Developer Insights: Wave Defense & Gamemodes

August 23, 2024

Greetings Champions! This Developer Insight blog is all about Wave Defense: its development, its release, and where we’d like to take it and alternative Paladins game modes in the future. Along the way, we’ll be sharing clips from the development version to give a glimpse as to how far the mode has already come from its original prototype.

Development

It’d been a long while since Paladins received a new mode with the last “core” mode being King of the Hill, released in 2019. Ever since, the team has thrown around ideas and concepts for new modes and spins on existing experiences. However, with Siege being by far our most popular mode compared to all others, we wanted to ensure we were providing the most support possible for Siege, then add occasional fun LTMs to rotation.

This eventually led to Siege Beyond, considering changes to the Siege gamemode to keep it feeling new and fresh, similar to how MOBAs change their core mode format season to season. Some players didn’t resonate with those ideas either, so that pushed us to look into another route to adding a Siege-like mode: restoring Payload. Payload, however, is both an older mode with severe development limitations due to the age of the mode & its unique level design compared to modern gamemodes. Not any more popular than Onslaught, TDM, or King of the Hill also means balancing its support with all other side modes. This is what got us to begin exploring the original Siege maps and projects like Siege Remixed and Swift Siege as we looked to make LTMs more like mode variants.

During Siege Remixed’s development, our former level designer Shak had also been working on a side project a few on the team were passionate about: a small horde gamemode running on Primal Court. When they originally showed it to the team, it looked like this:

This video was recorded with God mode enabled as testing was mainly centered around spawning at this stage.

As you can see, it was very much a prototype & mainly played around the studio as a fun lunch break game. Over time, however, several people would poke at the prototype and add various features or aspects to it. Artists would recommend skins, a designer curated the bots being utilized, and a programmer was beginning the shell of a GameClass (basically what tells our game that something is its own game mode). As we entered Winter of 2023, the Primal Court prototype looked like this:

It was around this time that the team was planning for 2024 and the official pitch was made to create Wave Defense, at the time simply called “Horde”. (It got a little confusing internally when talking about Horde, the Item Hoard, and the Wild Hoard update.) We got the go ahead & after Moji’s rework was fully complete we went to work.

Over the latter half of Spring & early Summer, we added the two other maps players would see and unique bots for each. We added its own rules and settings, officially branching it off of Onslaught. We also brought the powerups from a previous LTM back to emulate the feel of an arcade experience. Our goals with Wave Defense were simple and hopeful: create a PvE experience for Paladins; one that was quick, approachable, and replayable. This version was the one that was released in Public Beta.

Release

Our hope when Wave Defense was released into Beta was that its popularity (measured by number of unique players) would start near Onslaught and over time become less played while we worked on a more refined version based on feedback. Instead of describing how it performed, here’s a chart of our main game modes during Wave Defense’s launch week:

Note: Competitive KBM is actually all of Ranked since we switched to Crossplay required.

Wave Defense launched at nearly double the players as Onslaught, and despite known performance issues and bugs managed to fall in line with our other main modes. This was beyond our initial expectations and encouraged the team to look into further improvements and PvE ideas. However, as Wave Defense has been developed over a year at this stage, those improvements will take some time & we’ll communicate when they are ready.

A brief tangent: Having 4 side modes that all are similar in player count is an honor, but also comes with issues. Rotating modes in and out has been our solution in the past to offer every mode players would like to see some of the time; but with Wave Defense being added and none of the modes less popular than each other, it’s a temporary solution. An idea being considered to make the Arcade LTM a full-time mode and merging modes like Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill, and Payload into it so we can continue to offer more modes while not harming matchmaking quality or time further. We’d be curious about player thoughts on this topic!

What’s Next

Our current goals with Wave Defense are to improve performance & continue to iterate on what the mode offers. On performance, we’ve already noticed an interesting trend where consoles perform much better than PCs, especially the current generation of consoles. We’re planning to dig into this and see if there are optimizations we can spread to last gen & computers, but it’ll take more time than we’ve had this specific update.

Wave Defense will be less frequent from our August update until October, replaced by an Event mode we’ll share more on soon. However, we wanted to make something to offer those looking for a harder challenge and something to earn. For select weekends during this period, Dark Tides: Champion Difficulty will be available! This is a harder version of the current Dark Tides experience, featuring stronger bots with some added abilities, as well as a new final wave that brings back Death Speakers from the original Dark Tides Event.

Those who defeat this mode during one of these weekends will earn the Limited Title Champion of the Tides to signify their conquering of the Kraken. We’re excited for players to play and maybe work towards a high-score!

We’ll continue to share updates on Wave Defense’s development and availability over time as we balance improvements to this mode as well as taking care of other modes. We’ve got changes coming to the map pools of Ranked, Siege, and TDM as well…but we’ll chat about those another day soon. Until then, enjoy Wave Defense!

