Abscissa and Ordinate - Patch #66
It’s all hands on deck (well... the computer 🤓) as we continue to fine tune and pinpoint the exact areas for improvement since launching the Final Test Phase. We’ve been deploying patches all throughout last week, but this week is special… because it's BALANCE PATCH WEEK! Let’s plot the course!
📺 Leave your opponents in the dust... by poking the ground in front of them!
New Features ⭐
- Players can now poke at things in-game.
Improvements 🦾
- In-game keyword tooltips should now have higher resolution icons on iOS devices.
- A descriptive error message will now appear when entering the wrong password during account migration.
- Sidebar row order animations in-game no longer janky. We added nice smooth easing instead!
- Better grayscale animation timing on dying cards (anything marked for death) including spells. These will stay gray for longer until effects of their death are resolved.
- The Continue button after conceding is now centered.
- The Concede button in the tutorial exits immediately instead of waiting for the bot to stop talking. Silly bot.
Changes ⚙️
- Random Hero selection in Conquest Discovery has been disabled.
Bugfixes 🐛
- All Heroes now have 25 cards in Discovery as expected.
- Fixed an issue where players could not click on Start Conquest / Get Tickets.
- Game freezes related to attachments should be resolved.
- Migrated accounts and new users should now get the 50 Test DAI.
- Conquest Constructed deck should stay selected after ending a match or on a refresh.
- In the deckbuilder, locked cards are now highlighted if in a deck.
- Profile correctly displays winners and losers from previous matches.
- Fixed a bug where some players would play with a different deck then what was selected.
- Invite-a-Friend codes should now appear in the module.
- Removed the "Show details" prompt when successfully completing an order in the Market.
- Card grades will now display correctly in-game.
- Attachments on Conquest rewards will now display the correct card grade.
- Fixed bug where re-connections could cause a crash if the player was dragging an attachment at the same time.
- Fixed a bug where some users were not receiving an email when trying to login with a @gmail account on mobile.
- Fixed a bug where some users were encountering “Invalid JWT token error” in the wallet. If you are still seeing this error message, logging out and back in should solve them permanently.
- The dusted cards in the graveyard sidebar are now below the dead cards.
- Partially fixed a bug where deckbuilding on mobile would delete cards from your deck list while scrolling. It is still prevalent, and we’re working on a complete fix, but it’s much less likely to happen now.
- The “Get Tickets” button no longer displays XP boosts upon hover.
- The Master rank placement numbers are now correct across the menus.
- Fixed a bug where users with an old username couldn’t play games.
- Ensnare & Deactivate will now modify their target and attach to it in the order that's printed on the card.
- Units that reach zero (0) hp no longer visually increase above zero hp. This is a fix to a visual bug and has no mechanical effect.
Welcome back to another weekly balance patch everyone! We've got a more lowkey patch this week, serving to tune a few aggressive units, pull back on a few overnerfs, and buff a few underperformers in service of creating a more diverse meta and opening up some design space in the future. Without further ado, let's jump in!
Hax (4052)
Spell: Research ➞ Barrier
A fairly major tweak. Trading his research for barrier cuts down on Hax's cycling potential while also making him a bit harder for your opponent to dust, but also limits your own ability to quick-kill him with a spell of your own, making him more interactive and less powerful overall.
Gale (1019)
Power: 3 ➞ 2
Health: 2 ➞ 3
Buff to a somewhat underused card, making her more durable at the cost of some power, should be interesting, maybe AGY hero smash can make strides again.
Card Sling (1059)
Text: Discard your left-most card in hand to do 2 damage to a target and draw two. ➞ Do 2 damage to a target. Discard your left-most card in hand. Draw two.
Another underperfomer tweak, can once more be played on an empty hand - removing the requirement to discard the card cuts down on possible weird cornercase scenarios due to the casting restriction
Seaweaver ➞ Sea Mage (2020)
Name: Seaweaver ➞ Sea Mage
Traits: None ➞ guard
A few cards got name tweaks this patch - in particular, cards with 'weaver' in their name, with the exception of 'Webweaver' were tweaked to ensure that they weren't confused with Skyweavers in terms of lore/aesthetic. Sea Mage also got buffed with Guard.
Hail Arrows ➞ Hail of Arrows (1038)
Name: Hail Arrows ➞ Hail of Arrows
Name Buff - the community and team really didn't like last week's change haha.
Tactician (2088)
Text: Sunset: Reveal a random card in the enemy hand. ➞ Inspire - Spell: Reveal a random card in the enemy hand.
