First of all, I’d like to applaud the devs (Ratbeard, I’m looking at you) for what seems like a strong effort at listening to their community. Great job!
Now, let’s dive in to the newest Dev Diary as of January 21, 2021. I believe this hotfix solves many issues that have been present for too long. The fact that these issues are being hotfixed gives me hope that any new arising issues will be met with more urgency. This is fantastic news for the PvP community and the game itself.
First things first, crit/block stat balancing! This is further reducing the impact of critical hits in PvP. From what I can tell, critical hits will happen slightly more often, but the damage multiplier has been reduced from 1.25x to 1.11x. This is a slight nerf to schools like ice that get a large multiplier to spells that shouldn’t do as much damage. This is good for schools like storm and fire who have high damage output even without critical hits.
Next, shadow pip dashboard. Wow, this is a big one! Essentially they’ve reduced the chance that a wizard with a lower shad rating will get the first shadow pip. This is important! If you sacrifice other stats to get a higher shad rating, you should get the first shadow pip. Great! Now, we still don’t have much information on how the shadow gauge works, but there’s good news! They’re working on it. That’s all for current hotfixes, but there are lots of upcoming fixes in the works. For instance, players should no longer face the same opponent in back to back matches. This is a great fix. Playing the same person over and over again is boring and often frustrating.
Now for things that haven’t been fixed, but are a work in progress: Opt-outs for level and rank tiers. Improved shadow gauge feedback. MORE improved crit/block feedback. Treasure card gating. Maycast audit. (Reducing cast frequency, not getting rid of maycasts) Spell audit. (We’ll see about this one....) Trainable TCs (TCs being transformed into trainable spells) New taunt/pacify tech. More Meta Curation.
All in all, I think the devs are doing a better job of creating competitive environments with all schools in mind. If nothing else, this is providing fresh opportunity to test hotfixes and updates as they continue to be released. Again, I applaud the devs for continuing the updates and listening to the community. That is how you keep your player base excited for new things to come- when you actually listen and change the things that need to be changed.
