Legendary Keeper Balance Update Overview

[SmugLookingBarrel]

Monster sanctuary patch review for Legendary Keeper Update

The newest patch for Monster Sanctuary has just been released, and in addition to several excellent quality of life changes, some new content, and customization options, there were quite a few balance changes and updates to monster skills in this patch. This article will detail each of the changes, and provide some insight as to the reasoning behind them and possible implications. This is mainly focused on PvP, but most of it can also be applied to other modes.

Disclaimer
I participated in the closed beta and tested some of these changes, but there is still some speculation about the role of the new monsters in the metagame. I also didn’t receive direct information from the devs as to the reasoning behind all of the balance changes, so some of that is speculation.

With that said, here is everything you can expect in the Legendary Keeper update.

New Item
Ancestral Medal: 55 Attack, 55 Magic, begin combat with 1 age stack and 5 charge stacks
Available from defeating every legendary keeper, or from level 5 reward boxes.

This is a fantastic item for any offensive monster that utilizes Charge stacks, Age stacks, or both, providing a 15% increase to your first attack (additive with other charge stacks), a 3% increase to all of your damage (multiplicative with other age stacks), as well as excellent attack and magic for an accessory.

New Skills
The new skills are focused on making Charge stacks into a more versatile tool. Previously, charge stacking teams were viable, but since the only thing charge stacks did was increase damage, the viability of an individual monster that utilized them was closely tied to damage: could it deal more damage than other charge monsters, or buff an ally with more damage. With these new skills, charge stacks can now be used for more then just damage buffing, and monsters that work with charge stacks can have competitive viability in different ways than before. This also has major implications for the light shift passive Supremacy, which previously wasn’t seen very often on account of charge stacks and debuffs not synergizing very well. Now they certainly do.

Charged Anomaly
Aura: For every 15 charge stacks spend by an ally, it applies Chill, Shock, or Weakness to a random enemy
Learned by Qilin

Charged Destruction

Aura: For every 15 charge stacks spend by an ally, it applies Burn, Weakness, or Armor Break to a random enemy
Learned by Magmamoth, Skorch

Charged Hazard

Aura: For every 15 charge stacks spend by an ally, it applies Burn, Poison, or Shock to a random enemy
Learned by Goblin Pilot, Glowfly

Charged Reflexes

Aura: Whenever an ally gains a charge stack, it has a 5% chance to also gain Might, Agility, or Sidekick
Learned by Kame, Koi, Vaero

Charged Chant

Aura: Whenever an ally gains a charge stack, it has a 5% chance to also gain Sorcery, Barrier, or Channel
Learned by Sycophantom

Charged Banner

Aura: Whenever an ally gains a charge stack, it has a 5% chance to also gain Glory, Spellshield, or Regeneration
Learned by Goblin Miner, Salahammer

Load Up

Shield actions apply one charge stack per shield. Passives shields have a 20% chance to apply a charge stack.
Learned by Goblin Miner, Sycophantom, Targoat


Skill/Equipment balance changes

Meditation now grants 6 charge stacks (up from 5)
Meditation was designed to encourage a damage dealing monster to take a turn off to buff before attacking, but 5 charge stacks wasn’t enough of a payoff, and this passive was thus only really used on monsters that could make use of the charge stacks while never attacking. Gaining 6 charge stacks should make it a little more enticing for a damage dealer, while also boosting the power of meditation supports like Leadership Oculus

Charging Sphere now grants 3 charge stacks at max level (up from 2)

Likewise, Charging Sphere almost exclusively found its way onto Leadership supports. This change will boost the effectiveness of those supports while also making the item more appealing for charge-based damage dealers

Polluted Water effect increased from 8% to 10%

Toxiquus is a debuff monster that wants to be run on a full aquatic team, offering 8% stronger debuffs for each aquatic monster, but it wasn’t commonly seen. This increase, which is effectively a 6% increase in a full aquatic team, should help it compete with other options.

