Today's patch is a big one! Much-anticipated balance updates, new card art, and a change to how queues work that we expect will lead to a lot more Court matches!
This patch also overhauls and modernizes our backend/client Chat server architecture, which wasn't working for some players. If you played before and couldn't see anybody online and see any chatting in Global Chat, check back in!
We've introduced the ability to queue for multiple game modes at once. After queuing as normal, simply select another game mode and queue for that one as well! While in a PVP match your other queues will be paused, and resume after the match finishes. As before, you can still be queued while playing campaign and CPU games, and those queues will not be paused, letting you play PVE content while you wait for a match.
With this change, we're aiming to deliver on the promise of more Court matches, and this feature will be important for the health of queues when we launch Ranked, which is still in active development.
This new queuing system represents a large engineering overhaul for us, and encourage players to use the in-game report system to report any bugs they encounter while queuing. Also, we have more quality-of-life UI updates planned for the new queuing system, such as the ability to see all the queues you're currently in, and leave them individually, but we wanted to release this initial version for testing and feedback, and see how it affects queue health for the game as a whole.
Of course, what you're probably here to read are card balance changes, and to see if Bestow Destiny is nerfed! It has been, along with many other changes:
Card Changes
Bestow Destiny now costs 4, up from 3.
Bestow Destiny now gives +3/+2, rather than +3/+3.
Bestow Destiny's target now only "drops" the sword if the target is killed, rather than any time the target leaves play. Also, if the target is transformed into another card, then the buff is properly erased as well, and will not drop the sword at a later point.
Immediately on release, Bestow Destiny became a format-warping card. We want Bestow Destiny to exist in a space where it's a good option for aggressive decks to be able to consistently push through damage if that's what their deck list needs, especially against control decks, but not so efficient that it's an auto-include in every situation. Additionally, the rules for when the "sword" drops left little room for counterplay, so now the sword only drops on death and now properly interacts with transform effects. With this change cards like Trip, Gleep, Erase from History, Another Day etc are now all viable counters.
Karpime the Bold now costs 9, up from 8.
Karpime's win rate stats are very high, and while we do believe that's partially due to always being alongside Bestow Destiny, she's still over performing and so has been taken down a bit. We believe that raising her cost is the most appropriate balancing lever for her, as it represents her coming down and ending the game a full turn later.
Love Potion now costs 2 devotion, up from 1.
Erase from History now costs 2 devotion, up from 1.
Possess now costs 2 devotion, up from 1.
As the meta game has developed, we've realized that cards which can completely remove an opponent's champion from the game should categorically be at two devotion. These cards can be hard counters to decks that want to build around their champion, and while we are okay with such cards existing, having them be at one devotion means they can be 3x as present in a deck list, which leads to frustrating hard counters for champion-centric strategies.
Possess now costs 6 resources, up from 5.
Possess is comparable to Love Potion in power, while it doesn't let you keep the target indefinitely, it has much looser targeting restrictions and Spirit decks often plan on sacrificing the stolen character anyway. Considering the power of the card, it's been increased in cost slightly, and we could see it going up to 7 and matching Love Potion in the future.
Remember the Named now revives to your own field, rather than the opponent's, if they've taken control of your champion and killed them at some point.
How Remember the Named worked previously, while technically correct, was pretty frustrating and often made the card a dead draw in the very situations you put the card in the deck for.
Open Palm Disciple now costs 1 devotion, down from 2.
This poor bear was seeing little to no play, so we're letting him be in more decks.
Heroic Rescue now costs 5 resources, down from 6.
The previous nerf to Heroic Rescue has left this card feeling very inefficient at what it does, so we're lowering its cost.
Ancient Rage now costs 2, and fully heals the target first.
Ancient Rage is an interesting design that allows Arbura decks to turn the corner and start the beats, but at its old cost it was simply losing games. Additionally, the targets that Ancient Rage would most want to target usually had Vigilance and took some damage before you could play it, making the card bad in the situations you wanted it in.
Liberk now costs 9 resources, down from 10.
Liberks' win rate dragged far behind other champions, so we're helping him out a bit.
The Arburamoot now costs 10 resources, down from 11.
The Arburamoot has seen almost no play at 11, with the effect often being weaker than it initially seems, as cards with Play effects don't work well with it. We're dropping the cost to see if it incentives more play.
Other Changes
You can now queue for multiple game modes at once. Once queued, simply also queue for the other modes you want to queue up for. While in a PVP match, all current queues are paused and will be resumed once you leave the match.
Overhauled the Chat server to be more resilient and able to connect in more situations, as well as providing more feedback when unable to connect.
Bug Fixes
Fixed various issues with Posses and Possessing Muse where they were continuing to affect a target that had left play.
Fixed an issue where Ring of Renewal wouldn't return your Champion to your own hand, but rather the opponent's if they took control of them.
Watches-at-Night now only prevents the death of your Champion if you actually control your Champion.
It's no longer possible to get another Right Eye of Insight during the campaign.
Players in a game can no longer attempt to accept a trade, breaking the client.
Cards drawn by The Dusk Queen now properly have the Revealed buff showing (they were always visible to the opponent).
Various fixes that were leading to game servers throwing exceptions and having to give players a draw.
Fixed an issue where the Card Highlighter would display "tradabletrue" after trading a card.
"On attack" effects like Baijin now must actually attack to trigger, whereas before they were triggering as long as it was their turn to attack. Thus Baijin isunable to summon spirits while he's asleep, or Lost in the Woods was played, etc.
Removed the rules clarification for Karpime that referred to an older design.
Removed the rules clarification text for Gleep that suggested it could be used on Rituals.
Fixed the animation for Careful Shot not displaying.