 -> 6500
  • Damage: 280 -> 285

Maccabeus (20) nerf
  • Damage: 165 -> 160

v3.13 Patch Notes

NEW! Custom Games 2.0

You can now select game modes and adjust starting resources in custom games. More modes and options to come in the future.

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NEW! Mercenary

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Cannoneer
- Cost: 100 mythium
- Income: 30
- Movement type: Ground
- Health: 950 (Swift)
- Damage: 102 (Impact)
- Attack speed: 0.67
- Range: 500


Game Fixes & Improvements

Pathing & Targeting
- Fixed a pathing bug where melee units would sometimes keep trying to turn around when trying to attack a unit in the cave
- Fixed a rare edge case where a unit moved faster than intended

Quality of Life
- Profiles now show Classic wins/losses (we just started tracking this statistic now, so everyone will start at 0 wins, 0 losses even if you already played classic games earlier this season)
- Leaderboards and profile percentile rankings are now more accurate (it now only compares you against players that are active this season, not all players)
- Post-game score screen now shows win/losses for that queue type
- Post-game score screen Waves tab now shows King hp percents
- Custom Games now start with normal resources (no longer -debug and resources by default). This should make it easier to practice builds or play co-op with friends.
- Buff tooltips now show a larger icon

Chat
- New chat emojis :sob: and :money:

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Stability
- Fixed a matchmaking bug where the matchmaker would get stuck and not form the correct matches (iterator was mistakenly being incremented when in skip phase (substep); should only be incremented when it’s a new main step)
- Fixed a concurrency issue (OnMatchMade now fires after the lock is released)
- Added a failsafe where the lobby will restart if no ranked matches start in a 5-minute span

Debugging
- Fixed a bug with -wave 0 not clearing properly

Game Balance

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King Image Image
- Chain Frost: Bounce speed: 3000 -> 4000
- Lightning Hammer: Bounce speed: 5000 -> 6000, Damage reduced by 3%

Making these abilities feel better against Froggos and Lizards

Fighters

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Desert Pilgrim Image 
- Improved Chain Heal autocast AI and bounce behavior: it will now bounce to any injured targets, instead of only targets missing a certain amount of hp. This fixes a few cases where it wouldn’t bounce to an injured target that it should have bounced to.

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Whitemane Image 
- Health: 4450 -> 4400

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Fatalizer Image 
- Attack speed: 1.47 -> 1.43

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Eggsack Image Image
- Incubation: No longer immediately hatches a weakened Hydra on the wave Eggsack breaks (still hatches a weakened Hydra the following wave)
- New ability: Eggsplosion: Upon death, deals 80 Pure damage to nearby enemies
- Now aggroes the rest of your lane a bit later so that melee DPS can be used more effectively with Eggsack (we recommend testing once in a custom game)

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Hydra Image Image
- New ability: Ancient Power: Gains +1% damage and +1% damage reduction for each wave that has passed (the wave number matters, not how long Hydra has been out)
- Health: 3150 -> 2850
- Damage: 120 -> 114
- Hydraling: Health: 1050 -> 950
- Hydraling: Damage: 40 -> 38

The goals of these changes are to:

  • Nerf the strategy of using Eggsack as a tank mid-late game
  • Make protecting Eggsack a viable strategy mid-late game
  • Make sure it isn’t overly punishing if your Eggsack breaks on wave 3

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Hades Image 
- Raise Imp: Mana cost: 17 -> 16

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Great Boar Image 
- Stampede: Damage increased by 10%
- Stampede: Area of effect: 250 -> 400

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Red Eyes Image 
- Thunderous Charge: Damage increased by 10%
- Thunderous Charge: Area of effect: 250 -> 400

Mercenaries

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Centaur Image Image 
- Health: 4300 -> 4500
- Damage: 195 -> 205
- Cleave: 30% -> 20%

Centaur currently shuts down too many builds and makes certain units (notably Swift/Arcane tanks and lower tier tanks) obsolete late game. Shifting some power from splash to base stats. It will still be strong against those units, but less extreme.

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Kraken Image 
- Health: 6600 -> 6400
- Damage: 290 -> 280
- Spell Resistance: Removed
- New ability: Ancient Power: Gains +1% damage and +1% damage reduction for each wave that has passed

Kraken was only used to hard counter Honeyflowers and Pyros on ranged waves. It will still be strong against those units, but Kraken deserves to be more versatile, epic, and stronger late game.

Waves

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(5) Scorpions Image
- Fixed an unintended case where Scorpion King would avoid getting aggroed first against some builds

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(6) Rockos Image Image 
- Health: 800 -> 830
- Damage: 38 -> 39
- Impale: 4% stacking up to 20 times -> 3% stacks up to 9 times

Note that Impale never actually stacked 20 times, except in rare cases in 4v4 dual building or when 8+ Rockos leaked to the king Rockos’s Impale is insanely strong when focusing the same target, which is sometimes the result of RNG. It also makes tier 1 spam and splits even stronger than they should be (they will still be strong). Also worth noting that a high % of lower-rated games end on wave 6 due to cheese strategies, undervaluing tier 1 units, and not understanding splits.

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(14) Killer Slugs Image
- Health: 2030 -> 2000

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(16) Cardinals Image 
- Health: 1880 -> 1900

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(20) Maccabeus Image
- Damage: 160 -> 165
- Insatiable Hunger: Removed

With the introduction of Witch and Maccabeus’ fast attack speed, summoners and tier 1 spam aren’t broken anymore - if anything, they are weak on wave 20. The goal of this change is to increase the number of viable units on wave 20, while also nerfing it. Maccabeus is really cool (he’s a fire breathing turtle), but it feels unfair to have a boss wave be so decisive. Some games will still end on 20, but now a higher percentage of games will go to 21.

Projectile Speeds

Slow projectile speeds inflate the power of tier 1 spam and splits, so we’re making them faster for mercenaries and waves. These changes should only be minor buffs against very low health units

  • Lizards: 1500 -> 2500
  • Hermit: 1500 -> 2500
  • Drake: 1500 -> 2500
  • Witch: 1500 -> 2500
  • Froggo: 1500 -> 2500
  • Shaman: 1500 -> 2500
  • Kobras: 1500 -> 2500
  • Quill Shooters: 1750 -> 2500
  • Quadrapuses: 1500 -> 2500
  • Dire Toads: 1500 -> 2500

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