Backstab damage bonus increased to 25% (from 20%)

Currently Backstab is only available on Thanatos, who has much better things to be doing than attacking, such as being the best buffer in the game. Perhaps with a little more damage, players will be more willing to try actually swinging that scythe.

All Mass Shielding actions got their shield amount increased

Currently, while shields can be built quite quickly using passive effects like Healing Shield or Overheal, or with Arcane Shield that scales with magic, actions that apply shielding to the party are comparatively lackluster. This change should help those actions feel impactful without boosting the power of some of the stronger shield actions. Below is a list of each action and the old and new numbers for the max level

Shield 3x200+20% Defense -> 3x 250+20% Defense (+150)
Forge 550+100% attack -> 800+100% attack (+250)
Weakening Shield 2x 250+25% Attack + 25% Defense -> 2x 300+25% Attack + 25% Defense (+100)
Fire Shield 2x 250 + 25% Defense + 25% Magic -> 2x 300 + 25% Defense + 25% Magic (+100)
Ice Shield 2x 250 + 25% Defense + 25% Magic -> 2x 300 + 25% Defense + 25% Magic (+100)

Force of Nature, Carnage, and Polar Winds now heal for more
These ultimates dealt less damage or had fewer effects than other alternatives, in exchange for a full party heal. That heal is being increased slightly to make these ultimates more appealing.

Force of Nature 600+100% Magic -> 750+120% Magic (+ 150+20% Magic)
Carnage 400+125% Attack -> 500+150% Attack (+ 100+25% Attack)
Polar Winds 500+75% Magic -> 600+100% Magic
(+ 100+25% Magic)

The damage multiplier from Power Focus now depends on how many monsters have acted in the turn it was used.

This exclusively concerns Brutus, who was incredibly difficult to deal with if its team got the first turn, as it could Power Focus to gain double damage on the next turn, and force the enemy to either deal with Brutus or lose three monsters on the second turn of the duel. This change reduces the effectiveness of a first turn Power Focus by 33%, and should lead to less full wipes by Brutus on turn 2.

Solar Burst, Solar Blaze, and Gale each had their mana costs increased by 10

These skills were mainstays of many competitive monsters and offered high combo potential as well as reasonable damage, so they are having their mana costs increased to make them harder to spam.

Critical Sorcery’s bonus reduced from 6% to 5%

Critical Sorcery provided one of the strongest buffs to crit chance in the game, even with being halved on every buff after the first it was 18% crit chance with 5 stacks of Sorcery, which wasn’t hard to achieve in a Sorcery team. This change will reduce the Critical Hit Chance of Sorcery monsters.

Channeling Balance bonus reduced from 7.5% to 6%, Extra Channel proc chance reduced from 15% to 12%

Channeling Balance has proven to be a massive force in the competitive scene, accumulating multiple channel buffs quickly and being very difficult to stop once buffed. These reductions should make the playstyle less dominant without killing its viability.

Enlightened Proc chance reduces from 55% to 50%, Martial Prowess proc chance reduced from 75% to 70%

These changes are being grouped together because they both affect the same style of team: The triple Enlightened dodge team. These teams could share a huge amount of buffs thanks to Pandora’s Box and Enlightened being able to trigger off itself, and could gain buffs from being attacked thanks to Martial Prowess. Both of these skills are having their activation chances reduced to slow down the rate at which this team style can accrue buffs.

Shield Burst now expends 90% of shield (up from 50%) and its damage multiplier was reduced from 300% to 175%

Shield Burst has been a powerful strategy in PvP since the game’s launch, with the major benefit of not needing any damage boosting equipment and thus being able to give their damage dealers full tank setups while still one-shotting enemy monsters. The previous patch sought to nerf Shield Burst by only allowing 50% of the shield to be consumed, but what ended up happening instead was it was still strong enough to one-shot monsters, and now the shield burst user could keep half of their shield to protect themselves. This change makes the shield burst user more vulnerable after attacking, as they’ll have much less shield, while keeping the skill’s damage the same.