Developer Insights: Event Pass

August 14, 2024

Greetings Champions! This blog kicks off a mini-series of Developer Insight posts detailing various aspects of updates released this year as well as small previews of what is arriving over the horizon. Our goal with these is to answer some frequent questions we see from the community, explain various changes and issues we’ve experienced and how we’re resolving them, and hopefully along the way showcase some of the behind the scenes it takes to develop Paladins. This first post is all about Event Passes, and specifically the 2023 variation of them.

Eventful Chests

Throughout this year, we’ve made a lot of changes to the Event Pass meant to reduce the risk of bugs in future passes & standardize how passes work from release to release to provide content more often and consistently. This started with the transition to Chests being the main way of delivering content, a change that players rightfully felt was random. We went into a little bit of detail in the Wild Hoard Update Notes, but we think we should share more to elaborate why we made the change.

In the original Battle Pass & Event Pass structure, each level needed to be created and configured from scratch with no ability to reuse the structure of previous passes. Each reward, whether it was a whole new cosmetic item or a bunch of crystals, needed to be manually added and tested every time. This meant content that worked in one pass might break in the next pass if the new item configuration had a mistake that nobody caught. To cut down on both the effort of making new Event Passes and also the chances of errors happening, we came up with tools and systems that could include more automation. This is how we landed on using chests, since we could keep the same level reward structure by giving out the same chests each pass and only need to change out the items within the chests.

Once the kinks in the new chests have been ironed out, the reduction of manual configuration should prevent bugs that would previously have taken 3-4 days of testing and fixing per patch, which doesn’t sound like a lot but that’s often the difference between several balance changes, a new LTM, or general polish and bug fixing that our designers can do with that time. It also cuts down on human error, something that really began to show with passes like Midnight Masquerade and Valor’s End. Handling all the Item configuration manually meant often we would break Items in ways that made it not only impossible for players to receive, but harder for us to fix.

However, as players have noticed, the initial implementation of this new system came with new bugs and issues that we're working on addressing. Conveying the contents of a Pass, the need to open Chests in order to receive your rewards, and general frustrations with clarity are all topics we’ve listened intently to. We’re planning to take steps to address this, starting with the next update coming later this month. To begin with, we know that the auto-rolling tech has confused many players as to what items they’ve acquired, so for now we’re disabling it.

Flashback Passes

Flashback Passes began as a way for us to offer previous Battle & Event Pass content for a great discount in-between normal Event Passes. In case some players are worried that the Flashback Passes meant less original content, so far that hasn't really been the case & was not our intent. For comparison sake, here’s 2023 versus 2024:

2023 Event Passes

Into the Abyss (February - May)
Midnight Masquerade (May - August)
Sand’s of Myth 2 (August - October)
Valor’s End (October - January 2024)

2024 Event Passes

Wild Hoard (January - March)
Flashback: Beat Botz (March - May)
Feudal Fables (May - July)
Flashback: Buried Treasure (July - October)
New Event Pass
Flashback Event Pass

You’ll notice that 1 new Event Pass is missing while 3 Flashback Passes were added, this was so we could invest more resources into the new skins this year to improve & test their visuals. Moving forward, we’re still figuring out how 2025 will look on the Event Pass front & will share info once we have it. However, we do have some changes being made based on feedback on this year’s passes and their cadence. One small change we plan on testing is adjusting Event Pass XP to be a mix of the modern curve & past Event Pass level curves to make it feel better for players.

Feudal Fables & Buried Treasure

For Feudal Fables, players had assumed that Feudal Fables was running significantly longer than we had planned, because the in-game timer indicated as much, and we didn’t update this timer before launching Tidal Surge. That’s purely an oversight on our end, & we wanted to make up for that to players as soon as we could.

Feudal Fables is returning…and Buried Treasure is staying! This is something we’ve never done before (and is still deep in testing) but we felt the best remedy to the fact that we moved on too quickly from an Event Pass was to let the 2 of them run side by side.

Players who already made progress on Feudal Fables will still have that progress & be able to finish up their passes between now and the next new Event Pass currently aimed for October. As for Buried Treasure, as a one-time only offering, we’re adding 6 Items to the Event Pass to sweeten the deal and hopefully make up for the issues experienced around launch of this Flashback. Players who already purchased it will be able to earn these as normal, and new purchasers will have 42 levels they can progress between now and October. Both passes will progress simultaneously, no need to pick which you are working on at a given time!

This system is highly experimental, being based on what we did for Anniversary back in 2023. We’re doing our due diligence to ensure this system works as players would expect and are excited for you all to get your hands on it later this month.

