v11.03 Major Update

Expected patch release: Monday-Tuesday, April 15-16 (Pacific Time)

[h3]News[/h3]

• Check out Lisk's Developer AMA and Jules' Gameplay & Balance AMA from this past month! These AMA ("ask-me-anything") events are run every month, so keep an eye on reddit for the next ones.
  
• Next Nova Cup: April 20-21
  
• Join the Tournament Discord to participate and receive tournament notifications. View all past Nova Cups here: Legion TD 2 Esports Portal.

[h3]New Fighter: Goblin Copter[/h3]

Flying. Attacks enemies with a twin cannon.
Goblin Copter Stats

• Tier 1 (Cost: 20g)
  
• Role: DPS
  
• Ranged / Impact / Fortified

[h3]New Fighter: Whirlybird[/h3]

Flying. Ditches its wimpy twin cannon for a BIG rocket launcher. Deals extra damage every few attacks.

Whirlybird Stats

• Tier 1 Upgrade (Cost: 100g)
  
• Role: DPS
  
• Ranged / Impact / Fortified
  
• Giga Boomstick: Every 3 attacks or whenever it gets a kill, its next attack fires an oversized rocket that deals 70 bonus Impact ability damage.

[h3]New Fighter: Oathbreaker (Final Form)[/h3]

Massively boosted stats. Plus, gains 35% damage reduction when Unchained Rage is active.

By popular demand, an additional upgrade for Oathbreaker! Credit to Drachir for the original idea.

[h3]New Classic Mode: PvE[/h3]
Are you among the exclusive group of ultra-chill gamers for whom Income ‘n Chill feels lacking in ‘chill?’ Introducing the mode for you!

PvE Mode: Outlast the other team! Instead of sending mercenaries, mythium automatically turns into income after each wave. All players receive the same-random sends (or saves) every wave.

• Roughly 50% chance to receive a send each wave. The percentage goes up/down depending on previous waves to reduce the chance of long streaks. Earlier waves are more likely to be income sends, while later waves are more likely to be power sends, but you never know for sure!
  
• The size of each send (amount of mythium) is based on the total mythium generated by all players since the last send. So if you don't receive a mythium send, you should still be cautious as usual.
  
• Recommended value is similarly scaled off of the total mythium generated since the last send.
  
• Map is fully revealed.

Tip: for even greater chill, you can play PvE mode in a Custom game lobby with friends all on one team, for a true PvE experience.

[h3]New Secret Card: Mr. Wiggus[/h3]
Life's too short to make safe bets. Life's also too short to not buy this Secret Card and support the devs.

[h3]New Skin: Snake Staff Shaman[/h3]
You've heard of the golden rule, haven't you? Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

[h3]Campaign 2-Star Rework[/h3]
You now choose between 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star when starting a mission.

• 1-star: Same as what was previously Normal difficulty
  
• 2-star: Your King starts with 30% health
  
• 3-star: Same as what was previously Hard difficulty

The new 2-star challenge should be more fun/less frustrating than the previous condition of not leaking 40%+ on any wave, which had unexpectedly punished many cases of smart risk-taking.

Additional Details: All saved progress is preserved, so if you 2-starred or 3-starred missions in the past, you don’t have to beat them again. Also, if you play the 2-star mission without earning the first star yet, and you win, you’ll unlock both stars!



[h3]Pathing & Targeting Overhaul[/h3]

Majorly improved pathing & target to be more consistent and behave as intended.

• Improved consistency between multiple runs of the same wave, most noticeable in Weekly Challenge/Sandbox, as well as consistency between Sandbox & 2v2 & 4v4.
  
• Improved cases where melee units would unexpectedly running a little too close to their target.
  
• Improved consistency of various splits; note that this will result in some splits behaving differently than before, so some disruption is expected. In the long run, we feel consistency is worth the cost of short-term disruption.
  
• Improved some cases of Sea Serpent/Deepcoiler/Eternal Samurai/Samurai Soul unexpectedly taking aggro earlier than intended.
  
• Improved some cases of melee Power mercenaries unexpectedly taking aggro earlier than intended, particularly in mid/late-game.
  
• Improved some cases where units would “lock-on” too soon to a target, rather than switching to a better (closer) target.
  
• Fixed a long-time bug where initial aggro in some lanes behaved slightly differently than other lanes (especially Lane 4 in the 2v2 map) due to very slight asymmetries in wave spawn positions.

