Greetings Champions! Here's what happening in the Realm this week:

It's now been almost 10 months since we brought This Week in the Realm back as a Steam blog post, and over that time we've been watching how many players engage with it and comparing it to how we've communicated information before. On average, over 30,000 players read these weekly blogs, which makes it by far the most viewed space for Paladins updates. Beyond our socials, beyond the website, beyond even some YouTube trailers. We really appreciate everyone who takes time to catch up on the smaller developments we share here & want to get that information in front of more players' eyes, which brings us to some news.

The Paladins website has long suffered from issues in key moments of communication, as well as required significant upkeep from us despite less users than any other platform we utilize. Simply put: a dedicated website for news doesn't make sense anymore with how players are actually consuming content. As such, it's being archived and all future Update Notes, Chronicles, and blog posts will be hosted here on Steam and/or provided on our Support page. The New & Returning Player Guide, for example, already has been moved over to our Support offerings, merging the place to learn initially about the game with quick access to help!

Moving forward, we want to utilize platform-specific features to communicate with those audiences information relevant to them, by continuing This Week in the Realm but also tying in our other communication styles and forms. This is a big change & we understand that it'll take time for us to show you all why this is an improvement, so stay tuned for future Update Notes, blogs, and Chronicles to see how we better utilize not just Steam but all platforms to get more information directly in player's hands.

Lunar Aurora

Cookie Coverup

Family of Faces

Enjoy a mix of Paladins gamemodes in one queue, now including the likes of Survival alongside Payload, King of the Hill, Onslaught, and Team Deathmatch!

- EvilMojoKryptek

Tear in reality appear once more as End Times returns in a Prime variation! As Atlas departed our timeline, ruptures were sent across the Realm. Vora went searching and discovered temporal Rifts opening in familiar locales, with Atlas's voice guiding how to once again mend the seams of existence.  Join in the battle to ensure your chance to see the future!
End Times is an Event mode that predated King of the Hill, as such it shares a lot of similar rules.  To shake things up, we've made adjustments to the mode that should make it more objective focused while remaining fast paced.

• The first team to reach 250 tickets, or the team with the most tickets after 12 minutes, wins.
• Killing a player scores the team 2 tickets.
• Controlling the Capture Point earns 1 ticket per second.
• The Tear relocates every 90 seconds to a different spot on the map.
• Every time the capture point relocates, both teams receive a random effect:
  • Warp Speed: Movement Speed Buff
  • Quick Cast: Ability Cooldowns Reduced
  • Anti-Gravity: Gravity Reduced & Jump Height Increase
  • Ultimate-Engine: Ultimate Ability Charge Rate Increased

The original End Times took place exclusively in the Shattered Desert, but this version has spread across the Realm. The following maps will be available in End Times Prime:

• Shattered Desert
• Foreman's Rise
• Magistrate's Archives
• Trade District
• Snowfall Junction
• Marauder's Port

It was a blast bringing back another Event mode, this time with a larger scale twist. We hope players enjoy!

Tear in reality appear once more as End Times returns in a Prime variation! As Atlas departed our timeline, ruptures were sent across the Realm. Vora went searching and discovered temporal Rifts opening in familiar locales, with Atlas's voice guiding how to once again mend the seams of existence.  Join in the battle to ensure your chance to see the future!
End Times is an Event mode that predated King of the Hill, as such it shares a lot of similar rules.  To shake things up, we've made adjustments to the mode that should make it more objective focused while remaining fast paced.

• The first team to reach 250 tickets, or the team with the most tickets after 12 minutes, wins.
• Killing a player scores the team 2 tickets.
• Controlling the Capture Point earns 1 ticket per second.
• The Tear relocates every 90 seconds to a different spot on the map.
• Every time the capture point relocates, both teams receive a random effect:
  • Warp Speed: Movement Speed Buff
  • Quick Cast: Ability Cooldowns Reduced
  • Anti-Gravity: Gravity Reduced & Jump Height Increase
  • Ultimate-Engine: Ultimate Ability Charge Rate Increased

The original End Times took place exclusively in the Shattered Desert, but this version has spread across the Realm. The following maps will be available in End Times Prime:

• Shattered Desert
• Foreman's Rise
• Magistrate's Archives
• Trade District
• Snowfall Junction
• Marauder's Port

It was a blast bringing back another Event mode, this time with a larger scale twist. We hope players enjoy!We've now refreshed Trials of the Realm, which means we're back to the first few regions with a different set of rewards. This time, we're embracing the same Flashback energy the Event Pass has taken with returning Trials classics alongside some new options. Here's what you can earn beyond the usual 175 Crystals and various Chests:

• Here for the Violence and the Vibes Limited Title
• Flashback Challenger's Spoils
  • Digital Space Avatar
  • E-motions Avatar
  • Point n' Click Spray
  • Striking Snake Mal'Damba MVP Pose
    • If you own all of these, each roll will provide you with 2 Team Skin Boosters

Season 6 Ranked Frames are here! Thank you all for your patience while we worked to get these out to you. As a heads up, we made a few changes to the distribution of Ranked Frames this season. If you played multiple splits in Ranked last Season, you will be receiving a Loading Frame for each split you played where you achieved a different division. This means if you placed Masters in Split 1 last year and Diamond in Split 3, you’ll receive both the Season 6 Masters and Diamond Loading Frames.

