Update #39 Release Notes May 7 2015

[Fyst]

Hero Rework: Atasha the Queen of Flames

The Queen of Flames has been reborn from the ashes of her previous form, bringing with her a brand new kit that better represents the incredible power found within a living avatar of a goddess

Atasha's original kit, though iconic, had some major fall off in the mid/late game and other Mages overshadowed her in many of her primary 'roles'. So we took her back to the drawing board and came up with a brand new kit that we felt better suited her intended role as well as brought her gameplay a lot closer to her lore of being a powerful Avatar of the Goddess.

Phoenix Flower (PASSIVE):

• Atasha transforms into a Phoenix Flower with full health when she takes lethal damage. While she is a flower, she is unable to take any actions (move, cast abilities, attack) and has her Armor and Magic Resist modified (depending on her level).
  
• Armor and Magic Resistance will be modified by -40/-25/-10/+5/+20 (passive's level is determined by Hero's Level / 3)
  
• If the Phoenix Flower survives the full duration (6 seconds), it bursts into flames and Atasha rises from its ashes, reviving with health equal to what the Phoenix Flower had.

Fireball (Q)

• Normal: Atasha throws a Fireball, which explodes on the first enemy it hits, dealing Magic Damage within a radius of its position.
  
  
• Empowered: The Ascended Goddess throws a massive Fireball. It explodes when it hits an enemy or when it reaches its max range, expanding its radius greatly. The Empowered Fireball will continue to travel for a short distance after exploding, dealing Magic Damage to all enemies it passes through.

Scorching Pillar (W)

• Normal: Atasha calls forth a pillar of blazing fire that explodes skyward after a short delay, dealing Magic Damage and Slowing all nearby enemies. All enemies hit directly by the pillar take increased Magic Damage and are Slowed by a greater amount.
  
  
• Empowered: The Ascended Goddess calls forth a massive pillar of flame that explodes skyward after a short delay, dealing Magic Damage and Slowing all nearby enemies.
  
• This is effectively the same as Normal except with greater range and all enemies hit by this ability suffer the "inner" radius effects (aka no more outer radius and inner radius has been expanded to fill the whole area)

Wall of Flame (E)

• Normal: Atasha creates a line of smoldering ground upon the target location. After a short delay - longer delay depending upon casting distance - the line bursts into flames for 3 seconds. All enemies caught in the fire will be set ablaze. All enemies that have been set ablaze will take Magic Damage over time (every 1/2 second for 3 seconds).
  
  
• Empowered: The Ascended Goddess creates a line of fire that will travel from her current position to the target location before lingering there. All enemies caught in the fire will be set ablaze (Magic Damage every 1/2 second for 3 seconds).

Divine Ascension (R - primary cast)

• Atasha unleashes the Goddess's full power, becoming an Ascended Goddess of living fire for a moderate duration. While Active, the Ascended Goddess's abilities are empowered and cost no mana.
  
• The Ascended Goddess gains the ability to cast Dragon's Breath once per ascension, exhaling a large cone of flames, dealing Magic Damage to enemies within the area.
  
• While in Avatar form, Atasha will have a completely new animation set that have her floating off the ground, instead of walking like a mere lowly 'mortal'.

Dragon's Breath (R - secondary cast)

• The Ascended Goddess exhales a large cone of flames, dealing Magic Damage to enemies within the area.
  
• Dragon's Breath can only be used while Atasha is in her Avatar Form, and a maximum of once per transformation.

Hero Rebalance: Slag - The Mad

Slag has developed a new and improved formula for his Tar but it takes a little longer to prepare / His damage output/profile has been balanced to be a little less bursty

Slag's old Tar mechanic made him an extremely frustrating hero to deal with in both Siege and Counter-Siege situations, as well as there was not a lot of counterplay opportunity vs his tar, because it had very little "downtime". We've adjusted his Tar Ball to work off an Ammo system, where its usage cooldown is very short, but it's ammo generation rate is a little slower than it's old cooldown, in order to help with counter play options. To help compensate for this lower availability of Tar, we've added an "on enemy hit" portion to it's skillshot, which gives Slag opportunities to set units themselves on fire. We've also balanced some of Slag's extreme instant damage burst potential, by adjusting his Fire Grenade and The Big One damage.

