1.7 Notes
August 04, 2015
Last updated
August 04, 2015
Last updated
Update 1.7 has been entirely devoted to community love and game health. When we say “we’re listening,” we mean it … and we took an entire update cycle to address the deep-rooted player pain and feedback we’ve heard time and again. We’ve focused on fundamental technical improvements, which means there’s not a lot of wiz-bang in 1.7. But these changes — individually and together — make every match feel better and create new possibilities for casual and competitive players alike.
“There are a couple phrases in the Vainglory community that send a shiver down most players’ spines. We’ve all fallen victim to the ‘Catherine stun bug,’ engaging in a match-deciding teamfight only to derp out with plenty of pursuit and none of the merciless. And most of us have felt that same painful issue with wasted SAW shanks, nonexistent Glaive knock-backs and a host of other problems with the same root issue. Then there’s the infamous _‘melee stutter,’ _because who doesn’t enjoy chasing a fleeing enemy with a sliver of health and almost hitting that hero over and over again, until eventually you overpursue and eat a turret in the face. Not to mention the most common and deadly basic-attack problem: lack of reliability during lag.
“While we’ve been able to lessen the pain short-term using bubble gum, duct tape and plenty of CaptainNeato sorcery, the message from players was clear: FIX IT. No matter what it takes. In this cycle, CaptainNeato & team dedicated a huge amount of time and effort, dug deep into the code and solved this once and for all.” —PlayoffBeard
Major improvements to basic attacks, making them more reliable during lag
Eradicated issues where Catherine’s stun, SAW’s shank and Glaive’s knock-back would sometimes not trigger (along with other similar issues).
Heroes will no longer attempt — then fail — to attack during chases (a.k.a. melee stutter).
Heroes will continue to basic attack even when lagging.
Heroes with very high attack speed will attack at full speed despite lag.
Stutter stepping/animation canceling still provides the same skill-based advantages.
“Where’d it … what tha? …*pings bacon tears* … um, let’s go to the next camp. ”
Jungle monsters no longer disappear in brush “blind spots.” Note: These blind spots in the map needed to be fixed individually. If you find a blind spot that we missed, please report it to feedback@superevilmegacorp.comso we can fix!
Brush line of sight: When you are visible in brush because you have recently attacked or been attacked, your health bar will no longer dim, correctly indicating that enemies can still see you even though you are in brush.
One extra fun surprise from Margouillat that players will discover quickly!
“Uhhh … why aren’t I healing?!”
Placing a large number of Scout Traps on the spawn platform no longer prevents it from healing you and your allies.
Tapping your hero portrait in hero select to choose a position no longer causes the game to “freak out” and lock you out under specific conditions.
Android: Notification icon on Lollipop now displays correctly.
Android: Fixed crash on startup for HTC One M8 and Vega phones.
“By far, the most anticipated and hotly requested skin theme has been for Taka. Not only is Taka’s skin introduced in this update, but Chainsaw actually stopped work on a different Taka skin mid-production when he heard what players were clamoring for, switched gears and delivered Shiro Kage Taka, which we hope is an instant fan favorite. Plus, the shockingly awesome Paragon Catherine skin theme is completed up to Tier 3, Stormlord Ardan gets a radical Tier II look and much more.” —PlayoffBeard
Hero skins new in 1.7:
Shiro Kage Taka Tier I
Paragon Catherine Tier II & Tier III
Stormlord Ardan Tier II
SAWborg Tier II
Killa-Joule 9000 Tier II
Destroy unwanted cards, breaking them down into their Vainglory “Essence.”
Use Essence to create the cards you need to finish skin theme tiers!
The amount of Essence required to craft a new card is determined by the new card’s rarity.
To create and destroy a card you must tap and hold the DESTROY CARD button to prevent the accidental creation and destruction of valuable cards. The duration of this action is determined by the rarity of the card. The higher the rarity, the longer you have to hold to create and destroy.
Open the Scoreboard to mute teammates who are spamming pings or behaving unpleasantly.
“This is especially valuable when an experienced Vainglory player wants to help a friend get comfortable with the game before facing human-player competition. And sometimes friends just want to beat up on bots after a rough day.” —PlayoffBeard
The party captain can place the team into a BOTS game through a new drop-down menu.
“The clear benefit is extra spectator slots for tournaments, which could now be easily simulcasted in four languages. But it’s also great for competitive teams that want to play, coach and analyze simultaneously.” —PlayoffBeard
There are now four spectator slots in Private matches.