We also want to talk about Grandmaster Frames. This year, we are granting everyone who would receive the Season 6 Masters Loading Frame the Grandmasters Loading Frame as well. We don't do this lightly and understand if this seems controversial, but we wanted to share our reasoning for this. Our Grandmaster tracking has had blind spots the past few years, which has caused issues where several players who did achieve the status of Grandmaster would not be seen by our system when gifting those frames. In the past, this often applied when a player achieved Grandmaster early in the season and then lost or decayed to low Masters, or even out of Masters.

With this process change for Season 6, we wanted to remove the frustration of not receiving a frame that players felt they should have received and not require them to contact Support to receive their earned rewards. We also wanted to ensure our most dedicated players are rewarded for their hard work, we'd much rather a too many situation after several years of too few. We'll share more on how we intend to avoid this scenario for Season 7 at a later date!
Chivalry

• Shield HP reduced from 4500 ➡️ 3500

After watching the performance of Scorch and Formidable, we felt Chivalry could use another tone down in order to both prevent Fernando from forsaking his Frontline oath and ensure Aegis offers a significant level of defense the other Talents give up for their strengths. 

Deep Roots

• Updated description to note the reduced projectile speed of Crippling Throw

Bringing back older Talents comes with surprises, and turns out Deep Roots has a 35% projectile speed nerf on it compared to base Crippling Throw. Considering the strength of the Talent, we decided to simplify clarify that this is an aspect of it as opposed to remove it. It has already had this functionality so it will feel identical! 


Overpower

• Reverted change to Ult targeter from cone back to pinpoint hitscan

This change made Khan's Ultimate feel more unreliable than prior, which worked opposite to our goals. So, we've reverted this change to help him feel a bit snappier and more responsive. 

• Reduced from 2150 ➡️ 2100

Heirloom Rifle

• Damage reduced from 450 ➡️ 425

Valor

• Damage reduced from 400 ➡️ 350

Our Grand Magister has been having a bit too much fun at the higher levels with her regained lethality. We're partially reverting the buffs we gave to her health and weapon as we feel they still help modernize her kit and make her more viable. To better compensate, we're hitting Valor's damage to lean Lian further from her auto-aim roots into a new, glorious era for the Magistrate. 

Protection

• Maximum Shield reduced from 650 ➡️ 550

Recharge

• Recharge amount reduced from 2750 ➡️ 2500

Thanks Grandpa

• Removed 1s CD reduction
• Shield bonus reduced from 300 ➡️ 200

His time has come. After over a year of enjoying strength he hasn't felt since his early days, we're asking him to slow down a bit. We're nerfing both Protection and Thanks Grandpa to lower the frustrations of pocketed Flanks and Damages after the Guardian buff, as well as adjusting Recharge to be less forgiving if Torvald pops it in the line of fire. We think he'll still be strong with these values, but no longer the terror he has become since Wild Hoard. 

• Healing Totem description now shows its proper healing amount.

 

• Pyretic Momentum now properly provides its Movement Speed bonus

 

• Ninja now properly provides its added Movement Speed bonus in Hidden

Greetings Champions! Here's what happening in the Realm this week:

Tears in reality appear once more as End Times returns in a Prime variation starting tomorrow, April 17th! Bringing back this precursor to King of the Hill was a blast & the team wanted to expand on the mode as we've got a collection of maps built for it. In tomorrow's version, there are some scoring changes as well as the addition of all of the KotH maps to End Times pool.

Enjoy closing rifts as Atlas guides you through the reality warping powers you will wield as End Times Prime is featured for the next week before it returns to the vaults for a bit. We've enjoyed having modes come back & stay tuned in the future for more ways to play these classic Events!

Check back tomorrow for the full hotfix notes!

Our Support team has recently been aggressively investigating a wide variety of behaviors, from toxicity to cheating and other Terms of Service concerns. We take both the safety of our players as well as the health of our game and community seriously, which is why we plan to continue to enhance our efforts over the coming weeks. Players may see more regular warnings issued after matches if our team detects any potential bad behavior, as well as suspensions issued if players are found to have serious infringements and/or chronic bad behavior on their account. We kindly remind everyone of both the Paladins and HiRez Account Terms of Service as we work to make the Realm a safer place.