TL;DR

7.5 Update (August)

Feudal Fables Event Pass returns alongside Flashback: Buried Treasure!
Flashback: Buried Treasure has an additional 6 Levels added.
Chests will no longer auto-roll on acquisition. We will revisit this system in the future with improvements.

7.6 Update (~October)

A New Event Pass will be released!
XP adjustments will be made to make progression feel closer to past Event Passes.

Thanks for all of your support and patience while the team has been hard at work on this upcoming update. We have a lot more going on with the update coming in a few weeks, we’ll be sharing details in future blog posts touching on topics from specific Champion balance, Ranked, Wave Defense, and even a special Event! Stay tuned!

Tidal Surge Hotfix Notes

July 31, 2024

General

Fixed an issue where players who purchased the Event Pass weren't receiving the bonuses and some rewards.
- We're rolling out an additional fix any players who remain in states without earned rewards over the next few days.
Fixed an issue where some chests within the Event Pass weren't auto rolled on acquisition.
Fixed an issue where the Event Pass would hang on the purchase screen when bought.
Fixed an issue where the Diamond Trove listed duplicate skins within its collection.
- We're working on an additional issue where 2 skins (Outlaw Sha Lin & Ebon Star Zhin) appear as unowned even if owned for some players.
Fixed an issue where bot names were incorrect within TDM Training.

Champions

Fixed an issue where Io's Sacrifice Talent could end up in a state where she was invincible to damage.
Fixed an issue where Lillith's Blood Hex was not healing targets past its initial tick.
- Both Champions have been reenabled across all queues.
Fixed an issue where Rei's Magic in the Blood was activating during Chain Heal as opposed to on the next cast.

Under Investigation

Dark Tides still has issues spawning players and offering Loadouts. This issue runs a bit deeper and will be fixed next update.
Rejuvenate does not affects Pets or Illusions, which is unintended and will be fixed. We're continuing to watch sentiments around the new version & will make other non-fix improvements based on feedback as well.
The Trial missing from Crosswind Hold is still hidden, however players will not need to complete it and can earn rewards as if it's not there. We're investigating within the Trials system issues with not receiving repeat rewards and will share more info as soon as possible.
Makoa can get caught in terrain mattering when and where he activates Ancient Rage. We're looking into potential solutions, but in the meantime, we recommend not jumping against walls or ceilings during activation. Being BIG can be hard sometimes.

Support

Our Customer Support site has been updated and revamped with a new link & more features. Start a chat as needed with the blue icon in the bottom right of the Support page & be sure to bookmark this link for use if you find yourself in need of assistance in the future! https://support.hirezstudios.com/en/

Tidal Surge Update Notes

July 24, 2024

Release Date: July 24th

Wave Defense

PvE experiences are nothing new to Paladins, from LTM scenarios to past Events like Dark Tides, we’ve always toyed around with moments where players can fight AI combatants.
However, we’ve slowly worked on a passion project that looked to create a new experience that allows players to play a more-developed vision of what those modes could be like. Presenting Wave Defense, a new rotating game mode for Paladins.

Basics

Survive 10 minutes against waves of combatants who slowly escalate in number and difficulty.
Protect the objective in order to prevent the horde from draining your tickets.
The horde wins if you lose 30 Tickets.
- Dying to the Horde loses you 2 Tickets.
- The Objective drains 1 Ticket every 3s it is left uncontested.
Random powerups have a chance of spawning after a kill, allowing players to claim brief buffs.

Queues

Matchmade

This version allows players to queue with randoms and enjoy Wave Defense with a full team! This is the primary method of enjoying the mode and what we intend to balance for in the future.

Private

This version allows players to play on their own or with up to 4 friends without worrying about other players. Want to try a fun challenge or test out builds? This version scales based on the number of players, with our goal being an enjoyable experience regardless.

This queue is in the Training tab, and the Tutorial has been pushed offscreen. To access the Tutorial, use arrow keys or the D-Pad to navigate over.

Experiences

Corrupted Burrow

Directly following the events of “Burrowed Within”, protect Brightmarsh and the Burrows from Yagorath’s brood of hatchlings and various monstrosities that are attempting to infect its heart. Moji managed to weaken the Maw’s grip on Nature, but only together as friends can you fully push back the Darkness to its seal.

Forgotten Altar

Deep within Ska’Drin ruins of Primal Court, the Pyre has hidden away an altar preserving an ancient weapon. Curious Champions are encouraged to look into it by Tiberius, but Azaan refuses to allow them to do so with ease. Acolytes and Arbiters of his will stand in between you and uncovering more about the Realm’s most ancient force.

Dark Tides

A reimagining of the original Event mode, Dark Tides takes place on Marauder’s Port, where corrupted cultists are performing a ritual to amplify the powers of the Kraken to attempt to open another Rift to fully destabilize the Realm. Once you interrupt them, prepare for denizens of the Abyss to arise and punish you for your heresy against their Lords.

