6.01: Game Balance & Improvements

Small maintenance patch with balance changes and other improvements

Matchmaking
- 4-person parties in Classic Queue are now only split up if their average rating is 1800+. We consider both ranked rating and hidden classic rating when calculating a team's average rating.
- Improved average match quality for players rank 1-40
- Improved average match quality for all players during off-hours

Game Coach
- No longer wrongly says you're overvalued with Eggsack
- Less likely to warn you about missing certain attack/defense types
- No longer warns you about missing certain attack/defense types when playing Chaos

Improvements
- Mastermind rolls can no longer have more than three tier 1s (occurred 0.5% of the time)
- "Suspended until" message now shows how long you are suspended (in addition to the date)
- Added sound effect for rank-up celebration
- Added small persistent VFX for Chained Fist & Oathbreaker, Golden Buckler & Royal Guard
- Improved VFX for Elite Archer & Trinity Archer
- Tweaked Scoreboard tooltip width
- Mastermind roll selection warnings are now smarter for arcane units

Fixes
- Fixed a bug where King Upgrades sometimes became unusable
- Fixed a rare bug where matchmade games would sometimes crash when playing with a player who had an "=" sign in their names
- Fixed a rare bug where a player wasn't marked as AFK when they should have been, when their client is unresponsive but still connected
- Fixed a bug where the Health Bar Visibility option wasn't saving between sessions
- Fixed a bug where viewing a player's profile via match history while in-game would send you to the main menu instead of back to game when you pressed back
- Fixed a bug where rank-up celebration popup would show during your first 10 ranked games of the season (it should only show after you have played at least 10 ranked games this season)
- Fixed a bug where Unranked tier accidentally had numeral divisions
- Fixed some rounding bugs with HP displays
- Fixed some minor bugs with Profile stats (Rounding digits, sorting 100%)
- Fixed some minor display bugs with Leaderboard
- Fixed a bug where reporting a player sometimes didn’t display a “Success” message, even though the report succeeded
- Fixed a bug where you would be auto-requeued for a Ranked game if someone failed a ready check in a Custom game (Thanks FlightTV for logs)
- Fixed a layout bug with Postgame Builds
- Fixed some display bugs in Profile

Stability
- Experimental Game Server stability (modified some thread locking code exit conditions & thresholds)
- Improved Login Server stability
- Fixed a rare bug where a wave would spawn twice, resulting in a lot of other server instability
- Disabled "Display Mode" (Windowed/Fullscreen) option setting while in-game, since it sometimes causes the game to crash. This setting is meant to be modified only while in the Lobby.



[h3]Legion Spells[/h3]

There's been legion spell power creep over the years, so we're dishing out small nerfs. Nerfs often don't feel good, but they are important for game balance.

Giant Snail
- Health: 530 -> 510
- Damage: 23 -> 22

Guardian Angel
- Maximum health: 2400 -> 2300

Hero
- Damage and damage reduction: 7% -> 6.5%

Magician
- Mana regeneration and gain: 24% -> 22%

Protector
- Health: 650 -> 600

Pulverizer
- Stun duration: 1 second -> 1.2 seconds
- Percent chance: 28% (16% for ranged) -> 27% (15% for ranged)
- Fixed a bug where Pulverizer didn't work with Masked Spirit & upgrades (it now has a chance to stun a single random target)

Sorcerer
- Ability damage: 24% -> 21%

Titan
- Health: 1400 -> 1350

Vampire
- Lifesteal and spell vamp: 24% -> 23%

Villain
- Damage amplification: 28% (16% for ranged) -> 27% (15% for ranged)

[h3]Fighters[/h3]

More time is needed to assess fighter balance after the season 6 patch, so we're going light with the changes

Zeus
- Attack speed: 2.5 -> 2.38

Lost Chieftain
- Gaia Shield: Health: 1250 -> 1300

[h3]Waves[/h3]

Recommended Value
- No longer inflated late game
- Now generally more accurate
- Now ramps up with each subsequent wave of wave 21

(9) Carapaces
- Health: 750 -> 740
- Deflection: 15% damage reduction from ranged autoattacks -> 15% damage reduction from ranged units

Deflection is now more understandable and also allows it to counter ranged ability damage dealers

[h3]Mercenaries[/h3]

Ghost Knight
- Health: 3150 -> 3200
- Damage: 185 -> 190

Siege Ram
- Health: 5400 -> 5350 green_arrow.png red_arrow.png
- Deflection: 15% damage reduction from ranged autoattacks -> 15% damage reduction from ranged units

Deflection is now more understandable and also allows it to counter ranged ability damage dealers