Patch #400047 - Summer Swarm

Welcome to our newest patch. This update contains our thirteenth balance patch for the game and two brand-new cards!

Patch Preview

• Two new cards are now available! Jump in-game to collect Swarm and Icespike!
• A large amount of balance changes, mostly to T3 cards, in preparation for our release of the new campaign maps later in the year. 

General Changes

• Synced Map of the Day reset with Daily Quests, the achievement tip for Map of the Day now displays the full date with time when last completed.
• Added the statistic "time spent in matches" to the in-game profile. 
• Using the text search in the achievements window will now also look for missing maps and missing cards. For example, if you search "Crusade," it will return all achievements related to the PvE map Crusade that are still incomplete.  
• Added friend list and ignore list capacity indicator to the UI.
• Increased the friend list limit from 200 to 300 total accounts.
• Added more information to logs when getting errors or crashes, which should help us better diagnose the cause of game instabilities. 
• Added "Don't show again" to multiple Yes/No dialog boxes in the game. 

General Fixes

• Fixed game connections not being properly closed when the match ends. This should hopefully improve game stability.
• Fix AFK players BFP reserve drain considering more playtime than up to the last action.
• Fixed context menu items showing as white when clicked.
• Fixed visual bug of charge count not decreasing when removing upgrades.

New Cards

Icespike - 110p T3 Frost Unit 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Siege of Hope".
 
Active - Frozen Blanket:
Activate to bestow up to 5 friendly units within a 20m radius with an Ice Shield. Each Ice Shield absorbs up to 620/620/680/800 damage for 30 seconds and can be strengthened to absorb up to 2000 damage. Reusable every 30/20/20/20 seconds.
Passive - Brrrr!:
Attacked units are frozen for 15 seconds. After freeze wears off, targets are immune against Freeze for 10 seconds.

For more information, check out Community Update - May 2024.

Swarm - 90p T3 Nature Spell 
You will find the upgrades for this card on the map "Titans".

Spell - Beetle Infestation:
Summons a swarm of 4 Burrowers at the target location. The Burrowers have a lifetime of 20 seconds and do not provide ground presence to play out cards or claim structures next to them. Additionally, they are immune to revive effects and cannot be infected with the Twilight Curse. Reusable every 25 seconds.

For more information, check out Community Update - June 2024.

Card Balance Changes

[ Tier 1 Changes ]

 Mark of the Keeper:
1. Removed enemy player card play block.

Since the introduction of Tectonic Shift, Mark of the Keeper + Tectonic has become a PvP combo capable of completely disabling the enemy player's ability to respond and defend themselves. We are removing the card block ability to allow players to still summon cards inside a MotK aura. This will have no effect on PvE and this change does not affect the NPC version of Mark of the Keeper. 

 Thugs & Strikers:
1. Add "Marauder" tag to the game and add to Thugs and Strikers.
2. Change "Gang Up!" from "orcs" to "marauders."

We have been quite happy with the Gang Up! ability on Strikers and Thugs, but it currently has some weird interactions with Twilight Minions who are orcs but not part of the gang. We would also like to expand the Gang Up! ability to other cards, so we are swapping the effect from the species tag "orcs" to the new "marauder" tag both Thugs and Strikers already possess. 

[ Tier 2 Changes ]

 Banditos (incl. Corsair summons):
1. Alliance friendly unit requirement: 3 per stage ➜ 2 per stage
2. Blessed Alliance Rework:
   A. No longer based on nearby enemies
   B. Now grants increasingly more damage reduction based on number of friendly units nearby.
   C. Description - The unit will be incited to resist more damage when being surrounded by friendly units within a 25m radius. Per every 2 friendly ground units around them Banditos will receive 20% less damage up to a maximum of 6 units that will spur them on.

Part of our focus in the next 2 patches is to enable melee-based PvE strategies in the lower tiers. As part of this, we are enhancing Banditos' swarm identity by reducing the total number of Banditos needed to activate their bonuses. This will also indirectly buff Corsair. The new Frost affinity will grant scaling defensive bonuses, allowing Banditos (b) to act as a powerful frontline for Bandit armies.