Our goal with Wave Defense is to gauge player interest with this initial beta experience, and if enough enjoy it look to make updates/improvements in future releases. We hope you all enjoy!

Trial Challenges

We’ve heard feedback from the community that some of the new challenges are too long-term focused. With that in mind we’ve made the following changes:

Damage And Heal Players For 2,000,000 total Health ➡️ Damage And Heal Players For 1,500,000 total Health
Expend 15,000 Ammo ➡️ Expend 1,500 Ammo In Non-Training Siege, Team Deathmatch, Or Onslaught Matches
Expend 150,000 Ammo ➡️ Expend 15,000 Ammo In Non-Training Siege, Team Deathmatch, Or Onslaught Matches
Expend 500,000 Ammo ➡️ Expend 50,000 Ammo In Non-Training Siege, Team Deathmatch, Or Onslaught Matches
Get 100 Headshots ➡️ Get 80 Headshots
Heal 3 Allies Within 5 Seconds 75 Times ➡️ Heal 3 Allies Within 4 Seconds 40 Times
Heal 4 Allies Within 5 Seconds 50 Times ➡️ Heal 4 Allies Within 4 Seconds 25 Times
Kill 40 Frontline Champions ➡️ Kill 30 Frontline Champions
Kill 60 Damage Champions ➡️ Kill 45 Damage Champions
Kill 60 Flank Champions ➡️ Kill 45 Flank Champions
Kill 60 Support Champions ➡️ Kill 45 Support Champions
Spray 200 Times ➡️ Spray 50 Times
Spray 30 Times In Onslaught or KotH Matches ➡️ Spray at least twice in 5 Non-Training Onslaught or KotH Matches
Spray 30 Times In Team Death Match or Payload Matches ➡️ Spray at least twice in 5 Non-Training Team Death Match or Payload Matches
Spray 40 Times In Siege Matches ➡️ Spray at least twice in 10 In Non-Training Siege Matches
Spray 100 Times In Non-Training Siege, Team Deathmatch, Or Onslaught Matches ➡️ Spray at least twice in 25 Non-Training Siege Matches

We will of course continue to monitor Trials and player feedback regarding them.

Buried Treasure Flashback Event Pass

What happens when you mix together surfers, pirates, and sea creatures? A Summer full of Flashback Fun! The Buried Treasure Flashback Event Pass brings back some of the most beloved cosmetics from the Shore Patrol and Pirate’s Treasure Battle Passes, as well as the Dark Depths Event Pass! 5 curated skins from those passes, as well as a whole host of previously exclusive cosmetics alongside a new set of Titles, are available in this trifecta of summer themes! As with the previous Flashback, players who own items within will be able to earn boosters and Crystals so everyone can join in on the party!

Ranked Season 7, Split 2

Play 5 Placement Matches

Reward: Golden Cache

Play 25 Matches

Reward: Sacred Stone Avatar

Restored Recolors, Phase 2

We've continued to bring back these Closed Beta recolors, now bringing some more classic styles that have changed or characters with specific details that required additional work. They'll be available for 160 Crystals/30,000 Gold or within the Heroic Hues Chest!
Barik

Artisan
Tinkerer

Buck

Alpine
Mesa

Cassie

Amaranthine
Azure

Drogoz

Lust
Pride
Wrath

Fernando

Gallant

Grohk

Deathcap
Lichen
Toadstool

Grover

Lavender

Jenos

Capricorn

Kinessa

Hunter
Tracker
Sharpshooter

Lex

Justicar
Peacekeep

Makoa

Aruba
Bahama

Mal’Damba

Hexer
Juju

Pip

Iodine
Uranium

Sha Lin

Charisma
Renowned

Skye

Aqua
Canary
Blush

Strix

Ghillie

Viktor

Olive
Navy

Limited Time Modes

Active from Friday - Monday 12 AM ET throughout the Tidal Surge update

New

Lian, I Shrunk the Realm!

Enjoy a version of TDM where every time you manage to get an Elimination, your Champion shrinks by 10% in size and health while moving faster and jumping higher. This effect can stack up to 5 times, so watch out where you step as tiny Champions fight to see who can become the smolest bean!

Updated

Truly Talented

Bomb King
- New Talent: Pop n' Lock
  - Poppy Bomb now deals 500 extra damage and cripples for 2s.
Imani
- Added to the Champion Pool
- New Talent: Equilibrium
  - For 3s after using Elemental Shift, your cast speed is increased by 30%
Mal'Damba
- Wekono's Curse
  - Reduced damage from 900 over 3s ➡️ 560 over 2s
Pip
- New Talent: Lead Vial
  - Healing Potions now only activate when directly hitting a target, and may persist in the world for 10s after hitting a surface. Reduces cooldown of Healing Potion by 3s.
Seris
- The Void Protects
  - Now caps at 500 Shielding per target
Zhin
- New Talent: Blademaster
  - Deal 30% more damage to enemies within 20ft of you
- Retaliation
  - Now makes Counter last 1s longer.
Yagorath
- Added to the Champion Pool
- New Talent: Defensive Curl
  - While in Hardening, you are immune to Anti-Heal.

