Early Access Patch v0.7

Patch v.0.7 is nearly here!

Patch Notes 17 мая 2023 г.

Summary

Patch releasing 12.00 GMT May 16th, 2023.

Greetings Champions! It’s time to talk about Content Update V0.7!

As the thick fog clears around a wrathful Forest, Morigesh is revealed as the next Hero joining the Predecessor roster!

We’re practically buzzing to talk about this deadly force of nature, but first we want to go into more detail about those oft-mentioned TTK changes we’ve been promising.

V0.7 represents the first half of the large sweeping changes we’re making to fully address the TTK (Time To Kill) issues we’ve identified in Predecessor. Specifically, this week we’re resting our sights on Crests, Minion Towers and XP issues. These can all be tackled separately and should serve to lay a stronger foundation for the upcoming 0.7.X Balancing Patch that will dive deeper into Hero base stats, Abilities and Items. It’s important that we make those changes in tandem, otherwise we risk creating some rather harsh imbalances.

For now our first goal is to decrease Crest sustain and lower their overall stats. This will allow us to create a Laning environment where committing to your abilities when trading feels more meaningful, as damage will carry more significance and force opponents to return to base more often. It will also allow us to provide more base durability, making it harder for Heroes to take each other out in the early stages of the game when they commit to those all-in pushes. Lastly it also allows us to decrease Minion damage to Heroes as there will be less natural sustain to mitigate it. With these changes we’ll be taking the opportunity to rework some T3 Crests to help provide more exciting Power Fantasies for you all to enjoy.

After this we have changes to our XP gains from objectives. We’ll mostly be shifting away from global XP sources so that leads achieved on one side of the map don’t tip the balance on the other side. It can feel really unfair for a player to be winning their lane, but global XP sources catch their opponent up in spite of their efforts. This is a leading cause of team snowballing and how objectives can snowball into each other.

Finally, we’re also taking the opportunity to review our last new Hero, Phase, after lots of valuable community feedback. Her kit struggles a lot due to her former identity and legacy from Paragon, having had tools that incentivised a backline-heavy playstyle that was often quite non-interactive. Right now it’s beyond our scope and capacity to rework her playstyle into a more close-range one as it would require heavier revisions to all elements of her kit holistically. Instead we’ll be repositioning Phase into more of an enchanter role, hoping to carve out a strong identity as a Hero that can rescue her teammates from crucial mistakes.

- Bloodmordius, Senior Game Designer

HOTFIXES

Hotfix V0.7.1 (16/05/23)

◆ Resolved an issue that replaced important and useful text with [SPANISH]???

A NEW HERO APPEARS

Morigesh emerges from the eerie swamp!

Grab your insect repellent Champions, Morigesh arrives from the swamp to join the Predecessor roster!

This fierce force of the forest has been added to the Early Access bundles, meaning she’ll be unlocked for free, for everyone, immediately.

ABILITIES:

Pestilence [Passive]:
Effect: Morigesh's damaging abilities apply Pestilence for 3s, dealing 0.5% (+0.15% per 75 Magical Power) of the target's maximum health as magical damage every 0.5s.

Subsequent damaging abilities against a target affected by Pestilence will refresh the duration and spread the effect to nearby enemy targets.

Dagger [Basic Attack] [LMB]:
Ranged basic attack dealing physical damage.

Hive [Primary Ability] [Q]:
Cooldown: 14/13/12/11/10
Cost: 80/85/90/95/100
Effect: Morigesh throws a hive of insects that explodes dealing 60/105/150/195/240 (+45% Magical Power) magical damage.

Damaging a Marked Enemy Target slows them by 20% for 3s.

Swarm [Secondary Ability] [E]:
Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12
Cost: 50/60/70/80/90
Effect: Become the swarm, gaining 20% movespeed for 3s. Passing through Enemy Targets deals 80/115/150/185/220 (+60% Magical Power) magical damage and restores 5/10/15/20/25 (+5% Magical Power) health.

Passing through a Marked Enemy Target restores 8x more health.

Mark [Alternate Ability] [RMB]:
Cooldown: 6/5.5/5/4.5/4
Cost: 50/60/70/80/90
Effect: Select an enemy hero to deal 70/105/140/175/210 (+45% Magical Power) magical damage and transform your Voodoo Doll into their image.

Abilities have additional effects vs your Marked Target and they may be targeted by Curse.

Curse [Ultimate Ability] [R]:
Cooldown: 120/100/80
Cost: 100
Effect: After a brief channel, summon a horde of insects to stab the Marked target, dealing 250/400/550 (+75% Magical Power) magical damage.

The Mark is removed upon casting this ability.

GENERAL UPDATES

TUTORIAL MODE

Alongside Morigesh, we’re excited to introduce the Tutorial feature in this update, marking our commitment to improving the onboarding experience for new players. This feature plays a vital role in helping new players familiarize themselves with the core and fundamental gameplay elements they need to succeed in Predecessor. Upon launching the game, some new players will be dropped directly into the Tutorial, where they will be guided through core mechanics; including Abilities, Experience, Leveling Up, Gold, Minions, Towers, Enemy Heroes, and the overall goal of the game. The Tutorial can be revisited repeatedly and accessed by everyone from the Game Mode menu.