These changes involved a variety of systemic changes, which carry risk, but the reward seems worth it as inconsistent pathing/targeting has been a pain point for years. We will keep a close eye on these changes and release hotfixes as needed, as always.

[h3]General[/h3]

Eco Detection
- Players now have a one-wave “safety net” before eco penalties kick in. This should help players who ran out of time not fall completely out of the game after a single wave.
- Eco Income Penalty: -20% → -25%

This affects players who go full eco and stop trying to clear the wave.

Shutdowns
If you clear your lane within 3 seconds of being shutdown, your shutdown will now be reversed!

This is rare, but should help address some feelsbad cases where you clear the wave just as your fighter draws its last breath (especially Consort or other fighters with damage-over-time spells).

[h3]Classic[/h3]

Classic: Bonus Income
- Rebalanced bonus income formula to be more impactful so that lower-rated teams are not disadvantaged
- Soft-reset the ratings of all players above 3000 Classic rating, to compensate for the above to keep things fair

Even with bonus income, lower-rated teams were disadvantaged, resulting in matches that were unfair, 4-stacks with 80% win rates, a high frequency of players dodging these unfair matches, and heavily-inflated Classic ratings from 4-stacks taking advantage of unfair matchmaking. Matches will now be fairer and Classic ratings will be less inflated going forward.

Classic has no strict skill-based matchmaking, so you'll still match with players of all skill levels. The auto-team shuffler is effective at creating fair matches, but it does not work well when players 3-stack and 4-stack. If you value perfectly fair teams, we recommend playing solo, duo, 5-stack, 6-stack, 7-stack, or 8-stack when playing Classic, or playing Ranked.

Classic: Double Lock-In
- Starting Income: +1 → 0
- Starting Gold: 250 → 245

Classic: AOE Damage
True AOE damage: -10% → -12%

Affected units: Cursed Casket/Cage of Pain/Iron Maiden, Tree of Knowledge, King Claw, Holy Avenger/Sovereign, Honeyflower/Deathcap, Pyro, Millennium/Doomsday Machine, Great Boar/Red Eyes, Seedling, Yozora/Arctaire, and Glacial Touch

AOE and Double Lock In are overpowered in Classic. While our philosophy is to balance for Ranked, we’re willing to make changes to Classic when there are balance outliers.

[h3]Masterminds[/h3]

Champion
- Attack speed and damage reduction: 8.75% → 9%

Low win rate and pick rate, and minimal usage in Nova Cup.

Kingsguard
- 18% attack speed → 10% attack speed and damage reduction

Kingsguard is now stronger in base races, particularly in classic where most games end in base races.

Lock In
- Random: Bonus Gold: 6 → 7

With this buff, Lock In: Random is positioned to become a Yolo-lite mastermind.

[h3]Legion Spells[/h3]

Buffs to aggressive spells and nerfs to scaling spells will help mid game aggression and make games end sooner.

All Out Assault
- Mythium: 100 → 120
- Income penalty: -18 → -20

Low win rate and pick rate.

Battle Scars
- Attack speed per stack: 4% → 3.7%

High win rate and pick rate.

Counterattack
- Mythium: 55 → 60

Low win rate and pick rate.

Lizard Army
- Mythium: 60 → 45
- Lizards spawned on waves 11/12/13: 1/2/3 → 2/3/4

Lizards go brrr

Protector
- Regeneration: 0.7% → 0.6%

Very high pick rate.

Villain
- Damage amplification: 24% → 22%

High win rate.

[h3]Fighters[/h3]

Pollywog / Seraphin
- Attack speed: 1.09 → 1.1

Low win rate.

Oathbreaker
- Health: 1130 → 1110

Compensation nerf for the addition of Oathbreaker Final Form.

Masked Spirit / False Maiden / Hell Raiser
- Spectral Scream: Range: 600 → 650 (base attack range unchanged)

Less likely to get stuck attacking out of range of other units. Thanks SlightQT on Reddit for the idea.

Fire Archer
- Attack speed: 0.952 → 0.966

Dark Mage
- Mana regeneration reduced by 7%

Shifting power from Dark Mage to Fire Archer.

Fire Elemental
- Attack speed: 0.781 → 0.794

Low win rate and pick rate.

Sunfang
- Damage 86 → 88

Very low pick rate.

Gargoyle
- Attack speed: 0.909 → 0.897

Green Devil
- Attack speed: 1.3 → 1.28

Very high pick rate.

Slime Larva
- Health: 310 → 330

Slime Siren
- Health: 1150 → 1170
- Slime Larva: Health: 310 → 330

Low win rate and pick rate.