Player feedback around Truly Talented was beyond what we expected, so we wanted to meet the moment and provide additional support. First, we made some focused balance changes to help existing Talents function closer to their historical versions. We also are giving Seris a limit to her Shield dominance. In addition to balance changes, we've added additional Talents to the pool including 2 new Champions: Imani and Yagorath.
While many enjoyed this mode's lack of more contemporary Champions, these two allow us to explore some ideas that make them meld better with this era of Paladins design. Let us know how they feel and whether we should continue or leave this LTM a pure nostalgia fest!

Balance

Items

Armor Plating

Reduced scaling per level from 7|7% ➡️ 6|6%
Bloodbath
- Healing amount changed to 360|360 over 3s
  - 12 Healing is applied every 0.1s
Rejuvenate
- Reworked to “Increase your healing output by 10|10%”
Ever since passive Anti-Healing replaced Cauterize as a Item, Rejuvenate has been both a staple to Frontline gameplay and a difficult balancing act for the sandbox. It's ability to counteract a large chunk of Anti-Heal's effectiveness made it feel compulsory to any skilled composition while creating two distinct late game states to design around.

This rework is meant to solve several of the issues modern Rejuvnate has caused. Firstly, by shifting who buys the Item for its benefit from reciever to caster, Frontlines and other previous buyers can have more build diversity. Supports have already had very little Item diversity, and while introducing a healing output Item makes it a likely purchase, this still would offer some new nuance between Rejuvenate and Chronos on most Supports they don't have currently. This also fixes an issue where Support players have little say in how well they heal, mattering if their teammates bought Rejuvenate or not.

This version also would now be properly affected by Anti-Healing, meaning it's overall strength is lowered to compensate for only 1 person in an average composition needing to purchase it, as well as providing us a more predictable sandbox to continue our goal of reducing the reliance on healing. This means we can more actively monitor how various compositions and Supports affect middle and late game healing, as well as gives us more room to adjust the Anti-Healing system if needed.

Another goal of this swap is allowing niche builds and more self-sustain choices that forgo Supports entirely. Hell or High Water Octavia and several other ideas now have an Item to further boost their potential effectiveness. This version of Rejuvenate also synergies with other Lifesteal and Healing Item/Cards, so we believe it's a better Item that has more interesting applications for everyone.

Champions

Cassie

Abilities
- Blastshot
  - Now also applies a 10% Max Health Poison over 3s
- Disengage
  - Now also applies a 35% Freeze for 3s
    - Freeze currently behaves the same as Slow
Ultimate
- Scout
  - Now refills her Crossbow ammo on activation
Caspian

Abilities
- Rogue’s Tempo
  - Now travels at a single projectile speed of 400
  - No longer benefits from stacks of Piercing or Sharp Momentum
  - Now applies a 1.25s Cripple instead of a Slow
  - Cooldown decreased from 11s ➡️ 9s.
  Deadly Momentum
  - Cooldown decreased from 13s ➡️ 11s
Talents
- Measured Cadence
  - Now travels at a single projectile speed of 400
  - No longer benefits from stacks of Piercing or Sharp Momentum
  - Now provides 15% Rogue’s Tempo Cooldown Reduction on hit instead of a Slow
Cards
- The Finer Things
  - Reduced scaling from 12|12% ➡️ 15|5%
Corvus

Talents
- Dark Gifts
  - Increased heal from 75 ➡️ 100
  - Increased Reload Speed from 15 ➡️ 25%
  - Increased Cooldown Reduction from 15 ➡️ 20%
- Stunning Visage
  - Now also reduces Projection’s Cooldown from 8s ➡️ 5s
Evie

Ultimate
- Ice Storm
  - Now applies a themed Freeze instead of a Slow
    - Let it Slow, let it Slow!
Io

Talents
- Sacrifice
  - Now indicates on Io's health bar to enemies that she will not die when Sacrifice is up.
When we brought back the Grohk Talent Wraith in Truly Talented, we rediscovered tech to convey abilities that trigger at a health threshold. We've expanded this to Io's Sacrifice to lower confusion and frustration when fighting her and allow more choice in how you punish her.

