The new season will start on Monday, August 4th.
Greetings Citizens!
This Season marks our 6 year anniversary, and the start of Grey Knights Season. As well as the full Anniversary celebration (more information on that coming soon), we have a new Supreme Commander on the way, Kaldor Draigo.
Additionally, as mentioned in the last balance blog, we’re going to look at a slightly new approach to balance changes, which will maximise impact, and streamline the changes each month.
Warlords are at the core of a deck and its power so going forward we are going to focus on Warlords for the foreseeable future. Our first iteration of this will be that the three lowest performing Warlords from the previous season will receive a buff, and the highest performing Warlord will receive a nerf. On top of that we will still do bodyguard adjustments for that Seasons focus faction, in this case Grey Knights.
Before we move on to these changes there’s one more thing to cover. With the Ranked arena modifiers, we’ve heard the feedback, and with the increased upcoming power level with Enhancements we’re changing the stat buff amount in the final arenas. Going forward the last three arenas will be as follows:
- Terra:Â +10 -> + 10%
- Imperial Palace: +20% -> +15%
- The Dark Cells:Â +30% -> +20%
This will mean that the step between arenas will be much smoother and that The Dark Cells is now capped at the previous level of the Imperial Palace.
With that news out the way lets look at the balance changes in full:
Warlord Changes:
Position: 66th, Winrate: 65.5%, Playrate: >0.1%
Hatred’s Embrace – Chaos Knight Abominant Dreadblade
-10 Cost
Overwhelming Carnage: All friendly cards with a cost of 40 or greater increase all attack stats by [40% -> 50%]
The knight Warlords are newer playable additions to the game, having existed as event Warlords for some time, and are not the most competitive at their current position. Not as powerful as the daemon primarchs, we are taking the cost down, which is a key difference given their reliance on high cost bodyguards, and also increasing the effectiveness of its special rule. This should be a big enough swing to make a serious amount of difference.
Position: 60th, Winrate: 70.2%. Playrate: >0.1%
Canis Rex – Sir Hekhtur the Chainbreaker
-10 Cost
While not performing as poorly as Hatred’s Embrace, Canis Rex isn’t overperforming by any means. Since we’re reducing Hatred’s Embrace’s cost we’re mirroring it here for Canis Rex, but his special rule remains unchanged, given its stronger position.
Position: 65th, Winrate: 66.6%, Playrate: 0.3%
Ett̫k Warspeke РGreater Thurian League Grimnyr
+40 Wounds
Ready Change: Psychic Debuff -> Ranged Buff
Despite being a terror to face in many scenarios, Ettok is not a high winrate Warlord at the moment. While one option would be to increase his nullify ability from 3 turns to 4, I don’t think anyone, even Ettok players, would be in favour of that. So, given he is already a very cost effective Warlord, we’ve increased his Wounds substantially, and have changed his ready. This ready change may be the most impactful, since Ranged is one of Votann’s strongest attack types, and gives him a better support role than currently.
Position: 64th, Winrate: 68.0%, Playrate: 0.1%
Trajann Valoris – Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes
Guardians of the Golden Throne: If a friendly card has 50% or more base Wounds remaining, boost its attack stats by [25% -> 40%]. If it has less than 50% base Wounds remaining, reduce incoming damage by [25% -> 30%].
Trajann is the lowest performing Supreme Commander and we’ve judged this to be because his ability buffs are fine, and nothing more exciting than that. As such, we’re cranking up the numbers on his special rule that should make an immediate and noticeable impact.
Bodyguard Changes:
Brother Varon – Grey Knight Battle Brother
+5 Psychic
+5 Melee
Apothecary Aralan – Grey Knights Paladin Apothecary
+8 Psychic
+3 Melee
Paragon Taremar Aurellian – Grey Knights Paladin Paragon
+3 Range
+10 Psychic
+5 Melee
Brother Moritar – Grey Knights Venerable Dreadnought
Trait Change: Psychic Link -> Shield
Cards added to the general pool:
Aeldari
Lhykhis
Phoenix Lord of the Warp Spiders
Servants of the Emperor
Arcadian Leontus
Lord Commander Solar
Death From Above
Death Korps Heavy Mortar Artillery Team
Sgt Kabil
Death Korps Death Rider Sgt
Mine-Sierra-II
Death Korps Remote Mine
Trooper Kraust
Death Korps Combat Engineer
Ganzorig
Attilan Rough Rider
Carver
Hades Breaching Drill
Great news dev team 🥰
Thank you for making this game great and 0kz never change the ingame music its perfect
Quite possibly the laziest changes to date. The BP doesn’t even have that many Grey Knights in it and most of the coin rewards have been removed in favour of tired old cards. This will be the third BP in a row I’ve passed on and that’s not something I’m chuffed about. You guys need to up your game.
