Patch Notes 1.11
All of our Sentinels and Initiators are getting role and abilities-specific tuning, with the start of First Strike in mind. Read the deeper dive below for our thinking here. Updates to our match economy ruleset (the way credits are distributed after a round) should alter decision-making when the round or your loadout is on the line.
Did anyone even want this? Anyway, here's the Left-hand view model.
With First Strike on the horizon, the balance team has been hard at work making our last round of major balance changes before teams start duking it out. We want to ensure that the top teams don’t have to constantly adapt to a changing game while they’re playing in the tournament. Minor balance changes may occur during the span of First Strike, but we won’t deploy changes like the ones in this patch that heavily impact a team’s strategies.
One of the trends we have observed is that attacking teams can have a really hard time breaking entrenched defenders. Although every piece of the game can influence this type of trend (move speed, weapon tuning, map design, Agent balance), we think there are a few targeted character changes that can help give attackers more opportunities to break entrenched defenders. Each is listed below.
—Max Grossman, Lead Character Designer
INITIATORS
Flash Tuning: The fade out of the flash debuff remains the same duration but now fades slower at the start
Initiators create concentrated windows of extremely high threat to help their teams break onto sites. To this end, we are slightly increasing the duration of debuffs from some Initiator abilities (mostly flashes). Our goal here is to increase the opportunity window that Initiator’s teammates have to capitalize on their utility and further differentiate Initiators from Duelists.