Jan 29
Gudrun's Solitaire Duel - Cybermind
A small fix, two buttons where missing audio.
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Note: Octavia does not select a Subclass, instead opting for her own Commander options.
After watching our changes to Anti-Healing’s ramp speed from the latter half of Season 7, we saw the desired improvements in the late game distribution of healing. However, the effect on the early & middle game was a bit more heightened than we intended and led to some matches lacking proper pacing. To alleviate this, we’re shifting the starting value for Anti-Heal down a single interval to allow a bit more time in these earlier stages while still keeping the scaling fast.
To kick off the Season, we’re bringing a whole host of Item changes with two goals in mind: making Items a more powerful part of our gameplay loop as well as merging together various eras of Items to curate the most diverse offering we could have. The headliner changes are those around Wrecker, Guardian, and Shields. Shields used to be a much more prevalent part of Paladins’ sandbox, with the health values higher and Wrecker more impactful than has been the past few Seasons (circa Season 3 onward). As part of Season 8, we’re returning closer to that style of defensive gameplay, with some new additions as well!
Wrecker is having its price increased slightly, but its scaling nearly doubled to make it the new standout item of the Offense category and a powerful counterplay to Shields. Guardian is also getting a minor bump to still allow it some room to either encourage a Wrecker purchase from your opponents or augment a Shield-heavy composition. Speaking of, Resilience is returning as the premiere CC counter Item! With that change, Sentinel has been adjusted to offer a bit more value on Shielding.
Alongside these larger changes, we’ve also finetuned the pricing of Blast Shields to accommodate its slightly more niche use and Bulldozer is being reverted to its S2 values to encourage its purchase when team composition leans heavy into Deployables.
Due to the changes to Wrecker, we'll be adjusting most base Shield abilities slightly upward to compensate for the early game pressure Wrecker may cause. Our goal with the Shielding changes are not to make Shields irrelevant, so we'll be watching closely to make sure the push and pull still remains both with and without Items.
Barik has slowly slipped from his comfortable spot as a safe Frontline pick to struggle to stay competitive against most compositions. After assessing where the weaknesses in his kit reside, we've decided to amp up his Cards to be more impactful and provide him stronger build options. We also are increasing Dome Shield's efficacy substantially to make it a larger threat to handle for opponents.
Buck is a strong yet niche Flank, mostly owing to his heavy reliance on Cards and Talents to cover gaps in his base kit. While this design is enduring and we intend to preserve most aspects of it, it has also led to his popularity and play rate dropping over time. We're shifting some of his cooldown Cards effects slightly into base, giving him a bit more room to create builds that don't spend the majority of points on those options. We've also reverted Bulk Up back to one of its stronger states and partially given Ensnare some damage back to bring back the version of Buck that lives in many veterans memories.
After the changes we made to Vatu's animation canceling, we wanted to go across the roster and ensure the cancel timings made sense for both animation and gameplay balance. As a part of that investigation, we found several cases where we could make animation canceling better and more fluid for several Champions. Any change you see like this one on Caspian is meant to make timings consistent across the game!
Cassie has been in a similar spot to Buck, however her popularity remains higher despite lower efficacy. These changes are meant to buff the playstyles on Cassie that haven't had as much room for success, specifically ones that focus on her sustaining herself and surviving duels. Big Game is also getting a slight increase to also have its value on lower-health targets a bit more competitive with Exaction.
Dredge has been performing well for himself after the return of Blast Shields, however there have been some long-standing areas of tension between his design, his balance, and his fluidity. We want to make Dredge more dynamic to play and also more interesting to fight, as such we're adjusting his Talents to reduce some of the efficacy of Scuttle and turn Hurl into a skill shot reward as opposed to a spammable option. We also are buffing a variety of his Cards to give him alternative build choices and to play around with and potentially surprise opponents with new game plans.
Khan has been a bit stagnant in his loadout useage with Storm of Bullets providing a significant DPS that outweighed his other benefits. To shift him away from this, we've partially put Storm of Bullets into base kit while reducing its effect to match the Live version. In essence, this is a buff to his other Talents. Vortex Grip is also seeing an additional change, allowing Khan to enable his team to burst a foe he grabs by Weakening them. We've also tightened up his Ultimate pull time to make it feel more consistent on both sides of the cast. P.S. We're keeping an eye on Lian's Shield and still considering directions to take it into the future
Here we go again. After Crystalline Battery's niche, fun but ultimately ineffective time in Live, we took a step back and considered all the change we've made to her the past few years as well as success we have had with designs elsewhere. This new Talent, High Voltage, gives her a flexible Carbine playstyle that synergizes both with her kit but select Champions across the roster to gain a potent damage buff.
