The upcoming Update 6.50 for Raid: Shadow Legends won’t be introducing any grand features, but it does bring some important balance changes that will concern both Champions and some Blessings. Take a look at the tables presented below if you want to get an early idea of what you can expect.
On top of that, we have several new Champions to introduce. Read on if you want to find out more!
It would be impossible to underestimate the impact Blessings have on the overall game balance of Raid: Shadow Legends. And just like every other element of that balance, Blessings need to be monitored and tweaked when something does not work as smoothly as intended. After going through player feedback and plenty of data, we’ve identified several Blessings that needed to be adjusted to bring them all in line and ensure some choices are not inherently better than others, no matter which Champion gets them.
As you can see in the tables below, Brimstone and Phantom Touch were the primary culprits; these two Blessings, in particular, became a no-brainer choice because of the benefits they provided even on Awakening Level 1. Naturally, we have never intended to limit variety like that. After the rework, both Brimstone and Phantom Touch will retain their potency, but now it will develop more smoothly and require higher Awakening Levels. Phantom Touch will deal slightly less damage than before, but it was rather overpowered compared to all alternatives.
On top of that, we’ve buffed 9 other Blessings to increase their power and give you guys more awesome options to choose from. It won’t be the last balance patch as far as Blessings are concerned, so please leave your feedback on the changes and thoughts on the balance of this feature overall - we’ll be reviewing it all!
As a whale I've had gears to get ACC (and all others for that matter) thresholds for end-game content long before any "High Awakening" on even barely playable champ.
And guess what, I don't need neither Brimstone nore Phantom Touch to 60-mil NM Hydra in auto.
I don't think this "rebalance" is going to incentive many of us to spend even more for something we actually don't need.
That being said, we're left with the ugly truth : you've deliberately chosen to hurt new and casual players, in a game where it's already incredibly difficult to catch on. And the reason why you made that decision is beyond me...
Like everyone else in this thread, I want to just say that your Blessings nerf is a very bad change to the game. Players have invested energy, time, and money to build their teams using Blessings. For you to go and nerf it months after release, especially in a way that hurts newer and low spending accounts the most, reveals a disconnect with the players, and frankly has a greedy vibe to it.
The gambling aspect of Blessings (and shard pulls, gear upgrades, etc.) makes it even worse. For comparison, consider one of my favorite games, League of Legends (LoL). In LoL, say I go buy a champ I like for ~$5…if that champ is later nerfed for balance reasons, it's not that big of a deal, because I can go buy another champ that might interest me more for ~$5. But in Raid, you can gamble away $300 on Blessings/shards and not see any improvement in the champs you want because it's an RNG outcome. So nerfing in something in Raid becomes far more problematic than a non-gambling game.
The other problem—why is Plarium spending any time and resources on nerfs to the players, when there are so many quality of life (QoL) changes you could focus on instead? Plarium, poll your player base and have them rank their most important QoL updates, and prioritize those. I've been playing this game for ~8 months now, and when people ask me I tell them to stay far away from Raid because it still needs serious QoL enhancements. Here are some examples: ways/items to reduce RNG for shard pulls (or option to buy a champ directly like League of Legends and Eternal Evolution); ways to reduce RNG for Blessings and gear upgrades; increase energy cap; increase the cap on clan boss keys; remove the silver cost for changing gear; have 2x/3x/etc. multipliers for all fights (1 fight = 2x/3x/4x rewards); free ability to change individual masteries instead of resetting the whole tree; overlapping events that actually benefit the player, coupled with an event calendar; the ability to refund the books & masteries you've spent on a champ so you can test other champs in your roster out; shops that allow you to buy as much of an item as you want if you have the resources; monthly champ fusion system in which players can pick the champ they want to fuse and can burn any resource they like (energy, silver, gems, etc.) to achieve it (still takes resources so no loss to Plarium)....the list goes on. Other games already have features like this, it is way past time to step it up Plarium.
