August 8 Balance Community Update

Greetings, Stormgaters!

We witnessed some incredible Stormgating this weekend, with Probe triumphing in the TastelessTV Stormgate Showdown and becoming our first Stormgate Champion! Additionally, in grassroots play, Bee and Percival claimed victory in the Alpha Navigators Cup for the Europe and Americas regions, respectively.

Throughout this first week, we've been closely following these pro tournaments, actively playing the game, and gathering feedback from top players. Today, I'd like to discuss the current state of the game and outline some upcoming changes. (For full patch notes, go here).

For those of you who are still riding with us, here are a few things we’ll be looking at:

Celestial Rushes

One of the most significant issues we've observed in the first week of Early Access is the prevalence of aggressive tactics from Celestial players. These tactics vary widely, from Morph Core rushes to Strike Node rushes and proxy Argent plays. This is particularly evident on maps with short air-to-air rush distances, such as Jagged Maw and Broken Crown. We believe some of these rushes are unstoppable, and while most CAN be countered, the level of knowledge and execution required to defend against them is disproportionately high compared to the effort needed to perform them. So we’re going to make some changes.

Sovereign's Watch

Can now only be cast on structures within 15 range away from a friendly landed Collection Array.

Upon reviewing the games, we noticed that these rushes hinge on utilizing offensive Sovereign’s Watch to buy time for more serious threats like Strike Nodes or Power Banks. While the offensive use of Sovereign’s Watch is interesting, its exploitative applications far outweigh the "cool" scenarios. We considered many options to address these pushes, but ultimately, we decided this change most directly tackles the issue with minimal adjustments.

Morph Core

Damage decreased from 8 to 2 (+6 vs Light).

The mass Morph Core rush, frequently seen on Jagged Maw, is the one rush that doesn't heavily rely on Sovereign’s Watch. This strategy depends on the Morph Cores' ability to overwhelm defensive structures before they are completed. While it's important for Morph Cores to have an attack to defend against opening SCOUTs, Hexens, and early-game SCOUT floods, we don't believe they need to be so powerful against structures.

Regarding the Jagged Maw-shaped elephant in the room, there’s been a lot of calls to remove this map entirely. Our current plan is to keep it in the map pool for now to gather data on how low air-to-air rush distances impact gameplay. We can change the map pool without a client-side patch, so if the map becomes problematic again, we will quickly remove it.

General Balance and Matchups

In the first week, we've been pleasantly surprised by the general win rates across all factions. Currently, Celestials have a 53% win rate, Infernals are at 50%, and Vanguard stands at 47%. If this were the complete story, we would be very satisfied with our initial Early Access week. However, the matchups reveal a more lopsided picture. Our stats currently show V>I>C>V, with substantial advantages in these matchups. Let’s talk about each matchup:

Vanguard versus Celestials

Both anecdotally and according to our internal stats, Celestials have a significant advantage over Vanguard, making it our most lopsided matchup. The Kri is at the center of these discussions, and it feels like the data we gather about the mid-game or late-game of these matchups is moot due to the overwhelming power of this one unit. We currently believe the Kri is too powerful for two reasons:

It's too difficult to counter the Kri in straight-up fights when unit counts are low on both sides.
The threat of Kri running into a worker line pins players at home, as Kri can deal too much damage to workers and static defenses are not sufficient to deter them.

While Infernals also struggle to defend against run-bys, their core units are more capable of fighting Kri in direct engagements. To address this, we plan to move Kri towards a more specialized role and enhance the intended Vanguard counters to the Kri.

Kri

No longer has bonus armor while rolling.
Damage changed from 24 to 16 (+8 vs Light).

Vulcan

Health increased from 400 to 450.

Buzzsaw Cannon

Damage changed from 13 (+ 13 vs Biological) to 18 (+8 vs Light).

Another piece of feedback we’ve recently received is that Vector openers could too easily pin a Vanguard player in their base and Celestials players could gain an advantage by aggressively expanding and taking all the creeps on the map. More refined Vector openings have become more common lately, and they’ve been developing in the last few days. To address this, we’re looking to grant Lancers a tier-1 response as well as make some changes to tiering up that we’ll mention a bit later to let Vanguard tech to Vulcans a bit faster.

Lancer

The Kinetic Redirection upgrade no longer requires a Central Command.
The Kinetic Redirection upgrade’s research time increased from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.

Again, this one is a developing situation, and we’ll be especially looking at how these Vector-focused games play out after the patch.

Vanguard versus Infernals

When we examined the internal stats, we were surprised to find that this matchup is the second most lopsided one in favor of Vanguard. However, a deeper analysis reveals a different story. Infernals have a largely positive win rate before the 10-minute mark, whereas Vanguard dominates after 10 minutes.

We believe Infernals have such a large early-game advantage due to the combination of speed-upgraded Gaunts and early-game Fiend generation (from both Nightfall Infestation and Gaunts), which is overwhelming. To address this, we plan to combine the following changes to Gaunts, which tempers this power spike and Lancers, which gives Vanguard more options to deal with early-game pressure (and perhaps go on the offense themselves) in all matchups.