For comparison, assuming the monster using Shield Burst had 1000 shield, it used to consume 500 shield, and the base damage was 1500, while it will now consume 900 shield, and the base damage is 1575.

Healing Wave heal reduced from 3*225+40% magic to 3*200+40% magic

Healing Wave was one of the best healing skills in the game, offering a solid 9 combo and 675 healing+120% magic, which was comparable to many healing ultimates. This change will reduce that slightly.

Life Wave heal increased from 2x 400 + 4% max health to 2x 500 + 5% Max Health

Life Wave often felt like an inferior version of Healing Wave, offering less combo and less healing. It’s now a bigger heal, while also scaling better with max health.

Avalanche crit damage bonus increased from 30% to 50%

Considering Shred has a 70% crit damage bonus, it seemed strange that Avalanche only had 30%. It’s been increased to the standard 50%.

Debuffs applied by Dragon Mastery, Steam Punk, Tranquility, and Phoenix Heritage now trigger passives that trigger when debuffs are applied.

This change has some major implications:

Dracozul can now trigger Flash Freeze an additional time with any water attack, thanks to Dragon Mastery applying chill.

The Shock debuff from Steampunk can now trigger Chain Lightning and Proliferate, which makes monsters like Crackle Knight and Oculus better at spreading Shock

The Weakness proc from Tranquility can now trigger Curse of Weakness

The Burn from Phoenix Heritage can now trigger Proliferate.

Holy Presence now triggers on healing and shielding actions

While gaining an additional buff on buffing actions was powerful, many of the monsters that got Holy Presence wanted to be using other types of support actions, which often left Holy Presence feeling lackluster. Now it can continue to grant buffs even on healing or shielding actions, while still incentivising you to use buffing actions, where it will add extra combo.

Intelligent Swarm proc chance is now 100% (up from 75%)
The chance to gain a charge stack from this passive has changed a few times in patches, and is being boosted to 100% to allow Oculus to better support the new Charge Stack synergies.

Thorn Tendril now grants 20% Crit Damage (instead of Crit
Chance), and the bleed proc is now 500% of your crit damage[/b]
Thorn Tendril previously applied a bleed based on the higher of your attack or magic, but it gave Crit Chance, and most monsters that make use of crit chance didn’t build high attack or magic. With this change, Thorn Tendril will be a more effective tool for punishing attackers, working especially well on Critical Defense tanks.

Abyssal Sword now has a 60% chance to apply a buff or debuff (up from 30%)
Abyssal Sword offered a unique passive that could apply buffs or debuffs when attacking, but with a low proc rate and lack of useful stats for damage dealers or supports, it was often overlooked. With this change, it will be much more likely to perform its intended function.

Center of Mass effect increased to from 25% to 30%
Center of Mass was a powerful but often overlooked passive that helped AOE damage muscle through high defense targets or to boost healing, and is receiving a slight buff to be better at it. This is most applicable to Darnation and Toxiquus, who have two instances of the passive.

All passives that give a monster a chance to apply a debuff to an attacker have that chance boosted from 40% to 50%, as has the passive of the item Spark.

Now you have slightly better odds of punishing attackers with a debuff.

Magnetize Proc chance reduced from 25% to 20%
Now that Crackle Knight has his own instance of Multi Shock, Magnetize, which has a chance to trigger for each instance of shock on the target, is having its proc rate reduced. It should still be more powerful in a shock team than it is currently.

