3/15/15 Major Updates Patch Notes

I finally fixed the random ultimate problem! I had 2 variables with almost the same name, and was calling on the wrong one (which made it pick from the ultimates already picked by players 1-30, so if you were lucky, it copied someone elses ultimate, but chances were you got player 30's ultimate, which was nothing)

plant the bomb can no be picked; however no promises that it wont crash the game eventually.

glad mode, i added a backup "remove invuln" and made the region bigger; though it looked plenty big.

I added a new AMS item, "Scroll of AMS" it costs 12,000 gold, has 5 casts, and blocks 6000 spell damage per cast.

I found a problem with late picking and innates, not sure if that is the situation you ran into; i couldnt find a problem with -random and innates though.  80% sure this will fix your issue.

Taunt, I found a "triggering unit" which should have been a "picked unit" causing a null return on a condition. lets see if this works.

Atmas tooltip has been fixed, and the actual damage is higher than the tooltip was saying (not much). The damage seems to be exactly what it is set to in the editor though. Spell damage reduction may be screwing with it though, idk.

FIXED item invulnerability. To kick it up a notch too, I altered the ability for lighting shield 1, it is now a small area dispel, dealing 2000 damage to summons and purging all units in the area.

Totemic Set +700 gold cost
Speed Set +1000 gold cost
Auroric Set +1000 gold cost

Reasoning: I feel as though aura from items make skill items pretty worthless. These items are damn near required no matter what class you play. Making them more expensive will not make them any less needed, but will make them cost a bit more.

Regalia +100 mana
Warriors Token +10% ias
Warriors Set +1000 hp
Power Shield Recipe -1000

Reasoning: a completely unused line of items, with good reason i guess.

Divining Rod +4 armor
Holy Gauntlets +25 DR
scepter of the holy protector +10 regen
ring of shielding +10 DR
Panths Armor +10 IAS

Reasoning: defensive items are underrated, and have been since shields were added.

BOMBS: some minor tweaking on higher level bombs. I still dont see them being entirely too viable, just due to gameplay and all that; but they were buffed at higher levels, given more bombs for massive and fat man, and their value is higher while the recipe is lower (so you can sell the remainder without taking a hit to the wallet)

Elementals made about 10% weaker, a little less life, a little less damage. Moreso on the light, corrupt, and stone bosses, so as that all 5 bosses have a closer difficulty and can be accessed a little earlier. As it is now, you can kill an elemental, then go kill an archon; I want there to be a slightly larger gap in there.

Rag bosses get more powerful as they level, the system I had created before was too static, so after 3 times through rag, his rate of difficulty did not nearly keep up with how easily he was killed. I hope this creates a better challenge for players in the future. The Reward for some of the bosses has been increased, to compare better to archon farming.

Found some bugs in the automatic "gold to everyone" trigger, and the "gold to people chilling in yiff's arena". More "triggering units" when I needed something more along the lines of "(Owner of (playerhero(integerA)))" and an action going off earlier than it should, resulting in a not-always-so-equal-free-gold-distribution.

Item abilities with spell damage (Staffs, and immortals helmet) have had their spells reworked to be more... useful. With the huge nerf to weak C via the addition of a massive AMS potion, I feel as though atmas is no longer a 1 hit wonder. Spells on staffs have had their cooldowns reduced greatly, and their mana costs reduced also. Ice staff remains unchanged, and corruption staff has only had its CD reduced a little. Fire and light have seen the greatest buffs.

Looking into it, Auroric set was still granting a 60% endurance aura (though it should have been 40) and has likely been like that since I set agility to .5% attack speed. The buff has been set properly to 40%. The brilliance aura has been reduced to 25%.

Immortals boots now only grant 80% spell damage reduction, in an attempt to allow late game spells without the use of weak C to be worth casting. The boots still offer 40 brilliance, and 60% endurance.

Scepter of the mana goddess has had its ability to drain mana increased from 1200 to 2000

Immortals shield now only grants 90% spell damage reduction, for the same reason as boots. Immortals armor still grants the full 95%.

Prismatic Shield is down to 90% also.

