Predecessor Patch V.0.6 | Predecessor

Predecessor Patch V.0.6

Patch v.0.6 is almost upon us - bringing with it a slew of features, improvements and an all new Hero!

Patch Notes 2023年4月28日

HOTFIXES

Hotfix V0.6.4 (28/04/23)

◆ Added some extra code to the game to help combat those pesky Steam login issues (we're looking at you, AB-400 errors!)

◆ Fixed an issue that could occur for players who rather ambitiously competed in both EU and NA Competitive Night events in the same day (take that, P-1000 error!)

Hotfix V0.6.3 (26/04/23)

◆ Fixed a bug related to Competitive Nights ahead of it going live.

Hotfix V0.6.2 (25/04/23)

◆ Fixed an issue with Murdock's Ultimate not firing and going on cooldown after a specific input sequence.

◆ Fixed an issue with Phase's Telekinetic Link stopping working when trying to link to a dying teammate.

◆ Fixed a crash while scrubbing through replay that has wards placed on the map.

Hotfix V0.6.1 (19/04/23)

◆ Resolved an issue that meant party invites weren't properly working for EGS players.

◆ Fixed an issue that caused the game to crash during initial loading.

ORIGINAL UPDATE

Patch releasing 12.00 GMT April 18th, 2023.
This update will result in a period of downtime (likely a few hours) due to size and content of the patch. This may change, so keep an eye on our social channels for the latest. We thank you for your patience and ongoing support.

Welcome to Season 2, Champions!

We’re kicking off the new season with a bang! V.0.6 brings with it a new Hero, the first iteration of our replay system, competitive nights, rewards for season one, balance changes and more!

Let’s start by talking about balance. Our focus with this patch is to help build in a longer Time-To-Kill (TTK), but we want to set expectations that these changes are by no means the single silver bullet that’ll deliver our TTK goals on the first attempt. What we’re delivering in this update is the first step of many, directed specifically towards the Carry role for now as their damage output has been the most problematic. As a result, elements such as Critical Strike Damage and Hero Basic Attack scalings are receiving a reduction in power, alongside a decrease in potency for many Carry items too. To compensate however, we’ve shifted some of this damage towards Abilities to facilitate clearer trading patterns and windows of strength. This may seem counterproductive to our TTK goals, but alongside targeting a longer TTK, we also wish to complement this by better defining power windows that reward intelligent positioning and smart Ability usage. As always we’ll be reviewing all the data and the feedback as well as making further balance changes with this additional goal in mind.

And fear not - it’s not all nerfs! There is a peppering of other adjustments to Heroes such as Offlane/Jungle-centric Riktor buffs to open up his Role diversity, Feng Mao Mana improvements to help grant him more of a presence on the map, and even some love for The Fey’s Harvest Nettles ability to make her aggressive playstyle more rewarding.

While many changes are still cooking in the Omeda ovens and will be rolled out in future patches, the ultimate balance goal is to progressively shift towards a higher TTK environment where unique Hero Ability interactions and windows of power are better defined, leading to more tactical, engaging and rewarding combat encounters. This is a lofty goal and we realise it may take some time to achieve. We also anticipate some growing pains as we progress towards these goals from patch to patch. Rest assured we will be keeping a close eye on how things are going and will respond swiftly to any undesirable results.

Your feedback is vital in helping us get this right, so please do take the time to join the official Predecessor Discord or Subreddit where you can leave your feedback and suggestions for the team to read.

With all that said there still plenty more to come in Season 2 so stay tuned, and we’ll see you out on the battlefield!

A NEW HERO APPEARS

Phase makes her appearance!

The Psychic Stray, Phase, is the newest Support Hero joining the Predecessor line up! Her telekinetic talents allow her to psychically connect with her allies, all while skillfully manipulating the battlefield in her team’s favour!

ABILITIES:

Essence Catalyst
Effect: After Phase finishes casting an ability, she gains 20-37% attack speed, 10 (10%) magic damage on hit and 5 mana on successful basic attacks for 3 seconds.

Pulse Bolt MB]
Effect: Ranged basic attack dealing physical damage.

Psychic Flare ]
CD: 13/12/11/10/9
Cost: 60/65/70/75/80
Effect: Blast a flare of psychic energy around Phase and her Linked ally, dealing  75/115/155/195/235 (70%) magic damage. Enemies take 20% damage from a second flare.