Kasumi

Health
- Increased from 2100 ➡️ 2200
Weapon
- Yokai Doll
  - Tightened targeting cone from 6 units ➡️ 4.5 units
  - Increased bonus Shield Damage from 200% ➡️ 250%
    - No longer can buy Wrecker
  - Cursed target damage output reduction increased from 2% ➡️ 3% per stack
Kasumi's kit is in a pretty decent spot after relocating to the Flank class, but her Yokai Doll still is a bit less consistent than many would like. We're tightening the targeting cone on it to be more precise, making her work a bit harder but upping the consistency heavily. We also are giving her more utility though the damage output reduction Curse applies, making her more able to duel targets as well as use her Ult to start a team snowball. Finally, we're resolving a longstanding conflict with stacking her passive and the item Wrecker by buffing the passive & removing her ability to buy the Item.

Kinessa

Weapon
- Carbine Rifle
  - Damage increased from 170 ➡️ 215
  - Firerate decreased from .15 ➡️ .19
  - Increased hip-fire accuracy from .75 ➡️ .9
- Sniper Mode
  - Decreased damage from 1200 ➡️ 1000
  - Increased base damage from 30 ➡️ 100
  - Decreased charge time from 1.5s ➡️ 1s
  - Increased FOV from 25 ➡️ 38
Abilities
- Transporter
  - Travels 30% faster
- Oppressor Mine
  - Now applies a 15% Slow to targets affected by it
Ultimate
- Headhunter
  - Increased duration from 5s to 8s
  - On activation, Kinessa loses 50% Ult charge. Carbine shots cost 2 Ult Charge & Sniper shots cost 8 Ult charge. If she ends her ultimate with any charge remaining, that amount goes towards her next Ultimate.
Talents
- Reposition
  - Now also reduces the distance you teleport from 100 ➡️ 75
- Octopressor
  - Replacing Oppression
  - Moved from Card to Talent, now states “Oppressor Mines now target up to 5 enemies and can have up to 3 active at once.”
Cards
- Aftershock
  - New Card to replace Octopressor, states “Oppressor Mines' Slow now lingers after exit for .4|.4s.”
- Lie in Wait
  - Reworked to "Your Sniper Mode scope zooms an additional 5|5%."
- Beam Me Up
  - Original effect moved into base at Level 3
  - Reworked to "Reduce your damage taken by 4|4% while in Transporter"
- Calibrate
  - Reduced effect scaling from .15s ➡️ .12s
- Power Supply
  - Reworked to "Hitting a headshot grants you .4|.4% Ult Charge."
We plan to release a blog to go through these changes in more depth, including the goals and methodology of these changes. For the most macro viewpoint, our goal is to shift Kinessa from a Sniper-first role to a more flexible, hybrid Damage. Her Carbine now is a much more capable weapon, while her Sniper is being emphasized as a poke tool that can clean up kills. This is both to provide her a more healthy spot in a meta, as well as allow more room for Strix in the future as the Sniper-first Champion.

We also have done a pass on her Talents and Cards to lower the frustrations of fighting her playstyles while letting her have more freedom in buildcrafting, with the hope that these ways of play can become stronger without the painpoints that led to previous nerfs. Reposition has long been her best Talent, and with these tweaks will remain strong but require more skill to leverage. Octopressor was a card cursed to never be Level 5, and by shifting it to a Talent allows her to keep that gameplan with less complication and more Loadout space.

Koga

Abilities
- Dragon Stance
  - Movement Speed bonus reduced from 25% ➡️ 15%
Maeve

Talents
- Street Justice
  - Reworked to “Activating Midnight recharges Pounce. During Midnight, Pounce executes targets at or below 40% Max Health. Midnight lasts an additional 2s.”
- Cat Burglar
  - Damage bonus increased from 25 ➡️ 30%
  - Duration increased from 3s ➡️ 5s
- Rogue’s Gambit
  - Damage bonus increased from 15 ➡️ 20%
Street Justice has long been a polarizing Talent, and we felt it finally time to address. While we considered bringing back Artful Dodger, we felt the player fantasy behind Street Justice was one worth preserving. So, we've now tied the execute to Maeve being in Midnight, limiting it's uptime to match all other executes in Paladins. However, we've given the Talent some added perks that make the words "Goodnight" instill fear in her opponents. The execute opportunity remains active as long as Maeve is in Midnight stance, regardless of if the target is blinded or not. We also felt buffs to both of the rival Talents would make Maeve's suite now feel properly distinct and effective as separate playstyles.

Makoa

Ultimate
- Ancient Rage
  - Now increases Makoa’s size by 50%
    - You wouldn’t dare challenge him.
  - Now grants 50% Headshot Damage reduction
  - Increased bonus health from 4000 ➡️ 5500
  - Increased Anchor Swing damage from 525 ➡️ 600
Makoa has fallen a bit to the wayside compared to the rest of Frontlines, and while his core kit feels good, he's lost a bit of impact. Ancient Rage will now be an Ultimate that can let him block more damage for his teammates, allowing for another tool in objective fights. This also serves as a noticeable buff to the effectiveness of Leviathan for those who leverage every activation.

