Patch Notes/July 31, 2020

We are excited to announce Patch 0.5, deploying on PC this Friday, July 31 at approx. 2:00pm PT / 5:00pm ET, following the Creators Cup. This represents a broad rebalancing pass on the abilities meta of the game. These changes come after much consideration of your feedback since the beginning of our Open Beta and following the changes introduced in our last patches. To summarize the changes you’ll see below, this is an update to many items of frustration you have voiced.

**First and foremost, this patch is about Time-To-Kill.**

Many of you told us TTK felt too slow and that it was too hard to eliminate opponents. We believe the core of the issue was indeed that weapons were not dealing enough damage, but also that the shooting windows of opportunity were rendered too short by the very strong presence of mobility or defensive Hacks. Hacks started to have too strong an influence on the TTK overall. So, we have focused our changes on making the weapons more powerful, while preventing the Hacks from being used constantly to escape or eliminate opponents.

**The second focus is related to several specific abilities that felt unfair to many of you.**

Namely, the Protocol V’s one hit kill ability, the Mine Hack’s overall power level, and the Invisibility Hack’s overly strong ability to escape a gunfight. Each of these is addressed in this patch. We know the change on Protocol V will likely be a controversial one with some of our skilled sniper players, and we will keep a close eye on that discussion going forward, but we believe reducing its constant presence in the game will be to the benefit of all players.

**Lastly, this patch is introducing changes to AoE (explosive) weapons.**

We aim to make AoE weapons more comfortable & efficient to use, while reducing the ability for players to pushback and spam with high efficiency. We have effectively removed all pushback effects from those weapons and made sure they could not be abused for indoor combat.

As always, this patch would not have been possible without all your questions, comments, and suggestions. Your ongoing feedback is critical, so please keep it coming.

### Content

#### WEAPONS

**RIPPER**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Damage to 13/13/13/13/15, up from 11/11/11/11/13.

**RIOT ONE**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Damage to 29/31/33/35/39, up from 26/29/31/34/38.

**MAMMOTH**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Damage per pellet to 6/6/6/6/7, up from 5/5/5/5/7.
	+ The post-shoot animation has been improved to increase the reactivity of the weapon.

**PROTOCOL V**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Decreased Damage to 50/54/58/62/67, down from 50/58/65/73/80.

**HEXFIRE**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Damage to 4/4/4/4/5, up from 3/3/3/3/4.
	+ Decreased Rate of Fire to 900 RPM, down from 1000.

**SKYBREAKER**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Damage to 50/54/58/62/67, up from 40/46/52/58/64.
	+ Decreased Physical Pushback by 100%. (no more pushback).
	+ Skybreaker now does High Environment Damages.

**SALVO**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Decreased Damage to 20/20/20/20/24, down from 27/27/27/27/34.
	+ Increased Explosion Area of Effect (AoE) to 4R, up from 3R.
	+ Decreased Physical Pushback by 100%. (no more pushback).

**KOMODO**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased DMG to 29/29/29/29/34, up from 25/25/25/25/30.
	+ Increased Explosion AoE to 2.5R, up from 1.5R.
	+ Decreased Physical Pushback by 100%. (no more pushback).
	+ Komodo now deals progressively less damages under 15m range.

#### HACKS

**MINE**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 16/15/14/13/11, up from 12/11/10/9/7s.
	+ Decreased Damage to 30/30/30/30/45, down from 50/50/50/50/75.
	+ Decreased Projectile Chase Time to 8s, down from 15s.
	+ Decreased Projectile HP to 60, down from 75.
	+ Decreased Detection Radius to 12R, down from 15R.
	+ Decreased Deploy Duration to 30s seconds, down from 60s.
	+ Increased Trigger Timer to 1s, up from 0.5s.

**WALL**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Decreased Duration to 9 seconds, down from 25s.
	+ Decreased Total Deployed Wall limit to 2, down from 5.

**BALL**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 14/13/12/11/9s, up from 12/11/10/9/7s.
	+ Decreased Duration to 60s, down from 180s.

**ARMOR**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 16/15/14/13/11, up from 14/13/12/11/9s.

**SLAM**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 14/13/12/11/9s, up from 12/11/10/9/7s.
	+ Decreased Damage to 20/20/20/20/30, down from 30/30/30/30/45.

**INVISIBILITY**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 16/15/14/13/11, up from 12/11/10/9/7s.
	+ Decreased Duration to 5s, down from 8s.

**HEAL**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 14/13/12/11/9s, up from 10/9/9/7/5s.
	+ Decreased Duration to 9s, down from 15s.

**SHOCKWAVE**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Decreased Damage to 10/10/10/10/15, down from 20/20/20/20/30.
	+ Increased Cooldown to 14/13/12/11/9s, up from 10/9/9/7/5s.

**TELEPORT**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Increased Cooldown to 14/13/12/11/9s, up from 12/11/10/9/7s.

#### GAME MODE & SYSTEMS

**SHOWDOWN**

* Detailed changes:
	+ Decreased Sector Decay Damage Showdown Multiplier to x3, down from x7.

We believe the current Sector Decay Damage has been creating too much pressure to reach the last sector in time once Showdown begins. The above changes in Hacks and our previous changes on Showdown & Crown should ensure this level of damage is enough to be strong incentive to stay in the last sector without being too stressful.

## BUG FIXES

* General Client and Server stability improvements