Targets hit that are also facing the flare are blinded for 1/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4s.

Energy Lance ]
CD: 20/18.5/17/15.5/14
Cost: 80/90/100/110/120
Effect: Channels a beam of pure energy dealing 40/60/80/100/120 (40%) magical damage over 2.5s. Each instance of damage applies a stacking 4% slow that lasts 0.8s.

Upon reaching 8 stacks the target is rooted for 1.25s. The next instance of damage (excluding Energy Lance) will deal 40/60/80/100/120 (40%) magic damage to the target.

Telekinetic Link MB]
Pull CD: 24/22/20/18/16
Pull Cost: 50
Effect: Applies a Link to targeted Ally granting them 2/4/6/8/10 physical power while linked. If reactivated, Phase will Pull the Linked target towards her.

The link will be broken if the target goes out of range or if Phase gets hit by Silence or hard CC, excluding root.

Hyperflux ]
CD: 120/105/90
Cost: 100
Effect: Phase overcharges herself and her Linked Ally, granting both 60/90/120% attack speed, 110/115/120% movement speed, and 10/15/20% Omnivamp for 8s.

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS

Season 1 Rewards

The first season of Predecessor has officially ended, which means it’s time to collect your end-of-season rewards. Your Player Level when the patch goes live will determine the rewards you'll receive as follows:

◆ Player level 10 = Countess EA Season 1 Icon

◆ Player level 20 = Purple Hex Countess skin

◆ Player level 30 = Kira EA Season 1 Icon

◆ Player level 40 = Occult Kira Skin

◆ Player level 50+ = 300 Platinum per 10 Levels

With the start of Season 2, your Player Level will be reset. We'll release more information about Season 2 soon, including the much anticipated roadmap, so stay tuned for more.

Competitive Nights

We’re excited to introduce Competitive Nights to Predecessor! Starting April 27th we’ll be opening up the Competitive Nights queue for 3 hours every Thursday evening for Europe and NA East regions. To participate, players will need to form a party of 5 and go head-to-head against the most skilled teams in the game.

All players will start each week with the same matchmaking score, so it's a great opportunity to see how high you can climb on the leaderboard before the week is out. Grab four friends and get ready to compete in the ultimate test of skill and teamwork!

Replay System [BETA]

This week we’ve added the first iteration of the much awaited Replay and Spectator feature. With this feature you can now watch back recent matches as well as matches your friends have played. The goal is to empower the community to create more content and support community-run events.

Currently the Replay keybinds are not displayed in-game but will be in the future. For now you can find them listed below for both Keyboard & Mouse, and Gamepad.

This is just the first implementation so we understand that it might still need some polish. Please do share your feedback to help us make this feature as useful as possible.

Public API

We're excited to announce that V.0.6 will see the official release of our Public API, which has been developed with the support and collaboration of several community partners. The API provides community developers with the necessary tools to create new applications and features that support, expand and enrich both Predecessor and the wider community.

Starting tomorrow these initial community partners will have live access to the Public API, which will become more broadly available for other developers in the coming days. Look out for a separate blog post for specific details on how you can gain access and use this functionality for your own tools and events!

Community Event - The Hunt

We're pleased to announce that a special Profile Icon featuring Kira - the winner of our first community event, The Hunt - has been added to the game. All players will receive this reward upon logging in.

Thank you all for taking part in this event. As with everything during Early Access, we look forward to expanding and improving on community events in the future and we hope you'll take part in the next one!

New skins

Another update means more new skins! The following new looks are available now in the store:

◆ Opaline The Fey [Common]

◆ Shadow Lynx Phase [Common]

◆ Grand Oracle Sevarog [Common]

Be sure to check them out and let us know what you think!

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

◆ Changed Sparrows portrait to help her stand out from the rest of the cast.

◆ Improved map collision.

◆ Improved the way that targeted abilities snap to targets.

◆ Recommended items now include Tonics. These items will now be suggested when at full build.

◆ Improved some visual effects on Sparrow’s bow.

◆ Toned down some visual effects on some heroes when closer to the camera.

◆ Adjusted animations for Belica’s Seismic Assault and Kira’s Mercy.