 Befallen's Curse:
1. Power cost: 100 ➜ 90
2. Tainted Disease (p) damage reduction: 25% ➜ 40%
3. Both affinities: Fix the last infection's damage to properly match infection duration (180 dmg ➜ 200)

  Burrower:
1. Active ability Tunneling:
 - Change availablity from only U1/U2/U3 ➜ all upgrades.
2. Active ability Acid Spit:
 - Decreased damage from 850/850/1000/1100 (2550/2550/3000/3300 in total) ➜ 800/850/950/1100 (2400/2550/2850/3300 in total).
 - Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.
 - Fixed missing damage against mounted units on affected wall segments.
 - Added a preview of the ability radius that is displayed on hover over the activation button.
 - Changed display order on card visualization and tooltip from first ability to second ability to match activation icon order.

 Deep One:
1. Tainted catch debuff strength: 25% ➜ 40%

 Gladiatrix:
1. Sobering (both affinities) cooldown: 20 seconds ➜ 10 seconds

 Icefang Raptor:
1. Blessed Reserve (b) damage reduction: 30% ➜ 35%
2. Infused Reserve (r) damage reflection: 35% ➜ 60%

 Knight of Chaos:
1. Chaos range increased 20m ➜ 25m
2. Life Points: 900/900/950/950 ➜ 970/970/1020/1020
3. Fixed an issue where the aura would not affect units currently already affected by another instance of the debuff.
4. Added a preview of the ability radius that is displayed on hover over the unit, but only while the ability is active.

Pure Shadow is on the weak side in the current PvP meta. As a result, we are buffing Knight of Chaos to provide more reliable crowd control and to function as a better high health target for spell/ability combinations such as nasty surprise, mage bomb, and corpse explosion.

 Lost Dancer:
1. Blast damage: 80, up to 120 in total (670 dp20) ➜ 100, up to 150 in total (830 dp20)
2. Blast auto-cast range: 30m ➜ 40m
3. Tainted Blast human damage: 100% ➜ 50%
4. Infused Siege: 50% ➜ 30%

The +10m auto-attack range increase and +25% damage increase should improve Dancer's viability in both PvP and PvE. We reduced affinity specific damage bonuses to compensate for these other buffs, though the specific damage to structures and humans relative to each affinity remains largely the same. 

 Lyrish Knight:
1. Surge of Strength frozen damage buff: 50% ➜ 80% more damage

 Rageclaws:
1. Class: "Human Soldier" ➜ "Human Marauder"
2. Add "Gang Up!" to Rageclaws
3. Add “Group Pressure” to Rageclaws

Rageclaws now have Gang Up! and combo with Thugs and Strikers. 

 Revenant's Blessing:
1. Infused Immortal (r) damage buff: 30% ➜ 50% more damage
2. Bugfix: Now properly stacks with Lost Manabeast's Immortalize ability. 

Previously Revenant's Blessing, when combined with Manabeast's Immortalize ability, would cause Lost Wanderers and Lost Shades to instantly die. While we have fixed this instant-death issue, we have introduced an alternative issue where Immortalize, when combined with Revenant's Blessing, now makes the revenants of Lost Wanderer and Lost Shade live forever. While neither issue is ideal, we think it is better for the bug to benefit the players until we can figure out a permanent solution to the problem.

 Stone Shards:
1. Blessed Fury: Ignore freeze damage reduction ➜ Ignore freeze damage reduction and deal 50% more damage to frozen targets

 Stone Tempest:
1. Stone Wrath damage:  30/32/36/41 (45/48/54/62 in total) [840/890/1000/1140 dp20] ➜ 35/37/41/46 (52/55/61/69 in total) [870/920/1020/1150 dp20].

[ Tier 3 Changes ]

 Aura of Pain:
1. Power cost: 100/100/100/90 ➜ 90/90/90/80
2. Duration: 30 seconds ➜ 40 seconds
3. Card charges: 6/8/10/12 ➜ 10/14/17/20

Slight changes to Aura of Pain to encourage stacking the spell on own melee units. 

 Backlash:
1. Power cost: 120p ➜ 110p
2. Cooldown: 30 seconds ➜ 25 seconds

Small buff to Backlash to allow Fire decks to counter Swarm in T3. 

 Corsair:
1. Assistance cooldown: 90 / 90 / 60 / 60 seconds ➜ 45/45/30/30 seconds.
- Toggle ability Concentrate of summoned Commandos (Shadow):
  - Increased the activation cost from 10 power ➜ 20 power.

