Moot

Dev Note #90: 3.8 Update Preview #1: Servant Balance Adjustment

MEME

  Greetings Heirs,   We are here to provide preview of 3.8 Update.     ========================================================= New Special Potential Added =========================================================   As we announced in the Update Preview, the next servant will be Aria.   3.8 Update Preview: https://bit.ly/2pMgzpT

[Notice] 3.8 Update Preview Greetings Heirs, 3.8 Update is near so be the first one to check out the update contents!🔥🔥 We have several exciting contents coming up such as new Abaddon Tower Hell Mode👾👾👾 & Halloween Avatars🎃🎃🎃 Let's jump right into it! 3.8 Update Preview Details: moot.us

In current meta, results of many PvP battles are determined by rather or not ally AoE servant gets to kill enemy DPS servants because Tank servants are often too powerful and difficult to take down. We thought that it was necessary for not only Ignore DEF servants but also ATK Based servants and DEF Based servants to do meaningful amount of damage against Tank servants. This is why we asked for feedbacks about Tank servants in the previous Dev Note.   3.7 Update Preview #1: https://bit.ly/2miCd2Y

Dev Note #85: 3.7 Update Preview #1: Servant Balance Notice Greetings Heirs, Since the release of Mildred, many Heirs have been suggesting necessity of adjustment on Mildred. We have been putting deep thoughts to Mildred adjustment internally. We decided to bring balance adjustment on Mildred not only because combination of Mildred and Lucrecia is extremely powerful, but also because Mildred herself is extremely powerful in general. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mildred Combo Skill AoE Damage Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The biggest cause of out-performance of teams using Mildred is her Combo Skill's AoE damage. As an AoE DPS servant, Mildred attacks Ranged servants after attacking targeted opponent. The problem with Mildred was that she often wiped out three servants excluding Tank servant, defeating Ranged DPS, Ranged Support, and Ranged Healer servants. While we buffed Potential for AoE Damage Reduction in 3.6 Update so that Heirs could build against Mildred, Heirs that were not able to build the Potential are still vulnerable against Mildred. Also, it is a very difficult for Heirs to fully invest in the Potential just to fight against Mildred. While it is possible to avoid AoE attack from Melee AoE DPS servants because they only attack servants within the AoE attack range, most Heirs often end up having three of their servants attacked when they face Mildred since many Heirs are using Ranged DPS, Healer, and Support servants. Since Mildred wiping out three Ranged servants significantly outperforms Melee DPS servants, we are adjusting the AoE damage of Mildred from current 30% to 20% so that servants with decent HP and DEF can survive Mildred's AoE attack. To expand the explanation for each class: Ranged DPS: Since Ranged DPS servants tend to have lower base HP and DEF, we still believe that Ranged DPS servants will remain vulnerable against Mildred unless they have HP or DEF buff from Passive or well built Potential. Ranged Support: Currently, when the Ranged Support servants are slightly lacking HP or DEF or have only 1 Potential developed, Ranged Support servants will most likely die from Mildred's AoE attack. We have adjusted Mildred so that Support servants will survive Mildred's AoE attack with decent development after 3.7 update. We went through multiple tests based on Heirs' data on Infinite PvP, and we have confirmed that Ranged Support servants survive Mildred's AoE attack in many cases. Our goal is to have Ranged Support servants to lose 50~80% of their HP when attacked by Mildred. Ranged Healer: Currently Ranged Healer servants lose around 60% ~ 80% of HP with decent Gears and Potentials. With adjustment in 3.7 Update, our goal is to have Healer servants to lose around 30% ~ 50% of their HP. While the result stated above may vary based on various circumstances of the battle such as DEF debuffs and ATK buffs, we want to let Heirs know the adjustment above was made after carefully testing under various circumstances with Heirs' teams data in Infinite PvP. We believe that our test results are applicable for in most circumstances. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mildred Combo Skill AoE Range Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Currently Mildred attacks as she teleport to the front of her target. After she attacks her target, she draws a circle around her and additionally attacks everyone outside the circle. Since the diameter of the circle is so short, Mildred often ended up attacking Ignis that positions herself between Melee and Mid-Range or attacking Melee servant in ambiguous position. Therefore, we decided to increase the diameter of the circle so that the attack focuses more on Ranged servants. While it is difficult to specify what servants will get hit or not not only because Mildred can attack different servants based on who she is targeting but also because other servants can move around as they position themselves, we focused our adjustment on excluding Melee DPS servants from the attack range. In most cases, Ignis has a high chance of avoiding Mildred's AoE attack. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mildred Skill 2(Dark Stream) Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While Mildred's characteristic allows her to attack Ranged servants, her 2nd Skill allows her to attack all enemies in a straight light from the target. Therefore, there were cases where Melee DPS servants that were added to the team to counter Mildred instantly died from Mildred's 2nd Skill under certain circumstance. Therefore, we are changing her 2nd Skill so that her main attack from 2nd Skill does 100% damage to the target while doing 20% damage to servants that take AoE damage. So far, we have went over Mildred adjustment. We put a lot of thoughts and went through various tests until we finalized our decision of Mildred adjustment. After numerous tests, we tried to provide various solutions against Mildred while keeping Mildred's characteristics. While Mildred will remain strong against Ranged DPS servants, Support and Healer servants will be able to survive from Mildred's AoE attack. Heirs will now be able to respond to team using Mildred by utilizing Melee servants as it became harder for Mildred to attack Melee DPS, Support, and Healer servants including Ignis. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AoE DPS Servant Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While this adjustment is more focused on Mildred, we believe many Heirs would see this adjustment as start of direct adjustments on AoE DPS servants. Ever since the release of [A] Sphinx, it is true that similar damage ratio of AoE attacks and Single Target attacks has been an issue. We have been increasing the gap of damage ratio between AoE attack and Single Target attack for months, and we are planning on continuing to make adjustments so that AoE attacks don't simply outperform Single Target attacks. As we see this process necessary for overall servant balance, we are planning to finishing this process before 3.9 Update. However, not all servants will be changed across the board like Mildred. While we also considered adjusting AoE damage ratio of all AoE DPS servants from current 30% to 20%, we decided to not make this change because Mildred's AoE attack and Melee DPS servants' AoE attacks have different range. Each servants' AoE attack ratio will be adjusted according to the range of their AoE attack. There are other servants beside AoE DPS servants that have AoE or piercing attack in their 1st or 2nd Skill like [A] Leto or Leto. There are also cases where piercing attack does great amount of damage instead of having narrower range. We will be adjusting these skills so that they do reasonable amount of damage within acceptable range like Mildred instead of killing enemy servants in one hit. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seeking Feedback Regarding Tank Servants ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While performance of Mildred is a problem, we believe that extensive survival of many Tank servants including Lucrecia due to their HP, DEF and Potential is also a problem. (While some Heirs intentionally build team focused on survival, we believe that the real issue is that Tank servant often survives to drag on the game even when the team is not built for surviving.) Therefore, we are considering various ways of allowing Heirs to defeat Tank servants before defeating other servants. We want to assure Heirs that we are not considering direct nerf on Tank servants. Instead, we believe that there are various solutions such as allowing DPS servants to do greater damage against Tank servants or allowing DPS servants to negate certain ability of Tank servants. We are aware that comments of many Top Ranking Heirs on the Tank issue have been gaining popular support. We are looking forward various feedbacks from the community regarding this issue. We would appreciate your feedback. Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions. We believe that servant balance adjustment is necessary for longevity of Heir of Light. While we are aware that there are various issues, we will continue to try our best to improve the balance of Heir of Light through community feedback. Thank you. moot.us

