Playtest 219: More pacing and balance adjustments!
Treisk
Member, Administrator
Playtest 219: More pacing and balance adjustments!
Of note: For the next few weeks, we're seeking additional feedback on your experience playing with/against Bots! Also, just having more bot games played in general will give us replays we can examine to find/solve potential issues. Get out there and slay those bots!
General Gameplay
- Warp Spire respawn time: 5 minutes ⇒ 4 minutes
- Destroying enemy structures now provides significantly more global EXP.
- Ground Wards & Detection Wards
- No longer an auto-acquired attack target
- This means players must focus-fire them, and structures/minions/Kingpins will not attack Wards
- Health: 125 ⇒ 75
- No longer an auto-acquired attack target
Economy
- Starting Max Supply: 20 ⇒ 40
- Starting Stock: 40 ⇒ 60
- Stock generator value has been increased across the board
- Supply generator grants: 5 max supply ⇒ 4 max supply
Gem Regions
- Aspect Gem collection time: 40 seconds ⇒ 30 seconds
- Aspect Gem spawn interval: 10 seconds ⇒ 8 seconds
- Aspect Geyser respawn time: 5 minutes ⇒ 4 minutes
- Gem collector
- Health: 100 ⇒ 140
Creep Camps
- Stock Crystal collector
- Health: 300 ⇒ 400
- The Shield mechanic on Caterpillar Creeps has been adjusted
- If the shield is broken before the cast completes, the Caterpillar takes 300 damage
- If the shield is not broken, the Caterpillar will cast a Nova around himself, stunning units near it
- Adjusted creep camp clear rewards
- Easy
- Small Gems (20 Scrap each)
- Small Stock Crystal (5 Stock per player ⇒ 4 Stock per player)
- Medium
- Medium gems (40 ⇒ 30 Scrap each)
- Medium Stock Crystal (5 Stock per player ⇒ 8 Stock per player)
- Hard
- Large gems (60 ⇒ 40 Scrap each)
- Large Stock Crystal (5 Stock per player ⇒ 12 Stock per player)
- Easy
Units
Blue
- Hydros
- Attack cooldown: 1.2 seconds ⇒ 1.3 seconds
- Healing Waters (Basic)
- Cooldown: 12 seconds ⇒ 6 seconds
- Healing: 120 ⇒ 70
- Healing bonus per level: +25 ⇒ +10
- No longer reduces cooldown per Hero level
- Ryme
- Health: 425 ⇒ 410
- Attack cooldown: 1.6 seconds ⇒ 1.4 seconds
- Health per level: +35 ⇒ +33
- Damage per level: +1.5 ⇒ +2
- Physical Resist per level: 4 ⇒ 3
- Frostbolt
- Damage: 30 ⇒ 25
- Damage per level: +6 ⇒ +2
- Shield Slug
- Health: 200 ⇒ 220
- Movement speed: 4.4 ⇒ 4.6
- Damage: 20 ⇒ 24
- Attack cooldown: 1.3 seconds ⇒ 1.2 seconds
- Attack windup: 0 seconds ⇒ 0.1 seconds
- Ice Shield
- Now converts damage taken into healing
- Duration: 3 seconds ⇒ 1.5 seconds
- Plated Warrior
- Now regenerates Plate while out of combat.
- The Plated Warrior is considered "out of combat" if he has not damaged an enemy or taken damage for 10 seconds
- Health: 200 ⇒ 230
- Stock cost: 6 ⇒ 5
- Now regenerates Plate while out of combat.
