Balancing
We are adjusting Juren's effectiveness with this patch. We're focusing on some aspects of the hero and are keeping an eye on the hero in the future for additional adjustments.
Juren
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Havoc Harbinger is now 900ms (up from 800ms)
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The Unblockable indicator now displays for 600ms (up from 500ms)
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The chain link timing from Light Attacks to Havoc Attacks is now 100ms (down from 200ms)
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Unruly Destruction now costs 40 stamina (up from 20)
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Last Man Standing (Tier 3 Feat) now gains buffs in the following order: Defense, Attack, Life Steal (was Attack, Defense, Life Steal)
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Overbearing Might now heals for 12 (up from 10)
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Elemental Force now deals 20 damage (up from 18)
[Developer's Comments]
We're making some changes to Juren's effectiveness in battle, as well as to adjust indicator timings to be more easily readable.
To start, let's explore how Juren is built, and how it affects his indicators. Each action Juren can use starts with a 200ms "Decision Point". This "Decision Point" uses a singular animation, which then branches into the "Tap" and "Held" variant, depending on player input. This ensures that the hero feels responsive to play as pressing buttons makes Juren immediately start attacking. During development, we settled on a 200ms window to minimize false inputs as a smaller window resulted in more unwanted "Held" variants. This has the drawback where attacks that gain new properties to appear later in the attack than in attacks which do not have the "Tap" and "Hold" variants. This is more apparent with attacks that gain the Unblockable property as the visuals to communicate the property include iconography, which is how many players differentiate the property being present or not.
The first set of changes affect Havoc Harbinger, which on the sides had a total duration of 800ms, 200ms of which is the "Decision Point" for either the "Tap" or "Hold" detection of the attack. This means the actual Unblockable portion of the attack only showed the Unblockable indicator for 600ms, which is further reduced on the opponent's side to 500ms to compensate for network conditions. This created situations where the attack appeared to be an Unblockable 500ms attack; while the total duration of the attack was indeed 800ms, the indicator could be misleading. By slowing down the attack by 100ms, the Unblockable indicator will now display for 600ms, which should be more reactable and readable by players.
This slowing down of the attack also had a side effect where using Havoc Harbinger then feinting to Guardbreak could not catch Roll attempts, so we reduced the chain link timing to ensure Juren can't be rolled away from on reaction to Havoc Harbinger.
The second change affects Unruly Destruction. The attack is very slow, with damage which is lower than normal for an attack of that speed, and, is not feintable. This makes the attack a risky proposition to use in many situations and is both weak to parries and dodges. To compensate for these weaknesses, the attack gains Uninterruptible Stance very early and allows Juren to trade and use the attack in a variety of situations which can prove advantageous. However, at a more standard 20 Stamina cost, the attack can be used very often, which results in play patterns that are disruptive and frustrating to play against. To counteract this, we're raising the stamina cost of the move to 40; Juren can now only use it three times in a row before running out of Stamina (compared to 6 times) and should now be even more of a commitment from Juren.
Next, we're adjusting Last Man Standing, Juren's Tier 3 Feat. From our initial testing, at high level play, the instances where you have a downed player on your team are not as frequent as it is in other levels of play, and so the Attack buff being first made sense. However, upon review after launching the hero, the Attack buff is up more often than initially anticipated, and as such we decided to swap the order of the Attack and Defense buffs, so that the Attack buff kicks in when 2 of Juren's allies are downed. This occurs far less often and should lead to a lower lethality from Juren in most situations.
We are also applying some other changes to Juren to both compensate for the loss of power to Juren and to make other moves more attractive to use.
Overbearing Might had a life swing of 24, which is the same as regular guardbreaks, despite resetting to neutral and not giving Juren a reason to use the move outside of it's great visuals and ability to ledge opponents. We did not want to increase the damage the move causes, but with the move healing by 2 extra health, this makes it less useful of an effect but can still have an impact on drawn out fights.
Finally, we're also adjusting Elemental Force to deal the same amount of damage as Unstoppable Force to have more of an incentive to use the move. Elemental Force can be used to start Juren's chains, but at lower damage than Unstoppable Force, it made little sense to use the move.
We'll be keeping an eye on Juren as the season continues and adjust further if necessary.
Bug Fixes
Juren
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The Guardbreak indicator now properly appears at the beginning of Guardbreak and Overbearing Might actions (up from appearing at 200ms)
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Guardbreak and Overbearing Might now correctly auto-counter Guardbreak attempts that land during their first 200ms
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Fixed an issue where guard switching at the end of Juren's recoveries could allow the hero to skip 200ms of recovery and immediately start another attack
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Left side Titan's Rampage is now longer Uninterruptible when Out of Lock
[Developer's Comments]
As mentioned above, Juren is built using a “Decision Point” system, that lasts for 200ms. When Guardbreaking or using Overbearing Might, the Guardbreak indicator appeared after the Decision Point, but did not need to, as both actions result in a Guardbreak, so we fixed the indicator issue to display the Guardbreak indicator at startup.
This also fixed another issue where Juren did not appropriately auto-counter Guardbreak attempts if they landed during the Decision Point portion of these Guardbreaks (as it does with every other hero)
