Hello everyone and welcome to Patch 2.17! Today we have new skins, a new taunt, server improvements, an update to training mode, and a slew of balance improvements. Oh, and Kor is down to 5400 gold now, so you can get him added to your KORllection of Legends.  

New Skins

• Lion Rampant Roland
• The Heavyweights (Gauntlets skin)
• Photo Op (Taunt)

Server Migration Tonight After the Patch.  

We’ve heard your complaints about server performance, and after a lot of investigation and deliberation  we’ll be migrating our servers tonight. While that means some extended downtime, we’re aiming to have better networking performance for everyone afterwards. Thanks for your patience! See you on the flip side.

• Four Hours Extended Server Downtime tonight (Est. June 15, 10:00 pm EDT – June 16, 2:00 am EDT)
• Better networking performance in the future

Training Mode Update!

We’ve added some new features to the training room that will allow players to get even more out of their training time. If you’re a lab monster, scientist, or technician, you’ll be able to find all new kinds of strings and resets with the new ‘Dodge Out’ setting that will allow you to choose what direction bots dodge out of strings. We look forward to seeing what you all come up with!

• Difficulty renamed to CPU.
• Removed Dodge Out from CPU and made it its own setting.
• Dodge Out can now do directional dodges and random.
• New page labeled Bot Options 2.
• Items are now equipped instead of spawned.
• Added item option to bots.
• Added Position Reset.

Community Request

• In Couch Party and Custom Online, the game will do a better job of not randomly picking the same map in consecutive games. It will only do this if Map Choosing is set to “Random” or if the “Random” map wins when Map Choosing is set to “Voting.” This will have no effect on any “Striking” modes.
• Steam Launcher command  -noskulls will remove the skulls from the bouncy bomb 
• Steam Launcher command  -noskulls also turns off the skulls in shipwreck.

UI and Animation

• Changed start up animation on the Axe’s Side Air so that it telegraphs better
• Changed “confirm” button to “set region” button inside the region settings screen
• Slight tweak to the tail orientation in the High Five Taunt animation so that it will support a wider variety of sidekick body types
• Taunt icons incorporating sidekicks now scale to better fit the square icon space in the store and inventory
• Redrew missing frames from the collectors KO fx animation.
• Reduced opacity of the swooshes on the axe’s recover animation so that the axe head would be easier to track

Controller Support

• Added PC support for Intsun T3

New Weekly Legend Rotation

This week’s Legend rotation features Asuri, Brynn, Cassidy, Koji, Lord Vraxx, and Ulgrim.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a rare crash bug in custom lobbies involving a race condition with someone leaving.
• Fixed a bug in Training Mode where spawned weapons were invisible until unpaused.
• Fixed a bug where setting your region wasn’t getting handled properly.
• Fixed a bug that removed the back button to exit the game.
• Fixed a highlighter issue in the Keybinds Screen.
• Fixed a bug that could cause an incorrect Hurtbox to be displayed on the transition frame between animations when viewing Hurtboxes.
• Fixed issue on mammoth fortress and potentially other maps where it would unload and reload parts of the map that weren’t on screen for a while causing a performance spike.
• Fixed a bug causing all controllers to stop being recognized on Mac
• Fixed a rare crash when starting the game.
• Fixed a bug where the color/skin picker would open onto a hero you don’t own.
• Fixed a bug causing Dark Matter Vraxx KO eye to not color swap correctly.
• Fixed a bug in training mode where disabling/enabling items didn’t properly update. (Credit Dobrien)
• Fixed a bug that could incorrectly display fractional Damage when Show Damage is enabled. (Credit Luxcifer)

Game Balance

Smaller list of balance changes this patch while we focus attention on Hurtbox polish and other fixes. With the introduction of Gauntlets and recent changes to dodge, the meta is shifting. So we’re still observing and collecting feedback before making any rash decisions. These ongoing changes should help cut down on the number of cases that leave players asking “Why did/didn’t that hit?!?” Enjoy!

Spear
These changes should help lower Spear’s dependency on the Neutral Light -> Chase Dodge Side Light -> Down Light -> Side Air string, which at 5 Startup and roughly 70 Damage felt a little too dominant on the kit. Lowering the stun on Neutral Light should create a window to jump out of a Side Light punish, and increasing Side Light’s Force should lessen the Damage range where its full combo connects while making it more worthwhile to land in the red.

• Spear Neutral Light: Reduced Stun Time from 19 to 16.
• Spear Side Light: Increased Variable Force from 26 to 32.

Axe
The Axe is getting some visual changes that should help make its attacks a little easier to read, as well as a small decrease in height to the Neutral Light to reduce some of the threat overlap between it and Down Light.

