Ewok's thoughts on the patch
New Events System
A key feature in this update is a brand new Events system. This system replaces the old Key Card Events, and will enable our designers to craft a wide variety of Event types, structures, and themes.
To provide interesting and challenging scenarios, the new system can restrict the type, number, category, and rarity of units eligible for a given Event.
This is great and exactly what we needed in events. A reason to gear up different sets of characters and have them be useful. It will be interesting to see exactly what type of events are possible. Exclusive characters is the right direction, and I hope in time that the events also include player versus player instead of player versus ai for all the different challenges.
First Event – Featuring a New Character!
One of the most-frequently requested characters is now available! In this inaugural Event, players can Battle to win Shards for this character in their customized training Battles.
This Event features seven stages which must be unlocked progressively. Only Jedi units are allowed.
This is probably going to be Yoda. My dear hope is that yoda will have some way to deal with Poe and hopefully shift the meta away from him. I really like having only jedi able to do it, this kind of restriction is perfect for the game. Allowing people who have gone against trends like Nightsisters teams to have a much better chance at getting a nightsister(if that ever happens) then someone who uses a cookie cutter team. Exploration of builds should be rewarded and this is the exact perfect way to do it.
Free Energy Rewards
During 3 two hour periods of the day (12:00-14:00, 18:00-20:00, and 21:00-23:00, all in your local time) the player can collect additional bonus Energy through the Daily Activities menu.
This is a great idea to get players more involved during the day and helps the f2p crew out a lot so they don't have to waste money on energy.
Shard Shop
Previously when players gained enough Shards for a 7 star character, any additional Shards earned had no value. The Shard Shop is the answer to this problem.
A "Shard Shop" will now unlock when a player has collected a 7 star character.
At the shop, players can convert additional Shards earned for their 7 star characters into a currency that can be spent on acquiring Shards for other characters.
My sincere hope is that the shard shop will have more then just the current selection of characters. They really need shard shop only characters and maybe some other options to spend shards on in the future for the shard shop to be really successful. While the f2p crowd is going to love it for the whales unless they get something to spend shards on it will just be a feature ignored completely.
Previously, abilities which caused Damage over Time (DoT) or had a time-delay element in their damage could not kill an enemy unit when it started its turn. That is no longer the case.
This is a great first step, but detonator skills still stink and make the scoundrel team non-viable.
Character Balance Changes
First Order Tie Pilot
FOTP was affected by a couple bugs that significantly affected his performance in a variety of ways. Considering the magnitude of these fixes, we're going to observe how much they affect him before considering any further balance adjustments.
Fixed a bug with FOTP's 7-Star stat allocation, giving him much higher Strength Growth and much lower Agility Growth than intended.
Fixed a bug that allowed his Basic ability to gain more multi-attacks than intended
While this fix may seem like a nerf, it actually makes fotp so much more overpowered. As long as Poe gets his taunt off fotp is going to be one shotting everybody, even a maxed 5's.
Talia
As one of the few Dark Side healers, Talia finds her way into a variety of parties, but has been significantly underperforming; we feel this is largely due to the extreme risk of her powerful heal, coupled with a few AI bugs that tend to drive her to make... tactically unsound decisions.
Health Steal effect on Basic ability doubled at all ranks (60~100%, from 30~50%)
Fixed multiple bugs that made AI-Talia use her heal improperly
Any buff to Talia is good because she stinks right now. This buff won't put her anywhere near the arena meta, but she will now be a decent healer for hard dark side events and also a big buff for night sisters teams who really needed a buff after the asajj nerf below.
Poe Dameron
Poe's high-Tenacity gear upgrades after the level cap increase, coupled with his Unique ability, allowed him to substantially outperform other Tanks. In addition, the high chance to Expose enemies with Resistance Bravado made it reliable for him to secure a huge advantage for his team on the first turn. After these changes, Poe still has far more Tenacity than any other unit, and still has the only currently available Area-of-Effect Expose ability, even if it is less reliable, so we are confident that his unique role as a high-risk, high-reward Tank remains intact.
As an additional note: the changes to his gear requirements were made only on Tiers II and III in order to minimize the disruption to players currently trying to equip and upgrade Poe.