‘LARGER ACTIVE ITEMS’ REDESIGN
“The ‘larger active items’ option has become the overwhelming choice for players — especially with those having trouble hitting small icons with big fingers like myself. Seeing this, the team adjusted the design to show your entire item build without compromising the ease of active-item tapping. I’m especially excited that I can see ShinKaigan’s, Gabevizzle’s, XenoTek’s and jetpacks‘ item builds while they’re streaming again! ” —PlayoffBeard
Larger active items now includes smaller icons for the rest of your item build.
DESCRIPTIONS FOR POSITION SELECTION
“We’re learning so much watching the amazing OGN broadcasts of the first Vainglory World Invitational. One interesting development was seeing how international broadcasters and players refer to and utilize the ‘Roam’ role, and ultimately we felt that term should return properly to the game, along with descriptons for each position to help team coordination in hero select.” —PlayoffBeard
Tapping on your hero portrait in hero select will open and close a description of how that position is typically played.
The term “support” has gone back to “roam” because of how multifaceted the job is.
SCOREBOARD LOOK
“Both to gear up for team identification, and to clean up the noise in the scoreboard, we have converted the hero names that used to be there into beautiful hero portraits!” —Kraken
Hero names have been replaced with hero portraits on the scoreboard.
DESELECT THUMBS UP & DOWN
“Lemme honor this laner … wait … oops! Sorry for the thumbs down, buddy.”
You can change your thumbs up/thumbs down and friend invite selections freely until you hit the FINISH button.
“We’re keeping a close eye on early-game aggression overall, and early-game jungle invades have become extremely common, especially at high skill tiers. Aggressive invaders can cross the map and interfere with farming the very first jungle camp before they can be cleared. Now, if you roam across the map to invade, you will most certainly be one camp behind your opponents — and you may miss lane farm as well. We’re also monitoring Minion Mine capture times, or lack thereof. In competitive play, they’re still being ignored most of the game because their early-game tradeoff is still not worth the extra gold it feeds to the enemy. This change makes your decision of whether to take a Minion Mine more tactically interesting.” —SurpriseBirthday
Lane minions spawn at 5 seconds into the match (instead of 10s). The initial last-hit becomes available in lane at 35 seconds into the match.
Jungle monsters spawn at 20 secs into the match (instead of 30s).
Taking a Minion Mine increases lane minions’ value by +5% gold instead of +10% gold.
VOX
“Vox had a few too many strengths going on at once. His barrier was not an essential part of his kit, so we are exchanging it for a flat boost to his HP to simplify things. We’re also boosting Resonance-bounce play with better range and ratios for his bouncing damage. We want to highlight the intense positional strategy of using his bounce damage without pushing him further into team-wide burst territory using his ultimate like he was in earlier versions. Consequently, we are nerfing his upfront disengage ability in exchange for more frequent but shorter dashes. This increases Vox’s mobility & damage output while on the offensive while reducing his escapability.” —SurpriseBirthday
Barrier from basic attacks and resonance bounces removed.
Base health up from 632-1347 to 695-1465.
Base crystal damage per shot up from 24-62 to 34-68.
Resonance bounce range up from 4.0 to 4.5.
Only fires double shots at targets marked by Resonance.
Sonic Zoom dash movement range down from 4.5 to 3.5.
Cooldown down from 11-7 to 5-3.
Resonance amp up from 50-65-80-95-125% to 75-85-95-105-125%.
Fixed a bug where Wait For It… not only bounces Resonance from you, but also deals one instance of Vox’s basic attack crystal damage to you.
TAKA
“Taka’s ability to assassinate targets was far too reliable, leaving little time for targets to react. His weapon build already provided top-tier sustain damage, in addition to providing massive burst that made it difficult to itemize defensively against a Weapon Taka. Crystal Taka, on the other hand, suffered from depending too much on a single shot of damage. We’re lowering the overall damage of his ultimate and giving Crystal Taka some more sustained damage.” —SurpriseBirthday
Damage reduced from 330-530-730 to 250-390-530.
Mortal Wound duration down from 4 to 3 seconds.
Mortal Wound DPS now has a 70% crystal ratio.
Mortal Wound duration is refreshed whenever Taka Mortal Strikes the target.
“Skaarf still struggles in his role as either a lane- or jungle-based carry. In particular, Goop was a very risky move for such a squishy dragon — and for very little reward!” —SurpriseBirthday
Applies a weaker 30% slow even when lit on fire
Duration (not lit on fire) reduced from 10-15 to 8-10 seconds.