Staff of the death bringer and rags sword now offer 30% command auras; these are the only 30% command auras in the game. Reason being, int has 35% evasion, which is accessable by agility if needed. Strength needed a late game ringer, imo; which is also usable by agi if needed.

Scepter of the primarch has had its life drain increased to 12%. So much armor/reduction has been added to the game over the years that 10% life steal vs 300 armor=shit and piss. There is still the massive trade off of wielding this vs a weapon or item offering more than 150 max damage. (or 50 if you arent str).

Eternal sets: Mana goddess mana restore is increased to 6000, and cooldown decreased to 40 seconds, from 60. CD on eternal reduced to 40, eternal of life reduced to 30, from 60.

Demon gauntlets tooltip was incorrectly stating 2000 damage, when the damage was only 1000. damage is now 1250 and tooltip reflects it. No idea why these gloves are not used more.

Archons now get stronger as they are killed
Archons now all give the same amount of gold
Archons have all been given life regen
The walls between archons has been widened. Some heroes/skills may still be able to shoot the gap

Skill Alterations:

Offensive:
Spitfire: CD down slightly
Psn Nova: Now deals a tick of damage when the poison is inflicted, rather than waiting a second to deal its first tick of damage. This initial tick can kill units.
Seed of corruption: Base mana cost reduced by 25, hopefully to allow someone other than high int casters to make use of it as an early game farmer.
firewall: hits Air
Feral Spirit: Mana cost -10 per lvl
Vamp Soul: +5% base steal
Monsoon: as it levels, the duration is shorter and the strikes are more frequent. The damage output remains the same, however at max level the duration is 3.5 seconds rather than 5. The CD also decreases faster per level to make up for this as well.
Life Drain: Cd down a little, damage at level 12+ increased by 15 per. High spell damage reduction makes a 3.2 second channel completely useless. With the new values, in 3.2 seconds you drain a total of 2500 life; with only 50% reduction thats ~1100 after hero reduction is added in.

Defensive:
Bone Wall: lowered the cost
Hardened skin: Altered the ratio to make it about 1 level stronger, with a new cap of 342 (to better compare against immortals shield granting 250)
Shadow Strike: cd reduced by about 3.


MISC:
Acid rain: Finally hits air
Immolation: Hits Air, AoE increased with level
Battle roar: initial mana cost down, and mana cost per level down. Intended for auto attackers, it required the mana of a half-caster. Also being a purgable team based spell, it needed a little love.
Blaze: AoE increased from 150 to 175, and the fire duration increasees .1 per level.
Endurance Aura: +10% Ms at first level
face the void: Cd reduced initially, and per level. still taxing on the mana pool, but may help with farming a bit if you have the mana to support it.
Frozen Orb: Damage increased at higher levels, lowered the CD a little.
Gobbies: Mana cost per level reduced greatly.


Ults:
fixed a problem with the life regen on puppet master stacking a shit-ton of times, translating to "shit ton of life regen".
Locust: Swarm count increased slightly, Cd decreased with level (Locust is/was pretty shitty from 16 on)

DONZO

I'm a little hesitant on the bombs as in general they're pretty good. An early large/massive in team games can completely wreck havoc. So much so that it is really hard to protect noob allies from them let alone yourself. Simply put in a good game they're summon clear ability that can be use to completely clear an opposing team of their AMS potions and in a bad game they simply wipe the whole opposing team with ease. Besides bombers can also flag for extra income in general or make damn good flag protectors.

Hmm, I thought that bombs do not deal damage to heroes? I need to update the tooltips, cuz yeah, they do. sweet. Alright, i rebalanced them around that fact.

As per your other comment, i reduced the cost of DP by 5 per level, and the base cost by like 10. I also reduced the CD, and the CD per level was reduced by more.

I think i removed the slow debuff from spitfire slow when the skill ends.

I am looking forward to the changes. Here are some questions I have and tips:

Will HS Orb still share the ability with light shield 1? Or will it have its own ability and was that fixed as well? It shared the bug with the lightening shields and shared a cool down with light shield 1.

Maybe add an "Exceptional Orb Shop" in the base so noobs can somehow see they have to kill the elementals to get them. Maybe you could add the hs orb recipe in there as well. Just make them all cost 1 lumber.