Traits: lifesteal ➞ stealth,lifesteal
Health: 3 ➞ 1
A fairly interesting tweak here - Tactician had a really good body for its cost, which when bundled with its spell made its a pretty strict upgrade to the spell itself, even earlygame, so I've changed the role up, by trading 2hp for Stealth and a tweak to the effect, now he can reveal multiple cards if you chain spells. This should make him a bit weaker agressively but give him more tactical value.
Evermore (3075)
Cost: 5 ➞ 4
This has basically dropped off the map (as well as HRT decks, to some degree) so I'm good to try it at 4c - should remain less of an autoinclude, but is also stronger than it was at 5c.
Shade (3084)
Power: 3 ➞ 2
This may seem like an unneeded nerf, but the stats + cantrip on this basically made it strictly better than cards like ember wolf and claw bear, and having 1c units that are almost always better than those, which are already pretty overstatted by traditional 1c creature standards, is not great balance-wise, so a few super powerful 1c units were adjusted this patch.
Bill (3088)
Health: 3 ➞ 4
Buff to ol' Bill, at 4c he can afford to be given a bit better statline. I like him as a midrangey board-pusher.
Alight (4016)
Traits: banner ➞ None
Alight is one of the most played cards currently, and I'm curious if its reveal and targeted draw utility are enough to carry it, as 1c banner spells that cantrip are pretty spooky. I could see buffing it or changing it another way if it's useless now, but I think its probably still good because of its tutor utility. This is also a nerf to Jakintsu, which seems fine since the double banner on him often offered a fair bit of extra tempo.
Ivy (4041)
Cost: 1 ➞ 2
Power: 1 ➞ 2
The buff to Ensnare coupled with Wither and her strong stats put her in the 'better than claw bear 90% of the time' camp, so I'm moving her up the curve with +1pow - IMO the power of the decent body + wither + ensnare should still make her a solid option.
Gato (4042)
Power: 1 ➞ 0
Nerf to another major mainstay - Gato wants to play, not fight! It shouldn't be a massive loss IMO, but will reduce damage output a bit, making him a bit less powerful for aggro decks.
Coal Dozer (4044)
Spell: Vile Vial ➞ Chain Toss
Changing the attachment to reduce capability for cycling - I do think that the tactical value of chain toss should be useful as well though.
Howl Geist (83)
Text: Sunrise: Attach Chains. ➞ Sunrise: Attach Chains, unless this unit has an attachment.
Tweak to buff howl geist and adress some weird cornercases where it was animating weirdly due to chains placement.
Dracomantium (31)
Text: Death: Dust your top four dead metal cards to give your hero armor. ➞ Death: Dust your top three dead metal cards to give your hero armor.
Unnerf, I do like having good lategame tools, and while there was discussion about this when I first added it to the changes, that was a long time before the actual patch, so I'm fine returning it to how it was and watching it.
Potion Seller (2016)
Spell: Barrier ➞ None
Nerf to another powerful 1c unit, barrier was likely overkill on this guy, made him extremely hard to remove earlygame.
Vialet (3039)
Spell: Lead ➞ None
Another minor debuff to a 1c unit.
Krystal (3094)
Spell: Shroud ➞ None
Another minor debuff to a 1c unit - again, as 3 advantages over claw bear at the cost of 1hp, so I removed one - Shroud is also a very common enchant so trimming its presence down a bit seems fine.
Nimbus (4005)
Traits: stealth ➞ None
Removing Stealth from this to make it easier to challenge - have seen it in action, It feels fun, and maybe a tad strong, but not too bad - could see him going to 3c + banner to match his effect.
Electron (4026)
Traits: armor ➞ stealth,armor
Buff as was discussed last patch. Stealth should make him more appealing.
Whipvine (4034)
Cost: 2 ➞ 1
Traits: guard,wither ➞ guard
Health: 4 ➞ 3
This is a pretty spooky buff, moving him into Ivy's old slot, but earlygame he's unlikely to root more than 1 unit, and mid-lategame roots falls off in value, so I think it should be a powerful defensive option that offers some counterplay - could see it as a 1/2 if 1/3 is too good, or swap guard for wither, but I'd like to see how it performs like this.
Cinder (4038)
Text: Sunrise: If your hand has fire, attach Fireball ➞ Sunrise: If your hand has fire, attach Fireball.
Spell: Barrier ➞ None
Another tweak to a 1c unit that's a bit too superior to claw bear/wolf, making it more vulnerable to burn damage.
Research (20044) Only existed on Hax - I don't mind it but it was also kind of a basic design. I think there could be room for it in the future.
Note: We will not remove cards from the game once Final Testing Phase is complete.
Recent Posts
