v11.05 Major Update

Expected patch release: Wednesday, June 5 (Pacific Time)

[h3]News[/h3]

Check out Lisk's Game Dev AMA and Jules' Gameplay & Balance AMA from this past month
Next Nova Cup: June 29 - 30
Join the Tournament Discord to participate and receive tournament notifications. View all past Nova Cups here: Legion TD 2 Esports Portal.
Check out Drachir's new Legion TD 2 Stats website to see win rates and more data
Sign up for Shadowings' Nemesis League

Major Updates

[h3]New Fighter: Crab Warlock[/h3]

Summons Crablings to do its dirty work.

Crab Warlock

Tier 4 (Cost: 140g)
Role: DPS
Ranged / Magic / Swift

Crabling

Role: Tank
Melee / Pierce / Fortified

[h3]New Fighter: Crabomancer[/h3]

Now calls a deadly Pincer to battle.

Crabomancer

Tier 4 (Upgrade Cost: 260g)
Role: DPS
Ranged / Magic / Swift

Pincer

Role: Tank
Melee / Pierce / Fortified

Game Balance

[h3]Classic[/h3]

Hydra’s health, damage, and value decreased by 20%
Reverted the nerfs to Priestess of the Abyss and Azeria
- Gaia Shield gives the full health buff again
- Invigorate stacks infinitely again
PvE mode: Dwarf Banker and Big Wig maximum mana decreased by 33%
Tower Defense mode: All players are now Ordered Chaos (Chaos with the same matching rolls for all 8 players)

Going forward for Classic, balance changes will only be made to outliers, particularly overpowered outliers. The bar for what is considered an outlier will be high. For special modes that are particularly imbalanced, like Tower Defense mode, we’ll consider creative solutions like Ordered Chaos to prevent players from abusing Double Lock-In, Lock-In, Redraw, and legions.

Thanks to Snek and many other players who contributed to discussions around Classic balance.

[h3]Systems[/h3]

Leak Gold

Increased the share of leak gold your team receives (when you break an opponent) that goes to the more behind player on your team
Decreased the share of leak gold going to the more fed player

This mechanic has existed in the game for years, and we’re scaling it up in response to feedback from players.

Bounties

High income mercenaries: Gold per mythium: 0.3 → 0.2
Power mercenaries: Gold per mythium: 0.25 → 0.3

These new bounties better reflect the true power of each mercenary. It also makes leak percentages more predictive of damage to the king.

It didn’t make sense that Brute gave less bounty than a Fiend. It also didn’t make sense that 3 Drakes had a higher leak percentage than a Needler, but Needler did significantly more damage.

[h3]Masterminds[/h3]

Cartel

- Income after wave 10: -36 → -38

Cartel is the top performing mastermind in top ladder and Division 1 Nova Cup, and we’re okay with that, given Cartel has a high skill cap. However, it’s currently too strong with a high win rate and pick rate as high as the bottom 10 masterminds combined.

Double Lock-In

Starting income: 1 → 2

This buff affects ranked only. Double Lock-In is significantly underperforming to the point where it discourages players from playing Megamind. We considered removing it from the Megamind pool, but felt that would hurt its identity of randomly picking among all masterminds. We intend for Double Lock-In to remain a niche pick and slightly weak at Master+ but don’t want it to feel like an auto-loss for Megamind players.

If Double Lock-In becomes too strong, we’ll consider reverting this change.

Fiesta

- Gold gained from leaking on waves 2-12: Increased by 1
- Gold gained from leaking on waves 13-21: Increased by 2

The changes in patches 11.00, 11.01, and 11.04 over-nerfed Fiesta, so it deserves a buff.

Redraw

Gold cost for Redrawing: 1 to 45 → 1 to 40

We’re happy that Redraw is starting to see play below Master, as well as in Classic, but a buff is in order.

[h3]Legion Spells[/h3]

Battle Scars

Stats per stack: 330 health and 3.7% attack speed → 320 health and 3.6% attack speed

High win rate and slightly high pick rate.

Investment

Income: 31 → 30

High pick rate. This should make Investment less of a default pick.

Loan

Income penalty: -31 → -30

Low pick rate. Loan is an interesting spell because it can be used both defensively and offensively, but it’s currently undertuned.

[h3]Fighters[/h3]

This patch is light on fighter balance, as there are changes to masterminds, mercenaries, and systems that will shake up the meta.

Sky Queen

- Damage: 59 → 60

Slightly low win rate and pick rate.

Treant

- Health: 950 → 940

Tree of Knowledge

- Health: 2300 → 2330

Shifting power from Treant to Tree of Knowledge.

Lioness

- Health: 2250 → 2280
- Damage: 97 → 98

Alpha Male

- Health: 2680 → 2650
- Damage: 102 → 101

Shifting power from Alpha Male to Lioness.

Priestess of the Abyss

- Invigorate: Heal: 8% missing health → 35 + 1.5% max health

Azeria

- Invigorate: Heal: 8% missing health → 100 + 2% max health

This change balances the Azeria-Lost Chieftain-Sacred Steed combo and also leads to more consistent outcomes for Priestess and Azeria. Right now, it's much better (to an extreme) if you get off a last-second heal, not only due to the fact that it’s an extra cast, but also because the heal is based on missing health.

Gatling Gun

- Health: 1020 --> 980
- Attack speed: 2.44 → 2.41

Vulcan Cannon

- Health: 2800 --> 2700
- Attack speed: 2.44 → 2.41

High win rate.