Gaunt

Plague Axes research duration increased from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.
Reaper’s Rush research duration increased from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.
Reaper’s Rush now increases movement speed by 30%, down from 40%. Resulting improved speed decreased from 5.6 to 5.2.

Lancer

The Kinetic Redirection upgrade no longer requires a Central Command.
The Kinetic Redirection upgrade’s research time increased from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.

After 10 minutes, once Vanguard has weathered the storm, it's their turn to go on the offense. When the Infantry ball reaches a critical mass, it becomes very difficult for an Infernals player to respond. Although the entire Infantry ball is holistically strong and its individual units synergize well, we believe the Exo is the strongest unit in the composition, especially against Infernals. Options for the Infernals player include flanking, Harbingers dropping Magmadons, Flame Imps, and Hellborne. However, these options either require significantly more skill from the Infernals player or force them to play very defensively.

We're making the following changes to temper the strength of the Infantry ball and grant Infernals more options to deal with it:

Exo

Damage decreased from 14 (+8 vs Heavy) to 13 (+6 vs Heavy).

Hexen

Hexen Master Training, which unlocks Miasma, now requires a Greater Shrine instead of an Elder Shrine.
Hexen Master Training research time increased from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.

Moving forward, we’ll be evaluating the balance of this matchup and the resulting gameplay interactions with the Infantry ball.

Before we move on, I’d like to discuss our philosophy regarding periods of power spikes. In moderation, these power spikes are very positive; it's rewarding to take turns feeling powerful and being on the offense. However, we are mindful of two concerns:

When the periods of dominance don’t switch sides often enough
When it's clear that one faction has much better chances in the extreme late game over the other. Historically, we've learned from other games that it feels bad to feel like you're playing against the clock.

To get back on topic, we don't see any evidence that one faction is favored over the other in the extreme late game. Instead, it appears Vanguard players are heading into advantageous positions as they approach the late game due to momentum from the mid-game.

Infernals versus Celestials

This matchup features a large early-game advantage for Celestials and a significant late-game advantage for Infernals. Early game is characterized by aggressive Celestial rushes and Kri run-bys, which favor Celestials. We've addressed these issues in previous sections.

In the late game, Infernals excel. We believe this is because Celestials lack strong counters to Magmadons, Hellbornes, and Flayed Dragons with their tier-3 upgrade. To address this, we plan to make the following changes to give Celestial players stronger counters to these units:

Cabal

Gravity Flux duration increased from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.

Scythe

Damage against air units increased from 8 (+8 vs Heavy) to 12 (+12 vs Heavy).
Scythes will now prioritize attacking air units.

Saber

Mass Accelerator no longer costs 100 Health.
Mass Accelerator cooldown increased from 0 seconds to 20 seconds.
Damage increased from 48 (+40 vs Heavy) to 52 (+52 vs Heavy).

Archangel

While using Avatar, Archangels are now immune to both the Vulcan and the Magmadon’s stuns.

Thoughts on Mirrors

In Vanguard versus Vanguard matches, we often see SCOUT mirrors evolving into Exo mirrors. We’d like to see more diversity in this matchup and are hopeful that the recent changes to Lancers, Exos, and Vulcans will bring about some variety.

In Infernal mirrors, Gaunts and Magmadons dominate. This is partly because, in the Early Access release, the intended counter to the Magmadon, the Weaver, is weaker than it has ever been.

Celestial mirrors are currently quite chaotic with numerous proxies and aggressive strategies, making it challenging to predict their future direction. We’ll be closely monitoring the viability of proxy Argent play and the ability of Celestial players to transition out of Argents.

Overall, we believe there is still significant potential for these mirrors to evolve, and there’s nothing concerning enough to warrant immediate action at this time.

Promoting Interaction

In general, we want to encourage more interaction between players and will continuously seek ways to achieve this. Two areas where we’ve identified room for improvement are the difficulty of harassing Celestials due to the uptime of Sovereign’s Watch and the durability of their workers.

Sovereign's Watch

Duration decreased from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
Damage increased from 20 to 30.

Prism

Health decreased from 260 to 180.

Early Game Economy/Pacing

We’ve received high-level feedback indicating that the early game feels slower in the Early Access version compared to previous iterations. This slowdown seems to be due to harder creeps, longer tiering times, and an increase in the number of upgrades. We agree with this feedback and consider a primary issue to address in PvP. While we may not be able to fully resolve it in this patch, we are taking several steps to improve the situation.

In the Early Access release, we significantly increased the tech-up time from tier-1 to tier-2 from 15 seconds to 60 seconds to create clearer early, mid, and late-game phases. While we appreciate the direction this has taken, it has led to some negative outcomes, such as disincentivizing tech-based builds and overly stunting the economy, especially for Vanguard players, due to halted worker production during tech-up times. We aim to adjust these changes to find a better balance.