In the immortal items in the map add something to the weapons that makes it clear they can only be gotten in unlimited weapons mode. Not sure how much work it is, but maybe you could remove the recipe in normal game mode.

Maybe just a fun request for me personally would be to add some type of immortal weapon recipe with rags sword. Not sure what it should do etc but would be an option to somewhat match doombringer with crit but I don't know how to make it balanced etc.

To fix the double archon bug, you can add 250-300 units of cliffs between scylla and the paladin, the corruption elemental and the paladin, and scylla and illidan. A 500 range hero cannot do it, but a 550 can. My understanding is that 750 strength guy is the max range. I just saw you had some fixes to this, but I will leave this part here just so you can verify everything is good. The real ability to do them was based on agro with a skill then attack to finish them off. If the cliff range is long enough, I think the only other ability that would be able to do it would be skeles with a lot of auras going, but if the skeles are out of range of the auras, then they would die quickly.

There is a rare bug (not sure if it is engine base and if you could find a workaround) is when you are hexed and purchasing tomes, they drop on the ground. I had this happen playing wrath and I gave him a decent amount of free agility and hp before I realized what was happening. I don't think I would have won but it was still bothersome.

I think that elemental change would be good. I usually don't use demonic gloves because the time it takes to get all the essences, I feel like I could get way more gold killing archons.

Not sure if I had anymore, but I can't think of them now. I will add them if I think of them later. Thanks for taking the time to bug fix and update.

I remembered 2 more:
glad to see the changes to ams to counter weak c. There was a certain point where a melee could to nothing against spiked armor/helm of the war god. Maybe making them stackable would help even more. Reflecting more damage than you are taking is op (with 92% damage reduction from armor)

Pots and eternal set and eternal set of war god do not interact with banish (the healing is not increased). Not sure if this is intended.

Acid is only hitting air now.

Immolation is broken as well

I did some testing:

How does the Archon increase happen. Is it each one independently?

Double Archon is still possible with Sniper team. I also realized it is possible to do other Elementals and Archons at the same time. Ice and Archos, Lightening and Scylla, and still Corruption and Paladin. A good way to test this is with frost fall or shockwave.

Also, is parasite supposed to spawn a summon? If so it is not.

The scroll of AMS only has two charges, not 5 when you purchase it and doesn't stack.

HS Orb and lightening shield 2 have the same cd. Not sure if that was intended

I was thinking about how shoulders could be reworked. Maybe just giving a flat bonus regen instead of % based. Once the mana regen % is up to 1500 or higher, then unkillable is mathematically possible against everyone with a bat of 2 or higher without them stacking multiple crits. Unkillable will be mathematically possible with terra unless some major changes are made.

Eternal Set of the mana godess has a 50 second cd and needs to be updated to say 6000 mana in the shop.

Lastly I think it would be helpful to have hotkey shopping aligned with qwer asdf zxcv. I realize that would take a while to set up, not sure if I could help in any way.

Man i miss this game..

Archon go up by +8 to all stats every death I believe.

Going to test the skills and edit this post as I go along.
Offensives:
Fire wall works
Spit Fire works (it works like a pseudo atma's curse but slows instead of stuns)
Seed of Corruption works (lol I was able to run a ganking agility doing it + mines to give an idea)
Monsoon works
Death Pulse works
Vamp works
Edit:Everything works


Defensive:
Taunt works (One of my favorite skills from char2 final2 so yay ^_^ )
Shadow Strike works
Bone Wall works
Harden Skin works

Misc:
Acid broken
Immolation broken
Everything else works

Ultimates:
Atma's curse still has tool tip stating it only deals 0 damage. Also its visual effect disappears after 1 second.
Locust Swarm works

Modes:
Plant the bomb mode can be selected however bomb don't go boom counts down to 1 and nothing and your still stuck with the bomb.

Little Notes
Maybe the defensive spirit link could perhaps link to more units to combo better with summons and allied heroes. In comparison Spirit Link tethers to 6 where as each Watery Defender tethers to 4.

Shackles still seems weak to me when compared to doom roots,demon spawn, death orb and to a much lesser extent wrath of hell. Out side of divine shield, vortex, and abolish doom roots out classes shackles and doesn't disable your hero in the process.