Well, well, well…
The expectations were low, but… baby emperor bless us…
So, where to start…
The 3 worst performing warlords will get a buff and then you list 4 warlords… ok, ok, common mistake, let’s move on.
Objectives. 66-ish warlords to win with, plus the deal damage or take damage or win campaign objectives and yet, somehow, by some magical statistical anomaly, you cannot have a full stack of objectives without one of them being upgrade 3 cards, aka spend money… what are the odds of that… additionaly, there have been ZERO new objectives for years, or achievments, or anything to incite players. The only shortsighted goal you have is to make us spend money so we have to buy packs. Pathetic.
Matchmaking. The only deciding factor is win/loose stats for last seasons, so any warlord will overwhelmingly face the exact same enemies. I choose shooty deck, it’s melee deck or psychic. Over and over and over again… No variety, no changes, just the same boring battles.
Games go 2 ways, you either face a completely noob deck with lvl 1-4 cards, or some doomsday pack with maxed out cards, there’s basicly nothing in between. No scaling, no healthy challenge, it’s either you steamroll or you get steamrolled. Additionally, the points for win/loose have ZERO factoring for card levels, you get or loose the same amount against a maxxed out deck full of legendary cards as for a lvl 1 warlord that has a pony and a butterfly… complete amateur approach. Btw, if you don’t know how to do it, google it or just visit stackoverflow, you donuts.
The constant dei whining about how some cards/warlords are not used as much as others… they never will be, because all cards cannot be equally good, how is this concept so difficult to grasp after years of posing as game developers…
Factions have between 2 and 11 warlords and 35 to 225 units. How can you expect equal outcomes when lawn ornaments have 2 warlords and 35 units while chaos has 11 warlords and 180 units? Do I need to quote Dr Phil here to help you understand? Additionally, new warlords need time to be leveled up and getting used to, no competitive player will start using them asap and mess up his progress by experimenting with a lvl 1 guy that will get ganked in 1 hit if deployed.
Balance changes. Ok, ok, you listened and adjusted the unit bonuses in the arenas, well done. Please continue listening to the players and deal with the other unbalanced things. Morven and Magnus for example, this is supposed to be a strategic game, not a Las Vegas slot machine where on a 2+ you either get rich or die.
And this whole writing half a page about how x card lost his grandma at a young age and was very angry about it and then played football to help regulate his emotions so it makes sense to adjust his ranged skill, and on and on and then add +5 to a card that nobody is using and pat yourself on the shoulders because you fixed balance… Guys, game balance is not a thing. It is a commie utopia, that cannot be achieved. It could be made bettet, but that would require you to actually invest time and effort and do proper analysis and a major overhaul.
Greed. For some reason you peiple still live in the fantasy land of getting rich of a game that has a lot of improvement potential before making the improvements. Hitching the cart before the horse. So, listen, let me try and explain.
Trying to force people to buy cards and packs – NOT GOOD
Throwing random OP cards on the market without actually checking how it will affect game balance – NOT GOOD also leads to you having emotional breakdowns about card representation later on
Making the game unbalanced by favoring certain factions while ignoring others and then complaining about what you caused – NOT GOOD
Constantly chasing short terms goals in the hope of makibg quick bucks – NOT GOOD
Making a good game over time that has lots of players that enjoy it and have good revenue because you put in the work – GOOD
6 years you had and look at the player numbers in one of the most popular franchises with diehard fans. This is on you, guys. This is your incompetence, nothing else.
Offff, wow, that bottom comment… Jeez, must sting a little