December 6, 2024 marked another big Deadlock update, introducing a whole new hero to Hero Labs, adding more support for controllers, and adding a whole range of improvements, fixes, and balance changes.
Beyond that, some extra competitive options were introduced for matchmaking, enabling players to further fine tune what type of players they want to be paired with.
For a summarized list of the other changes:
- Party size at top MMR reverted from 3 to 2 for Eternus rank and above, but remains at 3 for Ascendant.
- Matchmaking now prioritizes teams having at least two frontliners when possible.
- Ability Range and Ability Duration now feature diminishing stacking.
- Fire Rate capped at a minimum value of -50%.
- Heroes gain an additional +0.5 Sprint.
- Sprint-related items adjusted:
- Sprint Boots reduced from +2 to +1.5 Sprint.
- Enduring Speed reduced from +2 to +1.5 Sprint.
- Carrying Soul Urn movement speed fixed at 13, with no sprint provided or speed modifiers allowed.
- Urn spawn point now alternates left and right starting with left.
- Shooting one Trooper on a zipline dismounts nearby troopers on the same zipline.
- Flying over buildings no longer triggers damage; only standing on them does.
- Base Patron HP reduced from 10k to 7.5k; downed HP reduced from 18k to 13.5k.
- HP growth begins at 20 minutes: +250 HP/min for active Patrons and +450 HP/min for downed Patrons, balancing at -25% at 20 min, 0% at 30 min, and +25% at 40 min.
- Introduced a tick-based Souls system providing small bonuses to the two lowest net-worth players, based on team soul earnings (2% and 1%).
- Implemented a limiting function to curb soul orb duplication during laning. Players are deprioritized for soul generation after four participation events per wave.
- Removed changes to Guardian damage and defenses against Troopers and players.
- Reverted soul-related mechanics, including:
- Trooper soul range reduction by 5m.
- Troopers dealing 20% more damage to each other.
For the full details, be sure to check out the official patch notes announcement.