 Infect:
1. Total targets: 7/7/10/10 ➜ 6/6/8/8 enemies affected

Infect is one of the strongest spells in the game. We are slightly reducing the total targets to reduce its strength in ideal scenarios. 

 Lost Banestone:
1. Bugfix: Everlasting: No longer extends the lifetime of other temporary entities, but only Revenants.

 Lost Manabeast:
1. Bugfix: Increase attack speed to 3 seconds

Lost Manabeast has a slower attack speed than listed on the card, making the card deal around 25% less damage than originally intended.

 Lost Vigil:
1. Celestial Blast damage: 90, up to 135 (1125 dp20) ➜ 108, up to 162 (1350 dp20)
2. Invigoration damage: 135, up to 200 (1675 dp20) ➜ 162, up to 243 (2025 dp20)

Lost Vigil has languished ever since its nerf soon after the release of the Lost Souls edition in Phenomic times. It was nerfed at the time due to being overpowered in PvP. Since then, we have significantly buffed T3 anti-air units in PvP, so we now feel safe to give her a 20% damage buff.

 Magma Hurler:
1. Life points: 975/1000/1130/1270 ➜ 900/940/1020/1140

Slight tamper down on Magma Hurler’s life points. Magma Hurler has long been the go-to unit for Fire in T3 and it became more so when we buffed its damage several patches ago. While we are buffing up other Fire options in this and the next patch, we are slightly nerfing Magma Hurler to make space for those other options without killing the card.

 Northland Drake:
1. Tornado general changes:
   A. Duration: 15 seconds ➜ 8 seconds
   B. Damage per second: 108, up to 162 ➜ 232, up to 348
   C. Tornado length: 30m ➜ 35m
2. Blizzard power cost: 70p ➜ 50p
3. Blessed Blizzard (b) freeze speed: Every 3 seconds ➜ Every 1.5 seconds
4. Infused Blizzard (r) extra damage: 100 damage ➜ 200 damage.

The goal with these changes is to double the speed of the tornado and to adjust the other numbers accordingly to maintain existing damage and freeze numbers. The hope is that this will make the tornado more usable through higher responsiveness.

 Nox Carrier:
1. Infused Necrostrike (r) Ripper count: 2 ➜ 3 Rippers summoned
2. Tainted Necrostrike (p) poison damage 40 ➜ 50 damage per second

 Sandstorm:
1. Power cost: 140p ➜ 100p

Sandstorm remains well outside of general viability despite the previous buffs. Instead of increasing card damage, we have reduced the card’s power cost again to encourage using it as a crowd control alternative.

 Shadow Insect:
1. Damage: 1200 dp20 ➜ 1440 dp20

 Sleet Storm:
1. Spell duration 10 seconds ➜ 15 seconds

 Soulhunter:
1. Minefield damage: 80/80/100/100 against units and 21.25/21.25/25/25 against structures (240/240/300/300 in total) ➜ 160/160/200/200 against units and 20/20/25/25 against structures (480/480/600/600 in total).

Buffing up Soulhunter's ability to not be outcompeted by its T2 spell equivalent. 

 Spitfire:
1. Ground Bomb damage: 270/290/320/350 (405/435/480/530 in total) [5510/5610/5760/5920 dp20] ➜ 376/396/426/466 (565/595/640/700 in total) [5880/5980/6130/6330 dp20]
2. Siege: 100% ➜ 50%

Move damage out of siege and into the ground bomb itself to improve Spitfire’s usability outside of building siege situations. Damage to buildings remains identical while damage to non-buildings increases by 33%.

 Stronghold:
1. Power cost: 200p ➜ 230p
2. Passive ability To the Last!:
   A. Both stages of internal damage buff and damage reduction are now stackable with external sources of damage modification.
   B. Both stages of internal damage reduction can no longer be disenchanted.

Since the buffs and the release of Tectonic Shift, Stronghold has been too strong in both PvP and PvE. We are slightly increasing its cost to fit its new strength.  

 Tectonic Shift:
1. Initial spell application timer (cooldown): 20 seconds ➜ 10 seconds
   A. This is the spell application timer, not the teleport ability timer.

Allow players to apply Tectonic Shift to multiple towers more quickly. 

 Transcendence:
1. Orb cost: Shadow, Nature, Neutral, Neutral (T4) ➜ Shadow, Nature, Neutral (T3)

Give players access to Transcendence earlier, enabling more T3 army strategies.

