Justice may be blind, but so is Glaive, and that hasn’t stopped either of them from being balanced. SEMC evened out the weight classes in 1.10, creating the fairest fight you ever had the pleasure of tapping. Vainglory’s latest update 1.10 “The Big Payout” dropped yesterday, and 14 out of the 18 heroes got changes or bug fixes. I don’t know if there’s enough space on the site to contain all of the changes! Without further ado, let’s dive right in.
skins
We got a new tiered skin:
- Star Queen Celeste – Tier I
The new Celeste skin is beautiful and many have been clamoring for a tiered Celeste skin. You got your wish! She slides right in to the family space theme with Vox and Ardan.
Guild rewards!
Guilds can now earn prizes each season for leveling up. At the end of the Autumn Season, which ends January 13th, guild members will receive a payout based on the Fame level achieved by the guild. If you reach level 90, each member receives 15,000 Glory and 900 ICE. That’s 750,000 Glory for a full guild of 50! To make leveling Fame even easier, they’ve added a new “Guild Heat” system.
By keeping your guild members active, you can unlock these Fame bonuses. Also new in 1.10, you can now gain fame with just two guild members! As Guild Captain, you can also change a guild between open and invite only, and change the guild motto!
Name changes
Don’t like the name SaltyMcSalterson? You can now change your own name! However, it will still cost 1300 ICE. This is a great move as it reduces the load on SEMC support and provides instant gratification for all you Millennials.
Hero and gameplay changes
Petal
Petal continues to be a focus for SEMC. The prolific pumpkin-head now has a new energy system for her seeds, so managing her seeds is now a focus of her kit. Her munions are now much tankier against AOE abilities, with up to nine “ticks” of damage required to kill them on overdrive. Basic attacks and single target abilities deal three ticks of damage, but AOE (Area of Effect) damage only deal one tick. Her munions also no longer attack jungle monsters that Petal stops attacking, to prevent them from stealing last hits. The biggest change however, is a new AOE heal and slow added to her ultimate. These changes put Petal one step closer to viability and give her a support carry-ish role in the jungle. Try her as a CP (Crystal power) jungle carry!
Vox
Vox got hit with a hotfix last month, which broke his last hit indicator. This has been fixed, and the hotfix changes are now official. They lowered WP (Weapon power) ratios on his Sonic Zoom ability, lowered base weapon damage, and fixed an attack speed cooldown bug. That being said, he’s still an extremely powerful hero, and with some other heroes being nerfed, he may rise in power again.
Taka
Taka got a pretty big change to his heroic perk. After trying to shift him towards CP in 1.9, it looks like SEMC wants to make both CP and WP viable build paths for Taka. His perk now provides 40 + 25% of his bonus weapon power as weapon damage each time it activates. It can also crit! This means that crit chance is no longer a wasted stat on Taka. This change allows WP Taka to scale much better into late game. Another huge change is he is now IMMUNE to stuns, debuffs, damage, glitter poop, etc. when he flips with Kaiten. Be on the look out for Taka in this patch, if you can see him. Snort.
Skaarf
The flapping larva was doing too much damage to Kraken. They’ve reduced the damage as well as to lane minions. His goop also got delayed by 0.2 seconds, and they fixed a bug where his flaming fireball would accidentally hit multiple heroes. Even with these slight nerfs, Skaarf remains an incredibly strong Crystal carry. I expect to see a lot of Skaarf in 1.10.
Ringo
Ringo got a slight buff by fixing a bug with his Twirling Silver. The attack reset from this ability was slower by 0.2 seconds than it should have been. This means that for pro players, his combo burst will be doing damage even quicker than before.
Celeste
The Star Queen was doing so much damage with her incredibly long range poke to build up Broken Myth stacks and then use her Ultimate, Solar Storm, to blow up everything. They’ve shifted damage from her Star to her Nova which rewards players for landing the harder to hit Nova. They also reduced damage on her ult, but only slightly. She’s still one of the top laners and will be a strong pick for 1.10. That skin is also amaze-balls.
Glaive
Combined with some other lifesteal changes, the developers felt Glaive had too much late game lifesteal. They reduced it by 5% at full stacks (20% -> 15%). Mr. Kitty will still be great in my opinion, especially with the critical chance on the new Tyrant’s Monocle. This gives him a base of 20-25% critical chance depending on if you max his B skill, and up to 65% with just one Monocle!
Rona
Rona used to steal too many hearts too much health by stacking Serpent’s Masks. With the new Serpent’s Mask, it can no longer be effectively stacked, so they removed the 50% lifesteal nerf on her ultimate. You can now also cancel her ultimate while silenced, allowing for more counter play. Rona is a powerhouse in Jungle, and I think building her with attack speed, defense, and Stormguard Banner will continue to be effective.