  We tried to somewhat address this issue by releasing the new servant Aria. As it can be seen in the Update Preview, Aria is a servant that utilizes "Freeze" mechanics. With her Passive, DPS version of Aria attacks the enemy while its DEF has been reduced by n% upon using a Combo Skill on a frozen enemy. Utilizing this Passive, Aria is capable of doing more powerful damage against Tank servants by decreasing massive DEF that the Tank servants accumulated with DEF UP buffs, DEF Up Passive, and DEF Up Wave Effect.   One thing we were very concerned about was creating a situation that Heirs are forced to abandon their ATK Based, DEF Based DPS servants that they worked on so hard upon adding Aria.   To address this concern, we will be adding "Upon using a Combo Skill on a frozen enemy, attacks the enemy while its DEF has been reduced by n%" Potential to some ATK Based, DEF Based servants on Special Slot #4. The Special Slot #4 Potential will be added to ATK Based & DEF Based servants without any AoE attack.   Following servants will be able to equip the new Potential:

MEME

  ========================================================= New Normal Potential Added =========================================================   Currently many Heirs equip Potential that increases Secondary Mark Combo Skill activation resist rate on their Tank servants to prevent enemy from using Combo Skill through Secondary Mark. However, there was no counterpart Potential to "Increase Secondary Mark Combo Skill activation rate" among the Normal Potentials, making it harder for Heirs to take down Tank servants. Therefore, we will be adding new Potential that "Increase Secondary Mark Combo Skill activation rate" to each class to increase the damage output.   We expect that many Heirs would like to try changing their Potential once the 3.8 Update arrives. Therefore, we will be giving out 100 Potential Change Stones as an Update reward to assist Heirs changing their Potentials.   To Heirs that are planning on changing their Potential, we advice them to put new Potential update into consideration.   ========================================================= Relation Effect Change =========================================================   Since Relation Effect has huge impact on the game, we have posted prior notice about the Relation Effect change.   Dev Note #89: https://bit.ly/2MI6gMD

Dev Note #89: Update Notice (Expected Date: October 14) Greetings Heirs, Today we will go over some details of Update scheduled to arrive next week. ========================================================= New Combine ========================================================= We are changing our element for Combine servants in Fire>Water>Forest>Fire order. Next servant in Combine will be Fire [A] Sphinx that is not only widely loved by Heirs, but also receiving buff this update. Fire [A] Sphinx is available for Combine until 11/11. Fire [A] Sphinx can be combined only once during the duration. Following servants are required to combine Fire [A] Sphinx > [Fire] Laura > [Water] Executioner > [Forest] Mary > [Light] Otik (Nat 4★ can be combined 3 times during the period.) Here are the list of combine materials for Nat 4★ servants: > [Fire] Laura: [Fire] Ashimov, [Fire] Gretel, [Water] Nuamaan, [Forest] Sirucus > [Water] Executioner: [Fire] Nutkin, [Water] Ashimov, [Water] Moira, [Forest] Rhamaan > [Forest] Mary: [Fire] Gwyllgi, [Water] Rhamaan, [Forest] Mordu, [Forest] Nuamaan ========================================================= AoE DPS Servant Adjustment ========================================================= As we notified the community earlier, we will be bringing buffs on Ignis and [A] Sphinx along with adjustments to servants with AoE attacks. ⭕Fire/Forest/Light [A] Sphinx & Fire/Water/Dark Ignis First Skill & Second Skill We will be expanding area of AoE attacks so that they can place AoE attacks on larger area. Also, just like Mildred, while the main target will receive 100% damage, enemy servants beside the main target will receive 20% damage if they are within the area. Furthermore, Fire/Forest/Light [A] Sphinx & Fire/Water/Dark Ignis will be able to attack greater number of enemies as their first and second skills will damage all enemies within range instead of damaging up to 3 servants. Combo Skill We will also be increasing the AoE area of Combo Skills. Combo Skills will do 100% damage to the main target along with 25% damage to other enemies within range. AoE Damage will be reduced from 30% to 25%. ([A] Sphinx & Ignis will do greater AoE damage than Mildred because AoE area of [A] Sphinx's & Ignis' Combo Skill is smaller than AoE area of Mildred Combo Skill.) ⭕All Element [A] Sphinx & Ignis We are constantly trying to buff servants that cannot be farmed through shard farming according to their acquisition difficulty. Therefore, we are buffing Transcendence Stat of [A] Sphinx & Ignis. ⭕Water/Light Rem First Skill & Second Skill The AoE attack area will be expanded. Also, just like Mildred, while the main target will receive 100% damage, enemy servants beside the main target will receive 20% damage if they are within the range. Furthermore, Water/Light Rem will be able to attack greater number of enemies as their first and second skills will damage all enemies within range instead of damaging up to 3 servants. Combo Skill AoE attack area of Combo Skill will also be expanded. Combo Skill will do 100% damage to the main target along with 25% damage instead of current 30% damage to enemies beside the main target within range. Damage ratio of 2nd skill will be increased from 1,025% to 1,400%. Damage ratio of Combo Skill will be increased from 7,075% to 7,700%. (We are buffing the skill damage ratio so that the damage ratio matches AoE skill damage ratio of other Nat ★5 servants.) ========================================================= Shard Farming Shard Reward & Drop Rate Adjustment ========================================================= We have already covered some feedbacks and questions about decreased servant shard drop rate after 3.7 Shard Reward Update through previous Dev Note. Dev Note #88: https://bit.ly/2MqRiZM moot.us