EDIT for spelling
my day is ruined and my dissapointment is immeasureable. who tf uses poison/hpburn in arena. you are just slapping us on the faces again and again runing this once great game to a just your usual daily money hungry crappy mobile game. honestly, you have ruined the game experience again and again. you should respect your players, not spit on their faces and ruin their experience. Do you ever take player feedback into account? this game has potential yet is ruined by its developers. play the game like a free to play/low spender gamer and then see how hard it is for 60-70% of your playerbase. stop nerfing the good stuff and star balencing the bad stuff. its not that hard. stop hurting the new, the ftp, and the low spenders. they make up 60-70% of your playerbase. 20% is refferal alts... if before you were digging a 6 feet deep grave and covering yourselves, now its 30 feet with a skyscraper planted on top. this is becoming more likea n online casino game rather then a rpg game... sigh, another golden gem destroyed by the devs... stop killing the golden geese
I play for 4 years and really never comment is I think my 2nd post here.
What is actually wrong with you?
I will pull myself together and not use curses, so you have to think of one after every 3rd word.
Brimstone
what bothers me a lot is that I don't get my resources back which I used in good faith (there is already the mistake) used.
I think your approach is unacceptable.
This is one of the shabbiest not to follow changes of my gamer runtime.
And there I have the STILL superfluous arena blessings not mentioned.
Shame on you.
I've been playing for almost 2 years now and am a low-spender. Plarium's rebalances and updates over the last year or so have made it quite clear that they do not want F2P or low-spending players in their community. This latest attack on us is the final straw. I have cancelled my Raid card on both accounts and will not spend another penny.
I'll plod along now with no ambition in the game just for my Clan's sake, but I'll be surprised if I'm still playing at the end of the month.
Thanks Plarium for driving me out of a game that I really enjoyed for well over a year. I'm sure you won't miss my minimal monthly spend, but if enough us do the same you might get the message......
While this update brings some needed improvements, it also has serious disappointments in the area of blessings. Changes to Life Harvest, Chain Breaker, and Miracle Heal blessings were good to where I may actually now use one of such, but the changes to Brimstone and Phantom touch were harsh, drastic, unjust, and negatively affect long-term and loyal players (most of Plarium's Raid customers). It's not good to upset customers. Moreover, the changes to such blessings do not represent a "balancing" of things; such changes represent a destabilization and overreaction to concerns with and uselessness of other blessings, not with these two blessings. The changes to the Brimstone blessing are just plain foul and should not have been done.
Concerning other blessings, as many others have noted, changes to the Lethal Dose and Incinerate blessings are useless because those blessings are limited to the arena, where almost no one uses such and where they are useless to and not used by Plarium's most loyal and long term players (many of whom are in higher tier arena gameplay). Those blessings may only be used, if at all, in low-tier arena gameplay by new players, but as they increase in arena tier level they will find such useless and opt for other blessings. Blessings should have utility at all stages and areas of gameplay. I don't use Lethal Dose or Incinerate blessings at all since they are only usable in the arena. I play at Gold Tier V, where I have never seen a player with a champion with one of such blessings. They are even useless at Gold Tier IV. Since long-term and loyal players are at these higher arena tier levels, changes to these blessings remain useless and such blessings are useless to long-term and loyal players (most of Plarium's customers).
Changes to Errol were very much long overdue. It's good to see he gets an AoE attack on his A2, although his prior A2 is going to be sorely missed. Since he does not place buffs or debuffs, his new A2 is too weak where and when his power is all he has. This could especially be a problem in this context of other changes to this skill where he now only ignores a very small portion of enemy defense, and so I'm concerned that the new A2 may be too weak. The change to his A3 is a balanced change that really just keeps helps him catch up with the far better skills of many newer champions. He needs either an additional skill or a change to a skill where he places buffs of debuffs, and this update does not give him such. I'm not aware of any other Legendary champion that does not place any buffs of debuffs at all. Errol is the only one, so his damage multipliers must remain very powerful to offset this great disadvantage of not placing any buffs or debuffs. I would have really liked to see him given a skill with a decrease defense debuff that involves reducing enemy defense prior to an attack, or even a skill that ignores one enemy's block damage buff, or even a passive of having, for example, a 20% chance to ignore 50% of enemy defense when attacking and have such passive on a 2 or 3 turn cooldown. The changes to his and Vlad's auras are proper, but should have left them with 30-33% aura in all battles. Legendary champions should have auras that affect all areas of gameplay. Epics should be mixed, where some only have auras that apply in certain areas of gameplay, while other epics have auras that apply in all areas of gameplay.