Yes, archons are +8 per kill.
Acid, fixed I think (i assume it was the targetting that was the issue)
Immolation was the same as acid. when I clicked "Air" it changed it to "only air"
Atmas: curious about this; as the buff is actually applied by corrosive breath. it is actually corrosive breath; with a triggered stun every 1 second. It can be purged though. the affect was still happening though? if so, strange. i can alter the graphic i guess, no problem.
Spirit link now starts at 3 links and builds to 10, mana cost reduced 10 per level.

Shackles has had its base damage increased by 10, so its total damage is now 50, 100, 200, 400, 800. at lax level, that is 8800 damage, while disabling for 11 seconds. I figured with the nerf to spell damage reduction, it would help the skill. The Cd is also much lower than the CD of doom roots.

Doom roots had its duration reduced by 1 second (Should have done this when i removed divine from supersonic).

Touched the terrain a bit more on archons; i think with demolition team or w/e you can still multiple boss in various places, but "Ehh" if you pick a build based entirely on the concept that you want to be able to kill multiple bosses in less time; hopefully you lose for other reasons.

Fixed AMS scroll.

Added a line to "ultimate weapons" to include that you need multiple weapons mode to get them

Parasite should not summon a monster

HS orb and light shield should share a CD

Immortals shoulders will not be changed because of a single possible abuse in a game requiring a 12 duel minimum and 5+ immortals items. However in light of the spell damage alterations, the spell damage reduction on shoulders will be reduced (because mana shield also reduces spell damage taken).

Yes, mana goddess has a 50 second CD. I updated the tooltip on the recipe to reflect the change to 6000.

All shop items used to have hotkeys. It took me tens of hours to arrange them all. Know what happened? People asked me to remove them because they would accidentally hit the wrong hotkey.

Potions and eternal sets are all potion affects and are not intended to work with banish. While it is something i could change; i feel as though i would have to nerf the hell out of banish if i did. As a 1 point skill, that would make it over-the-top; especially early game.

No new super-end game items will ever be added. It is highly likely that no new items will ever be added. I mean, there are something like 380 items in the game right now, if you include recipes.

The hex/tome bug is a wc3 engine thing. your hero is turned into a unit which cannot have an inventory; so rather than the items being picked up, they arent. also, if you were able to use the tomes, it would cause a fatal error and the game would crash. you used to be able to buy tomes in base; until we found out that people would buy them with peons and crash the game.

I should add dummy items to the elemental shops explaining how to get exceptional orbs; but i mean... there are constant pop up tips, and other people in the game; and just a hint of logic flying around.

Also me glorn tested the rag quest and it appears the bug where the game crashes on multiple runs seems to have been fixed. So... That now works ^_^

So when is the bug fix gonna be on ent?

I think some time this weekend. So be sure to find all the bugs you can and report them before then.

More Updates:

Bombs once again, do not deal heroes. After playing a few games with them (using them, and against them) they do a much better job of farming than I thought, and the hero damage was a bit nuts. Combined with weak C you literally do not need a farming skill at all, for the entire game.

Chain Light: Initial mana cost reduced greatly, but mana cost per level increased. Every farming skill in the game has had its mana cost reduced in the past couple edits, except chain light. This should make it more viable early game for lower mana heroes, and a little more taxing late game when the damage is increased.

PTB: touched it a bit, not sure what the problem is; so I added more text updates; should help pinpoint what is/isnt going off, and keep players informed on progression.

Elementals: Reduced their damage a bit. Weakening their HP a little doesnt scale really when compared to the fact that they are all holding exceptional orbs!

Exceptional Orbs: Now require a recipe, which costs MONEY(3000). I think this has been a long-time oversight by myself, and really everyone. Pretty much a free 150 damage. I recall a time when a player would get 4 Exceptional orbs right before a duel, and it was hilarious the level of win... that was back when max damage was around 800 too. Nuts I say, Nuts!

Weak C: Radius increased by 122 as a base (so 600 range units are within the aura), reduction reduced by 10 as a base, so it ranges from (-10) to (-30) now. This was done because of the staff upgrades, to make them viable without the use of weak C, makes them super strong with it; also this makes it more of a team skill in pvp, and less of a farming skill.