Paladins Magma Board

The community recently came together and started a Magma board, dropping doodles that range from adorable to cursed. The team loved the vibes & wanted to give 'em a shoutout! Feel free to contribute respectfully & reminder that this space is moderated by community members. We just think it's neat.

https://magma.com/d/ssvm6S2Nvn



- EvilMojoKryptek

Greetings Champions! Here's what happening in the Realm this week:

The Flashback Beat Botz Event Pass was an experiment we very publicly commented on, so we felt it equally important we share some context as to the results. Simply put: the Flashback pass seems popular! We were unsure how many would scoop it up for its value versus its contents, but many new or returning players have picked it up for the former while veteran can earn some sweet Crystal incentives.

We plan to explore the Flashback concept more in the future as a way to offer some old themes new life and help us balance awesome new Event Passes without impacting quality. That doesn't mean these types of passes will always be the same, we may throw some new in with the old or explore themes players may not expect. That said, we're really excited for a future that also mixes the past in occasionally.

As for Event Passes themselves, we're still tracking and listening to feedback on progression, the chests, and the system overall. We don't have anything to share at this moment, but wanted to make sure you all knew we also hear that alongside the Flashback feedback. Thanks as always for letting us try out new things!

When rumor spreads of a mystery benefactor among the Goblins, Ruckus feels compelled to finally return home to the Quarry and discover new treasures. Bolt is less enthused.

📖

Io Portrait

Analog Horror

Principal of the Abyss

Omen Awakens

Play Onslaught on Brightmarsh in this test LTM! If you all enjoy it, we’ll be adding this map to the Onslaught for future rotations of the mode, so let us hear any and all feedback!

- EvilMojoKryptek

Greetings Champions! Here's what happening in the Realm this week:

Now that we're on the other side of releasing the update after both some extensive delays and day one disables, let's chat about how we got here and what we're doing moving forward.

The initial delay of the update was due to an out-of-date aspect of our connection to one of our partner platform's systems that allow us to certify builds quickly for release. This is an important aspect of our release pipeline as it's what allows us to make changes and improvements after PTS right up till before release. This problem took about a day to solve as we rebuilt the game to update this connection.

While that issue occurred on one platform, we were testing all others to ensure everything was in order. In our playtests, we discovered an issue where another platform was failing to properly enter lobbies & freezing at load in. This issue is what prompted the longer, second delay during which we had programmers dig into the issue to solve it. This build, however, had enough changes that we had to recertify the build with partners again, which is how we ended up delayed to this week.

We try to walk a balance between transparency with you all & focusing on doing our best to solve problems so apologies there was little context prior. We hope this shines a little light on why the update took additional time!

As for the recent disabling of both Capture the Flag & certain Items in Survival, these were unfortunate stopgaps and results of issues we had not seen fully until launch day, In CTF's case, we wish we could've tested it on the PTS however the mode had an issue where it wasn't showing up for public players that we had to solve late into development. In general, we don't love shipping anything we feel is cutting it close, but in Capture the Flag's case we were super passionate and knew we'd likely have to make fixes but wanted it to release. Once the scoring issue was discovered, (players could exploit how we handled flag handoffs) we moved to disable the mode and began work on a fix.

Survival we did test on PTS, however our fix between PTS and Live was proven insufficient. Survival comes from an era where healing was still in its infancy in Paladins and while we were aggressive with how it functions in the mode (90% at all times, the Fog applies Anti-Heal) it was proven still not enough when it came to certain Champion and Item combinations when the public played. We disabled some of the enablers of this combo for now but also have been working on a fix.

This leads us to the resolution to all of these: We plan to release a hotfix tomorrow that will fix these issues with both CTF and Survival, as well as other small fixes we are confident we can make right now. When these are applied, Capture the Flag will return for its original timetable and Survival will leave until its scheduled debut. Despite all the issues we are tracking, the team is really proud of this update and has been enjoying seeing players explore all the changes we've made. Thank you for all your support and feedback!

Love Exchange

Spring Break Fireworks

League of Champions

Teams compete to be the first to capture 3 flags on the Classic version of Stone Keep. Players carrying the flag have a special Ultimate that allows them to dash while holding it but are revealed to the entire enemy team, take increased damage, and have slower cooldowns.

- EvilMojoKryptek

The Banners Fall Update is here, and along with it comes Ranked Season 7, Capture the Flag as an LTM Realm, and a Flashback Event Pass allows players to revisit some old favorites!


For this year’s Ranked skin, we wanted to pay homage to our legacy by returning to one of our older Champions as well as our roots as a game. Ultimatium Fernando hearkens from another Realm, one where combat is forged in a Battleground of Gods. Veteran Paladins players will know God of War Fernando well, who was based on the original Ares model in SMITE. This skin is instead based on Ares’ updated looks and uses his voice as he fights new battles in this unfamiliar land. We also made his effects and his weapon to truly feel like a new god has joined the likes of Jenos and Io. We hope players enjoy him alongside aim assist and MM changes made specifically to benefit our competitive environment!