Catherine
Cooldown Catherine was a little too strong. Her shield and stun with Cooldown Speed (new name!) allowed her to be tanky without building any tank items. They’ve adjusted this slightly by shortening the duration of her stun and increasing the cooldown back to 13 seconds for all levels. It’s a slight nudge and she’ll continue to be strong as it was her shield that made it hard for her to be brought down, and her shield was unchanged.
Koshka
The kitty is back! Koshka has an extremely powerful ultimate Yummy Catnip Frenzy. In 1.9, if her ultimate was reflex blocked, she’d effectively be stunned for 2.2 seconds. Now, blocking it simply cancels the whole thing and allows Koshka to continue doing Koshka things. She also got another buff – her basic attacks reduce cooldowns by two seconds on her ultimate (up from one second). Oh, and you can’t ult poor minions anymore, only heroes.
Phinn
So many Phinn jokes, so little time. I’ll save you the digression. SEMC has decided that missing his anchor throw was too forgiving, so they’ve reduced the refund and increased the cooldown as well. Still the coolest ultimate in the game, I think Phinn has a ton of potential. He’s just too damn slow!
Fortress
Who let the dogs out! Woof. Fortress gets a change to his A ability, Truth of the Tooth. Instead of lifesteal from his B ability, now all allies gain up to 20% Weapon and Crystal lifesteal for up to three seconds when marked with Fortress’s A. Also, popping the bleed debuff now allows you to immediately reapply it, for more damage and slows! Fortress may have some interesting new compositions now that lifesteal was changed significantly.
Joule
With the changes to Tyrant’s Monocle, WP Joule would’ve been too strong. They adjusted her pierce down to 5-10% so she doesn’t rocket leap into OP’er space. Ok that was pretty bad. The new Monocle is an interesting item on her, perhaps something a certain theorycrafter could analyze in an upcoming article. 😉
Krul
I saved the best for last. BANGARANG! Krul’s ultimate, From Hell’s Heart, got a fix that now correctly applies the slow and stun duration depending on how far away he hits you with his axe. If you hit someone at full boomerang range, it now slows for THREE seconds. It’s the longest stun in the game. Start practicing your boomerang throws!
items
Eve of Harvest and Serpent’s Mask were both changed. Instead of full 25% lifesteal as a stat that could be stacked, that portion of lifesteal is now a unique passive. For up to 1200 damage at level 12, you gain 25% lifesteal. A counter in the left corner tells you how much damage is left for your passive. Overheals don’t count towards this, so dealing damage at full health won’t penalize you.
Stormguard Banner was too good on carries, allowing them to run around the Jungle, stealing camps. In an attempt to stymie this behavior, they’ve increased the cost of Banner by 150 gold, reduced the Health regen from 16 to eight, and also prevented multiple Ironguard Contracts from providing gold.
Multiple Contraptions were being abused, primarily in the EA meta. To fix this behavior, Contraptions now share charges with each other. They also removed the 200 Health bonus, and increased the recharge time from 15 to 20 seconds. They also made a small quality of life change, increasing the radius for dropping a Scout Trap. I’ve accidentally flared so many times, so I welcome this change.
Tyrant’s Monocle now provides 40% critical chance (up from 30%) but only 20% critical damage (down from 30%). This is an interesting change because it allows certain heroes to hit a high critical chance (Glaive) with just one of these. For more about this change, see Gadianton’s amazing article.
Scout traps were doing too much damage, especially at level one. They’ve reduced it across the board. They also made Flares reveal Scout Traps permanently (as long as they are in vision range). Lastly Minion Candy now only lasts for 30 seconds on Jungle bosses.
Match start
Players are now locked for ten seconds on the platform so they can buy items. This evens the playing field and is a feature is almost every other MOBA. After the ten seconds, you get a movement speed boost so you can get to the jungle camps before they spawn. This took some getting used to, but I like it a lot. It’s much more fair.
Turrets & VAIN Crystal
The Warhorn defense system was a little too good. In an effort to make matches a little quicker, they’ve reduced the shield regeneration per second on Turrets, but increased the total amount of shield. This means that it’s easier for a full team to burn down turrets, but harder for one hero to try and sneak one down. They also added the same barrier protection to the Vain Crystal.
Recommended items
Recommended items got a complete overhaul. Now it helps you build items starting from Tier one and two, instead of just showing Tier three items. Also, support heroes now show Ironguard Contract as the recommended purchase!
PHEW! If you read this far, I applaud you. It was a lot to take in. There are so many hero and balance changes in this patch, I thought my fingers were going to fall off writing about it all. However, I think SEMC did a great job in balancing 1.10. Hero balance is really really hard, and they are trying to make the game the best it can be! Go play!
EDIT: Here are the official patch notes as well, for all of the changes and bug fixes!