Monster Balance Changes
(in the next post)

[SmugLookingBarrel]

Qilin: Gains Charged Anomaly, Shock Charging, Buff Charging, Charged Healing, Attack Plus, Mana Plus, and Initial Shock. Loses Blessed Strikes, Dragon Skin, and Armor Shred
Qilin got a major rework this patch, and is now designed around the new charge stack mechanics. It now has Shock Charging and Buff Charging alongside its light shift passive to power Charged Anomaly, and can make use of those synergies as a healer thanks to Charged Healing. Its kit is much more synergistic than before, and might find its way onto shock teams, charge teams, and more.

Magmamoth: Gains Charged Destruction
Notably, the debuff proc does happen before the attack that caused it begins, so debuffs applied by Charged Destruction on Magmamoth’s turn will count for Death Blow.

Goblin Pilot: Gains Charged Destruction, loses Armor Shred
Goblin Pilot teams utilizing Supercharged have found some success, and with the boosts to charge stacks, they might become more effective soon, and getting some free debuffs from your supercharged pilot will certainly help.

Glowfly: Gains Charged Hazard. Multi Shock is now available at level 10
Glowfly can generate significant amounts of charge stacks for its team thanks to Insect Charge, so should get good value out of Charged Hazard.

Glowdra: Loses one Mana Proc
Glowdra has been a strong performer in the competitive scene for some time now, acting as a combo builder for Sorcery teams. While Sorcery teams haven’t been overwhelming, they have been overperforming, so losing one Mana Proc will slow down Glowdra’s combo generation

Skorch: Gains Charged Destruction
Skorch can use burn to generate charge stacks, and now it can use charge stacks to generate burn. Synergy!
Crackle Knight: Gains Multi Shock, loses Wind Affinity
This patch is focused on making Shock a more viable team strategy, and Crackle Knight seemed like a good candidate for that. It’s always been able to inflict shock to multiple enemies and benefitted from it well, but previously it required an ally with multi shock to really work. Now it gets multi Shock itself, to better fill the role of shock-based support.

Goblin Miner: Gains Charged Banner, Charge Amplifier, Load Up, and one Mana Plus, loses Buff Charging.
Goblin Miner offered an interesting assortment of Buff synergies, Debuff synergies, Charge stacks, and shielding, but those aspects of its kit didn’t fit together very well, which led to it often being overlooked in favor of monsters that were more focused. With these changes, Miner keeps his unique place in interacting with all of them, but is better able to blend them together. He can now apply charge stacks with his shields, and buffs with his charge stacks.

Salahammer: Gains Charged Banner
As the only monster in the game with access to two instances of Critical Buffs, Salahammer excelled at applying charge stacks to teammates while it buffed them. Gaining Charged Banner allows it to turn those stacks into more buffs, and Salahammer itself will greatly appreciate a Glory buff

Kame: Gains +2 base attack, Multi Might, Charged Reflexes, Load up. Loses 1 base health, Meditate, one Attack Plus, and one Static

For a monster said to be a master of martial arts, Kame felt more like a master of a single technique, Shield Burst-justu. These changes should help define its new role as a monster that supports physical attackers with Might, shielding, and charge stacks, while making it less of a oneshot machine with Shield Burst.

Koi: Gains Critical Healing and Charged Reflexes
Koi hashad two useful roles on a team, as a healer or a crit-based support, but previously those two things were mutually exclusive. It could either support its team with buffs and charge stacks, or keep its team healthy, and it wasn’t good enough at either role to justify a spot. With the addition of Critical Healing, Koi can now heal significantly better, and also trigger Critical Boon and thus Critical Buffs using its healing moves. Koi also gains Charged Reflexes, which gives it a chance to add more buffs when applying charge stacks, and very much appreciates the change to Holy Prescence allowing it to work with heals. Koi will be much more effective and more cohesive with these changes

Vaero: Gains Charged Reflexes
With Critical Buffs and Buff Charging, Vaero can generate quite a few charge stacks for its team, and the addition of Charged Reflexes gives it a chance to apply some extra buffs with those charge stacks.

