1.6 Notes
June 29, 2015
RONA UPDATE (1.6): AXES & CARD PACKS!
Update 1.6 brings a bold new berserker to the Fold. Plus, get cards packs to unlock those Tier II and Tier III skins and enjoy Casual & Ranked queues, a revamped profile and much, much more. Let’s explore the update …
RONA BACKGROUND & LORE
Rona is a deadly berserker who is always ready to leap into battle. She holds her own in melee combat, unleashing enormous damage on everyone who stands and fights. Rona is most often played in the jungle, pairs well with protectors and works well with both weapon and crystal builds.
Read the lore: Rona vs. Skvader
RONA EARLY-ACCESS PERIOD
Rona will be unlockable with ICE only for the first 7 days. Afterward, you will be able to unlock Rona with ICE or Glory.
Rona attacks 50% faster than most heroes, but she deals only 80% damage with each attack. Additionally, Rona’s abilities use Bloodrage instead of energy, a unique resource that is generated from basic attacks, abilities and taking damage from enemies. This caps at 100 and decays when Rona leaves combat. Energy and energy regeneration from items is converted to in-combat bloodrage generation.
Rona leaps into battle, gaining bloodrage from colliding with enemies. She also gains damage reduction based on the number of enemy heroes she hits. After a short delay the ground ruptures, slowing enemies who pass over it.
Rona lunges to her target, landing a basic attack and gaining bloodrage. Briefly after using this ability she can reactivate it to attack again, consuming all of her bloodrage and applying a mortal wound to her target. The damage of the second attack is increased for each point of bloodrage consumed. Additionally, the cooldown for this ability is reduced by Rona’s basic attack.
Rona begins an axe-wielding whirlwind, continually dealing weapon damage to nearby enemies. During the whirlwind she can move freely but at reduced speed. She can cancel the ability at any time by reactivating it or using another ability. Red Mist requires at least 75 bloodrage to activate.
UNLOCK CARD PACKS IN THE MARKET!
“The rollout of new skins and card collecting continues as the GET CARDS section of the Market is now available! You can use your ICE and Glory to collect more cards faster by getting card packs from the card boxes. Distinguish yourself from other players by completing card collections and unlocking the unique Tier II and Tier III skins for your favorite heroes.
“The card boxes are time limited and will be replaced with a new box once the current one has expired. The new box will have a new mix of card content favoring different heroes and skins. Tip: Use the ‘Peek in Box’ option to inspect the contents of the box to see if it features any cards you’re looking for.
“Got unwanted cards from a box? Don’t worry, we’ll be adding additional features in the near future that will help you use any unwanted cards to complete the skins of your choosing.” —Noj-Trab
ICE BOX: Unlock a four-pack of cards using ICE you’ve purchased. Features different heroes and themes over time.
GLORY BOX: Unlock a four-pack of cards using the Glory you’ve earned. Available cards change over time.
You can peek in a box before you unlock cards! Use the cards you get to unlock skin tiers.
NEW CASUAL & RANKED QUEUES
“Introducing separate Casual and Ranked queues is all about player intent. If it’s late at night and you just want to get in one more game, you shouldn’t be afraid to play for fear of losing a hard-earned skill tier. If you want to try new things, you need a place to experiment without regretting the consequences. And if you want to coordinate, grind and compete, you need a home for that without running into a first-time instalock Celeste building Weapon. If we’ve done our work well, both queues should be fun and rewarding. But now, you can pick the queue that’s right for you in the moment.” —PlayoffBeard
The Public Match queue has been divided into Casual and Ranked. These are separate matchmaking queues with different purposes and requirements:
CASUAL MATCHES
Play fun, low-pressure games. It’s a great place to try new heroes, new item builds and experiment with different hero comps.
Your skill tier is not impacted. The matchmaker will still try to find the best possible match. If you always try-hard in the Casual queue, your casual queue matchmaking score will rise, making it difficult for you to try new heroes or strategies when you want to.
You will still gain XP, Glory and Karma — and cards will drop at the same rate as Ranked. Also, all your Casual and Ranked matches will count toward First Win, Third Win and Sinister Seven achievements. You don’t ever have to play Ranked if you don’t want to!
RANKED MATCHES
Play for skill-tier prestige.
You must be account level 10 and Karma level 10.
Free hero rotation does NOT apply. We want players in Ranked to already know how to use the heroes they pick.
You must have at least three heroes unlocked to play. This is just so you don’t get stuck if your teammates select the only two heroes you’ve unlocked.
Parties with members who are greater than one skill tier apart cannot play Ranked.
Whenever you play Ranked Matches, you have the opportunity to advance your skill tier. To test your skill, the matchmaker will occasionally match you with opponents who are slightly higher or lower tier than you.