• Axe Neutral Light: Slightly decreased Hitbox Height.
• Axe Side Air: Changed animation to better telegraph power startup.
• Axe Recovery: Reduced swoosh opacity to make the axe head’s position easier to read.

Kor (and Gauntlets)
We’re holding off on making any major changes to the Gauntlets until they’ve settled some in the meta. From what we’ve seen, Kor’s performing slightly better than anticipated at low levels of play, but performs at or slightly lower than expected after that. We’re going to continue keeping an eye on him as players continue to learn the matchup. For now, we’ve made a visual change to make it clearer when Kor’s Side Gauntlets starts charging, and slightly decreased its Force.

• Kor Side Gauntlets: Decreased Variable Impulse from 54 to 53; Changed the starting point of the charge animation to better telegraph the start of the power.

Cassidy
Cassidy Neutral Blasters was one of the first Signatures we ever made, and it shows in the hitboxing. We’ve made a rehitboxing pass and increased the Damage some by ensuring that there aren’t strange edge cases where it can do 38 Damage.

• Cassidy Neutral Blasters: Rehitboxed to better match animation; Increased Damage from 15 to 19; In the rare event where both shots would land, the second will not be treated as a hit.

Vraxx
Vraxx’s Neutral Lance on hit behavior extended a few frames into the miss animation before transitioning into the hit animation. There are still some slightly jarring aspects to the transition that we’ll have to address in a later patch, but this shouldn’t have any significant balance implications.

• Vraxx Neutral Lance: Adjusted animation to match Hitbox timing; Total power duration on hit decreased from 87 to 83.

Asuri
Asuri’s Neutral Sword can be a little awkward to land so we’ve cut down some of its long startup time for a decreased Force reward.

• Asuri Neutral Sword: Decreased Time to Hit from 26 to 24; Decreased Variable Force from 59 to 58.

Ulgrim
Most Axe characters compensate for the low mobility of the base kit by having a decent amount of travel to their Side Signature. Ulgrim’s close-in Side Axe made him feel comparatively static, so we’ve increased the leap distance on his first swing in exchange for some Damage.

• Ulgrim Side Axe: Increased distance traveled before first swing; Slightly increased Hitbox width of first swing towards Ulgrim; Reduced Damage from 28 to 24.

Azoth
Though lethal, the long startup time on Azoth’s Side Axe makes it a little too easy to evade.

• Azoth Side Axe: Decreased Time to Hit from 29 to 27.

Fixes

• Cassidy Neutral Blasters: Adjusted Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Orion Neutral Spear: Adjusted Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Vraxx Neutral Blasters: Adjusted Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Vraxx Neutral Lance: Adjusted Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Vraxx Down Lance: Adjusted Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Nai Down Katars: Adjusted Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Hattori Neutral Sword: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Hattori Side Sword: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Hattori Down Sword: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Roland Neutral Lance: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Roland Side Lance: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Roland Neutral Sword: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Scarlet Down Hammer: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Sentinel Neutral Hammer: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Sentinel Side Katar: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Teros Side Hammer: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Brynn Neutral Spear: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Brynn Side Spear: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Brynn Side Axe: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Ember Down Bow: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Azoth Neutral Axe: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Azoth Side Axe: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Azoth Down Axe: Updated Hurtboxes to better follow animation.
• Cassidy Neutral Hammer: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Orion Neutral Spear: Changed animation timing to better match Hitboxes and Recover Time.
• Orion Side Spear: Adjusted animation timing to better match Hitboxes.
• Vraxx Neutral Blasters: Adjusted animation timing to better match Hitboxes.
• Vraxx Side Blasters: Adjusted animation timing to better match Hitboxing.
• Vraxx Neutral Lance: Adjusted animation timing to better match Hitboxes and Recover Time.
• Hattori Side Sword: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Roland Neutral Sword: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Scarlet Down Hammer: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Sentinel Neutral Hammer: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Sentinel Side Katar: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Sentinel Down Katar: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Brynn Side Axe: Changed animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Ulgrim Side Axe: Changed FX timing to match animation/hitboxes.
• Gnash Down Hammer: Adjusted animation timing to better match Hitboxing and Recover Time.
• Azoth Neutral Axe: Adjusted animation timing to better match Recover Time.
• Sword Side Air: Fixed some cases where target could be dropped before the final hit.
• Fixed a bug affecting which powers treat soft platforms as a collision. (Credit: Zeloxory)
• Fixed a bug that could cause an incorrect Hurtbox to be displayed on the transition frame between animations when viewing Hurtboxes.