  To summarize the changes:   1. Servant element will be a factor when it comes to Relation Effect activation. For example, sniping Relation Effect of Fire / Water / Forest servants will activate only against Fire / Water / Forest servants. Relation Effect of Light / Dark servants will activate against all elements. (Fire / Water / Forest / Light / Dark)   2. As we make the adjustment above, we will be adjusting Relation Effect of some Light / Dark servants to become more significant.   3. After we announced the changes above, many Heirs were concerned that it will become impossible to defeat Light / Dark servants that they have been defeating using Relation Effect in PvE contents such as Abaddon or Explore.   We received an excellent feedback from the community that this is a good opportunity to increase the use of Nat ★4 servants. Therefore, we will be also adjusting Relation Effect of some Nat ★4 servants so that they can snipe two of the most difficult servants: Light Lenore and Light Heide.   Following changes will be made to Relation Effect with 3.8 Update:

MEME

We excluded sniping Dark Carmilla, Light Blavatsky, and Dark [Al Heylel from this Relation Effect change because we believe that Heirs can somewhat build against these servants using Potential. After observing how Heirs react to the change, we are planning on making additional changes on Light / Dark ★4 Healer / Support servants to increase their usage.   ========================================================= Avatars =========================================================   To Heir of Light that is Dark Fantasy RPG, Halloween is as important as Summer Event or Christmas. Therefore, we will be releasing 4 new Avatars to celebrate this Halloween.   Many Heirs have been asking if the Halloween Ankou or Halloween Heylel Avatars that we are giving out for Mysterious Jack-o'lantern Event includes Mark. To jump to the conclusion, the Avatars do include Mark.   Also, we want to go over our current Avatar policy along with our future direction regarding Avatars.   1. Avatar can change Appearance, Combo Skill Animation, or Mark Setting depending on the servant that receives the Avatar. In most cases, Avatar will include new Appearance, Combo Skill Animation, and Mark. However, Avatars for servants that already have Avatar with additional Combo Skill animation will only change Appearance and Mark.   2. Once we release a new Avatar, we put the new Avatar on discount until we release the next Avatar.   3. Avatar price is divided into three categories listed below:

MEME

Since the new Ankou & Heylel Avatars that can be acquired through event can also be purchased from the shop, these two Avatars will include Mark. However, since these two servants already have Avatars with additional Combo Skill Animation (Multi-Hit change), the Combo Skill Animation (Multi-Hit change) will remain the same as default Avatar for Halloween Ankou & Heylel. Instead, we are selling the Avatars for cheaper price than default Avatar.   4. Since it is impossible to change the Multi-Hit unlike Mark that can be crafted, many Heirs have been asking for new Avatars for servants that have yet to receive new Combo Skill animation. (Multi-Hit change) We apologize about the delay creating new Avatars. There is certain amount of Avatars that we can work on, making it inevitable to delay Avatars for some servants. To address this issue, we are planning on adding Avatars with simple appearance change along with Multi-Hit change to the shop for a low price in 3.9 or 3.10 Update.   5. It was very difficult to tell if the Avatars were on discount or not because the shop didn't display Avatars' original price.   Therefore, we are making changes to display both original & changed price to Avatars like below:

MEME

  ========================================================= AoE Servants Adjustment Notice =========================================================   We are constantly putting thoughts on AoE servant adjustment, which resulted in Ignis, [A] Sphinx, and Rem balance adjustment in the last patch. We will continue to make adjustments to other AoE servants.   3.7 Update Preview #1: https://bit.ly/2miCd2Y

Dev Note #85: 3.7 Update Preview #1: Servant Balance Notice Greetings Heirs, Since the release of Mildred, many Heirs have been suggesting necessity of adjustment on Mildred. We have been putting deep thoughts to Mildred adjustment internally. We decided to bring balance adjustment on Mildred not only because combination of Mildred and Lucrecia is extremely powerful, but also because Mildred herself is extremely powerful in general. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mildred Combo Skill AoE Damage Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The biggest cause of out-performance of teams using Mildred is her Combo Skill's AoE damage. As an AoE DPS servant, Mildred attacks Ranged servants after attacking targeted opponent. The problem with Mildred was that she often wiped out three servants excluding Tank servant, defeating Ranged DPS, Ranged Support, and Ranged Healer servants. While we buffed Potential for AoE Damage Reduction in 3.6 Update so that Heirs could build against Mildred, Heirs that were not able to build the Potential are still vulnerable against Mildred. Also, it is a very difficult for Heirs to fully invest in the Potential just to fight against Mildred. While it is possible to avoid AoE attack from Melee AoE DPS servants because they only attack servants within the AoE attack range, most Heirs often end up having three of their servants attacked when they face Mildred since many Heirs are using Ranged DPS, Healer, and Support servants. Since Mildred wiping out three Ranged servants significantly outperforms Melee DPS servants, we are adjusting the AoE damage of Mildred from current 30% to 20% so that servants with decent HP and DEF can survive Mildred's AoE attack. To expand the explanation for each class: Ranged DPS: Since Ranged DPS servants tend to have lower base HP and DEF, we still believe that Ranged DPS servants will remain vulnerable against Mildred unless they have HP or DEF buff from Passive or well built Potential. Ranged Support: Currently, when the Ranged Support servants are slightly lacking HP or DEF or have only 1 Potential developed, Ranged Support servants will most likely die from Mildred's AoE attack. We have adjusted Mildred so that Support servants will survive Mildred's AoE attack with decent development after 3.7 update. We went through multiple tests based on Heirs' data on Infinite PvP, and we have confirmed that Ranged Support servants survive Mildred's AoE attack in many cases. Our goal is to have Ranged Support servants to lose 50~80% of their HP when attacked by Mildred. Ranged Healer: Currently Ranged Healer servants lose around 60% ~ 80% of HP with decent Gears and Potentials. With adjustment in 3.7 Update, our goal is to have Healer servants to lose around 30% ~ 50% of their HP. While the result stated above may vary based on various circumstances of the battle such as DEF debuffs and ATK buffs, we want to let Heirs know the adjustment above was made after carefully testing under various circumstances with Heirs' teams data in Infinite PvP. We believe that our test results are applicable for in most circumstances. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mildred Combo Skill AoE Range Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Currently Mildred attacks as she teleport to the front of her target. After she attacks her target, she draws a circle around her and additionally attacks everyone outside the circle. Since the diameter of the circle is so short, Mildred often ended up attacking Ignis that positions herself between Melee and Mid-Range or attacking Melee servant in ambiguous position. Therefore, we decided to increase the diameter of the circle so that the attack focuses more on Ranged servants. While it is difficult to specify what servants will get hit or not not only because Mildred can attack different servants based on who she is targeting but also because other servants can move around as they position themselves, we focused our adjustment on excluding Melee DPS servants from the attack range. In most cases, Ignis has a high chance of avoiding Mildred's AoE attack. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mildred Skill 2(Dark Stream) Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While Mildred's characteristic allows her to attack Ranged servants, her 2nd Skill allows her to attack all enemies in a straight light from the target. Therefore, there were cases where Melee DPS servants that were added to the team to counter Mildred instantly died from Mildred's 2nd Skill under certain circumstance. Therefore, we are changing her 2nd Skill so that her main attack from 2nd Skill does 100% damage to the target while doing 20% damage to servants that take AoE damage. So far, we have went over Mildred adjustment. We put a lot of thoughts and went through various tests until we finalized our decision of Mildred adjustment. After numerous tests, we tried to provide various solutions against Mildred while keeping Mildred's characteristics. While Mildred will remain strong against Ranged DPS servants, Support and Healer servants will be able to survive from Mildred's AoE attack. Heirs will now be able to respond to team using Mildred by utilizing Melee servants as it became harder for Mildred to attack Melee DPS, Support, and Healer servants including Ignis. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AoE DPS Servant Adjustment ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While this adjustment is more focused on Mildred, we believe many Heirs would see this adjustment as start of direct adjustments on AoE DPS servants. Ever since the release of [A] Sphinx, it is true that similar damage ratio of AoE attacks and Single Target attacks has been an issue. We have been increasing the gap of damage ratio between AoE attack and Single Target attack for months, and we are planning on continuing to make adjustments so that AoE attacks don't simply outperform Single Target attacks. As we see this process necessary for overall servant balance, we are planning to finishing this process before 3.9 Update. However, not all servants will be changed across the board like Mildred. While we also considered adjusting AoE damage ratio of all AoE DPS servants from current 30% to 20%, we decided to not make this change because Mildred's AoE attack and Melee DPS servants' AoE attacks have different range. Each servants' AoE attack ratio will be adjusted according to the range of their AoE attack. There are other servants beside AoE DPS servants that have AoE or piercing attack in their 1st or 2nd Skill like [A] Leto or Leto. There are also cases where piercing attack does great amount of damage instead of having narrower range. We will be adjusting these skills so that they do reasonable amount of damage within acceptable range like Mildred instead of killing enemy servants in one hit. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seeking Feedback Regarding Tank Servants ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While performance of Mildred is a problem, we believe that extensive survival of many Tank servants including Lucrecia due to their HP, DEF and Potential is also a problem. (While some Heirs intentionally build team focused on survival, we believe that the real issue is that Tank servant often survives to drag on the game even when the team is not built for surviving.) Therefore, we are considering various ways of allowing Heirs to defeat Tank servants before defeating other servants. We want to assure Heirs that we are not considering direct nerf on Tank servants. Instead, we believe that there are various solutions such as allowing DPS servants to do greater damage against Tank servants or allowing DPS servants to negate certain ability of Tank servants. We are aware that comments of many Top Ranking Heirs on the Tank issue have been gaining popular support. We are looking forward various feedbacks from the community regarding this issue. We would appreciate your feedback. Please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions. We believe that servant balance adjustment is necessary for longevity of Heir of Light. While we are aware that there are various issues, we will continue to try our best to improve the balance of Heir of Light through community feedback. Thank you. moot.us

  We have notified Heirs about our plan of changing AoE servants in the previous Dev Note. We will continue our work on servants with AoE skills on their 1st & 2nd Skill until 3.9 Update.   More specifically, we believe that ATK Based DPS servants with high damage ratio will be able to do even greater damage with the new Freeze Potential in 3.8 Update. We will continue to balance out servants with future updates.   Today, we covered the servant balance adjustment portion of 3.8 Update. In the next Dev Note, we will be covering community feedback reflection & new content. If you have any question regarding 3.8 Update Preview, please feel free to leave any questions. We will go over the questions in the next Dev Note.   Thank you.   Flynn