 Unity:
1. Card charges: 6/8/10/12 ➜ 8/11/14/16

 Unstable Demon:
1. Demonic Rage:
   A. Movement speed bonus and acceleration 60% ➜ 100
   B. Duration 5 seconds ➜ 4 seconds
   C. Cooldown 15 seconds ➜ 5 seconds
2. Critical Mass damage : 560/700/900/900 (2000/2500/3000/3000 in total) ➜ 560/700/900/900 (4000/5000/6000/6000 in total)
  - Fixed incorrect handling of overkill damage.

 Virtuoso:
1. Trumpet of Jelicoo building damage:  600/675/750/825 (1700/1800/2000/2200 in total) ➜ 600/675/750/885 (1700/1800/2000/2200 in total)

We are currently reworking Girl Power into a melee-support card, and once it releases, it will, alongside this minor buff, allow Virtuoso to one-shot small spawn buildings with its ability. 

 Vulcan:
1. Flamethrower damage: 120 per second (2400 dp20) ➜ 140 per second (2800 dp20)
2. Conflagrate damage: 265 per second ➜ 280 per second

 Wrathgazer:
1. Power cost: 220p ➜ 200p
2. Disintegration speed: 150/150/150/165 ➜ 170/170/170/185 life points per second

[ Tier 4 Changes ]

 Colossus:
1. Thunderous Roar Rework:
   A. Releases a bloodcurdling roar that riles up Colossus. The unit will deal 75% more damage for 25 seconds. Additionally, Lumbering Step is activated for 25 seconds. Reusable every 30 seconds.
2. New ability, "Lumbering Step":
   A. Turn Speed - Increase turn speed by 50% for the duration.
   B. Damage: 200, up to 1000 in total.
   D. Description: "While moving around unit knocks back small and medium units dealing 200 damage, up to 1000 in total to enemies. Affects ground units only. "
3. New Ability, "Colossal Birth": When being spawned the unit is undazed and displaces the earth, knocking back small, medium, and large units. Can be spawned nearby enemy units and structures excluding walls. Affects ground units only.

Colossus's rework design was previously decided upon with community help, but the final implementation never managed to happen due to a lack of implementation capacity and a later shift in priorities towards other factions. This rework will finally see the light of day and provide the long promised melee-partner for Forest Elder (b). Colossus's Roar gives it a major self-damage buff, allowing it to kill bosses quickly, while the Lumbering Step gives it a Thunder Wagon-esque ability to damage enemies just by walking through them. 

 Kobold Inc.:
1. Orb cost: 3 Frost, 1 Neutral ➜ 2 Frost, 2 Neutral
2. Blessed Speed-up (b):
   A. Speed-up & Description: 50% faster ➜ Construction time is reduced by 66%
3. Tainted Speed-up (p) drawback: 400 damage ➜ 25% of maximum life points lost on spawn
4. Add Construction Hut cost reduction effect (-25% power cost) to both affinities.
5. Initial cooldown: 60 seconds ➜ 0 seconds

As part of our continual focus on creating a new building archetype, we want to propose several changes to Kobold Inc. As a T4 Frost building, Kobold Inc. should be the ultimate building support. One issue is its orb requirements. All other Frost buildings and their support requires only 2 orbs (this is similar to how all root network cards are available for 2 orbs), but Kobold Inc. uniquely requires 3 orbs. We think this unnecessarily constrains the card and limits what is actually available to use with Kobold Inc, which right now it really only Stronghold or WBG unless Kobold Inc is enlightened. After this change, other cards like Volcano, Deepgorge, Hatecaster, Artillery, or Comet Catcher when player's orb swap for Sages will become available for use with Kobold Inc.

Next, we want to equalize the different affinities. We are increasing the frost affinity's speed-up while making the shadow affinity's penalty percentage based. This will make it a choice between rapid construction or instant construction with health loss. It also removes edge cases like U0 Altar of Nihil which is instantly destroyed by Kobold Inc. because it only has 400 life points. Additionally, we are adding Construction Hut's discount to Kobold Inc., which seems like an obvious addition. T1 cards shouldn't outcompete T4 cards in the same role. Last, we are removing the initial cooldown from the card as it functions as an unneeded time penalty. This is only step one of the changes to Kobold Inc., as we have more changes planned for the frost affinity to ensure it is a compelling choice instead of players defaulting to the shadow affinity. 