Moji

Talent
- Jubilation
  - Now also spreads 75% of Mark damage to nearby enemies
    - It makes them go Boom Boom.
While we've been watching and listening to feedback on the strength of Moji's healing output, we don't want to rush to overcorrect her numbers and features until she's fully settled in playrate and match statistics. However, Jubilation has been underperforming and many OG Moji players have spoken on how she still doesn't have a true Flank Moji level option. So, we've added the features of her old Talent Boom Boom directly into Jubilation to offer a close-to-par Damage experience.

Nyx

Abilities
- Royal Presence
  - Now displays a duration bar while active
- Realm Breaker
  - Now can miss 2 hits before resetting combo chain
  Cards
- True Freedom
  - Reworked to Heal for 75|75 when landing the final hit of Realm Breaker's combo
- Devastating Blows
  - Increased bonus damage trigger range bonus from 4 → 5 units
- The New Order
  - Increased Shield amount from 30 → 60
Seris

Talents
- Forsake (replaces Mortal Reach)
  - Restore Soul now heals over .5s, but it's cooldown is increased to 3s.
- Internal Torment (replaces Agony)
  - Rending Soul on a target with maximum Soul Orbs marks them to take 20% increased damage for 3s.
"They just hold heal" is thrown around often in conversations around certain Supports, none more than Seris. Her channeled heal and focus on non-aggressive gameplay is part of what makes her the most popular and approachable Champion, but it's also something that has kept her unviable at a higher level where Supports need to provide more than healing numbers.

To address this, we've created 2 new Talents specifically focused on offering more active roles for Seris in gameplay and give newer Seris players a better transition from her ease to more complex and impactful playstyles. Forsake gives Seris access to a burst heal like her sister, opening up her ability to apply pressure through damage windows between cooldowns. Internal Torment, however, offers players willing to balance her channeled heal and steep investment on stuns a powerful debuff that her whole team can utilize.

VII

We've rolled back all of the changes for VII we tested on PTS after gathering feedback on their concepts and impact of his playstyles. We're going back to the drawing board with him alongside a few Champions, we want to make more fundamental shifts to based on community feedback and chronic design issues. We'll share some more info over the next month!

Strix

Abilities
- Scope
  - Increased FOV from 25 ➡️ 38
We didn't want to give Kinessa so much without at least offering Strix a equally deserved FOV revert. We plan to revisit our Owl-themed marksman once we have Kinessa in a place that allows us to focus on curating his Sniping experience in ways that make him feel better on both sides of the scope.

Terminus

Talents
- Undying
  - Reduced DR received from 20% ➡️ 15%
Cards
- Abomination
  - Reduced scaling from 2|2% ➡️ 1.75|1.75%
- It Watches
  - Reduced scaling from 3|3% ➡️ 2.5|2.5%
Torvald

Weapon
- Gauntlet
  - Reduced damage from 200 ➡️ 195
Tiberius

Weapon
- Bladed Chakram
  - Now bounces 2 additional times.
Abilities
- Crouching Tigron
  - Startup reduced from 0.5s ➡️ 0.2s
Ultimate
- Blade Dance
  - Whirling Blade now has 0.2s of invulnerability on landing
Talents
- Predatory Instincts
  - Reworked to “Eliminations during Combat Trance reduce its next Cooldown by 25%.”
- Vicious Assault
  - Now grants 40% DR while airborne
Vatu

Weapons
- Kunai
  - Damage increased from 280 ➡️ 310
  - Fire rate decreased from .9s ➡️ 1s
Talents
- Enveloping Shadows
  - ICD decreased from 3s ➡️ 2s
Vora

Ultimate
- Harbinger’s Wrath
  - Movement Speed during increased from 60% ➡️ 75%
  - Increased targeting angle from 80 ➡️ 100
  - Increased fire angle from 20 ➡️ 25
  - Adjusted Ultimate Camera to aid with aiming and presentation
Vora's Ultimate is a unique tool that has both lethal and movement applications. We want to incentivize players utilizing it for its intended goal of execution so we're making the targeting more consistent and forgiving, while also adjusting the camera to better frame her target. We also are giving back some speed during her Ultimate to allow for chasing down opponents or a desperate escape from a lost fight. We're also tracking Unified in Purpose and its application of DR being based on final hit as opposed to initial.