- Ancient Ice Frog
- Size increased by roughly 12%
- Stock cost: 8 ⇒ 13
- Scrap cost: 200 ⇒ 250
- Health: 600 ⇒ 1200
- Damage: 60 ⇒ 80
- Range: 2.5 ⇒ 3
- Unit cap: 4 ⇒ 2
- Icy Breath
- Range: 8.5 ⇒ 12
- Duration: 4 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
- Windup time: 0.8 seconds ⇒ 1.6 seconds
Green
- Alder
- Damage: 20 ⇒ 21
- Attack cooldown: 1.6 ⇒ 1.5
- Damage per level: +1.5 ⇒ +2
- Deeproot Terror (Ultimate)
- Radius: 6.0 ⇒ 6.5
- The Deeproot Terror is now untargetable while growing
- Model size increased by 50%
- Health: 700 ⇒ 800
- Initial stun delay: 3.5 seconds ⇒ 3 seconds
- Grath
- Damage: 22 ⇒ 21
- Terrapin Trooper
- Damage: 18 ⇒ 20
- Attack cooldown: 0.9 seconds ⇒ 0.8 seconds
- Rustborn Rhino
- Health: 800 ⇒ 1050
- Armor Type: Light ⇒ Normal
- Stock cost: 8 ⇒ 10
- Trample
- Range: 16 ⇒ 18
- Bramblethorn Goliath
- Armor Type: Light ⇒ Normal
- Trebuchet
- Has received a new model and animations!
- Unit Cap: 4 ⇒ 3
Red
- Eris
- Damage: 32 ⇒ 36
- Attack cooldown: 1.8 seconds ⇒ 2.0 seconds
- Vex
- Damage: 20 ⇒ 22
- Damage per level: +2 ⇒ +1.5
- Lavaspitter
- Movement speed: 4.9 ⇒ 5.2
- Burrow time: 1.8 seconds ⇒ 1.5 seconds
- Unburrow time: 2.5 seconds ⇒ 1 second
- No longer features a range indicator when burrowed
- No longer has a minimum range of 3.5
- Burrowed shot range: 12 ⇒ 11
- BUrrowed shot radius: 1.0 ⇒ 0.7
- Burrowed shot damage: 50 ⇒ 40
- Scarab
- Armor Type: Light ⇒ Normal
- Apocalyte
- Destructive Prophecy
- Cooldown: 40 seconds ⇒ 30 seconds
- No longer holds 2 charges
- Destructive Prophecy
White
- Celesta
- Illuminate (Basic)
- Cooldown is now reduced by 1 second per Hero level
- Damage per level: 1 ⇒ 0.75
- Illuminate (Basic)
- Vela
- Fair Warning (Basic)
- Cooldown: 12 seconds ⇒ 10 seconds
- Radius: 1.5 ⇒ 1.7
- Fair Warning (Basic)
- Sprinter
- Stock cost: 4 ⇒ 5
- Health: 170 ⇒ 140
- Damage: 18 ⇒ 16
- Attack cooldown: 0.9 seconds ⇒ 0.6 seconds
- Unit cap: 25 ⇒ 20
- Movement speed: 4.9 ⇒ 5.2
- Sprint
- Cooldown: 30 seconds ⇒ 22 seconds
- Purifier
- Stock cost: 6 ⇒ 8
- Scrap cost: 50 ⇒ 75
- Unit cap: 12 ⇒ 8
- Damage: 125 ⇒ 110
- Windray
- Unit Cap: 4 ⇒ 2
- Accelerating Winds
- Movement speed bonus: 10% ⇒ 15%
- Lifting Winds
- Range bonus: +2 ⇒ +3
Mercenaries
- Trapper
- Slow Trap
- Cooldown: 40 seconds ⇒ 30 seconds
- Duration: 100 seconds ⇒ 180 seconds
- Movement speed slow: 60% ⇒ 90%
- Slow Trap
Interface
- Added a control group display
Bots
- Are now aware of Gem Regions and will actively contest and help you contest them!
- Improved the general helpfulness of bots in teamfight situations
Comments
Additional change that was unlisted
Conduit 150 scrap->125 scrap
A couple times in bot games I'd see an off-screen unit stop moving on the minimap. By the time I looked it was moving, but looked like it may have had a temporary pathing mishap.
In bot games I rarely felt like I had down time where I'd think about camps, though at times I'd get caught up the camp-ping train. My PVP game ended up similar, with someone pinging camps and we'd often be going around en mass.
With bots I was often able to take two aspects while they were all fighting over the third.
I only saw the creep shield go off when I was fixing options, or some bots off to the side.