◆ Various map improvements.

BALANCE CHANGES

General Changes/Fixes:

Critical Strike Damage:

Carries specifically have a tendency to dish out too much raw damage in the later stages of the game once they have their Crit builds online, so we’re hitting the damage multiplier of Critical Strikes. While this won’t entirely resolve TTK feeling too fast for many players as it is purely a Crit-centric change, this is the first step of many towards redistributing damage away from basic attack potency and elevating damage windows through other means.

◆ Base Critical Strike Damage decreased from 165% to 160%.

Basic Attack Scaling adjustments:

We’re redefining the way Basic Attacks scale with Bonus Physical Power for many Heroes. In essence, all Heroes have a Basic Attack scaling which increases their Basic Attack damage as they acquire more Physical Power as any other ability might, but until now this information was not clearly visible to players.

While we already use this mechanic in several places as a balancing lever for many classes such as Mages to reduce their effectiveness when committing to Physical Power builds (encouraging them to stay within the general confines of their archetype, leaving them unaffected when built conventionally), we believe there is a greater opportunity to provide differentiation between Heroes and their Basic Attacks through these scalings. Likewise, we want to provide greater transparency regarding this mechanic, so the updated Basic Attack scalings will now be reflected in the ability tooltips so that players can see the impact these ratios have on their Hero, and therefore make more informed itemisation decisions in-game.

The end result of the Critical Strikes Damage and Basic Attack Ratio adjustments is that Heroes and Classes who invest in Physical Power and/or Crit will see a general reduction in their Basic Attack damage output as the game progresses, better pulling them in line with our TTK goals.

Balance adjustments via Ability tuning have been granted to many Heroes that are heavily impacted by these changes in a bid to better define their trading loops and general play patterns, with the intent of rewarding smart ability usage and playing to each Heroes strengths further as opposed to relying on raw Basic Attack damage to run down an opponent.

◆ Basic Attack Scalings have been adjusted for various Heroes (those affected listed below).

◆ Ability Descriptions for all Heroes now state their Base Basic Attack Damage and Basic Attack Damage from Scaling.

HEROES
A quick Slice ratio-adjustment for the Matriarch, the first of many.
Slice [LMB]
◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling decreased from 100% to 90%.

Crunch [LMB]
◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling decreased from 90% to 80%.

Cross Crunch [Passive]
◆ Physical Power Scaling increased from 10% to 15%.

Drongo
Pistol Shot [LMB]
◆ Bonus Physical Power Scaling decreased from 90% to 80%.

Gag Grenade [Q]
◆ Radius decreased from 350 to 300.

Rad Rounds [E]
◆ Cooldown decreased from 14 to 14/13/12/11/10.

Old Rusty [RMB]
◆ Cooldown changed from 9/8.5/8/7.5/7 to 10/9/8/7/6.

Shrapnel Cannon [R]
◆ Base Damage increased from 175/300/425 to 200/325/450.

Howitzer
R2000 Missile [Q]
◆ Magical Power Scaling decreased from 75% to 70%.

Kira
◆ General changes revolve around reshaping her abilities to balance her performance across various contexts.

The balance adjustments will be applied to various Heroes, with specifics further detailed above.

ITEMS

VISION:

Sentry:
Sentry’s uptime has proven a little too oppressive for Ward denial as of late. While there are various areas that we can improve, for now, we’re simply cutting back on Sentry’s uptime.

◆ Duration decreased from 15 to 12s.

CRESTS:

Consort/Guardian/Keeper/Warden Crest:
Supports have been gaining slightly too much Gold in the earlier stages relative to where we want them to be so we’re nudging it down prior to their Crest completion. This should also have the added benefit of slowing down how fast Mages in the Support role can reach their item spikes, while traditional Support picks remain less affected due to their cheaper item choices.

◆ Passive Gold per Charge decreased from 25 to 20.

Brutallax:
The Attack Speed component of Purifying Rage’s Cleanse gave a large amount of aggressive utility to an otherwise defensive Crest. We’re removing it to better define the theme of the item as anti-CC.

◆ Physical Power decreased from 25 to 20.

Additional detailed changes for various items, behavior alterations and adjustments will be covered in in-game updates.

BUG FIXES

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