Burst crystal ratio down from 80% to 65%.
Burn crystal ratio up from 80% to 110%.
Cooldown down from 14/14/14/14/12 to 10/10/10/10/8.
“At level 1, Petal could not fulfill her intrinsic purpose of commanding little pets to fight for her. Also, Petal was still mostly played as a sniper, carried only by her long attack range and not her pets. We want to shift Petal’s primary playstyle to crystal, and be all about them pets, them pets.” —SurpriseBirthday
Munion Pet damage changed from 12-62 + 35% crystal ratio to 8-63 + 40% crystal ratio.
Spontaneous Combustion visual effect is much clearer.
SAW
“SAW was too hard-countered by stuns. Stuns are good anyway against SAW because they stop him from attacking, and on top of that he has other effective counters.” —SurpriseBirthday
Fixed a bug where SAW was not able to attack at full potential speed at 12 stacks.
Attack speed per stack of Spin Up down from 30% to 25%.
“Fortress brought forth a new meta centered around early-game invades. While we appreciate this dimension of strategy, it was becoming a top pick/ban in tournament level play … and for good reason. Additionally, Law of the Claw triggered too quickly from Petal munions and attacks enhanced by Alternating Current, Agent of Wrath or Aftershock. These were dealing an additional instance of damage, causing the Bleeding to count these as multiple attacks, stacking the debuff too rapidly.” —SurpriseBirthday
Triggering full stacks of bleeding from Law of the Claw no longer slows the target unless you overdrive the ability.
Fixed a bug where Law of the Claw only took 5 attacks to trigger, not the stated 6.
Damage from pets and “basic-attack bonuses” no longer increment bleeding stacks.
“Krul has a powerful sustain ability in his kit — but it is utterly useless in lane. While we originally disabled Weakness stacks on minions because of visual clutter, enabling it on the lead minion can result in some interesting play without cluttering the lane too much. Additionally, Krul no longer completely nullifies the damage output of jungle bosses, Gold Mine in particular.” —SurpriseBirthday
Spectral Weakness no longer slows the attack speed of jungle bosses.
“Ringo is a center point of balance — at least, his weapon build is. But his crystal build has some interesting tactical nuance that is just below the threshold of viability.” —SurpriseBirthday
Hellfire Brew deals 100% piercing crystal damage, not true damage. This means this ability will now benefit from the effects of Eve of Harvest, Broken Myth and Frostburn since it is considered crystal damage. Because we promised that blue items enhance abilities, having Hellfire Brew not benefit from these items because of an obscure damage classification nuance breaks this promise to the player. —SB
Hellfire Brew crystal ratio down from 90% to 75%.
Fixed a bug where the burn debuff was not blocked by Reflex Block.
Fixed a bug where this ability could be activated on targets outside of vision.
“Koshka is applying too much pressure in the early game, even without building offense items. We’re nudging her down slightly in hopes of opening up the jungle to other picks such as Krul, Joule or Petal. We’re still looking closely at Koshka but want to see how things play out in 1.7.” —SurpriseBirthday
Pounce damage down from 120-440 to 80-400.
“Stacking active items generally reduces item build variety. We already do not allow passives to stack, so preventing actives to stack makes this more consistent. It also allows us to experiment with more wild active ideas in the future without worrying about creating cheese builds that rely on stacking the same item.” —SurpriseBirthday
Using an active item will put all other identical items on cooldown.
Fountain of Renewal no longer provides reduced healing after reaching 600 health (back to v1.5)
ATLAS PAULDRON
Charges up for 0.8 seconds before applying its effect to nearby enemies.
“Bonesaw is still too good on certain heroes, and even if opponents aren’t building armor! We’re increasing the number of hits it takes to reach full potential, so that squishy targets are affected less by Bonesaw, but long-brawls against tanks will give you more time to apply more stacks.” —SurpriseBirthday
Shred-per-stack down from 10% to 6% per stack.
Max stacks up from 5 to 8.
“Stormguard and its recipes lacked slot efficiency and value, especially Contraption.” —SurpriseBirthday
Stormguard Banner: +100 health
Warhorn: +100 health
Contraption: +200 health; -100 gold cost
“Reflex Block was intentionally undertuned in order to be safe. Now that we’re happy with the missing-health mechanic, we’re boosting the numbers up to where we think this item should be.” —SurpriseBirthday
Barrier up from 20% to 25% of missing health.