My economy management is still a mess, sometimes there is a stock crisis in the early game, and then it overshoots later after I lose track of generators a few times.
I like the new creep shield mechanic. It's vaguely more interesting when clearing camps, but it's really exciting when you're being counter jungled (or accidentally aggro the camp) and then an AoE stun goes off mid-team fight. Presumably the excitement in watching a new dynamic is the reason I lost my army to that, several times.
Haha, you caught this but didn't catch that the Drill Laser wasn't in last night? :P
This was a bit of an oops on our end. We accidentally had the pre-rework Conduit in last night. Should be fine for Sunday.
Ah! I didn't use the conduit, but I saw its cost in the selection screen. That makes sense. The conduit isn't really something used very much at the moment.
Really appreciate the feedback wondible! The pathing mishap might just be a bots non hero unit unsure what to do next and just waiting for the hero to respawn.
Bots!
I find it odd that the bots start in the middle warp-in area, despite always going to one of the easy camps on the side. Why not start closer?
Speaking of camps, it's very tough to feel useful as a melee-centric player when the bots put their fragile ranged units right up against the titans before attacking. Why not start attacking from farther back, you silly bots? Then I might be able to at least get behind the titans.
Gfdddc73c542049068d226ef3a32ea4a3 - around the 5:30 mark, my Eris ally has a scarab but doesn't seem to want to do anything with it. It's not that the bot isn't engaging at all, it IS, but not with that unit. Unsure if intentional.
In the same game, around the 6 minute mark, we're losing towers in our base and there's a Jugg on the way, and instead of defending, my bot allies decide that's when they're going to attack the Easy camp titans. I may or may not have been yelling at them at this point. They even continue to fight the titans while being directly attacked by the enemy bots.
Non-bot comments:
Replay timer is a bit funky. Sometimes it shows like this:
1:00 / 15:00
Sometimes it shows like this:
1:00
/ 15:00
And it jumps back and forth. The replay controls jump along with it, to boot, ha, which makes it a pain to pause when you want to!
In the "unsure if intentional" category again, sentinels grant detection capability as soon as they start warping in, not when they're done.
I've tried (in bot games, at least) to make Aquas work. Without Vindication they just seem to be a waste of resources. Essentially, I have to save Cannonball to get out of the fight rather than in. If I jump in with it, all I'm doing is giving those enemy units who would otherwise be out of range me or my allies a nice juicy "please kill this scrap/stock" target. In order to be willing to throw my Aquas into massive enemy swarms (by the time you can get Aquas, make no mistake, there ARE swarms), I would need Vindication back, or do more damage on the landing, or change the slow to a stun.
edit: Part of this reason, I posit, is because it is easier to focus fire large targets than to successfully land AoE abilities on many small targets. You can dodge AoE abilities, plus they take some thinking to place properly. Focus firing an easy-to-click-because-it's-so-big target? That's easy to reach because it's either on the front line or IN your own units? That's simple by comparison. Thus, the big units like Aquas need to have something to offset this - Ice Frogs nicely counter that focus-firing by freezing things. Aquas just sort of stand there and die.
I tried to see if Aquas could survive better with Quads supporting them, but let's be real - Plated Shell is a far cry from what it once was. 5 stacks is not, in my opinion, worth the effort it takes to cast the spell. Intervention, while I'm still not sold on it, can have some uses, but it seems to work much better in conjunction with Ice Frogs. When the frogs freeze, you can sometimes use Scuttles to surround whatever they're freezing and thus have a good Intervention target to fight efficiently. Otherwise, for T2 I'd much rather pay the scrap premium for a Frostcaller and help control the field a bit.
Overall I do like the direction y'all have gone with the blue changes, blue tanking feels viable again, I just have to feel it out a bit more.
Feedback has been noted! Thanks SpideryCU!
@SpideyCU -- Re: the two units you touched on the most (Aquadillo and Quadrapus), we've got some changes we want to try for these units next week. They're on our radar for exactly the reason you described (Plated Shell not very interesting/effective, Aquadillos dive to their death).