 Lost Evocation:
1. Power cost: 140p ➜ 110p
2. Blessed Revenant damage reduction buff: 50% ➜ 60%
3. Infused Revenant damage buff: 100% ➜ 120%
4. Affected units can now receive the buff again if they re-enter the area of effect and the previous buff's duration has expired.

 Lost Warlord:
1. Add affinity effects to revenant's spawned by Revenant's Doom.

 Spore Launcher:
1. Remove slow, now moves at normal XL speed (6.4 m/s).
2. Remove Siege, add XL-counter
3. Add L-knockback to Explosive Spores

We are trying out a minor identity change for Spore Launcher, making it more mobile with stronger built-in crowd control. We realize this is unlikely to make it the preferred choice for root network absent changes to Razorleaf. 

 Tortugun:
1. Eruption:
   A. Remove affinity effect from Eruption, change both Eruption affinities to current Fire affinity with the Fire affinity description (50m range).
2. New Devour Affinities:
   A. Blessed (b) Devour: "Additionally, unit receives 50% less damage for 20 seconds after consuming a unit."
   B. Infused (r) Devour: "Additionally, unit deals 100% more damage for 20 seconds after consuming a unit."

Tortugun's affinities are wildly unequal with one having 30m range and the other having 50m range. We are making both affinities have 50m range and moving the affinity effects to Devour. Players are now encouraged to strategically time feeding their Tortuguns to gain access to a large damage reduction or damage increase buff for a short time. 

 

Map Changes

Uro (PvP Map):
Removed both red-colored fortification walls (incl. official spectator version of the map).

King of the Giants (PvE Map):
1. The unlikely event of Jorne dying now results in game over instead of soft-locking the players into the map.
2. Increased the detection range for both Rogan and Jorne near the final cave to end the map by 15m. This should decrease instances of players failing to complete the map despite successfully guiding Rogan to his objective.

Blight (PvE Map):
Fixed a rare crash that occurred when players were destroying the objective spawn buildings as the timer ended. 

Can't wait to try Icespike with ice age.

The green spell is gonna be nasty in pvp. Should also be useful in pve while CC'ing the camp units, not as much vs willzapper.

I really like banditos as a concept so I'm excited to try it out.

I like befallen being cheaper so it can more easily be cast as a disabling effect.

Lost dancer being a 40 range unit at T2 that hits air is really interesting. Especially since it can also have siege and an S counter.

I always liked rageclaws so I'll see how good the change is. I normally use them with frost so I'd see how they perform with wintertide instead of freezing enemies.

Aura of pain has high theoretical damage but hard to make the best use of with the low range and slow damage (especially compared to the nature and shadow T3 damage spells). Might be more worthwhile now.

I feel like corsair purple is gonna be a lot worse than the other with the changes to commandos and banditos.

I'm happy lost manabeast is buffed, though the ability is kinda hard to find the best moment to use.

Biggest problem with northland and soulhunter is the time wasted moving to and during animation so any help is good.

I'd like to use sandstorm but knocking units away from itself kinda sucks. Will still try it out.

I'd prefer sleet storm if the effect was immediate on entry. Considering it's basically ensnaring roots + gravity surge but only on T3 the delay is kinda annoying.

Transcendence is kinda winmore on T4 but it might be better on T3 since you use smaller units.

I REALLY like the changes to unstable demon. The ability having lower cd gives a lot more control over its health and the explosion dealing 6K might be worth it on pve.

Can't wait to try colossus now that it's not just a vanilla unit with good stats.

Kobold inc really suffered from having triple frost orbs and 60s delay. It basically was only useable with worldbreaker and stronghold. I even tried using the normal and promo worldbreaker for more charges. A lot more options now. I hope the next buff to the frost one is either an ice shield or, even better, 50% total discount on buildings.

I'm so happy lost warlord got this change. It was so annoying to me not getting the cool new ability on the normal revenant. Also unintuitive.

I'm definitely using the infused tortugun. It's all about dealing damage on a long range with that card. I dont care about damage reduction on it if the enemies are just dead.

 

I'm glad there'll be no more softlocks on king of the giants (hopefully). Those are really annoying.

