We've been getting more player feedback about the last boss of the game being too difficult still, even after the previous nerfs in balance patches before the 1.1 update. As this is currently the last boss of the game, we do want for it to be challenging, but we've identified a specific improvement for this fight thanks to recent feedback, which is how hard it is to gain progress between lost combat rounds.
To improve the balance of the boss we've done the following changes:
Phase 2 enemies now have 30% less Maximum Health.
Phase 2 enemies have a new "Convergence" skill, which triggers when they die to grant 30% of their Maximum Health as Maximum Health to all allies, with a Heal of equal value to fill that gained Maximum Health over 5 seconds.
Phase 3 enemies now have 10% less Maximum Health.
This makes phase 2 enemies significantly easier to kill at the start of the combat, with only the last remaining enemy having similar Maximum Health as before, but at that point they are the only enemy doing damage.
The Ghost debuff is now easier to take advantage from in both phases, but especially on phase 2 because if the last remaining enemy is Ghosted they would instantly die, skipping the benefits of their new Convergence skill.
In general, we want player positioning to be the main way for players to control how their characters move and target enemies. The issue with this is that the current character behaviour rules are only explained once in the tutorial, and even if we add a glossary for players to read those rules on demand, a lot of players won't do it even if they're losing and don't understand why their characters aren't doing what they want them to do.
This was the main reason behind adding Commands as a feature, and we've seen them work great for players that actually take the passive spells that grant Commands. We didn't make them a default mechanic because that would dilute the importance of learning positioning, but this creates the issue of players that would benefit from having Commands not taking any because they don't know if they'll need them in the future.
We think that players having more access to Commands can be a net benefit to the player experience, so we've made the following changes:
Players now have 1 Command by default and the tutorial now also introduces Commands to players.
The Queen passive spell now grants 1 Command (from 2).
The King passive spell now grants 2 Commands (from 4).
This rebalance to the accessibility of Commands should allow players to play more tactically from the start, making them more aware of the importance of positioning and aggro, while preventing basic player positioning from becoming irrelevant.
The enemy that dealt the most damage after a combat loss is now highlighted in red, both in the board and the combat log. This should help to give players a clue about what are the enemy threats after they lose a combat round.
The combat summary tooltip now has a similar color coding in its sections to that of the combat summary panel. This should help players identify the info they want faster, like the difference between damage dealt and damage taken for example.
We have already started working on our next big update, which will be more of an expansion really. The main thing it will include will be the "endgame" runs, but there's a lot more we're preparing for it.
We have noted a lot of features and changes that players have requested, so don't be discouraged if we still haven't added one that you asked for, it will come sooner or later as we keep working on our big updates.
You can expect to hear more about the endgame expansion within 2-3 months, so stay tuned for that. We'll do patches to address any small or urgent issue in the meantime, but broader changes or new features are more likely to be added as part of our big updates.
That's it for this patch, consider leaving a review if you have enjoyed the Rise of the Summoners update, that would help the game a lot. Have fun in the Underboard!