Ability Changes
• Fire Grenade (Q)
  
  • Base damage reduced to 90/145/200/255 (from 90/155/220/285)
  
  
• Tar Ball (E)
  
  • Uses an ammo system where it requires a Charge to be cast.
    
  • Slag generates a Charge of ammo every 17 seconds, and can hold up to 2 at a time.
    
  • Ability Cooldown has been reduced to 4 sec (from 12 sec)
    
  • Tar Puddle lifetime has been reduced to 15 sec (from 40 sec)
    
  • All enemy units hit by the Tar Ball itself (the travelling skillshot) will be coated in Tar for 3 seconds.
    
  • Tar coated enemies can be set on fire by Slag's abilities, in the same way Tar puddles can be.
    
  • Enemies who've been set on fire will take Magic Damage over 6 seconds.
  
  
• The Big One (R)
  
  • Special Power Scaling on damage reduced to +0.7 SP (from +1.0 SP)

Hero Rebalance: Khagas - The Khari Marksman

Has learned to gallop / Blinding Arrow is now a skillshot / Volley now applies it's bonus to the primary target

Khagas, being one of the slowest champion with no non-ult way of shaking off pursuers, despite being a centaur, always felt a little odd. So to combat this we've given Deft Hands (renamed to Khari Swiftness) a small movement speed boost (at the cost of some of the bonus attack speed) to help Khagas with his positioning as well as with his escape. We also found that his Blinding Arrow was an extremely strong tool against certain basic attack centric heroes, and was fairly reliable/easy to land, so it's been changed from a point targeted AoE, to a Skillshot that explodes in a small radius on the first enemy unit it hits.

Ability Changes
• Blinding Arrow (Q)
  
  • Fires a special arrow in target direction, that explodes if it hits an enemy unit, blinding and dealing Magic Damage all enemies in a small radius.
  
  
• Volley (W)
  
  • Volley now applies the "Bonus Physical Damage against heroes" to the primary target if they are a hero.
  
  
• Deft Hands (E)
  
  • Renamed to Khari Swiftness
    
  • Reduced the Attack Speed bonus to +15%/ +30% / +45% / +60% (from +25% / +45% / +65% / +85%)
    
  • Added Movement Speed bonus that starts at +25% but decays over 3 seconds.

Part 2 Continued Below

[Fyst]

Adventurer's Bounty Rework

The bonuses for winning Quests has been revised to primarily focus their advantage around controlling objectives and sieging rather than an outright combat advantage over the opposing team. Additionally, the number of levels has been reduced to 4 from 5 make it more likely that teams unlock more of their potential benefit. The specific bonuses are as follows:

• 1 Quest: +10% damage vs Minions and Neutral Monsters.
  
• 2 Quests: +8% Movement Speed while out of combat.
  
• 3 Quests: Gain an aura that grants nearby allied wave minions 10% damage dealt and 40% less Magic Damage taken.
  
• 4+ Quests: each additional quest win grants a temporary bonus of +10% Attack Power and +10% Special Power for 180 seconds. Additionally, your basic attacks vs Structures deal an additional 40 Pure Damage.

New: Tutorials

• There are now two basic tutorial game modes in the new Play->Tutorials tab.
  
• Upon completing the tutorials for the first time you will get a special bundle of what was previously the starter bundle with apprentice gear.
  
• The Ai in tutorials has been set to easy difficulty level.
  
• Both tutorials can be re-played and make for great practice modes. The interactive tips will only show up once to prevent them from being annoying when being replayed.
  
• In addition to interactive tutorials, every player will be presented with a number of interactive tips describing various features in the front end. Tips that have been viewed will never reappear.

New: Top Rated Replays

• You can now rate replays from both the post game lobby and the inspect dialog. Top Rated replays will show up in the new Watch->Top Rated Replays tab and can be viewed from here as well.
  
• Players are no longer able to download old replays that are not compatible with the current client. Previously, the client would download the files and then tell you the version didn't match.
  
• Adjusted the layout of the replay playback bar, as well as added some placeholder icons for the play/pause button that reflect the current playback speed.

Duel Modes Rebalance

More Passive XP and Gold income, Slower Recall.