That is a big Patch . Thanks to the hole Team for the amount of work !

The new Card Swarm is soo good .

Thanks for keeping us (players) entertained with a lot adds every month - literally you keep making the game better and better - we appreciate your work ! Both PvE and PvP players will be satisfied ! Big Love - 4esan4o ! ❤️

is it possible to add the visible radius on the ground for the necroexplosion ability of lost dancer.

Hotfixes

30 June 2024

• Fix Map of the Day not being choosen on daily reset
• Fix "TODO" on friend and ignore list indicators
• Fix Happy Hour times not being displayed using the player timezone
• Fix missing time on tip for Map of the Day achievement "Feel the Burn"

 

07 July 2024

• Fix PvP leaderboard considering players with zero matches
• Try fix huge BFP and Gold numbers on postgame window
• Fix replays not playing when double clicked
• Fix player context menu incorrectly showing certain buttons

 

10 July 2024

• Fix error when opening mails
• Second try fix huge BFP and Gold numbers on postgame window

 

31 July 2024

• Third try fix huge BFP and Gold numbers on postgame window
• Fix PvP not giving rewards when opponent quits by Alt + F4
• Revert hide players with zero activity on PvP leaderboard
• Cap daily quests and map of the day achievement to Advanced difficulty

 

01 August 2024

• Revert "Fix PvP not giving rewards when opponent quits by Alt + F4" that is the probable cause for the recent game freezes

 

04 August 2024

• Redo "Fix PvP not giving rewards when opponent quits by Alt + F4", games shouldn't freeze now
• Fix achievement Outsourced Content not progressing, the current progress will be corrected based on the match history

 

05 August 2024

• Fix not being able to reroll quests

Great work again.

Lovely stuff. Really looking forward for the boosted T3 units especially, and of course, the new cards. 

Doses Blight Expert become harder after tha patch or what? I don't remember Snipers so early... and so many windhunters.

On 6/30/2024 at 5:33 AM, Carofex said:

is it possible to add the visible radius on the ground for the necroexplosion ability of lost dancer.

We can probably make this happen, I'll ask our card implementers.

Speaking about lost dancer: Is it on purpose that her default attack is not homing?

1 hour ago, Carofex said:

Speaking about lost dancer: Is it on purpose that her default attack is not homing?

Isn't the same true for Firedancer?

1 hour ago, Metagross31 said:

Isn't the same true for Firedancer?

Firedancer shoots artillery projectiles in an arc, but the Lost Dancer shoots projectiles straight like the Frost Sorceress. So its something different.

And the Frost Sorceress has homing.

Edited July 6, 20242 yr by Carofex

She has thrice the damage radius tho....

Give Lost Dancer spam a chance. She can lay down crazy AoE damage because her impact area is massive. Unlike with a lot of other AoE ranged units you are pretty much guaranteed to benefit from her full damage in most situations.

On 6/29/2024 at 3:11 PM, WindHunter said:

for root network absent changes to Razorleaf. 

what changes to Razorleaf?


nevertheless - great work with update 😉

On 7/8/2024 at 8:46 PM, Draconnor said:

what changes to Razorleaf?


nevertheless - great work with update 😉

Razorleaf will likely see a slight damage nerf in the future. The card was already stronger than most T4 defenses before we made any changes, and our root network rework made it even stronger. While it is an iconic part of the game, and we intend to keep it very strong, we want to tone it down to be closer to a strong T4 unit than a functionally T5 unit, which only requires T3 to access. Razorleaf also shoves out all other options for root network decks once you reach T3. The amount of power creep we would need to introduce to make Spore Launcher or Howling Shrine viable alternatives is far in excess of what would be acceptable given the strength of the game content. 

21 hours ago, WindHunter said:

Razorleaf will likely see a slight damage nerf in the future. The card was already stronger than most T4 defenses before we made any changes, and our root network rework made it even stronger. While it is an iconic part of the game, and we intend to keep it very strong, we want to tone it down to be closer to a strong T4 unit than a functionally T5 unit, which only requires T3 to access. Razorleaf also shoves out all other options for root network decks once you reach T3. The amount of power creep we would need to introduce to make Spore Launcher or Howling Shrine viable alternatives is far in excess of what would be acceptable given the strength of the game content. 

i'm bit afraid. While Razor is indeed great defender with full root link... it still needs wall or howling shrine (ok ok stranglehold can try to do the work) to stop enemy units in his delayed aoe.... to be honest. Delaying it half second more could be more interesting than damage nerf to be honest.