Exceptional costing money now will take some getting use to. One thing that comes to mind is Demonic Gauntlets is going to get hit hard from this change. I mean 52500 is not exactly small change to say the least.

Agreed an additional 15k cost is intense perhaps take off the requirement for omega orb. Also hs orb will cost an additional 9k needs some other incentive maybe shorter cd on spell block.

Math for demonic gauntlets:
Comparing to a late game skill, MEA, at max level, with max attack speed, on a 2.0 BAT hero. You are looking at a bit over 500 spell DPS, if your opponent has no evasion.
Demonic Gloves: 2000 damage every 3 seconds. 666 spell DPS, evasion is moot. Does not require a 15 point investment.
MEA is better single target DPS than pulv or ele master.
With exception to super late game with immortals ring, demonic gauntlets offer some of the best damage in the game. Top spell damage potential in the game. Atma beam? ~150 spell DPS. Frost nova? ~200 dps.

I should do something with secret orb though; what do you say to removing the damage and having 190 total all stats?

Archon bug is back! after killing rag I went bag to rag quest and error! game over and closed

How will the Secret Orb cost extra money wasn't it just 3 essences + eternal orb? LOL +190 to all stats for 4k being achievable at around level 13 solo now that is what I call hax. Heck it already is hax in its current form now that it doesn't glitch out and orbs cost money and all. The thing about demonic is not just the costs but also the inventory juggling headache that comes from the needed recipe. It just makes multi task combining a pain in the ass. I'm sorry orimis what archon bug? Are you talking about the game crashing on the rag quest being back?

I tend to forget what the secret orb recipe is. like, i dont know what the recipe is. I for some reason throught it was all the orbs. It isnt though, no? all the essences? noice! Fine; ill leave it, boss!

Demonic gauntlets, is what... uhh, all 5 gauntlets right? So the price for them went up 15k. However, the CD was reduced by a second, making them uhhhh, 30% stronger.

They are a pain in the ass to make, and I have only made them a couple times in the history of my life... but uhhh... DPS facts dont lie. If they were easier to make, everyone would use them no matter what. I am damn near tempted to anyway.

Yes ormi, you said "Archon bug" then spoke of a rag bug disconnect. I think the problem may be with the mass unit creation and buff adding all at once; i will try to space it out; and a few other lag prevention techniques. Generally crashes like that happen because max RAM usage for the program is exceeded (in this case, it is 1GB). This can happen due to cyclic redundancies, or just by having too much shit happen at once. In this case, I think the problem may actually be linked to a greater amount of general "all game lag buildup" causing the rag quest to be the tipping point; as it calls on a lot of checks at once, and a lot of graphics go off at once.

Yea Secret Orb is awesome if you haven't used it before you should probably consider using it now.
It's components consist of lightning essence + frost essence + fire essence + eternal orb. Two of which of those essences come of the easiest to kill elemental bosses in the game.

Mean while what do you get from your 4000 gold investment?
3 second divine shield active with like a 30 second cd.
+135 Damage (in comparison fatal axe cost 5600 for this)
+55 to all stats
+45% attack speed bonus
Sells for 7500 gold!
Do you need much more incentive then that? Hell this thing is core buy it on everyone in every game already noobs.

Yiff arena duels sometimes lock up the game was playing with epic the first time it happened I had atmas curse and was near where the portal would be and the second time was playing a pub game with carefulbite and locust caused us to lock up at around the same spot in that arena.

Alright, so let's see if I get this straight.

During a duel, a player standing near where the portal to exit yiffs arena, was "merr-merr-merring" and "mer-mer-mer" happened, and the game "froze"

Use your big boy words!

"Lock up" was a player, or both players, invulnerable and unable to move? just unable to move? was 1 player invulnerable? was 1 player unable to leave the arena? Did you blue screen of death? Where were you before the duel started?

Locked Up: The point at which the only way to gain control of your computer is to power cycle it I couldn't operate task manager, alt + f4 wouldn't respond I waited 5 minutes with all the characters frozen into position. I never received the dreaded "fatal error" box.