As this is a fast paced Game mode, we felt that the XP and Gold gains in it needed to be increased a little bit to allow reaching higher levels that time, as well as allow for better itemization options for a Duel. We decided to give these increases passively over time, as opposed to just increasing unit rewards, because buffing unit rewards would make it trivially easy for one side to snowball early and make win the Duel. It also opens up the viable champion pool as well, because early game power houses won't be as oppressive either. The Recall channel time increase was done to make it more of a meaningful choice/sacrifice to go back to the well to heal up or shop.

• All Duel modes' passive Gold gain increased to 3.5 / second (from 1.5 / second)
  
• All Duel modes' passive XP gain disabled for the first 30 seconds of the match.
  
• Duel 1v1 mode's passive XP gain increased to 5.5 / second (from 0 / second)
  
• Duel 2v2 mode's passive XP gain increased to 8.25 /second (from 0 / second)
  
• Recall channel time increased to 4.5 seconds (from 4 seconds)

Version 44468

HUD and User Interface

• Left clicking onto the merchant or his shop will now open the shop dialog (if you are in range).
  
• Added minimap icons for Own, Ally, and Enemy wards.
  
• Updated creep camp minimap icons to be unique per type of camp.
  
• Unit health bars now don't take Shield Max values into consideration for calculating their "maxBarPoints" value, they only use current Shield and lagged Shield delta values for the maxBarPoints value.
  
• Updated Death Summary screen art.
  
• Added new art for the bar displayed when capturing a target.
  
• Quests now show the specific reward in the Quest bar instead of generic treasure chest.
  
• Mute Player Chat Messages has been refactored to also ignore that player's Pings.
  
• Tweaked the default PingWheel reveal delay setting to be more forgiving to slower mouse clickers.
  
• Fixed in-game shop stackable items quantity counter from being overlapped by border on listbox items.

Front End

• Added "Cooperative" as a top level choice in matchmaking.
  
• The keybindings for Use Recall and Emote are now listed under "Abilities".
  
• The keybinding for Cinematic Mode is now listed under "Camera".
  
• Removed the homepage "Tutorial" button
  
• Added a new homepage "Wiki" button.
  
• Options->Sound panel is now better organized and labelled.
  
• Options->Graphics now has quick defaults for Lowest, Low, Medium, High, Highest settings.
  
• Added tooltips for all buttons on the Watch and Portal panels.

Auto Join Chat

• Now has a message at top saying why the channel was auto joined and where to disable it.
  
• Now starts minimized now so not so cluttered for new players.
  
• Now auto joins players to a general chat that corresponds to their language setting.

Ai Golems

• Numerous improvements to the Ai for Hero Golems including retreating, Questing, target searching, and defensive positioning.
  
• Hero Golems no longer have knowledge of the positions of undetected enemy units. However, they do remember where the enemy last was and attempts to predict the area the enemy will be in for a certain period of time. They will search this area if looking for a target, or assume a target is near there if making defensive decisions.
  
• Added a new "easy Ai" that is currently only used in the two Tutorial matches.

Audio

• Added Chronicler Dialogue for the "From The Depths" Quest.
  
• Every Hero now plays a unique UI and Ambient sound when selected in the Front End.
  
• Chronicler now identifies your Hero selection when you lock in.
  
• Heroes may now vocally comment on various Quest related events such as Quests starting, failing, succeeding, expiring, accomplishing Quest sub-objectives and more.
  
• Heroes may now vocally comment on the transition from day to night and vice-versa.
  
• Heroes may now vocally comment on various Ping events.
  
• Heroes may now vocally comment on attempting to use an ability and failing due to "not enough mana" or "cooldown not expired".
  
• Added new sounds for various Lobby phases including Hero selection start, stop and the end of the begin game timer.
  
• Added sounds for match aborted and match requeued.
  
• Added sounds for players accepting or declining match assembly.
  
• Fix Serewyn's Seeds of Renewal potentially playing the wrong sound effect when picking up seeds while using a non-default skin.
  
• The game client audio output source is now correctly changed if the operating system primary output is changed (e.g. if you plug in or unplug headphones).

Map and Unit Art

• Further improvements to map including a number of Horen base details.
  
• Adjusted Horen tower rotation speed and animation.
  
• Animation Updates to Merchants and Troll quest Merchant.
  
• Updated Troll Stone Skin.
  
• Fixed various effects that weren't rendering (for example the torches on the bridge).
  
• Added missing Founder Vexie Art including HUD, small icon, large icon, painting, and store portrait.
  
• Improved the effect displayed when using the Slaughter Glyph.