Sycophantom: Gains Charged Chant, Load Up, and Healing Shield, loses Magic Powered Shield and one node of Magic Plus
With this update, Sycophantom is being shifted into a more support-oriented role, able to apply shielding, charge stacks, and buffs with its healing actions, as well as gaining an additional buff thanks to the change to Holy Prescence. This should help it find a spot in more teams.

Blade Widow: Gains +1 Base Defense, both shifts get +1 base Attack
Blade Widow is designed to function as a glass cannon, oneshotting the enemy monsters after some buffs and not caring if it falls the next turn. Unfortunately, Blade Widow has been too much Glass and not enough Cannon. It often finds itself just short of important KOs, and is too easily taken down in return, so it’s getting a small boost to attack and defense.

Beetloid: Light shift gets -1 Base Defense
Continuing with Sorcery teams, Beetloid was one of the premier buffers for the archetype, consistently increasing the offensive power of its teammates. It was also surprisingly resilient for a monster on an aggressive team, consistently able to live a hit, and boosting its teammates while doing so thanks to Revenge plus Leadership. Losing one node of base defense will make attempts by the enemy team to target down Beetloid more likely to end up with results other than buffing the opponent

Targoat: Gains Load up
Targoat has always been excellent at protecting the party while boosting their damage, but suffered due to its lack of other utility. Adding Load Up will increase its ability to generate charge stacks significantly, thus allowing it to be a bigger contributor to the team’s damage, especially in combination with Leadership.

Dracozul: Gains Shared Barrier, loses one Health Plus
Dracozul has previously struggled for identity as a monster. It has access to strong buffing actions, but not enough buff support to make a dedicated buffer, and has strong offensive options, but not enough to compete with similar monsters. Adding Shared Barrier will increase the efficiency of its barrier stacking, and with two instances of Buffing Shield plus Copy Shield, one extra buff goes a long way. Dracozul also benefits greatly from Dragon Mastery now being able to proc Flash Freeze, as it gains an additional hit on all of its water attacks, as well and benefitting from the buff to Avalanche.

Darnation: Gains Antitoxins
Darnation is meant to be a monster that can adapt to any situation, and it’s now adapted a way to cure its own debuffs. This won’t be a game changing addition, but it will be nice. Darnation also benefits greatly from the buff to Center of Mass, as he now has two 30% multipliers to his AOE attacks on the highest health target.

Aurumtail: Glimmer is now available at level 10 (skill tree is unchanged)
One of the things that made Aurumtail unique was its access to Glitter alongside four instances of Gold Sense, but this synergy couldn’t be made use of until level 30. Now you can make use of your gold-powered monster team from level 10.

Big Winners from the new patch

Crackle Knight and Qilin
The Shock archetype got massive buffs in the new patch. Crackle Knight got Multi Shock to go with its existing shock synergy, which is a massive increase, and Qilin got a complete rework that gives it a much more cohesive kit. These changes seem to make pure Shock teams much more viable, while also making these monsters more likely to see use on other teams.

Spectral Wolf
The only thing Wolf got from this patch is the new accessory, but it’s so excellent on him that it deserves mention here. Wolf gets a lot of value from Age stacks, both from having Aging, as each age stack makes the others better, and from Primal Rage. Wolf also has no way to generate Charge stacks, which is actually good, it means that it will get the full 15% boost from the stacks given by Medal, and Wolf has Equipment Mastery, so he’s able to forgo an accessory slot for the medal and still have three accessories worth of crit. All this makes Wolf significantly more dangerous while equipped with an Ancestral Medal.

Oculus
With the boost to Meditation, Charging Sphere, the new Ancestral Medal, and the return to 100% proc rate on Intelligent Swarm, Oculus is ready to spread massive amounts of Charge Stacks to its team

Koi
Critical Healing was what Koi really needed: A way to tie its healing and crit synergies together. With Critical Healing, Center of Mass, and Cascade, Koi now wields some of the strongest heals in the game, and also has access to Critical Boon plus Critical Buffs to support its team while healing. It also appreciates the change to Holy Presence, adding one more buff to its heals.