Upgrading Tier 1 command structure to Tier 2 command structure duration decreased from 60 seconds to 40 seconds.

Upgrade cost of Tier 2 structures generally decreased from 200/100 to 150/100.
Upgrade duration of Tier 2 command structures to Tier 3 command structures decreased from 90 seconds to 70 seconds.
Upgrade cost of Tier 3 structures generally decreased from 250/150 to 200/150.

Similarly, while we believe making creeps harder in the Early Access release was a positive direction, it has caused some issues, such as being unable to fight creeps with just 1-2 units or struggling with level 2 resource camps when you can easily handle level 1 creeps. We will reduce the damage of various creeps to lower their difficulty while maintaining the time it takes to defeat them. Notably, Lancers will find a much easier time handling the Slime and Shadow Mastiff creeps.

Slime (from Health camp) damage decreased from 8 to 6.
Ooze (from Energy camp) damage decreased from 20 to 16.
Shadow Mastiff (from Speed camp) damage decreased from 8 to 5.
Bruiser (from Resource camps) base damage decreased from 15 to 12.
Cleaver (from Luminite camps) base damage decreased from 8 to 6.
Piper (from Therium camps) base damage decreased from 8 to 6.

More About Creeps

The Siege camp guard was way too powerful for the reward that was granted upon defeat. In addition, while its jump ability was cool, it was a bit too buggy. Look for it to be reintroduced at a later time.

Skull Squisher (from Siege camp) base health decreased from 500 to 400.
Skull Squisher (from Siege camp) base damage decreased from 30 to 25.
Skull Squisher (from Siege camp) no longer casts its jump ability.

The Shadow Mastiff’s dash ability was interesting to play against, but dodging it felt inconsequential since it did too little damage.

Shadow Mastiff (from Speed camp) dash damage increased from 10 to 15.

Finally, we’d like to encourage players to creep a bit more, so we’re going to try to further increase creep bounty to do so.

Creeps will generally grant 60% increased bounty.

Buffing Lesser Used Units

We’re looking to make these additional small improvements to lesser-used units in addition to ones we mentioned above:

Hedgehog

Mobile mode weapon period decreased from 0.4 to 0.3 seconds.

Hornet

Health increased from 180 to 210.

Weaver

Lash energy cost decreased from 50 to 40.
Weapon damage increased from 10% of a unit’s max health (5% vs structures) to 15% of a unit’s max health (10% vs structures).

Notably, the Weaver lost its ability to walk over other units because of temporary changes to pathing. We’ll be looking to this back on in a future update and re-evaluate the balance of this unit at that time.

Buffing Lesser Used Upgrades

We’re looking to reduce the friction of certain upgrades that we’d like to see more of:

Brute

Sundering Soul Frenzy upgrade cost decreased from 50/50 to 25/25.

Harbinger

Seismic Slam upgrade cost decreased from 100/100 to 50/50.

Therium Purifier

Celestial Hyperdrive upgrade cost decreased from 100/100 to 50/50.

Vector

Recall upgrade cost decreased from 100/100 to 50/50.

Buffing Tech Structures

We’re looking to encourage and smooth out certain tech transitions:

Machine Lab

Cost decreased from 150/100 to 100/100.

Hellforge

Cost decreased from 100/100 to 100/0.

Shadowcleft

Cost decreased from 150/100 to 100/100.
Build time decreased from 60 seconds to 50 seconds.

Guardian Nexus

Cost decreased from 150/0 to 100/0.

A Few Bug Fixes

Finally, here are a few notable bug fixes that impact balance.

Fixed an issue where Slimes and Oozes did not grant a resource bounty.
The debuff left by Oozes and Slimes no longer deals damage.
Skull of Shedda damage decreased from 50 to 25, which is the intended amount as described by the tooltip.
Hexen and Archangels are now correctly added to automated control groups.
Fixed an issue where Bombers would get stuck on the edge of the map. Note that a more long-term solution will be coming in a further patch.
Fixed an issue where Helicarrier took too much Veterancy to level up.
Morphing to an Arcship with a Morph Core now correctly costs 200 Luminite, up from 100.
Arcstation now costs 7 supply, down from 10.
Fixed an issue where Seraphim were taking 50% damage from all sources instead of just from Creeps.
Fixed an issue where faster units had difficulty chasing and attacking slower units.
Large units (Vulcan, Atlas, Magmadon, Hellborne, Saber, Archangel) no longer push friendly units in PvP game modes.
Fixed an issue where Hellbornes and Sabers could push enemy units in PvP game modes.

Regarding large units pushing friendly units, it’s a feature we’d like to add back long-term, but it currently has some negative side-effects that are currently doing more harm than they’re helping. Look forward to it coming back at a later time!

And that’s it! For those of you who read the entire post, thank you for staying with us; we look forward to hearing your continued feedback. See you on the ladder!

Cheers,

Kevin Dong

Lead Competitive Designer

For full patch notes, go here