Twitch

• Twitch "ratings" have been renamed to "upvotes".
  
• Fixed a bug where players could not rate/upvote some streams.
  
• Clarified text describing why you aren't able to rate/upvote a streamer who hasn't logged into Twitch yet from within Soada.
  
• Double clicking the Twitch stream rating button will no longer open the Twitch stream - you now have to click outside the button.

Twitter

• Twitter Follower chest art added.
  
• Added a link to the Twitter home page in Account->Extras panel.

Languages

• Added Spanish.
  
• Added Polish.
  
• Updated Russian.
  
• Updated German.
  
• Added per-language font scaling to fit some longer languages within buttons.
  
• Added a new button that explains how players can help crowdsource improvements to each language.
  
• Fixed bug where changing languages caused certain strings to not be changed.

Vice Account Warning Changes

• Vice is now more straightforward:
  
  • Level 1 = no chatting allowed at all in game or in front end.
    
  • Level 2 = no chatting allowed at all in game or in front end. No rewards or XP on game end.
    
  • Level 3 = banned from the game.
• Players are now reminded of being in Vice with a dialog box when logging in.

Community Moderators

Certain accounts now have moderator support. This will allow these community members to give Level 1 Vice warnings (muting) to hostile players. You will find this action on the right click floating menu of any account if you are a moderator.

Misc

• Good tags such as rarity and good type are now exposed to the Steam asset API. This should allow the Steam web interface to build up advanced filters for finding assets to purchase through Steam.
  
• Try Hero mode can now be paused.
  
• Memory usage has been further optimized.
  
• Fixed a large number of grammar, spelling and string consistency problems.
  
• Fixed a number of locations using the wrong font.

Amendments

• Vanguard Chests' contents have been rebalanced to offer greater value.
  
• Added new lore pages as part of the tutorial rewards.

Version 44468

[Lord Oakshield]

Neat! Is this considered the F2P patch though ?

[Azta]

Originally posted by author:

Hero Golems no longer have knowledge of the positions of undetected enemy units. However, they do remember where the enemy last was and attempts to predict the area the enemy will be in for a certain period of time. They will search this area if looking for a target, or assume a target is near there if making defensive decisions.

<3

[Fyst]

Originally posted by Ex-Calibre:

Neat! Is this considered the F2P patch though ?

Doubtful, we will likely do another one based on you guys testing this build.

[Mr HoW]

After the update, I cannot play. After starting, the game says my version is out of date, and relog into steam to force the update.. But its already updates and all my game files are okay.. :O

[manny the veric king]

Hey Mr HoW, the servers have yet to catch up to the patch.

I believe a dev will post here when we are able to log in.

[manny the veric king]

PSA: When you log in, it may appear that your Apprentice Gear has been removed.

In order to re-receive it (if you are a veteran) you will have to play the Duel and Siege Tutorials.

(Will update here when you are able to log in.)

[Mr HoW]

Originally posted by manny the veric king:

Hey Mr HoW, the servers have yet to catch up to the patch.

I believe a dev will post here when we are able to log in.

Hello,

Right, now it says that the servers are unavailable due to the patch. We have to wait then, thanks for Your answer :)

[KyberSplicer]

Ooh! The new Atasha seems very interesting :D

[ARgent MMBets.net]

Хоть бы кто из русских комент оставил бы)

[manny the veric king]

Патч / обновление не достиг серверов еще. (I used Google translate.)

[ARgent MMBets.net]

thanks) (google translation x2)

[manny the veric king]

The newest patch has a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on that involves the new Tutorial modes.

The devs are hard at work making sure the patch goes through smoothly and that all the new Tutorial stuff works correctly. I don't have an ETA at this time.

Not to mention the Steam Store, Community, and Web API have all been acting up over the past hour.

It seems better now though.

[Lord Oakshield]

Originally posted by manny the veric king:

The newest patch has a lot of behind the scenes stuff going on that involves the new Tutorial modes.

The devs are hard at work making sure the patch goes through smoothly and that all the new Tutorial stuff works correctly. I don't have an ETA at this time.

Not to mention the Steam Store, Community, and Web API have all been acting up over the past hour.

It seems better now though.

Yeah Steam was down for a bit, effected everyone.

[mr.maksuha]

чета ну уж очень игру перекапали. особенно аташу