Updates

A Call For Help

• Damage from the Towers of Doom's Kill Zone now reduces Armor.

Updates

Mercenaries

• Sapper Camp
  • Initial spawn delay reduced from 60 to 30 seconds.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused the area warning indicator for Sapper's Basic Attacks to persist after a Basic Attack has landed.

Updates

Climate Phenomena

• Weather events will occur periodically every 4 minutes, with the first event starting at the beginning of the match. Each weather event lasts for a few 2 minutes at a time before clearing up. While these weather events are active, Heroes can gain a unique buff based on the type of active weather.
• Foggy Mists
  • After standing in a shrub for 1.5 seconds, Heroes gain Stealth. Stealth lasts 40 seconds or until attacking, taking damage, using an Ability, or until the weather event ends.

Updates

Mercenaries

• Sapper Camp
  • Experience increased by 100%.
• Boss Camp
  • Experience increased by 100%.
  • Now flagged as Elite, making it Unstoppable and Unbribable.

Updates

Mercenaries

• Sapper Camp
  • Sappers can no longer have their charge attack interrupted by a Silence effect after after they already started charging towards an enemy Structure.

Updates

Mercenaries

• Sapper Camp
  • Respawn time increased by 30 seconds.

Updates

Objective

• Altars
  • Respawn time increased from 90 to 110 seconds.

Developer Comment: As expected, our Gameplay Update for 2018 resulted in large changes to many of our game systems. While we're overall happy with the direction of the update, there have been some unintended side effects that we're hoping to remedy. We overestimated how much more powerful unlimited ammo would be for Structures, and as a result pushing mechanics have become too strong, resulting in lower game times on nearly all Battlegrounds. We're giving Structures some of their teeth back with this update, which should help teams hold pushes from Mercenary Camps and Objectives. We're also making some tuning changes to some of our Mercenary Camps now that we have had some time to see how they have been performing. Hellbats and Knights in particular are pushing harder than we would like, so we're reducing their power. We're also taking a look at the Slime Boss on Warhead Junction and reducing its early and mid-game pushing power, as right now it is too strong when combined with Warheads. Lastly, we are reducing the power of Regeneration Globes. While we like the new mini-game that neutral ones provide in the laning phase, we are not comfortable with how much they are currently benefitting the team that is ahead while they are pushing into a defending team. We're also seeing players picking up more Regeneration Globes in general, so this will help to keep the game's overall sustain in check. These are some hefty changes, and it's likely that there will be more needed to be done over time as things continue to settle. We'll be keeping an eye on things, and are prepared to make more updates as they're needed.