Expose chance reduced by 15% at all ranks
Reduced Tenacity on Unique ability from 15-35% to 10-22%
Reduced Tenacity on gear at early Tiers
I have a feeling I know why you made this nerf. Fundamentally changing the speed amount on gear would effect a ton of characters and how they are balanced since speed plays such a big factor in a characters strength, so modifying that is tough. Changing how turn meter reduction worked, like having it be resisted, would be a giant nerf to already weak characters who use it that aren't poe. So really the only thing left that would be an easy hit is expose. Expose really isn't the problem with poe. Tenacity is a little bit of the problem since dooku is supposed to be a counter to him with a stun, so lower tenacity more chance of stun I get it. What I really would have like to see is reducing poe's starting speed before gear by 1. This way gear doesn't have to change at all. Poe drops down a speed tier and he is no longer a coin flip win/loss character, but still pretty darn good.
Jedi Knight Guardian
Many players collect Jedi Knight Guardian early on to round out their parties, but she's also quickly outclassed by many other Tank options. These updates should help to keep her competitive.
Special ability Ability Block chance increased to 100% on Critical Hits
Defense bonus on Unique ability replaced with Heal Over Time (5~15% Max Health per turn)
I love this buff, very very interesting. Good job.
Asajj Ventress
This update should serve to fix several of the factors (including a bug) that made Asajj's Strike Fear ability frequently unreliable or ineffective. Note that there is still a bug under investigation that can cause Dispel effects to fail to remove enemy buffs.
Fixed a bug that caused Asajj's Strike Fear ability to heal all allies instead of just Asajj
Healing effect altered to be 20~40% Max Health plus 3~9% per effect dispelled, from 3~7% per effect only
Ability now Dispels all buffs at all ranks
Asajj really needs a buff after this, she is fixed but she is just in a terrible state of being too slow and too squishy just like Darth Maul.
Savage Oppress
Savage was intended to be an extremely durable Attacker who could become a huge threat when he found the opportunity to finish off a low-Health enemy, but his less-than-stellar base damage and relatively unreliable Special ability made that difficult. This update should make Savage a much more threatening foe on both accounts.
Unique ability now also grants Offense Up for 1 turn when receiving damage.
Special ability now deals massive damage and can't be Evaded when used against enemies at 25% Health or less
I definitely think Savage needed a buff, will this put him up into a usable meta position, nope. He is just to easy to ignore and without a taunt he can't offense up and he just still falls flat. He will still need some more work in the future.
Mace Windu
Mace Windu's kit was highly divergent, lacking synergy or focus that would allow him to play a clear role in combat. This overhaul should help him secure his identity as a heroic, high-pressure Tank that enemies will have to focus fire on to survive, even without a Taunt.
Basic ability reworked: Now deals 25~50% more damage while Mace is above 50% Health, and heals Mace for 50~70% of the damage dealt while Mace is below 50% Health
Unique ability reworked: At the start of each of his turns, Mace has a 30~60% chance to Expose a random enemy until the end of his turn. In addition, Mace gains 10~25% Turn Meter whenever he attacks an Exposed enemy.
I am not sure how I feel about this rework. First off he is a int based character and his basic attack is physical. This means his basic attack is pretty weak, so even if he does max it out he isn't getting much of a heal or doing much damage above 50% health since his phys crit is low. He has a leader skill that benefits jedi's and his new unique uses expose, which no jedi synergizes with. So really he can just be ignored again and only has a 30-60% chance of doing about 1/2 of glass cannon's health worth of damage on his turn, which just isn't enough to be useful. The only way he could be really useful is in an expose based resistance group to make resistance trooper go on steroids, which still isn't a very strong team at the moment.
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Replies
According to his newly updated ability descriptions in the game Yoda will not be a counter to Poe.
Having one or two heroes that are required to be in every team (Poe or Yoda) is not the way it should work anyway.
Different strategies should be rewarded, not punished when new updates come.
The gist of this update is 'If you don't have Poe, get him.'
Well yea whenever a character is a must have in every build he needs to be adjusted. It looks like won't be adjusted so the only way to get around it is to introduce new characters that make equally as viable teams that don't include poe.
So I'm guessing this means that Mace will maybe expose an enemy, and then he'll have to whack that enemy on his move, at which point he might expose a different enemy, and then he'll have to whack that different enemy on the next move.
So Mace is now playing Whack-a-Mole!
At least he should have been given 50~100% chance to Expose a random enemy; otherwise, this "buff" for Mace doesn't seem very good.
If you have a maxed Sid Rey leia hoth soldier and gs you can still win against a Poe team you are going against percentages here. You need 2/3 of your characters to kill him before he goes. All your people can go before him so you have around 50% chance ish of killing him.
Even if he is nerfed the large amount of damage characters like Rey can do so quickly makes it extremely hard to balance arena without making major changes.