NEW HERO: JUREN
Description
The Jurens are an elite force of the Wu Lin, wielded like a hammer; a great weapon deployed when eradication is the intended outcome. They once served the Wu Lin Emperor, but after being betrayed, they now serve none but themselves. They are pure chaos, untrustworthy and fearless, intent on preventing anyone from ruling over them. One must never turn their back on the Jurens, or dare to trust them -- even their friends or allies. They will stomp on what they can, to destroy, to abolish. To win.
Fighting Style
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Difficulty: Hard
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Unpredictable
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Opportunistic
Special Capabilities
- Tap or hold any attack for different outcomes
- Quick access to a unique defensive stance blocking in all directions
- Most recoveries can be cancelled by this defensive stance
BALANCING CHANGES
GRYPHON
- Veteran's Kick:
- Can now chain to Forceful Swirl on Hit at 133ms.
- When performed, Forceful Swirl gains Uninterruptible stance.
[Developer's Comments]
Gryphon’s kit is working well but has some constraints which makes them feel too linear. By allowing Veteran's Kick to chain to the uninterruptible version of Forceful Swirl, Gryphon can now maintain their pressure with chain attacks and prevent being peeled.
KENSEI
- Helm Splitter:
- Attack is now enhanced
- Pommel Strike:
- Now has increased forward movement
- Heavy Openers:
- Now have increased forward movement
- Soft Feinted versions of Left & Right Heavy Openers now have increased forward movement
[Developer's Comments]
Kensei can struggle to catch up to opponents that continuously disengage. We're increasing the movement in key areas to mitigate this, while improving Helm Splitter to help Kensei engage their opponent.
By increasing the movement on Heavy Openers, it also gives Pommel Strike slightly more range (in addition to its own increase in movement).
OCELOTL
- Hunter's Snare:
- Now has Uninterruptible Stance during the strike (from 100-800ms)
- Huntsman's Spirit:
- Now has a 60s cooldown.
[Developer's Comments]
By giving Hunter's Snare Uninterruptible Stance, Ocelotl should be able to use it more efficiently to engage targets from afar during a teamfight, without risking being interrupted.
The Interruptible Stance starts at 100ms since the attack cannot be feinted. We will monitor the change and adjust it in the future if needed.
Because Huntsman's Spirit didn't have a cooldown, some players tried to brute-force their way to objectives. We want to allow for this strategy but reduce how often it can be done.
This will not only force Ocelotl players to be a bit more careful after a death but also reduce the amount of renown given to the other team when failing in repetition.
SHAOLIN
Blink (Tier 2 Feat):
- Attack can now be dodged up to 566ms after activation (down from 466ms)
[Developer's Notes]
We've adjusted the dodge window to compensate for this move being a fast ranged unblockable melee move that is often used while external to your target.
VALKYRIE
- Shield Tackle Strike:
- Increased movement during the strike
[Developer's Comment]
We're carefully increasing the range on Shield Tackle Strike to avoid players from disengaging too easily without making it too oppressive in external.
VIRTUOSA
- Posture:
- (All versions) now cost 5 stamina per second. Note that this doesn't apply during a successful evade.
- (All versions) Heavy Attacks will now have 433ms of Guardbreak Vulnerability when performed from Posture (up from 100ms).
When performed as a chain without entering Posture, these attacks retain the standard 100ms of Guardbreak Vulnerability.
- Artful Improvisation (Feat 2)
- Cooldown increased to 15s (was 10)
- Superior Retort (Feat 3)
- Cooldown increased to 30s (was 20)
[Developer's Comments]
Virtuosa can be tricky to overcome at some levels of play. Some of these changes focus on the risk and reward aspects of Posture.
Virtuosa is currently able to sit in Posture indefinitely.
This is causing some issues in situations where she and her allies are outnumbering opponents, where she can easily catch stray trajectories and punish opponents easily. This is a strategy that many heroes have, but in Virtuosa’s case there is less possible counterplay.
As it is one of Virtuosa’s main strengths, we do not want to completely remove her ability to do so, but with her Stamina slowly going down while in Posture it should help alleviate the “Indefinitely” part of the equation. We are also aware of this strategy with other heroes (namely, heroes with Full Block moves) and will address them in the future.
Another aspect which is problematic when facing Virtuosa is that the universal counter to her Posture is Guardbreak, but when her opponents correctly use Guardbreak again Posture Virtuosa was able to make a read and use Heavy attacks, which could make Guardbreak attempts to fail.
While this is a read on Virtuosa’s part, it rewarded her with too much damage in situations where counterplay from opponents is limited. We are therefore increasing Guardbreak Vulnerability from Heavy attacks while in Posture to the same value as in neutral specifically to force Virtuosa to effectively deal less damage on a correct read on her part to an opponent performing a Guardbreak.
It is important to note that this does not affect Heavy attacks thrown if Virtuosa does not enter Posture in her chains; buffering Heavy attacks keep the standard 100ms of Guardbreak Vulnerability that is present for every hero.
We are also increasing the cooldowns on Feats 2 and 3 to reduce some of the gains from entering Posture and hitting enemies with Riposte. This will make any successful hit against Virtuosa more meaningful and lower some of the damage output mid game.
WARMONGER
- Preying Claw and Stab:
- Reaction pushed on opponent changed to Light (down from Medium).
- Can now chain to Light & Heavy Finishers.
[Developer's Comments]
Warmonger had difficulties continuing their pressure after landing Preying Claw follow ups since Light Openers are no longer enhanced. By allowing the chain to Finishers, it grants them access to pressure & slightly better damage than before.
As a trade-off, when Warmonger does not chain after Preying Claw and Stab, they have less frame advantage – it goes down to from 300ms to 100ms, which means they can still act before their opponents, but more actions are susceptible to being interrupted.
BUG FIXES
Gryphon
- Fixed an issue that caused Heavy Finishers to have extra tracking when opponents started their dodge too early.
Kyoshin
- Fixed an issue that caused Sajin-Arashi's movement to be influenced by Left Stick input in certain conditions.
Tiandi
- Fixed an issue where Tiandi has distorted mouth animation with Pianren Helm
Lawbringer
- Fixed an issue where Lawbringer (or their opponent) does not get reaction cancelled if either of them are interrupted during Impaling Riposte
Emotes
- Fixed an issue where the Snowball emote can trigger an assist but does not feed Revenge
Qiang Pass Map
- In the Dominion game mode: Fixed an issue where the Player could access Out-of-Bounds area when dropping from the zipline near the minion lane.
Spectator Mode
- Fixed an issue where the Spectator is not redirected to the player who performs Join In Progress if the spectator is spectating the bot in Player Camera which is replaced