Willo

Ultimate
- Blastflower
  - Reduced damage per stack 20% ➡️ 15%
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where Omen’s accuracy would function incorrectly client side due to specific player behavior.
  - Omen is now reenabled across the game.
- Fixed an issue where Unified in Purpose was providing DR to Vora for scaling durations at each card level.
- Fixed an issue where Farm to Fable and Skywhale & Friends were missing their message IDs.
- Fixed an issue where Seris' orange and green recolors did not show up in her skin selector UI.
- Fixed an issue where Torvald’s recolors were not properly displaying their colors.
- Fixed an issue where Guttersnipe Maeve has missing textures in Lobby preview.
- Fixed an issue where Verified players' checkmarks were not appearing
- Fixed an issue where disconnecting from games caused players to lose Items or end up in a bad state.
Under Investigation
- Various skin recolors are missing lobby preview textures (e.g. Skye).
  - Their presentation in matches is unaffected.
- On the Wave Defense map Dark Tides, players aren’t prompted to select a Loadout & spawn in the same spot.
  - A workaround for this is to pause & select Swap Loadout to acquire Talents & Cards.

This Week in the Realm | July 17th, 2024

July 17, 2024

Greetings Champions! Here's what happening in the Realm this week:

PTS Feedback & Changes

It's been a while! The team has been laser focused on Tidal Surge & PTS, but now that we've revealed the update and let players playtest the content, we have things to share and changes we plan to make based on player feedback.

Ranked, Season 7 Split 2

Some players noticed a lack of mention of Split 2 of Ranked in the PTS Notes. No worries, Split 2 is still starting in the Tidal Surge update with a Golden Cache and Limited Avatar to earn! We originally planned to make larger changes to Ranked, but after chatting internally and with the Partners we scraped the original vision we had for adjustments. We'll be writing a blog in a few weeks to share what we had thought up & what direction we are going in instead to let all players join the conversation. Stay tuned!

Wave Defense

We got a TON of helpful feedback on Wave Defense, from how it currently functions to areas we can expand and improve upon it in the future. For this initial release, we're going to be implementing a few updates from PTS:

Wave Defense will be released as "Wave Defense Public Beta" and "Wave Defense Party Beta" to be clearer around how each queue functions and their state.
Wave Defense will launch with more intense Wave 1, 2 and 3 than the PTS version, with Waves 2 onward featuring 2 different bot types.
- Due to this change, we expect performance to be slightly rougher throughout, however we are working continually on optimization. We want to make the mode as fun as it can be, then slowly beef up performance.
In future updates, we'll be exploring some of the ideas players have shared around rewards and/or Remixed-like modifiers within the mode.

We're really grateful players are giving us the space to create something like this & hope everyone gives it a try when it releases next week!

Balance Updates

We were swinging for the fences with our mid-Year balance, and that meant a lot of hits and plenty of misses. We've been listening to all forms of feedback and have some adjustments planned for the Live version.

Armor Plating

Reverted CC functionality
Reduced scaling from 7% ➡️ 6%

While we wanted to try something a bit more nuanced to make this Item less of an obvious purchase, this idea wasn't the right one. We both heard the concerns and saw a few issues emerge that made us feel a further nerf of its strength is better for the game in the short term.

Bloodbath

Reduced scaling from 450 ➡️ 360

This Item was performing very well on PTS with a return to True Healing and a significant scaling increase, so we want to be a bit more cautious and bring a bit down while preserving the True Healing. We're watching the strength of this item in conjunction with Rejuvenate but want to allow players to experiment more before we act.

Rejuvenate

Added "Does not work with Lifesteal effects."

While this was originally a bug, after watching Rejuvenate's performance on PTS we feel leaving this in place for now is the best call. We saw a lot of polarized thoughts on this version of Rejuvenate and its impacts on Support Itemization and early vs late game, however there was enough conversation from both directions that we want to let the wider player base experience it and give feedback. We plan to watch & act quickly to bring back the previous version if too many painpoints arise over the next few weeks.

We'll share some info on additional PTS adjustments to Champions over the coming days ahead of Tidal Surge's launch on July 24th!

This Week's Community Creations

Temptation's Visage

Artist: ikohiki

End of the Fable

Artist: Cathelinos

Risen Once More

Artist: AngemonTk

Weekend Siege Remixed Modifier: Powerup Spawner & Truly Talented

To celebrate the upcoming release of Wave Defense, we planned to activate the Powerup Spawner featured in the mode for Remixed. However, player feedback also called out for another Year 7 staple to be added instead. Truly Talented rules will also be activated with Siege Remixed, with 3x Champion XP active all weekend long it's a great time to wave goodbye to this mode for now!

- EvilMojoKryptek

Tidal Surge PTS Notes

July 12, 2024

Wave Defense

Basics

Survive 10 minutes against waves of combatants who slowly escalate in number and difficulty.
Protect the objective in order to prevent the horde from draining your tickets.
The horde wins if you lose 30 Tickets.
- Dying to the Horde loses you 1 Ticket.
- The Objective drains 1 Ticket every 3s it is left uncontested.
Random powerups have a chance of spawning after a kill, allowing players to claim brief buffs.