Year Of The Harbinger Season 2

## Sakura

**Year of the Harbinger: Season 2**, named "Sakura," is the tenth season of the ongoing Faction War. This season offered a single hero from the Samurai faction, along with two Hero improvements/reworks.

A series of chilling incidents has plagued the Myre, and many believe they all began with Sakura, an infamous Hitokiri. Years ago, the Samurai executioner was tasked to sentence a peasant fisherman who had committed an odious crime. As Sakura raised her axe to deliver justice, she fell into a trance and slaughtered every living soul in the village. Many years have passed, and yet Kaidan is still rumored to be haunted by Sakura's victims. Some unfortunate warriors recently fought in the abandoned village, but only a few lived to tell the tale. They have seen things most people would not believe…

## Features

### Heroes Reworks

* Lawbringer
* Raider

## Updates

### Major Hero Updates

With the launch of Year 3 Season 2, the Lawbringer and Raider receiveed moderate reworks to their kit, meant to grant them the means to initiate and sustain the offense they didn't have as much before. These changes not only refreshed the experience for each Hero but aimed to better the overall balance of the game.

### New Cosmetics

With every season comes new cosmetics. Each faction received their own new set of weapon visuals, together with the "Proudly Seventy" emote that unlocks to all Heroes who have and will reach Rep 70, the maximum Rep possible.

### Others

Changes have been made to progression in the game by activating dynamic rewards for all gamemodes aside from Ranked Duels. Dynamic rewards was only applied to Breach, awarding players for a longer game, and now doing the same in these other modes will provide proper due for time spent.

Changes to Arcade Quests were made in order to make the goals and buffs/debuffs more apparent, along with making the Weekly Quest more accessible to all players by reducing its Rarity Level down to 108 from 162.

HUD improvements were made to clear the HUD more, just like last season, from making messages and banners smaller on the screen, to removing entire features such as "X alive left" and kill messages.

Small changes were also made to the Temple Garden map to make it more balanced. These changes were to Zone A and the path leading from Attacker spawn to Zone A. For Zone A, the inside of the tomb was made clear of the tombstone while also lessening how deep the tomb area went. On the outside portion, a fencing was added, reducing the Zone's ledges from two to one. For the pathway from the Attacker's side, the ladder was shortened and the ground below raised in order to make the trek for Attacker much more equal with that of the Defender's.

## Midseason Changes

During the midseason changes, a number of improvements were initiated.

* Heroes received reworks.
	+ Raider is now less oppressive, as he does not possess side or back dodge guardbreaks, with his Stunning Tap having less flickering.
	+ Shaman and Warlord have had their throw distances reduced.
* The Stamina system has been improved, with Stunning moves being standardized and Exhaustion (Out of Stamina) not being so punishing as it now cannot be further drained; performing actions during Exhaustion will now only pause the Stamina Regeneration, not deplete it further.
* Emblems can now be placed on more parts of a Hero's body, while some Neutral Colour Swatches have been changed into either Attacker or Defender Swatches.
* The special "all black" colour swatch was added as a reward for playing "Realistic" gamemodes (typically found as an Event Game Mode).
* A number of bug fixes for Heroes, Maps and more.