“Infusions were still too powerful with too little trade off, inspiring players to infuse all game long, regardless of the scenario.” —SurpriseBirthday
Weapon / crystal power per level down from 6 to 5.
“Flares are globally visible, so you can trick enemies by flaring somewhere you are already at, to make them them think you’re NOT there.” —SurpriseBirthday
All players can see the flare particle effect when it goes up in the sky.
THE MATCHMAKER, QUEUE TIMES & RELATED TOPICS
Our work on the Matchmaker continues inside and outside of the regular update cycle. We know this is still a source of player pain and we take that incredibly seriously. There are many changes happening behind the scenes to improve your experience, and we hope you subtly feel it until the collective improvements really make a mark.
YOUR RANKED EXPERIENCE
We’re paying close attention to the new Ranked queue, studying both what’s working well and what could be a lot better. Of note, there is still some confusion around skill tier movement that was exacerbated by a skill-tier bar visual bug (even though the numbers of what players were really expecting were correct but not accurately shown).
WHERE’S SKYE????
We know you were hoping for a new hero in 1.7, and it hurts our souls to not give you one. That said, the depth and complexity of the issues resolved in 1.7 ate up a huge amount of dev cycles, and some of our team simply needed a vacation after a relentless push to the big July launch and related events. We’re a small team of humans, and inevitably people have to actually sleep and eat and do human-type things, as much as we try to prevent that. We’re players of Vainglory just like you, and we can’t wait to get Skye and more heroes into the Fold. That said, the improvements in 1.7 should open up new hero comps and item builds to keep you plenty busy until 1.8.
TEAM AFFILIATION
A lot of work has already been done to bring teams and the related competitive scene into Vainglory itself … but that work is ongoing. Ultimately, we’re extremely excited to give teams a chance to identify themselves — and for all of us to discover the amazing new pro-quality talent and teams that are the best kept secrets of Vainglory.
TEAM APPAREL!
We’re working on getting team apparel into our official Vainglory merchandise shop. We just have a couple t-shirts right now, but we’ll be expanding as fast as we can! If you’d like to see official gear for your team in the Vainglory Shop, feel free to ping me on Twitter: @playoffbeardVG.
Whether it’s clear or not from reading these update notes, we expect 1.7 to be remembered as a pivotal, absolutely essential update for the long-term health of the game and its eSports viability. We are very, very proud of the work done in this update cycle, and we hope you find our efforts worthwhile when you get in there and play. We also hope you feel the love in this update — both in terms of improvements to player pain points and for all of you in general, who are at the heart of this game’s success. So, now’s the time! Go play 1.7 and be sure to let us know what you think in the forums and vainglorygame subreddit. —PlayoffBeard
“You don’t always get the card you want. Now, as requested by the community, you’ll be able to turn your unwanted cards into the elusive cards you need. With our tap-and-hold system, it should help make sure you don’t destroy a critical card on accident. Oh, also remember you can craft a card from anywhere you can examine cards — even from the GET SKINS section of the Market.” —Kraken
“Thanks for your patience and feedback on the ping system! In spite of any systemic protection we can put in place, there are times when you will run into a player that uses the pings in a toxic way — doing what they can to make you feel bad. We’ve now added a ‘mute pings’ button in the scoreboard next to each teammate where you can now silence them. We will also keep track of that data and use it to help punish the offender and protect you.” —Kraken
To accelerate card collecting and skin weaving, we have lowered the price of the Glory Box from 749 to 479! You can now get more cards by drawing card packs more often from the Glory Box. Happy card collecting!
STATS & HEROIC PERK
SONIC ZOOM
PULSE
WAIT FOR IT …
X-RETSU
SKAARF
GOOP
PETAL
Petal gains 3 seeds around her whenever she is on the spawn platform (as long as there aren’t 3 seeds or pets already nearby). This allows her to have pets at level 1.
Spin Up stacks no longer lost upon being stunned.
LAW OF THE CLAW
KRUL
Spectral Weakness applies to large lane minions.
RINGO
HELLFIRE BREW
KOSHKA
POUNCEY FUN
ACTIVE ITEM STACKING & FOUNTAIN OF RENEWAL
“Atlas Pauldron has an extremely powerful effect that is essentially unpreventable. We’re adding a short delay so you can Reflex Block this ability.” —SurpriseBirthday
BONESAW
STORMGUARD BANNER
REFLEX BLOCK
INFUSIONS
FLARE GUN
