Trait Rank 4 is now just around the corner, and will be arriving next Monday with the change in season. As such we will be rolling the balance changes for Season 16 into the end of the post, and it will be a small one as Trait Rank 4 is a pretty major change, which will need at least a season to settle down on its own.
Why Trait Rank 4?
Traits offer a huge amount of tactics, flavour and personality to a card, but it can take a long time to unlock traits as a new player, and a significant amount of time until you can field a whole deck with traits. Add to that that a lot of traits become impactful when reaching what is currently Trait Rank 2 and we have a system that takes a long time to open up strategically. That’s something we want to fix here and make sure that the full level of tactical play is open to players from the start. By introducing a 4th Trait Rank we’re able to give these tools earlier by moving traits to the front of the upgrade path.
The second element is the power level between Traits. Currently there is a pretty significant spike in power at each trait level. This is partly due to having a small number of fixed increases, its power is going to get exponentially bigger, but add to that the stat increases in between traits, creating a doubling of power output. As such to balance this, as well as adding a 4th level, traits will not follow the current pattern of [0+x, 2x, 3x] but instead [x, x+y, x+2y, x+3y]. This gives us a lot more control and means that by setting the first trait level a bit higher than currently and then have smaller fixed increments from there we can have a much more evenly distributed power increase between the traits.
Which brings on to the final point which is more for us, but it makes balancing much easier and fluid. A lot of the time when trying to create or balance traits the base value and increases can be a real headache between too strong/too weak but with this new flexibility we should be able to get a huge amount more precision in these changes.
How’s it going to work?
So the most important thing to say straight away is that the number of levels and cards needed to full level a card will not change. Your cards will remain the same level they are currently and there will be no changes to the amount of copies held, upgrade costs or anything like that.
To make this work how cards gain traits will change a bit, so going forward:
– Legendary cards will start Trait Rank 2
– Epic cards will start Trait Rank 1
– Common and Rare cards will get Trait Rank 1 with their first upgrade
To allow the space for this additional trait upgrade for commons and rares, the first stat upgrade of each of these cards will be added to their base stats.
Here are the new upgrade trees for each rarity:
Legendary
Epic
Rare
Common
What’s also a nice bonus is that as you can see it’s allowed for very even stat upgrade spacing meaning the card progression so feel very uniform across all rarities.
Trait values
So what most of you have probably been keenest to find out, how is this going to affect trait values going forward? Here is the full list of the new trait values:
- Furious Charge: 40/60/80/100%
- Precision Shot: 40/60/80/100%
- Warp Surge: 40/60/80/100%
- Medicae: 15/20/25/30%
- Shielded: 1/2/3/4 Turns
- Taunt: 2 Fixed Turns, 10/20/30/40% Damage Reduction
- Inspiring Presence: 15/20/25/30%
- Regen: +4/8/12/16
- Poison: -4/8/12/16
- Scout: 150/200/250/300%
- Fear: 30/40/50/60%
- Barrage: 15/20/25/30%
- Endless: 40/60/80/100%
- Berserk: +3/6/9/12
- BGH: 30/45/60/75%
- Psychic Link: 25/30/35/40%
- Outflank: 15/20/25/30%
- Target Acquired: 2 Fixed Turns, 10/15/20/25% Damage Boost
- Psionic Blast: 15/20/25/30%
- Deathblow: 75/90/105/120% + 15/20/25/30%
As you can see a lot of the traits max value is remaining the same and that is due to the fact that a lot of the traits are currently in a great place. The damage traits (Furious Charge, Precision Shot and Warp Surge) have all seen an increase, which we feel is needed. Shield has also increased, and the main reason for this was that a lot of the newer traits have really brought down its effectiveness and so with it being one of the oldest traits that has slowly become less useful it felt reasonable to give it the bump up.
The final most significant changes are to Taunt and Target Acquired. Both of these traits will now last a fixed two turns from the first trait level with the damage decrease for Taunt, and a new damage increase for TA being the only variables. This should make Trait Rank 1 for both traits much more useful as it means that you guarantee to cover both yours and your opponents turns.
With that, we rounded off all that we need to cover on Trait Rank 4. Needless to say there’s a lot of change here and we’re really excited to see how this improves the game for players at all stages of the game.
Season 16 Balance Changes:
As mentioned at the beginning because of the game wide changes that Trait Rank 4 is going to bring we’ve only got a very short list of bodyguard changes this time round. Additionally there will be no warlord changes for the moment either, as Traits and Special Rules often have an impact on each other and so it makes sense to let this settle first.