Toxiquus
With the buff to Polluted Water making it a 30% boost to debuffs in a full aquatic team and the buff to Center of Mass, a passive which Toxiquus has two instances of, it’s now a more capable healer and support, as well as possibly viable in a damaging role.

[SmugLookingBarrel]

(post over, you may now reply)

[1337haXXor]

Wow, incredibly detailed write-up! I was a bit overwhelmed getting back into it seeing all the balance changes, but this laid it all out for me.

I'm glad for the Kame changes. I'm running a charge/beast type of setup. My starters are Brutus, Caraglow, and Targoat, but I've been struggling to fill the last three. To have synergy with eachother, but also the main team, as it depends who gets KOd. Right now it's Kame, Uran, and Yowie. I was going for beast/warrior but also with Armor Break as the main debuff.

[Sersch]

Nice write up!

Polluted Water was already buffed in 1.1 tho, not in this update

[Ghigi]

IMO Dracozul in the open world is now harder, much harder to deal with. I managed to kill it, but just with a debuffing team (similar I use against Brutus, for example). There's no chance I can kill Dracozul with a bleed team now, thing I did several times in my saves (5 here and 3 on the Game Pass).

Is any of the changes to that monster coming into play against him (open world)?

[NorthernDruid]

I took my Brutus Infinity farm team for a spin on the new patch. And after remembering Targoat had a new skill to respec into, let me just say: Load Up is super powerful.

My charge stacks on Brutus used to cap out in the mid-40s IIRC, and after adjusting my plays for Load Up, high-50s is now in the lower end of the scale, at the most I've been touching on 80 charge stacks.

[SmugLookingBarrel]

Originally posted by Sersch:

Nice write up!

Polluted Water was already buffed in 1.1 tho, not in this update

Oh whoops, you're completely right, and I somehow missed that

[strata_ranger]

Originally posted by SmugLookingBarrel:

Shield Burst now expends 90% of shield (up from 50%) and its damage multiplier was reduced from 300% to 175%

Wait, this is a nerf? The last time I made any progress on my save, Shield Burst expended 100% of your shield.

Oh, but now what about "Volatile Shield"? (e.g. Polterofen) I notice that also has a power rating of 175% (same as Lv.2 Shield Burst) except that it only consumes half the shield's value (thus dealing about half the damage of a Lv.2 Shield Burst).

[SmugLookingBarrel]

Originally posted by strata_ranger:

Originally posted by SmugLookingBarrel:

Shield Burst now expends 90% of shield (up from 50%) and its damage multiplier was reduced from 300% to 175%

Wait, this is a nerf? The last time I made any progress on my save, Shield Burst expended 100% of your shield.

Oh, but now what about "Volatile Shield"? (e.g. Polterofen) I notice that also has a power rating of 175% (same as Lv.2 Shield Burst) except that it only consumes half the shield's value (thus dealing about half the damage of a Lv.2 Shield Burst).

Shield burst was changed to expend 50 percent of your shield with the same damage multiplier, which was intended to be a nerf but was in some ways a buff, since you could keep some of your shield and usually still one-shot someone. Now it's back to 90% with a lower multiplier.

Volatile Shield remains unchanged, and is still a very solid skill, but easier to play around than Shield Burst.

[nokami]

For Charged Destruction, do I have to use the 15 stacks in one attack or does it keep track of how many I've used in a fight?

Like say turn 1 I used 3 stacks, then turn 2 I used 12 stacks. Will the skill proc?

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by kevin derank:

For Charged Destruction, do I have to use the 15 stacks in one attack or does it keep track of how many I've used in a fight?

Like say turn 1 I used 3 stacks, then turn 2 I used 12 stacks. Will the skill proc?

It's based on the total, so it keeps track, just like [Mana Conflux].