To climb, you must consistently defeat opponents equal or above you in skill tier and avoid losing matches to opponents below you. Maintaining a 50/50 win rate will not result in promotion but only keep your skill tier constant.
NEW PROFILE SECTION & HONORS
“We’ve reorganized the information in your profile to reflect the Casual and Ranked queues and to display information more clearly.” —PlayoffBeard
Your Profile is divided into separate tabs for Account, Karma and Ranked.
The Ranked tab of your profile will display your PROGRESS forward (and backward) as you attempt to reach the next skill tier. It will also indicate when you’re in danger of dropping in tiers.
Honoring players (upvoting) will increase their Karma score. Downvoting players will reduce their Karma, which means that repeat offenders will no longer meet Karma requirement for Ranked play (Karma level 10).
Abuse of downvotes will result in your votes no longer having any impact on other players.
NEW SKINS & CARDS
“This update introduces Tier III skins for Ringo (that fiery arm!), Adagio (ooooh, the red wings!) and Koshka (those emote effects!!!), _and we can’t wait to see which players achieve these rare and special skins first. If it’s you, be sure to post on Twitter or in the forums! We’re cranking on new skin themes, existing skin tiers and additional cards as fast as we can without compromising our standard for quality. If you’re still waiting for your favorite hero’s skin (Taka, anyone?), we know and we’re on it. What else is cool is that even released skin tiers are likely to get cooler over time as we have a chance to reflect and revisit them after this mad push is over.” —PlayoffBeard_
Adds Tier I skins for Skaarf and Catherine.
Adds Tier II skin for Adagio.
Adds Tier III skins for Ringo, Koshka and Adagio.
Adds more cards, including Legendary rarity!
Skins for the remaining heroes will arrive in future updates.
Turrets must be destroyed in order.
Early game Aces do not buff lane minions as much as late game ones. This ramps up from half strength at beginning of match to full strength at 15 minutes.
Ace buff is cancelled if you take turret damage.
Jungle minions no longer deal true damage, so you can mitigate the damage with armor and shield. But they deal more damage as the game progresses, especially jungle bosses.
Sanctuary death beam now ends sooner when you leave the spawn area.
Melee heroes have +33 bonus defense against lane minions. Consequently, Book of Eulogies / Barbed Needle’s massive melee heal has been reduced (see below). We want to melee laners be viable in lane because of stronger trading — not because of endless heal sustain.
Scoreboard: You can now see the minion/monster kill count (commonly called CS) for each player.
“We’re increasing the overall effectiveness of her pets and improving her viability in the current meta. Our work here may not be totally done.” —SurpriseBirthday
Convenience improvements
Munion pets are smart enough to pursue enemies who leave vision.
Existing pets will instantly level up when Yay, Pets! is levelled up.
Munion Pets
Pets attack 50% faster. (This is actually their natural attack speed; the old AI wasted a lot of time standing around.)
Pets are much more responsive when chasing.
Petal damage down from 20-95 + 45% crystal ratio to 12-62 + 35% crystal ratio. Base DPS is roughly the same, but crystal ratio DPS is now about 16% higher.
Seeds
Seeds have 1.2m vision range. This is very short … shorter even than melee attack range, so enemies pretty much have to walk over the seed to be revealed. It does mean enemies are now forced to clear overgrown areas.
Seeds defense aura also grants equal amounts of shield.
Spontaneous Combustion
Base damage down from 245-350-455 to 215-310-405.
“Skaarf’s kit had a few inconsistencies that need to be ironed out. We’re happy with his role as a poke mage but believe he needs better tools for last-hitting and deal greater damage to turrets when he is willing to commit to it.” —SurpriseBirthday
Spitfire
Collides with heroes & objectives but passes through everthing else. This means it now passes through jungle monsters & petal munions.
Damages everything it passes through, but each subsequent target takes 66% the damage of the previous.
Collision box reduced to better match visual size of the fireball.
Damage up from 75-100-125-150-325 to 75-125-175-225-325 (only middle ranks are stronger).
Turret Damage
Goop Pool’s burn damage vs. turrets down to 33% strength.
Fan the Flames can now damage turrets, but at 33% strength.
JOULE
“Joule’s potential for interrupting abilities from merely using her knockback gave her too much hidden power. Finally, we’re ironing out some awkward sources of extra power in her kit.” —SurpriseBirthday
Rocket Leap
Rocket Leap’s stun hitbox reduced by ~5%.
Rocket Leap’s pushback no longer cancels enemies’ abilities.
Big Red Button
Big Red Button deals damage over 6 ticks instead of 3 with the same channel time. This not only makes the damage smoother but shifts damage into later frames and hence makes the damage easier to dodge.
Big Red Button will begin to reveal Joule the moment she begins channeling, not when she begins firing.