Sky Queen
- Damage: 58 → 59

Slightly low win rate and pick rate.

Spectral Scallywag
- Health: 2300 → 2500
- Damage: 135 → 125
- Unyielding Spirit: 20 health → 10 health + 0.5 damage

Now weaker synergy with itself and with Tree of Life, and less likely to cause super long waves.

Violet
- Lightning Strike: Damage: 85 + 0.15% max health --> 80 + 0.15% max health

High win rate.

Desert Pilgrim
- Chain Heal: 125 → 120
- Slightly faster spell casting

Lost Chieftain
- Damage: 207 → 205
- Fixed a bug where the chosen target was mistakenly sometimes different on Wave 21 in some types of positionings


Shadow Dancer
- Health: 1700 → 2100
- Damage: 60 → 69
- Clones: 25% health damage → 15%
- Spawned clones now spawn with fixed positioning instead of random

Dread Knight
- Health: 3740 → 4900
- Damage: 132 → 157
- Clones: 25% health damage → 15%
- Spawned clones now spawn with fixed positioning instead of random

Removing power budget from the clones and making Shadower Dancer and Dread Knight less likely to reach “critical mass” where they are never attacked. Now weaker with attack speed buffs, but stronger on their own.

Eggsack
- Fixed a rare bug where Eggsack would improperly hatch if it died a split second after clearing the wave (e.g. solo egg vs. Robo on Wave 2)

Berserker
- Health: 1900 → 1870

Fatalizer
- Health: 5400 → 5260
- Duelist: Damage: 15 → 14

High win rate and pick rate.

Great Boar / Red Eyes
- Charge damage decreased by 8 %

Slightly high win rate and community point of frustration.

[h3]Mercenaries[/h3]

Historically, ranged DPS mercenaries like Witch, Four Eyes, Shaman, and Needler have been over-tuned. Now that they are more balanced, we’re seeing greater creativity and variety in mercenary usage.

We considered a Four Eyes buff, but decided against it, as Four Eyes remains one of the most-used mercenaries. Tip: Stop sending Four Eyes by default ;)

Imp
- Health: 700 → 730

Low win rate and usage rate.

Witch
- Froggo: Damage: 32 → 30

High win rate and usage rate.

Kraken
- Health: 7450 → 7400
- Damage: 291 → 289

High win rate and usage rate.

[h3]Waves[/h3]

Wave 11: Quill Shooters
- Attack speed: 1.626 → 1.639

Wave 13: Drill Golems
- Health: 3270 → 3300

Wave 19: Dire Toads
- Health: 4500 → 4400

[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:
- Game pacing
- Early game mercenary meta
- Summoners, life steal, regeneration, and units that scale with battle time

[h3]Custom Modes[/h3]

Tower Defense Mode
- True AOE damage nerf: -10% → -22% (Affected units: Cursed Casket/Cage of Pain/Iron Maiden, Tree of Knowledge, King Claw, Holy Avenger/Sovereign, Honeyflower/Deathcap, Pyro, Millennium/Doomsday Machine, Great Boar/Red Eyes, Seedling, Yozora/Arctaire, and Glacial Touch)
- All waves & mercenaries have +10% damage and max health. This brings wave difficulty in line with standard modes and indirectly nerfs certain exodia builds.
- Fixed a bug where melee/ranged units would aggro differently in some circumstances. Aware of some other issues and will monitor/continue to fix.
- “Infinite” Battle Warp: If a battle is taking too long with no fighters/enemies dying, all units on that side of the map will warp to the king to prevent battles from taking forever. Specifically, starting 60 seconds after the wave spawns, if the number of fighters & enemies alive stays the same for 30 seconds straight, it will trigger this case. For now, this is enabled for Tower Defense Mode only; once it is stable, it may be applied to all modes.

Giga Mercs Mode
- Mimic: Gold gained from Plunder no longer has a bonus multiplier with more Mimics (Plunder naturally scales by the fact that Mimic's increased stats make it more likely to get kills)

Superhero Mode
- Fixed a bug where holding onto Legion Spells didn’t allow you to properly stack them in some circumstances

Dual Build Duel
- Retired from the rotation

[h3]Matchmaking[/h3]

Duo Rating Adjustment for New Player + Non-New Player in Ranked
There has been a fairly uncommon, but feels-bad scenario when a new player exclusively duos with a non-new player and neither play much solo. To resolve this, now:
- If a new player is duoing with a non-new-player, and the new player is higher rated than the non-new-player
- Then both players will gain/lose the same amount of rating points based on evenly dividing the summed individual rating changes
- Known Issue: the post-game stats/match history will not display the adjusted gained/lost rating points as above. Just trust that it works.