Lord of Death / Hades

- Intellect: Mana restore on kill: 7% → 5%
- Mana regeneration increased by ~15%

Shifting power out of the on-kill mechanic to reduce rng and make Lord of Death and Hades more reliable summoner carries.

[h3]Mercenaries[/h3]

The mercenary bounty changes indirectly buff tank income mercenaries and indirectly nerf tank power mercenaries, so these are compensation changes.

Snail

- Damage: 9 → 8

Dragon Turtle

- Damage: 18 → 16

Fiend

- Damage: 20 → 18

Dino

- Damage: 48 → 43

Ghost Knight

- Health: 3730 → 3800

Siege Ram

- Health: 5200 → 5300

Kraken

- Health: 7400 → 7540

[h3]Waves[/h3]

Waves 6/13/18

- Staggering delay increased slightly to allow greater separation for split tanking

These waves had a tendency to stack on the same target. This change makes it a bit easier to break them up for 3 and 4-way split tanking.

Wave 17: Metal Dragons

- Health: 3370 → 3400

Wave 20: Maccabeus

- Health: 62000 → 60000

The ability to clear Wave 20 is relatively roll dependent. One positive thing about this is that it acts as a comeback mechanic by neutralizing leads. On the other hand, it can be frustrating, so we’re removing power from Maccabeus.

[h3]Pathing & Targeting Fixes[/h3]

Fixed a bug where Gatling Gun and Vulcan Cannon wouldn’t properly prioritize damaged targets in some circumstances. Thanks to Pennywise.
Fixed a bug where tank mercenaries spawned behind your fighters. Thanks to thaeltras.
Fixed a bug where Boars charged past the wave. Thanks to Bonobo and thaeltras.

[h3]Balance Watchlist[/h3]
The dev team is constantly monitoring game balance, between looking at data and listening to community feedback. If anything is being more closely monitored than usual, it will be listed in this Balance Watchlist section. For this patch, the following are on the watchlist:
- Double Lock-In

[h3]Developer Note[/h3]
In patch 11.01, we increased the share of leak gold going to the breaking player and decreased the amount of gold going to teammates.

We’re happy with the positive effects of this change, which include:

Rewarding players who apply pressure and break their opponents
Increasing the parity between incomers and breakers, rather than always forcing breakers to be the supportive player while incomers were the carry
Improving the early game meta and better aligning the meta of ladder games with tournament play

However, this change had some unintended consequences on snowballing, which we’re addressing by:

Shifting leak gold from the more fed player to the more behind player
Reducing the snowballing of players who break their opponents with income mercenaries

This way, we can preserve the benefits of the change, while directly addressing community feedback with a real-time lever to rein in snowballing.

We know this has been a hot topic in the community and kindly ask everyone to try this patch with an open mind. Thank you to everyone for giving feedback respectfully. Sometimes the preferred ways to get there are different, but remember we all want what's best for the game :)

Improvements & Fixes

Classic

Bonus essence for voting yes → bonus essence for voting for anything
Hot mode percentage: 80% → 100%. Thanks to Weow.
Hot mode rotation time: 24 hours → 6 hours. Thanks to Weow.
Increased the FairPlay penalty for dodging games. We're also aware of an abuse case around dodging, which we'll be looking into in a future patch. Thanks to Toikan.
Slightly increased the rating adjustment for 3-stacks and moderately increased it for 4-stacks.

Other improvements and fixes

Improved the win prediction model by decreasing the weight of king health slightly. Thanks to Ofma.
Improved the accuracy of recommended value on waves 11, 13, and 16. Thanks to Drachir and Ofma
Fixed some cases where certain legion spells would unexpectedly disappear after the unit revived. Thanks to thaeltras.
Fixed a bug in Superhero games where Sorcerer was mistakenly lost after being revived (if the unit had both GA and Sorcerer)
Fixed a bug where Campaign boss Drachia on 2-stars would have your king mistakenly start at 100% health instead of 30% health

Community Updates

[h3]Game Translations[/h3]

Legion TD 2's translations continue to be improved, thanks to major contributions from community members! If you'd like to contribute to improving the game's texts further, visit the following link:

Help Translate Legion TD 2

HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped up to this point!

[h3]Legion TD 2 Stats[/h3]

If you love Legion and data, you're in for a treat! Drachir built a new website where you can see win rates, pick rates, and other valuable data to help level up your strategies: Drachbot Legion TD 2 Stats

[h3]Nemesis League[/h3]

Shadowings' Nemesis League is a new weekly tournament featuring 8 teams
If you're interested in participating, sign up directly with Shadowings in the Legion TD 2 Discord
If you're interested in watching, games are casted every Wednesday and Saturday on Twitch

Thanks to Shadowings for organizing, Firebat for ideation, and GodForbid for the poster.

Closing Remarks

This patch has some exciting meta improvements and introduces new summoners to the game - Crab Warlock and Crabomancer!

As always, with any major patch, we'll keep a close eye on things and rapidly hotfix as long as needed.

Thank you again for playing Legion TD 2! We hope you continue to enjoy the game.

If you've enjoyed the game, but haven't left a review yet, please consider posting a short (hopefully positive

) review for the game! If the game reaches 90% positive, Steam will give it more visibility = more players = more freelo better matchmaking!

If you enjoy these updates, please give it a Thumbs Up, too!

If you have constructive criticism, let's chat about it. Discord and /r/LegionTD2 on reddit are our main channels of communication, and aside from the development team, there are community helpers who can ensure your feedback is heard, as well as answer pretty much anything you've ever wanted to know about the game. If you want a guaranteed answer from the devs, the monthly AMAs on /r/LegionTD2 are your best bet.

Sincerely,
Team Legion