Big Red Button and Thunder Strike damage hitboxes start near the front of Joule, not at the center.
Fixed a bug where Big Red Button dealt all of its damage over 1 second.
“Fortress’ percent health bite damage was too easy too apply, triggering the burst damage + slow + mortal wound in most situations. It was also a tad too strong early game, so we’re shifting some of its power into later levels.” —SurpriseBirthday
Stacks to trigger up from 5 to 6 stacks.
Initial damage down from 120-170-220-270-370 to 90-140-190-240-340.
Percent health damage crystal ratio up from 0.05% to 0.06%.
“Adagio gets a slight buff to his carry scaling, as we want to see him back in the meta as a situational farming carry. His perk was not particularly pronounced and rarely affected player decision making. You can now get a decent amount of energy by splashing Arcane Fire onto an entire wave of minions and clearing the whole wave.” —SurpriseBirthday
Base damage up from 65-118 to 75-118.
Arcane Renewal up from 20% to 35%.
Gift of Fire burst heal crystal ratio up from 50% to 65% crystal ratio.
Agent of Wrath damage crystal ratio up from 65% to 85% crystal ratio.
“Taka’s bug fixes have been very good to him. Turns out, Taka is a little too strong when every part of his kit is working consistently!” —SurpriseBirthday
Mortal strike lifesteal down from 30% to 20%.
VOX
“Crystal Vox’s early game is now too painful to survive to get to his late-game power. CP Vox’s signature style of dealing more damage through Resonance bounces doesn’t really emerge until later, condemning a CP Vox to selfishly farm in lane until his real personality emerges. If you haven’t noticed, we’re also nudging his stats to make weapon and crystal builds equally viable.” —SurpriseBirthday
Increase Resonance amp from 20-40-60-80-125% to 50-65-80-95-125% (only early ranks are stronger).
Attack speed at level 12 down from 161% to 151%.
Captain of the Guard Heroic Perk also grants 1 shield in addition to 1 armor.
Spin-Up also grants 1 shield in addition to 1 armor.
“This item was meant for map objectives, not for arbitrarily buffing heroes who have minions and making them dependent on this item to be relevant. Instead, we are directly addressing Petal’s power this update.” —SurpriseBirthday
No long affects hero summons/pets.
“Fountains are too stackable. We want this item to be powerful and create interesting timing gameplay, but don’t want to see it spammed across everyone’s inventory.” —SurpriseBirthday
After receiving 600 healing from Fountains, further healing from other fountains are only 66% as effective for 10 seconds.
“Originally intended for situational lane sustain and to make melee laners viable, these items are now granting a tad too much sustain. Additionally, “semi-melee” laners like Joule took full advantage of enhanced healing despite often last-hitting with a ranged ability. The large heal now only triggers if you’ve last-hit using a melee attack, as a reward for taking the proper level of risk. Finally, these items heavily punished Petal in lane, as her seeds and pets granted tons of bonus healing to the enemy laner.” —SurpriseBirthday
Only grants healing on killing lane minions and jungle monsters.
Only grants larger melee healing if you last-hit using a melee basic attack.
Book of Eulogies heal down from 35 to 30; melee heal from 70 to 60.
Barbed Needle heal down from 50 to 40; melee heal from 100 to 85.
“Bonesaw is seen too often even against enemies with no armor. This item was too strong as a general-purpose damage amplifier instead of a situational counter. It was also too strong on heroes who can proc this effect rapidly (such as Vox).” —SurpriseBirthday
Armor shred per stack down from 12% to 10%.
Friendly flares are a different color, so you can tell if it was your ally or an enemy who flared that area.
ANDROID LAUNCH!
The full Android launch is here! We’re supporting more than 150 Android devices to start. The list will grow even larger over time. Please tell your friends on Android devices that they can get Vainglory now on Google Play. Vainglory is 100% cross-platform, so you can play with and against friends regardless of whether they’re on iOS or Android — and a mix of devices and platforms is fine for the same party or match.
More than 150 Android devices supported.
Completely cross-platform.
Go rally your friends on Android and bring them into the Fold!
BUG FIXES
The chat keyboard now shows what you type. What a concept!
Fan The Flames crystal ratio now properly applies to all stacks.
Skaarf can no longer use Reflex Block to block his own self-silence during his ultimate.
Fixed a bug where Big Red Button dealt all of its damage over 1 second.
Fixed a bug that caused Catherine to apply her stun several frames too early.
Fixed a bug that caused Book of Eulogies and Barbed Needle passives to sometimes heal even if you didn’t get a last hit.
This is a big, big update with a lot of new moving parts. Give it a go now, and please be sure to report bugs and provide feedback in the forums and subreddit. Let the race to Tier III skins begin! —PlayoffBeard
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