Hey Gala attendees—you’re looking oh-so-dashing this patch!
Everybody is talking about it; four Hero Augment rerolls. Be sure to check that section out to read all the how and why behind it.
The Lunar Gala ends the morning of February 13th, Pacific time, so be sure to earn all the free loot, grab your last games of Fortune’s Favor, and finally crack that Chibi Panda Annie before the Lunar Gala themed content goes back to the vault (running Underground will not allow you access to this content past this patch). To brush up on the Fortune’s Favor and Lunar Gala details, click it here.
As for the rest of the patch, we’ve got a rework for Gadgeteen, and some heavy trait adjustments to Underground, LaserCorps, and OxForce that are sure to cause excitement. Past that, we continue to tighten the balance around champions, Augments, and of course, Hero Augments.
Befriender of Aurelion Sol, the one and only,
TL;DR: We are cutting down on variance to create more fun moments and autonomy around Hero Augment selection.
Monsters Attack! has a lot of variance, factors requiring you to play differently each game. Big brained Tacticians (that’s you btw) have to play around uncontrolled item drops, shop offerings, regular Augment offerings, and the boards of seven other players. That’s a lot to take into account when strategically assembling your team, and when we added Hero Augments into the fold, most of our players thought that this level of variability was too much to play around.
Why four? We went with four because it all but guarantees you an Augment that you CAN play into your comp successfully (and also WANT to play with your comp). The goals of this change are to avoid feelsbad moments of getting Hero Augments that don't make sense in your comp, AND unfun moments for players with limited time who really want to play Augments they enjoy. Of course, we will be keeping a close eye on feedback and data from this change, and can change it again if it’s the right call.
What about forcing Augments?With 13.1 C being our most balanced patch of Monsters Attack!, it gave us a moment to deliver this high impact and much sought after change. With four Hero Augment rerolls, players can force desired Hero Augments more easily—you’ll see a total of 15 unique Hero Augments if you use each reroll. This is where balancing Hero Augments is even more important. We know this, and have taken great care in balancing these Augments with 13.1, but also in this patch.
Lastly, we hope you have fun choosing your favorite Hero to lead your squad to victory, as it not only fulfills the Tactician fantasy of assembling your super team, but it also will allow you to experience the highs of your favorite Augments more often.
Riot Mort, our Lead Game Designer, went through all the item tooltips and reformatted them to make them all pretty-like. When I asked him why a game design lead would do this, he told me not to make others do what you would not do. #values.
Large, like Poggle’s head.
Gadgeteen 3 is okay early game, but just like being a teenager, long term planning is not the strong suit of Gadgeteen, and the trait suffers in the mid and late game. Whether you blame that on teen angst, or the trait’s inability to keep up with other mid/late game traits, something’s gotta give. In this case, it’s additional damage and damage reduction scaling that becomes more powerful as you equip items. With this change, our youthful Gadgeteens still don’t have to plan much, they’ll just scale up as the game goes on—which is a good thing, too, because the frontal lobe (the planning center of the brain) doesn’t fully develop till the mid to late 20s.
The random aspect of LaserCorps drone procs wasn’t something we wanted players to have to think about (nor think about ourselves, to be honest). It made math weird, and it didn’t align with the fantasy of dystopian drone overlords that the LaserCorps are all about (they’re fully vested in surveillance capitalism). With these changes, LaserCorps will have a smoother power curve, but also way more PEW PEW lasers, which last I checked were core to the trait.
Funny enough, this Ox Force buff may be a buff to Anima Squad. With Ox Forced units self-destructing after their final foray, Anima Squad units wouldn’t generate Fame for causing their death. Now that Ox Force units return to 1 Health after their brief invulnerability, they’re able to give Anima Squaddies the fame they deserve—that is of course if they can’t omnivamp their way out of certain death…
By updating the breakpoints of Underground, the trait should feel easier to go deep with. By adding a 6 trait breakpoint, going even deeper can be even more rewarding—or just result in an even faster 8th.
Before you exclaim, “Look what they did to my boy Draven,” please note that the damage nerf is about 3 to 4 percent, and the Armor/Magic Resist nerf will result in about 3 to 4 percent less effective Health (a calculation of Health x Armor or Magic Resist x any Damage Reduction).
I don’t really like Fiora. This isn’t a joke, or context, or anything like that. I just don’t really like Fiora, and I needed to tell you because unlike Fiora, I do like you. Will you marry me?
Jinx is a weird champion. We envision her as an item holder for just about anything, so we want to make sure she is good with almost all items equally. By buffing her Mana we allow her to get more out of her AP builds that should help Tacticians stabilize as they hold out for Miss Fortune or a similar carry.
Jax needed a weapon, or a buff. It also didn’t make sense that his Adaptive Strikes didn’t scale at all with Ability Power—especially as a spell that does magic damage. So, we’re making AP items a viable weapon for the guy that might just need to get over himself and slam a Rageblade every now and then.
We’re cleaning up Viego’s Heartbreaker logic to be more intuitive and reliable (and just in time for Valentine’s Day!). With this clean up, we predict Viego will be cleaning up boards much more successfully, so we’ve also shipped a preemptive nerf to keep this Heartbreaker from being the Convergence’s best janitor.
Even with a bug reducing Janna’s damage by 80%, she’s performing exceptionally well. Much of this is due to her strong utility (and sunny disposition), which we’re raining in on in favor of her increased damage.
Infinity Force previously did not have Mana nor Critical Strike Chance stats.
The current iteration of Jinx’s Get Excited! has been underperforming even after our last buff. We’re at the point where adding more Attack Speed to Jinx’s excited state will not benefit the Hero Augment in a healthy way, so instead we’re keeping the same theme, but moving some of the Augment’s power into her unexcited state, to allow her to access that her powered up state more easily.
Janna’s Rapid Reporting is getting reworked to Category Five which gives the already complex utility and damage champion some simple, yet tangible additional damage in the form of True damage.
We’re changing when many Augments grant their drip rewards (XP, gold) as a way to slightly lower power levels and standardize expectations around them. We’re also adjusting the items granted via Crowns and Souls to be more intuitive in the comp you want to run when selecting these Augments. One specific call out here, is that Edge of Night was performing very well with Prankster’s Crown despite it not synergizing with the trait’s best units. We’re swapping it with a Morellonomicon which should make more sense to slam on your Ekko or Zoe, but won’t have as much power as Edge of Night.
Cluttered Mind and Clear Mind are simultaneously incredibly similar yet wildly different in power. Cluttered Mind is underperforming when compared to its experience-generating counterpart. On the surface, that may not make sense, since the Augment allows you to star up units by utilizing your bench space, but in reality the Augment also requires you to inefficiently manage your econ—which is pivotal when climbing at higher ranks. By adding additional units, we save our dizziest Augment users some econ by giving them some bench space fodder for free.
Small, like Poggle’s brain. It’s just Little Legend anatomy folks, don’t politicize it.
Making squad goals more worthwhile for Anima Squad.
Lifting the angel out of the Underground for the potential to be a reroll carry.
Better thieves.
We’re discontinuing support of iOS 12 in our next patch. Earlier mobile OS versions become increasingly more difficult to support over time, so we’ll occasionally need to increase the minimum OS version requirements to continue playing TFT Mobile.