The Undisclosed Changes in 1.3.0

1.3.0 had a lot of notable changes in it (patch notes here) and our own AdyEndrus wrote an article on these changes. However, within a few short days it became very apparent there were many other changes that were not included in the patch notes. To my knowledge, the following list is very thorough, but please reach out to me if you believe I missed something.

Ironguard Contract

Two notable changes here:

• Earn 20 gold after taking 2 hits – rather than 5 hits
• Earn 30% bonus gold when a nearby ally last hits something – rather than 20%

These are both very welcome changes to boost the gold generation for junglers, particularly those who act as a support. Unfortunately, after doing some in-game testing, I discovered that I still had to take 5 hits to get the 20 gold pay out. It was later confirmed that the description is incorrect and should still read 5 hits. Bummer.

The good news, however, is that by increasing the gold bonus from 20% to 30%, that is a 50% increase from what it was before, which I can’t complain about.

 

Minion Candy

In 1.2.0, they reduced the early game power of Skaarf. In 1.3.0, they reduced they early game power of Koshka. This leaves Petal, who probably has the strongest level 2 power when used in combination with Minion Candy. Nonetheless, I was kind of surprised when I started to hear reports that Minion Candy was no longer working on Petal’s munions.  This has since been confirmed to be a bug, so you Petal players can sleep easy. However, there is no indication of how long it will take before a fix becomes available.

 

Attack Speed Increase for Taka

For any of you avid Taka players out there, you may have realized that Taka was the only hero in the game that started with 80% attack speed. Every other hero starts at 100% attack speed. With the release of 1.3.0, Taka gained a 20% attack speed bonus, putting him at 100% with the rest of the heroes and gradually increasing to 136% by level 12.

SurpriseBirthday, a reliable source from SEMC, clarified this change for me:

Taka’s attack cooldown was increased proportionally by the same amount, so his total rate of attack is exactly the same as before. This was changed because I thought a character not starting at 100% attack speed was weird.

Every character has a base attack cooldown that is USUALLY 1.4 seconds. But for some characters like Taka and Skaarf (actually just those two) who have 1.65 and 1.9 second cooldowns respectively. 100% attack speed reflects this base cooldown. I know this isn’t optimal, because it hides these variances in base attack speed.

To clarify:

• There’s a hidden statistic on every hero, called a “base attack cooldown”, which determines how quickly a character attacks.
• Before 1.3.0, I’m guessing Taka had a around a 1.3 or 1.4 base attack cooldown. Dividing this hypothetical cooldown by his previous 80% attack speed, we get an attack around every 1.625 to 1.75 seconds.
• With the change to 100% attack speed, they increased Taka’s base attack cooldown to 1.65, keeping his attack speed close to the same.

While this ultimately means Taka didn’t receive a buff after all, I’m still super excited because this opens a whole new world of analysis for me. You can expect a future article on the topic of base attack cooldowns and how they apply to the game.

 

Hourglass/Chronograph/Clockwork

An undisclosed change in 1.2.0 was the removal of energy regeneration on Hourglass and Chronograph. This had many people in an uproar because there’s many heroes that this hurt. It was also weird that Hourglass and Chronograph didn’t give energy regeneration, but Aftershock and Warhorn still had this energy regeneration, even though they were both build off of a Chronograph.

I’m excited (and surprised) to report that the energy regeneration of Hourglass and Chronograph is back!! It turns out that the lack of this energy regeneration was actually a bug that we’ve been living with for a month. Also, since Chronograph has a 2.4/second energy regeneration and it builds into Clockwork, Clockwork has received a small buff to its energy regeneration (from 5/second to 7.4/second).

 

Scoreboard Improvements

In some other MOBAs, a popular metric is something called “creep score.” It’s a measurement of how many lane or jungle minions – a.k.a. “creeps” – you have killed during the game. In Vainglory, your creep score affects how quickly you gain experience and gold. If you have a lower creep score than your opponents, you can expect them to have an edge over you.

In 1.3.0, you can now view the creep scores for all players at the end of the game:

During the game, however, you can only view your own creep score:

Admittedly, I really hope they start allowing you to view teammate creep scores during the game so that you know if any of them start to fall behind.

The final improvement to the scoreboard – which works both during the game and at the end of the game – is the display of active infusions.

No longer can you be caught off guard by the unexpected power spike of an opponent’s unseen infusion buff. Additionally, it’s nice to know if you teammates have active infusions because you may want to force an objective (or two) before its timer runs out.

That’s everything I have for now. I hope you’ve found this useful. I’ll keep you posted if I find anything else.