But still im big Razor lover - and it was my first Promo unit bought after the "out of beta" restart as i remember 😉 
But Howling (with skyelf sage) is also great... but not as good looking as promo razor 😉 And on some maps i even add bandit sorcerer to make it greater with enlightement in deck only for her 😉

Nevertheless i will trest new spoore launcher asap... but i have so much work to do lately 😞 

On 7/10/2024 at 5:06 AM, WindHunter said:

Razorleaf will likely see a slight damage nerf in the future. The card was already stronger than most T4 defenses before we made any changes, and our root network rework made it even stronger. While it is an iconic part of the game, and we intend to keep it very strong, we want to tone it down to be closer to a strong T4 unit than a functionally T5 unit, which only requires T3 to access. Razorleaf also shoves out all other options for root network decks once you reach T3. The amount of power creep we would need to introduce to make Spore Launcher or Howling Shrine viable alternatives is far in excess of what would be acceptable given the strength of the game content. 

Razorleaf isnt that strong for example a single Spore Launcher with full root support can easily defend any position on Bad Harvest expert without spell support while Razorleaf cant.

I usually defend the southern exit with Spore Launcher and that works great i tried that with Razor Leaf and it had no chance.

Im more of an rPvE Player and Bad Harvest is the only campaign map i play regularely so im not an expert but in my opinion Razorleaf isnt functionally a T5 unit its not even a T4 unit.

 

 

Each attack of Razorleaf has a damage potential of 1530 right out of the box. 1275 averaged. That is 5100 DP20. Without any support. Though the damage is spread out over a relatively big area so single target damage is usually only around 450-500.

Fully supported it's 35700 DP20. Somewhere around 13000 DP20 on single targets. Plus artillery range and ability to hit air. Assuming Thornbark support and a Root Nexus you pay 530p for that. Breeding Grounds knocks that down to 405p.

A fully supported Sporelauncher has 18375 DP20. Slightly higher single target of about 14700 DP20. That means Razorleaf is almost twice as strong. Plus is can hit air. Only downside being that with Root Nexus B it's "only" 4275 EHP, while Spore Launcher virtually cannot die.

1 hour ago, Cocofang said:

while Spore Launcher virtually cannot die.

And thats why Spore Launcher is better in my opinion he has no problem dealing with 2 Bandit Walkers while Razorleaf doesnt stand a chance.

Edit: I just tested it in the forge, Razorleaf gets destroyed by 2 Walkers while Spore Launcher can beat 4 Walkers

Edited July 11, 20242 yr by Fimion

Yeah, well now that Spore Launcher has XL damage and more knockback it obviously got better in those isolated situations. In a lot of other situations you're still looking at an enormous difference in damage and versatility.

19 hours ago, Draconnor said:

i'm bit afraid. 

I think we have proven sufficiently that we can be trusted to make balance adjustments to cards without killing them when we specifically state we do not intend to kill them. Consider that in the past you needed 360-420p to fully support one Razorleaf (now only 240p), and that each root network could only contain a maximum of 10 support (now unlimited), meaning that you could not even have 2 fully supported Razorleaves next to each other. So the existing networks are cheaper, more flexible (different units, Sylvan Gate), and stronger than they used to be. All that extra power and flexibility has let players easily cover Razorleaf's weaknesses with cards like Strangehold, Healing Gardens, and Timeshifter Spirit. So it is not surprising an already top-tier card became too powerful when combined with all these indirect buffs, something which has become very apparent in several of the defense-based maps we have been developing. 

Per the other comments: Cherrypicking a single, very niche, situation where Spore Launcher can be better does nothing to say Razorleaf is not too powerful and in need of a nerf. Any person who has used the card in its intended environment, with a well-built root network deck, would not say that Razorleaf is not that strong, especially compared to all other T3 defenses in existence. Measuring the card in a random duel with other units also completely misses the point, as Razorleaf defenses are intended to be layered defenses. You can get a Stranglehold, a Timeshifter, a Healing Gardens, and Promise of Life the Razorleaf (i.e. unbind it) for less power than it takes to go T4, assuming you even have access to T4 in a given campaign map (which is often not the case).