v2.5.1 | Patreon Weekly #276

Hey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to share some early plans I have for followup to v2.5.0

There’s also a new Patreon Poll this week, covering some potential followup changes after the removal of bomb IDing.

First Patch Balance

v2.5.0 has been live for about 5 days now, and v3.0.0 is likely going to take a while, so I’m spending a bit more time looking into v2.5 before moving on to Cleric stuff. In particular, I’d like for all the new trinkets and balance changes to be in a good place, rather than making people wait 4+ months for fixes there.

Firstly, even though the numbers are pretty early there’s some decisive info about the new trinkets: they’re not doing too well! The data is so clear here in fact that I’m going ahead and releasing buffs for them as part of v2.5.1, which is currently in review over the game’s various platforms. Here’s a quick summary of those changes:

• The Chaotic Censer is currently in more ‘outright detrimental’ than ‘neutral’ territory, so I’m giving it a great big buff like what the salt cube got during the beta. It’s hard to explain in detail, but essentially I have changed the internal RNG of the trinket to be MUCH more in your favor. It’s now more likely to spew gas when enemies are present, much less likely to spew it otherwise, and the censer will try to outright avoid spewing gas in shops or empty enclosed spaces.

• I’m giving the Salt Cube another simple buff that now results in total healing equalizing based on the extra satiety. This means food now heals for the same amount total as without the cube, just more slowly.

• The Shard of Oblivion is getting more bonus loot chance, up to 20% per item, from 12.5%. I really like the trigger condition for the trinket, but I admit the benefit could be better or more interesting. I’m just numbers buffing it for now, but will consider larger changes later.

• The Vial of Blood is actually doing comparatively well, all are the trinkets I changed in v2.5.0. I wouldn’t be surprised if I do make some changes here in v2.5.2+, but for the moment leaving things as-is is fine.

Otherwise things are less clear so far, so any changes I make will be in future patches. The Duelist’s and Monk’s winrate has gone up, but it’s not yet clear how close it’ll come to equalizing with the other heroes and the Champion. The buffed Duelist T2 talents are very clearly doing well though, weapon recharging (the only one that wasn’t changed) has gone from the former best talent to now just barely the weakest. Weapon abilities sadly don’t have enough data to make any judgments on yet.

I expect v2.5.1 will roll out later today, and I’ll definitely be making a v2.5.2 in the future. One of the changes I’m considering there is compensation adjustments for bomb identification, make sure you look at the poll for those!