[h3]New Feature: Motion Blur & Vignette Graphics[/h3]

These should make the game appear a bit smoother & more modern. Enabled by default, but toggleable in Options → Video.

[h3]New Feature: Build Position Text 2.0[/h3]

- Now displays next to your mouse cursor and uses A1→Q27 notation, which will take some getting used to, but should be more elegant in the long run than decimals.
- As a reminder, you can enable Build Position Text via Options → Interface → Enable Build Grid Position Text. It is off by default.

[h3]New Feature: Mastermind Selection Info[/h3]

By popular request, the Mastermind selection screen now displays available Legion Spells and your ally’s selected Legion, to help you strategize as a team.

[h3]Improvement: Leaks Covered[/h3]
In the postgame screen, “Leaks Caught” has been replaced with “Leaks Covered” which is the total number of waves (as a percentage) that you covered for your teammates (prevented from reaching the king).

This more accurately communicates how much you covered your teammate throughout the whole game. Previously, it was averaged out across all waves, but that made the numbers less interpretable given most waves don’t have any leaks.

[h3]New Feature: Ladder Points Games Counter[/h3]


Main Menu now displays your Ladder Points games this week, to bait you into playing until you hit your weekly cap.

[h3]New Feature: First Win Bonus Icon[/h3]

Main Menu now displays your First Win of the Day bonus as an icon, also to bait you into playing to get that juicy first win.

[h3]New Feature: Queued King Upgrades[/h3]

Queued King upgrades now show up in the bottom left HUD.

[h3]New Feature: Monument Skins[/h3]

Equipped skins now also apply to Monuments!

[h3]New Feature: Autosend Pings[/h3]

Now, you can ping your & your allies’ AUTO status to more easily coordinate when to start tryharding.

[h3]Minor Improvements[/h3]

• Campaign: Added a warning telling players that 3 star difficulty is very challenging and intended for experienced players
  
• Game Messages: Added a new game message that displays the 6 rolls that you selected to your allies (in addition to your initial roll)
  
• Graphics: Improved crispness of floating text rendering
  
• Graphics: Hiding the HUD (via Ctrl+H) now applies a vignette effect
  
• MVP: Improved formula to put a little less emphasis on leaks covered (other factors are more important)
  
• New Player Experience: “Incoming” Tutorial now has you play Mastermind, to introduce players to Mastermind before jumping into Ranked.
  
• Options: Emotes: Mousing over the ? now displays the actual emote image instead of dino
  
• Performance: Various improvements
  
• Reroll Window: Wave Strength Bar now display in high-contrast colors when graphics are set to Color Blind
  
• Reroll Window: Wave Strength Bar now displays waves that already passed as grayed out

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Bots: Fixed various cases of bots not behaving as designed (some bugs introduced in recent patches)
  
• Game Messages: Fixed a bug where Lock-In mistakenly showed 10 rolls that you couldn’t choose from
  
• HUD: Fixed a bug where the king upgrades bar wasn’t fully updated if a player upgraded the king at the last second before the wave started
  
• HUD: Fixed a rare bug where a player’s rolls didn’t register, resulting in being unable to build
  
• Menus: Fixed a Recommended Value inconsistency where post-game stats colored the undervalue amount yellow if 70-80% of recommended value; this is now colored red to match the in-game UI
  
• Profile: Fixed a bug where the past seasons dropdown was displaying the wrong number after selecting it
  
• Spectator: Fixed a bug with /spectate where the game would sometimes mistakenly appear dark (black fog over the whole map)
  
• Spectator: Fixed a bug where building grids didn’t display during the build phase
  
• Spectator: Fixed a bug where rolls didn’t immediately update when a player was drafting rolls
  
• Sounds: Fixed a bug where some UI click sounds would accidentally play twice in some circumstances

[h3]Community Emotes[/h3]
New Emote: boxboxCheer


[h3]Game Translations[/h3]


Legion TD 2's translations continue to be greatly 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!



This patch is huge. THREE new units, plus a long-due pathing overhaul, not to mention a new mode (PvE) and tons of QoL & fixes! Plus a variety of balance changes to further smoothen out some of the bumps that came with the major updates from January/February/March.

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!

And as always, 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,
The Legion TD 2 Team