Hi Halcyon Foldians! I’m AdyEndrus and today I’m bringing you a quick summary of the Vainglory 1.2.0 patch update. This summary will try to make sense of the latest patch notes, and can bring you up to speed if you haven’t played the game since the changes.
The big thing development wanted to focus on this patch was creating Crystal Power carries. It’s an underlying (or blatantly obvious) theme running throughout the patch notes. As we move through I will make few comparisons and have some general opinions or feedback for some of the changes.
The newest hero made it into the fold. Her wave clear is amazing. She is a strong counter to one of the weaker heroes. We’ll see what people can do with her in the next few weeks.
PlayoffBeard’s SurpriseBirthday aka Koshka
Koshka got the buff of a lifetime. Her flavor is an instant hit! The energy cost reductions pushed her to the top of the competition. No one can match her in tank stats with her perk stacked, and no one can match her early damage output. Once people start to catch up with her (I’m setting myself up here) the movement speed bonus from her perk puts her well out of reach. She’s slippery, fast, aggressive, and powerful. Keep an eye out for this one!
SAW had a lot of power shifted to his Crystal Power build. However, due to the bonus damage from the execute mechanic of the Mad Cannon stacks, it was time for his ultimate to get scaled back a bit. The crystal ratio got cut in half, but he still has crystal ratios coming out of his ears. Now he just won’t be able to burst a full team from 100 to 0 without breaking a sweat.
I think I made too many “caterpillar” references to this poor guy, because SEMC addressed it by calling this a “Bug Fix”.
They removed the energy recharge from Hourglass and Chronograph, and so junglers have to look elsewhere for their energy, or be more conservative. I didn’t like this change because some junglers are more mana dependent than others, and only casters have room in their builds for energy items.
This item keeps getting nerfed. I don’t see it very often in high Elo play, but when I do it can be annoying. They capped the scaling slow to a cap of 35%, and increased how long you have before you will be slowed from 1.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds.
Isn’t it about time? How unjust of a world do we live in where Weapon items were scaling better than Crystal? Well, no more! Shatterglass got shoved up to 150 CP with a 450 gold price increase. This item is now the caster’s equivalent of Sorrowblade. However, a Crystal Bit costs 300 gold and gives 20 CP. This change is 450 more gold for 35 more CP, so slightly more gold efficient than the lowest tier CP item. Alternatively, when compared to an Eclipse Prism (650 gold, 35 CP), this change is very efficient gold-wise. This was very obviously a buff to compensate for a true mage entering the fold.
This is almost the exact opposite of what League of Legends did with Lich Bane. Lich Bane used to be able to explode people because in the early game it was a poor item choice, and in the late game it was too powerful. SurpriseBirthday actually expresses that they want casters to scale into the late game, so here you go! Have you ever seen a CP Ringo??
Good name. Buffs! Buffs! Everywhere! While it’s not clear what “in combat” means, this item is much better. The first second you are in combat with enemy players it is as efficient as before, and then scales without you needing to sacrifice your life! Much improved, and I’m glad they are buffing Crystal Power items across the board.
Huge buff. I used to never suggest upgrading all the way to Serpent Mask because you lost the Barbed Needle passive, which was really strong. I think ShinKaigan suggested this change, because the heal from that passive is more powerful than the weapon lifesteal.
Broken Point. This item was strong. It was breaking the game. It was built in every game, on multiple people. So we fixed it, right? Right?? Wrong. Gadianton already did the numbers on the new Breaking Point and it’s still powerful.
1 Comment
Inkeyes
Mar 09, 2015 8:35 pmThank you for your insight. Delighted to read as always. From playing with and against Celeste, very powerful yet fragile – more extreme on both end than rango. Very effective against Petal. The other change are more apparent and welcome. An in-depth look and further break down of Celeste would be appreciated.