Early Access Balance Patch V0.10.2

A new day, Champions, a new balance pass! 

With Season 2 drawing to a close we’re keeping it short and sweet this week, so let’s jump right in and take a look at what you can expect from Predecessor V0.10.2!

For starters, as is tradition, our latest addition Zarus is receiving a quick balance pass alongside some quality of life improvements to smooth out his gameplay. Likewise, on the balance front we’re looking to elevate some of the less represented Heroes in the roster, such as Sparrow and Grux, while also taking a moment to re-examine Kallari who’s health regeneration mechanic makes an exciting comeback! 

So what’s next? Well we expect this update to be the last major patch of Early Access Season 2, meaning next time you’re reading one of these it’ll be all about Season 3! We won’t spoil some of the big plans we’ve got in the pipeline here, so keep your eyes peeled for Patch V0.11, the Season 3 roadmap, and much, MUCH more!

First though, let’s go over all those changes we mentioned coming to Predecessor with this game update.

~ Rei & Kari (Game Design and Community Teams)

STORE

New Skin - Midnight Muriel

Make a lunar landing with the stellar Midnight Muriel!

Glide the night skies with the new Midnight Skin [common] for Muriel, available in V0.10.2 in the store!

BALANCE CHANGES

It recently emerged that Greystone was suffering from a rather nasty bug that prevented his Deflect cooldown from decreasing throughout a match. We’ve fixed the issue and hope to see a glorious return to form for him.

Stoicism [Passive]:

◆ [Bugfix] Deflect Cooldown now correctly reduces with level.
◆ [Bugfix] Deflect is no longer affected by Ability Haste.

Grux struggles to keep pace at various stages of the match so we’re offering him a few buffs to bring him up to speed in the form of some additional scalings and some Smash & Grab efficacy. These changes are primarily targeting Grux’s late-game where he tends to struggle the most, and should not overly impact his early game potency. 

General:

◆ Attack Speed Growth increased from 1.5 to 2.

Smash And Grab [Q]:

◆ Mana Cost decreased from 100 to 90.
◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling increased from 70% to 80%.

Crush [E]:

◆ Damage increased from 70/100/130/160/190 to 70/105/140/175/210.

Kallari’s ability to quickly clear the Red Jungle due to her high single-target damage allows for fast level 3 ganks that can prove overwhelming. To reduce the pace at which she can gank we’re lowering her early clear speed while conversely we’re bringing back her classic health regeneration mechanic during Shadow Walk to further facilitate Kallari’s presence throughout a match. This should allow her to stay healthy between camps and recover after a fight should she manage to slip away.

General:

◆ Base Physical Power decreased from 61 to 58.
◆ Physical Power Growth increased from 2.8 to 3.
◆ Base Mana increased from 250 to 265.
◆ Base Health Regeneration decreased from 2 to 1.5.

Shadow Walk [Q]:

◆ Mana Cost increased from 40 to 50.
◆ Movement Speed decreased from 20% to 15%.
◆ Now gains 6/7/8/9/10 (+20% Physical Penetration) health regeneration while Camouflaged. 

Crippling Dagger [RMB]:

◆ Damage decreased from 65/85/105/125/145 to 60/80/100/120/140.
◆ Bonus Monster Damage decreased from 100 to 65.

Shinbi’s ability to default to playing at range in lane with Line Tempo overly rewards passive gameplay. To better encourage her to dash into the thick of it we’re moving some of her damage potential and sticking it into her Circle Rhythm, as well as shifting around her mana economy to punish her for becoming overly reliant on Line Tempo alone. 

General:

◆ Mana Regeneration increased from 0.9 to 1.1.
◆ Mana increased from 380 to 390.

Line Tempo [Q]:

◆ Damage changed from 65/95/125/155/185 to 75/100/125/150/175
◆ Magical Power Scaling decreased from 60% to 55%.
◆ Mana Cost increased from 30 to 40.
◆ Hitbox improved.

Circle Rhythm [E]:

◆ Magical Power Scaling increased from 18% to 22%.

Sparrow found good value from her previous round of mana-focused changes which increased her ability to trade and keep the pressure up. Despite this though she’s still falling slightly short as a Carry due to how long it takes her to ramp up. 

To better facilitate her high DPS identity and general trading potential, we’re increasing the damage on her passive to make her more threatening in longer, more drawn out engagements, while also juicing the execution potential of her Piercing Shot when focusing a single target. 

Relentless [Passive]:

◆ Max Health Damage per stack increased from 0.5% to 0.55%.
◆ Stack duration decreased from 5s to 4s.
◆ [Bugfix] Description now correctly states 6 stack maximum. 

Piercing Shot [RMB]:

◆ Damage decreased from 90/135/180/225/270 to 70/110/150/190/230.
◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling increased from 150% to 175%.
◆ Damage Multiplier per Relentless stack increased from +5% to +8%.
◆ Cooldown changed from 13/12/11/10/9 to 14/12.5/11/9.5/8.

The dust has settled since the Deathstalker rework and TwinBlast is still seeing too much success with physical penetration builds, overkilling targets with his Ultimate from afar. To that end we’re bumping down Ventilate’s physical power scaling once more to not overly impact attack speed itemisation but to instead guide the ability into a more reasonable spot.

Ventilate [R]: 

◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling per bullet decreased from 18% to 16%.

The true impact of Zarus’ arrival to the arena is still being assessed, as player mastery of our powerful new Hero continues to grow. 

That said, however, we’ve received some great community feedback that we’re keen to act on in this patch, as we further refine the timings of his abilities to make them more intuitive and generally improve his overall gameplay flow a bit. Alongside this we’re shifting around some of Zarus’ mana costs to better facilitate short, ability-based trades in lane, while also hitting the frequency at which he can run down his opponents with basic attacks alone as a result of well-times Evades in the earlier stages of a match.

General:

◆ Improved the timing of damage instances on Basic Attacks, Barricade and Spear of Nyr.  

Barricade [Q]:

◆ Mana Cost decreased from 80 to 60/65/70/75/80.

Evade [E]: 

◆ Attack Speed changed from 20% to 15%/17.5%/20%/22.5%/25%.
◆ Mana Cost increased from 40 to 50. 

Coliseum [R]:

◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling decreased from 150% to 100%.
◆ Now displays permanent physical power gained as a notifier on the HUD.

ITEMS 

Crests:

Rogue:
The Rogue crest offers too much early physical penetration and can result in overly oppressive trading loops in the first few levels of the lane phase. Time it was nudged down.

◆ Physical Penetration decreased from 8 to 6. 

BUG FIXES

◆ Fixed a bug where Kallari would lose her Camouflage when receiving magical damage if Dread was on cooldown.
◆ Fixed a bug where Zarus’ evade would state Movement Speed as its buff notifier.
◆ Rectified an issue with Oathkeeper & Truesilver Bracelet Descriptions.
◆ Fixed an API issue with Rune Bow and Wild Hunt sharing the Item IDs of Bloodletter and Hunt.
◆ Fixed a bug where Feng Mao’s Reaping Dash would not gain the correct cooldown at rank 4.

That's all this week!

Liked this update? Or perhaps you need to be consoled over a specific balance change? Either way you should join the conversation over on Twitter, the official Subreddit or our Discord server!

Catch you next time!