Players have often requested a way to revisit older Battle & Event Pass themes, so presenting Flashback Event Passes! This update’s Event Pass will be revisiting two of the earliest Battle Pass themes: Remix & Battlesuit. The Beat Botz Flashback Event Pass will offer 5 of the exclusive skins from those themes, as well as many of the cosmetics players originally earned through those passes. The goal of this is to offer players a much more affordable way to earn these contents through the EP while we work on the next original Event Pass releasing next update. Veteran players need not fret, rolling the chests within this pass will reward for those who own everything enough Crystals that if you own everything, you earn more Crystals than you spend.



For the full Update Notes, including balance adjustments, visit here: Banners Fall Notes

To celebrate our upcoming addition of these maps to Customs, play Siege on 3 earlier versions of beloved maps. Stone Keep, Timber Mill, and Warder's Gate all return in their classic iterations for players to enjoy while also earning twice as much Event Pass XP all weekend long!

Greetings Champions! Here's what happening in the Realm this week:

Over the past few major updates, we’ve spent time restoring details to various maps from Paladin’s early years. From Brightmarsh in the Anniversary update to Primal Court in Wild Hoard, it’s been a joy to bring back the little touches that make these maps feel closer to how veteran players remember while showing new players what they can look like in their best states. For Banners Fall, we wanted to spend the added time we took to bring as many of these back to form as we could in a single update. Next update Ascension Peak, Ice Mines, and Splitstone Quarry will be receiving their details back from the beta era! Here are some glimpses, check out the maps when Live for all the added props:
















As well as all these lovely notes, we’ve also restored the original render distance of Greenwood Outpost! That means players will no longer experience any pop-in when pushing the Payload on this map. We hope players are as excited as we are for all the content coming in the Banners Fall Update next week!


Of the changes we tested on PTS, none was as polarizing as Mal'Damba. Our lovely Chosen has long stood as both one of the most beloved designs by our community as well as a unqiue playstyle for the Support class. Historically, changes to Mal'Damba had been frequent throughout his time in Paladins until 2022, where he took a backseat to larger shifts in the Support class like universal Anti-Healing and the emergence of Double Support.

We tried some smaller buffs for him near the end of last year to shift him, but he remained a potent pick for players in Masters+, and much rougher for everyone else. As we begin to transition out of Keywords, we wanted to revisit him again and think about how to keep his venom-inspired heal while acknowledging that he has fallen far out of grace for most players.

After testing on the PTS, enough players melded with the concept of a Mending Spirits that provides him more burst while not enhancing his overall healing values that we plan to keep it for release. We did, however, hear from players that his Cards took an undeserved nerf alongside this change. We've worked to rectify that & have adjusted the following Cards:

• Adjusted to "Reduce your damage taken by 4|4% for 4s after hitting an ally with Mending Spirits."

We're no longer buffing the values of this card as we now intend to make it continue for the original duration of Mal'Damba heal and watch players' feedback prior to further adjustments.

• Description updated to "Heal for 4|4 every .2s for 5s after hitting an ally with Mending Spirits."

This is actually how it already functioned; our current description was incorrect.

• Description updated to "Increase the Movement Speed of allies hit by Mending Spirits by 5|5% for 3s."

This is actually how it already functioned; our current description was incorrect. This does mean technically it isn't for the whole duration of Mending Spirits, but we'd rather not buff this until we see it in the wild.

All of these changes mean that his Cards will provide him just as much benefit as before, while his heal still receives its hastened delivery. We know Damba players are some of the most passionate ones we have, so we'll be continuing to listen to feedback and work to bring the Support class closer to the best parts of him after this change.

These aren't the only adjustments we hope to make from PTS to Live, so stay tuned for refreshed Update Notes close to release!

Raeve Returns

Watch on Twitter!

Restful Pause

Death's Howl

To celebrate our upcoming addition of these maps to Customs, play Siege on 3 earlier versions of beloved maps. Stone Keep, Timber Mill, and Warder's Gate all return in their classic iterations for players to enjoy while also earning twice as much Event Pass XP all weekend long!

- EvilMojoKryptek

Speed is key in this shortened & heightened version of Siege! Each team starts out at 2/4 score with increased starting & earned Credits and a minor bump in movement speed, so make each play count as the game can end in one push!

• Score reduced to 2
  
• Respawn Time set to 5s
  
• Starting Credits at 1000
  
• Credits per second raised to 3/s
  
• Credits for Objective Play raised to 7/s
  
• Anti-Healing scales 5% every 25s