It's important to note that this initial implementation of the Tutorial focuses on providing a solid foundation of knowledge. While it covers many essential elements, there is still much more to be learned by playing through Predecessor. We are committed to supporting new players with additional tutorials and onboarding features in the future to help address more advanced gameplay.

NEW SKINS

More skins are hitting the store including an Omeda Studios-original Corporate Enforcer Lt. Belica!

◆ Inner Fire Feng Mao [Common]
◆ Corporate Enforcer Lt. Belica [Rare]
◆ Dark Heart Morigesh [Rare]

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

◆ Improved various Map collisions and made a number of minor visual improvements.
◆ Made improvements to Map/Ward logic.
◆ Replay Mode - Players can now use number keys to snap the Chase Camera to specific heroes.
◆ Replay Mode - Players can now click on specific Hero portraits to snap the Chase Camera to said hero.
◆ Replay Mode - Added a sphere of non-essential terrain deletion around the camera.
◆ Replay Mode - Various control fixes.
◆ Heroes can no longer attack after the core has been destroyed.
◆ AI Heroes are now correctly blinded by Phase Psychic Flare.

BALANCE CHANGES

Heroes

Kicking things off with Phase, we’re looking to increase the value of linking to your allied target by providing a scaling, more substantial power buff that benefits all Heroes. We’ll also be increasing her early game durability to help out her weaker laning phase. Her passive will also be reworked to better place her in the Enchanter playstyle. We know some players are worried about the implications of Phase having access to healing again due to her performance in Paragon, however we feel that we have substantial checks and balances in place to prevent abusive interactions, and will be monitoring it carefully. To start with, healing will not be based on her own health regeneration, as this can reach vastly different levels of impact based on item effects that can create hard-to-balance scenarios whilst making it still feel impactful without those interactions. Lastly we’ll be shifting the healing away from her ultimate ability and granting Haste instead. This should make the ultimate vastly superior when cast with a linked Mage. These changes should help reinforce Phase as a one-on-one protector with powerful single target heals and enhancements, whilst still lacking team wide effects. This will make her a powerful laner and skirmisher without having her outshine other supports in teamfights.

General:

◆ Base Health increased from 550 to 595.

◆ Health Growth decreased from 100 to 94.

Essence Catalyst [Passive]:

◆ Casting an Ability restores 20 (+8 per level)(+10% Magical Power) health over 3s. Linked allies receive the same healing. This effect does not stack.

Telekinetic Link [RMB]:

◆ When tethered to an Allied Hero, you and they both gain + 6/7/8/9/10% increased Physical Power and Magical Power.

Energy Lance [E]:

◆ [QOL] Time to start firing the beam decreased by 43%.

◆ [QOL] Can now be cancelled as soon as the beam spawns (0.6s instead of 1.9s).

◆ Now allows Phase to hover for the duration.

Hyperflux [R]:

◆ Omnivamp removed.

◆ Attack Speed decreased from 60/90/120 to 50/75/100

◆ Grants 30/50/70 Ability Haste for the duration.

◆ Movement Speed changed from 10/15/20% to 25%.

◆ Movement Speed now decays over the duration.

CRESTS:

All crests will be receiving around a 50% decrease to healing and broadly speaking more equalization across completion times. We’ll also be enhancing Crest Identity and opening up more paths for every role/class to choose from.

Marksman Crest:

◆ Attack Speed increased from 5 to 6.

◆ Physical Power Removed.

◆ Health restored on Unit Kill decreased from 6 to 3.

◆ Evolve Threshold decreased from 300 to 150.

Sharpshooter Crest:

◆ Physical Power Removed.

◆ Added 5% Lifesteal.

◆ Health restored on Unit Kill decreased from 6 to 3.

◆ Evolve Threshold decreased from 300 to 150.

Eviscerator:

We’re making Eviscerator a more consistently powerful Crest by giving it a very high uptime, at the cost of its larger power spike potential. This will make the Crest a bit easier to use in skirmishes and still a threat for Tanks to avoid, whilst not making it an all-or-nothing Tank-shredder.

◆ Physical Power Removed.

◆ Rending Strikes Scaling increased from 15% to 20%.

◆ Rending Strikes Ramping Damage Removed.

◆ Rending Strikes Cooldown decreased from 90s to 30s.

Liberator:

Liberator is being honed as a sustain-based Crest, but will lack damage as a consequence. This should make the choice more meaningful and also make it harder to pick up alongside other sustain options as doing so could lead to a lack of damage.

◆ Physical Power Removed.

◆ Lifesteal Increased from 5% to 8%.

Pacifier:

We feel Pacifier is in a healthy spot however want it to interact better with our more ability based Heroes.

◆ Physical Power decreased from 20 to 10.

◆ Adrenalize Bonus Damage now occurs on any non-item/dot Physical Damage instead of just Basic Attacks.

... and many more balance changes, hero abilities and improvements will be applied as necessary.

BUG FIXES

The full list of bugs fixes included in this release will be added before or shortly after the game update is released.

That's all this week!
Let us know what you think of this update over on Twitter, the official Subreddit or our Discord server!