Hi-Rez Studios has surprised me this time. Just two weeks ago, the company had a media exclusive stream on its Twitch channel previewing a new game mode in its early stages. Looks like someone decided to jump without looking, as Domination was added to the game in the latest patch, along with some interesting changes.
I played a few matches before writing this, and the changes, overall, feel very good.
One thing worth noting between Domination when I played it on the stream and now, is that you no longer need to stand on the sand dunes to capture the towers. As soon as you kill the enemy’s genie, your genie will appear to defend the point. It makes for faster gameplay, and better strategy, of no longer having the ability of “neutrality” before the enemy’s genie appears to sway the battle in their favor.
Below you can find the patch notes, and my thoughts on all the changes.
Honestly, I feel all these changes are necessary, and well received. Again, I played matches, and the interesting nerf to EXP gains from buff camp mobs had little affect on me as Loki (I went 20-1-14 in Conquest, and 14-1-5 in Domination). With each passing wave of balance changes every patch, the game seems more well-rounded.
I did also get the chance to invoke the right of banning a god, and it seemed to work fine. No one questioned why I chose the way I did (Hades, because I have problems playing against him as Loki), and no one complained. The game wasn’t tilted one way or the other, we just had a god unavailable to us, just as if no one had it purchased.
Another interesting note is the rotating free gods. This is a great change, allowing more people access to the great additions to the game, for a limited time. This offers a greater chance to try new gods with literally zero cost to themselves.
Cupid’s change from Physical damage to Magical will be an interesting transition, since it’s pretty radical after he’s been out for almost 3 months now. It’s going to be a hard change to a large base of his players, but it’ll be enjoyable to watch them struggle for a little while, as I pick them off one by one in each match.
However, what was missing from this patch was the guild system. I’m betting on it being in the next patch, and if for some reason it’s not, then the patch afterwards.
One thing I noticed myself in-game were the graphical changes. He Bo’s water stream ability has new graphics for the water animations, and the home base in Conquest had some graphical changes I noticed as well. Check it out below. How does everyone else feel about the changes?
New Gamemode: Domination
- Several Obelisks of Power have appeared in Egypt. Control them to gain victory.
- Average game time is around 20 minutes.
- Match Objectives:
- There are three control points.
- Each team starts with 400 tickets.
- Enemy tickets are reduced when your side controls two of the three points, as well as for each enemy kill.
- Reduce the enemy team to zero tickets to win the match.
- Other Info:
- You start at level three with 1500 gold.
- Neutral camps provide buffs but do not deduct tickets.
- Your team respawns together in waves.
- You will earn normal match rewards. Note that Domination has its own first win of the day bonus.
General Features:
- In addition to the five permanently free gods (Ra, Kali, Ymir, Sun WuKong, and Artemis), there will now be an additional five free gods at any point in time. The free additional gods will rotate over time. (You will still need to purchase a god in order to ensure permanent access).
- When you first enter the match lobby in either Conquest Normal or Conquest Ranked gamemodes, the top-ranked player on each side now has the opportunity to ban a god from play. When a god is banned, it is banned for both sides. All gods are bannable (Note that we had previously communicated that free gods would not be bannable, but reversed that decision after adding the additional free rotating gods).
- If enough people are in queue we respect your preferred region when match making. You choose your preferred region on the PLAY screen.
- In the Settings menu, you can now choose between 3 different ability casting options:
- Normal Casting Mode: A targeting decal is placed on the ground when you hit the ability button, and then the ability is fired when you left mouse click.
- Quick Casting Mode: A targeting decal is placed on the ground when you push down the ability button, and the ability is fired when you release the ability button.
- Instant Casting Mode: The ability is fired as soon as you press the ability button, with no targeting decal.
- The time spent in a “matching state” on timed queues is now drastically reduced, so that you should be sent into the match lobby much faster.
- Auto-purchase settings will now be stored server-side at a player level. This should prevent users have these settings reset after each patch (Note: Settings will be reset upon this patch, but should not be reset during the next patch).
- If you receive a party invite while alt-tabbed out of the game, you will now receive an out-of-match notification, similar to the notification you receive when you are alt-tabbed out of the game and receive a match invite.
- All Towers have the same health now (excluding Phoenixes). Previously, the first tower had less health than the second.
- In Conquest mode, gold now spools at 4 per second (previously 2 per second).
