Devlog #39 - Recharging

T is for Talented, G is for Gamers

Since our last post we've been hard at work fixing some infamous bugs and performance issues in 0.9 and doing our first class balance pass on the Archer - which includes some Talent reworks.

Let's dive in and see what's been going on!

Talent Tree Performance

In both our internal testing and community feedback we've spotted framerate issues growing out of control on the talent tree, especially late into a run when most if not all of the talent tree is revealed.

To remedy this we've made some core changes to how the tree is generated, how it loads and how it's manipulated as the player navigates it.

Previously, whenever you purchased a talent the lighting across the entire talent tree was refreshed - this now only occurs for Talents that are on screen, any other talents won't refresh until you move the tree to reveal them.

Secondly, since the rework of the tree back in 0.7 there was a long standing bug where the talent connectors would be rendered even if they weren't on screen - this was causing havoc when large areas of the tree was revealed, and is no longer a problem! We've also slightly reduced the max zoom out level of the tree to reduce the number of talents on screen at once.

Finally we've made some minor mechanical changes. The tree is slightly smaller than it was before, but we've only shaved off the very top areas where epic talents stopped spawning (mostly dead space anyway), given there's still over 1000 talents per run there should be plenty to look for.  

Archer Changes

It's been clear for a while that some of Archer's stronger Rare and Epic talents are completely outclassing the others. So we've taken some power off the very strongest and buffed up the weakest.

The Nerfs

- Piercing Blows now reduces the Knockback on pierced attacks by 50% (in addition to the damage)
- Increased the  cooldown of Frost Traps to 10 seconds (up from 5)
- Increased the cooldown of Explosive Traps to 10 seconds (up from 5)

The Buffs

- Sanguine Bounty now requires 25 kills (down from 50)
- Collector Talents now have a 3% drop rate (up from 2%)
- Grindstone now adds 5% critical strike chance
- Vortech Generator now adds a flat 2 second cooldown reduction on all abilities
- Frost Traps now scale off attack damage, dealing 50% of the total amount (Up from 1 flat damage)
- Explosive Traps now scale off attack damage, dealing 100% of the total amount (up from 3 flat damage)
- First Aid has been reworked into [Stimpack] - Give yourself a boost, fully restoring your Health Points and granting 2 Attack Damage until the end of the night

Additionally we've added charges to all Archer abilities, given how much charge synergy is in the class we think this will likely turn out to be a buff overall. Vortech Aimbot, Quick Fire, Hail of Arrow and Maelstrom will each use the charge system - their cooldowns have been adjusted to suit this.

Some Bugs!

Finally, we've been hard at work crushing bugs, here's a few of the highlights:

- Bountiful Bounty experience sacks now correctly return to the player and grant XP
- Wizard Basic Attack particles no longer grow to cover the entire screen
- Vortech Shrink-Ray can no longer duplicate enemies that are already shrunk
- Mastery Level names now correctly match their description and effect
- It is no longer possible to reach a negative level and stop gaining talent points
- Strike Abilities now correctly gain strikes from Relentless

And most importantly:

- The fly will now appear on the podium if he delivers the killing blow

And that's about it for this time - we'll be implementing more balance changes over the next few weeks so if you have any requests do feel free to join us on the Discord and speak your mind!

Stay Talented