Necrons:
Engine of Murder – Sautekh Dynasty Canoptek Tombstalker
Cost Change: 85 -> 80 (Down 5)
Servants of the Emperor:
Dead Eyes’ Dunno – Astra Militarum Ratling Sniper
Stat Change: +4 Base Range
Space Marines:
Captain Karludo – Iron Ravens Captain
Stat Change: +5 Base Melee
Iron Chaplain Furnous – Iron Hands Chaplain
Stat Change: +5 Base Melee
Brother Ishmael – Crimson Fists Company Champion
Stat Change: +5 Base Melee
Chaos:
Khan’zhar the Red – Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster
Ready Change: Psychic Debuff -> Melee Buff
Haarken Worldclaimer – Herald of the Apocalypse
Stat Change: +4 Base Range, +4 Base Melee
Hakkon Karnikus – Crimson Slaughter Terminator Lord
Stat Change: + 5 Base Melee
Horlax the Heartless – Crimson Slaughter Terminator
Stat Change: +5 Base Melee
That rounds off the balance change and the blog. Really looking forward to Trait Rank 4 and the core change this should offer to the game.
As ever feel free to join the discussion on Discord: https://discord.gg/9teFN6G or join us on Twitch, where we aim to get a livestream out once a month: https://www.twitch.tv/well_played_games
I am so excited about this! There are so many groups with combinations that I had to play for 4 months, and spend money, to unlock at **level one** and was hoping that it would get patched but not really thinking it would. Now the cards I buy are more impaction to my collection, and the cards I earn matter even more! Getting to bounce outflank cards with the Aeldari Wytch leader, people will get the Barrage with Orks sooner, and heals in the imperium makes Apothacary builds a viables trategy. I’m hyped. Thank you for the continued updates and support to the game. It’s definitely worth playing when the developers really value it.
Thanks for the update
Deathblow: 75/90/105/120% + 15/20/35/30%
Do you mean 15/20/25/30% ?
Very cool, keep up the hard work. Really like what you guys are doing.
Do you want to delight those few hardcore players who are ready to stick to the game for countless hours and years? ok, but these players aren’t making you money. Donations are made for you by casual players who want to have fun and are not ready to pour all their time into the game. And now these ordinary players will perfectly see that they will never pump their cards to the maximum level. You have just presented to the world a plan for the financial ruin of your project.
BCG
Zagstrukk still needs his scout adjusted. The ability that he has is a nerf because he can only benefit from a single scout move. As a result it is pointless to get him to max level
Why do I need to now get over 300000 to get from level 71 to 72??
Looks interesting. On the face of it, most cards seem more dangerous (for both teams). Not sure how that will feel, but I’m hopeful.
I’m concerned that high-damage shielded cards (Annihilation Barge etc) will be too difficult to break through before they wreck the whole deck.
Also, I think this change will only further highlight how multiple Outflank cards have pretty quick diminishing returns due to the debuff floor of 80% or whatever; several factions have enough Outflank cards that its easy to get into a situation where the 2/3 cards you can choose to deploy have an Outflank trait that won’t do anything (or will only steal psychic, which… whatever…). I know not every trait will always be ideal, but at least most of them aren’t completely useless some of the time.
On that note, I think it’s time for Medicae to get a quick tweak so it’s not the only trait where deployment order actually matters. At least so that it only triggers after all 3 cards have been deployed.
As soon as I read “which brings on to the final point, which is more for us” I switched off. Another change by top players for top players 20%/80% method. How does this benefit low to middle players who will be coming against decks who have traits already set at 60+?
Deathblow is already too powerful. Players who can’t afford to upgrade simply don’t have a chance to compete with any of this.
Correct me if I’m wrong but if this wasn’t a typo then you changed the stat increases from berserk. It currently is +4, +8, +12. It looks like you’ve changed it to +3, +6, +9, +12. If that’s the case why not just add a +16 onto what’s already there? This looks to be an unnecessary nerf in my opinion.
Shields used in deck : Canoness
Shields used by WL: Canoness
Strongest WL before trait 4: Canoness
Shields upgraded + 1 on already strongest deck: BROKEN GAME
Buffing all the cards only makes it better for the top level players since they already have the most powerful decks. I play for fun because I don’t have hours to spend on the game nor do I have loads of cash to plough into it, like many many others. What I’m now experiencing in ranked mode is constant defeats simply because my cards aren’t up to scratch. All this will do is allow even more powerful decks at lower levels.
I think this new way you & all your company are doing is amazing! Sorry if I was incorrect about my original statement. Thank you 4 everything you do! I can’t wait to start 2 play!!!
I don’t see how this benefits low level players at all. A few games in and I’ve met decks that can wipe me out with one or two rounds. There’s no way counter it when the AI has a deck with maxed traits. When there’s so many harder decks out there surely you should look at ways of making the matches more evenly placed than simply making all the cards even more powerful.