- Ranked matches now kick off every 30 minutes instead of every hour.
UI Changes:
- The Settings menu has undergone a UI overhaul. There are now tabs for different settings areas.
- The Play button on the top-bar menu is now better highlighted.
- A variety of UI cleanups have been made to the PLAY screen. This includes:
- Users may also now select their preferred server region.
- Your last selected tab is persisted across logins (so you will return to the PvP tab if that was your last selected tab the last time you played).
- The buttons now read “Join” and “Leave” instead of “Join Queue” and “Leave Queue”.
- Once you join a queue, you are restricted from clicking on other queues until you leave the queue.
- Several other cleanups.
- The sizing and positioning of the in-game web browser has been modified.
- The sell button in the in-game item store has been modified.
- Several cleanups and improvements have been made to the Social menus.
- Several other minor bug fixes and visual cleanups.
Abilities:
- Creeping Curse
- The active slow has been reduced from 35% to 30%.
- The cooldown has been increased to 150s.
- Hand of the Gods
- Damage done to minions has been reduced by 20%.
- Passive has been changed so that you take 30% less damage from Jungle minions.
- Heavenly Agility
- The active speed buff has been increased from 35% to 40%.
- Duration of the buff has been reduced from 5s to 3s.
- This ability now makes you immune to slows for the active duration.
- The cooldown has been increased to 150s.
- Intensify Defenses has been temporarily removed.
- Meditation
- The passive has been changed so that when you have less than 40% of your mana, your mana regeneration is doubled.
- The cooldown has been increased to 120s.
- Purification Beads
- This ability removes pulls again.
- The cooldown has been increased to 120s.
- Sprint
- The lifetime of the active speed buff has been changed to 6s.
- The cooldown has been increased to 150s.
Items:
- Recommended items that had mana potions have now been changed to healing potions.
Jungle:
- The XP reward for clearing a buff camp has been reduced by 50%.
- Protection Buff Camp
- The protection camp has had its buff reduced from +50 to +35.
Gods:
- General
- Base movement speed of gods has been increased by 10%.
- Projectile speeds on basic ranged attacks has been increased from 70 ft/sec to 100 ft/sec. Anhur, Artemis and Cupid are still at 110 ft/sec.
- Artemis
- Calydonian Boar
- Crowd control immunity duration decreased from 6s to 3s.
- Cupid
- Cupid’s base attack speed has been increased from .92 attacks/sec to 1 attacks/sec.
- PASSIVE – Lovestruck
- When an ability is used that consumes 10 stacks, Cupid also gains a 20% buff to his physical power for 6s.
- Heart Bomb
- Damage type has been changed from physical to magical.
- Base damage has been increased from 50/80/110/140/170 to 60/100/140/180/220.
- Damage contribution has been changed from 60% physical to 100% magical.
- Share the Love
- Base healing has been increased from 30/50/70/90/110 to 45/70/95/120/145.
- Damage contribution has been changed from 40% physical to 30% magical.
- Flutter
- Attack speed buff duration has been increased from 4s to 6s.
- All ranks now gain 2% attack speed per stack of Lovestruck.
- Lovestruck stacks now consumed by Flutter.
- Fields of Love
- Damage type has been changed from physical to magical
- Base damage has been increased from 175/225/275/325/375 to 225/290/355/420/485.
- Damage contribution has been changed from 100% physical to 120% magical.
- Freya
- Irradiate
- Decreased the cooldown from 13s to 11s.
- Pulse
- Decreased the cooldown from 13s to 11s.
- Banish
- Increased the duration of the banish from 1/1.5/2/2.5/3s to 1.4/1.8/2.2/2.6/3s.
- Sobek
- PASSIVE – Armor of the Nile
- Name has been changed to Blessing of the Nile
- Each hit now also gives Sobek +15 physical power, stacking up to 3 times.
- Thor
- Tectonic Rift
- The fissure now appears almost instantly, doing 75/115/155/195/235 (+60% of your physical power) physical damage and stunning enemies for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2s.
- Anvil of Dawn
- Reduced the amount of time the warning is visible when Thor is about to come crashing down.
- Ymir
- Frost Breath
- This ability now does 50/90/130/170/210 (+50% of your magical power) magical damage.
- Shards of Ice
- The slow applied during his ultimate has been increased from 30% to 40%