The new Sylvan Watcher, Shadowbow Tirloc, has skills on the level of some Legendary and Epic champions, and is overbuilt for being a Rare champion, unless his base stats are appropriately low. Despite this, I love the continued addition of new champions being released! The creativity of Plarium developers in crafting, designing, and developing their names, appearances, and skills is simply awesome. You all do a phenomenal job in doing so!
I hope Plarium will fix the blessings to address above concerns, which are shared by many of us customers.
I've seen Plarium's new reply regarding Brimstone and Polymorph and I would like to leave my thoughts on it:
The argument here is Brimstone is used 20 times more than Polymorph and Polymorph is not top 3 arena blessing according to your data and that might be true but it simply shows the nature of the game system. Raid most important aspect is PvE, including Campaign, Clan Boss, Dungeons, Doom Tower and Faction War and PvE is where the players get what they need to play the game (silver, shards, books, gears, etc.). The only PvP part of the game is Arena and people can skip Arena entirely (even if that's not an optimal decision) and still be able to play PvE perfectly but not the other way around because no one can play PvP effectively without the resources they need from PvE. Since PvE is so important players will build most of their champions with PvE being priority in mind and from the list of blessing Brimstone is the best one for PvE, everyone knows that and so the players choose it. With the majority of players focusing on PvE and the majority of champions are made to work in PvE (I think every champion have PvE potential, and some shine brighter in Arena) so most players will equip the legendary champions they have with Brimstone, explaining its high number of usage across the entirety of the playerbase, because most players play PvE. And if Brimstone happens to appear in Arena then it is not because it's the best choice for PvP but because it's used on a champion that is used in PvE and is also used in Arena. I am only 6 months into the game (haven't even got the free login Scyl yet) and my lv60 champion roster is quite limited, with most of them being PvE champions because I have to focus on PvE as that's how the game should be played. I use Brimstone on most of legendary, for ones that are viable in PvE and PvP (Mighty Ukko, Ultimate Deathknight, Gnishak) or PvE only (Tomb Lord, Bad-el Kazar). I don't have enough champions build to work nicely in PvP so one of my Tag Team Arena comp is made up of poisoner and poison exploder simply because they are the best champions I have, even though they are not built for PvP (and shouldn't, because they are PvE champions) and they are bad at it. That team has Tomb Lord and Bad-el Kazar, who happen to be equipped with Brimstone for PvE, and I use them there not because it's good but because they are the best champions I have left. I believe there are a lot of players like me as well, who do not have entire roster of arena-specific champions and have to use PvE-only champions and there are also champions that work in both PvE and PvP who are equipped with Brimstone because players decide PvE is more important. The importance of PvE and Brimstone's usefulness compare to other blessings is the result it is so widely used. The same can be said about Phantom Touch, although it has better PvP application compare to Brimstone.
Now speaking of Polymorph, the argument that it is used 20 times less than Brimstone and is not the top 3 used arena blessing does not seem like a good one to me. First, not every champions used in Arena are legendary because only legendary have access to legendary blessings. Players also use rare and epic champions in arena, depending on their current stage of progress and the champion's usefulness, and those champions can only use rare or epic blessings. That means there would be a fair amount of rare and epic blessings in the equation as well, not just legendary blessings (and even legendary champions can use lower ones if they so choose). Second, as I said before, players have PvE as priority so they want to use generally useful blessings like Brimstone and if that appear in arena it's because that champion with Brimstone is used in arena, not because Brimstone is the best one for arena. PvP blessings are limited to arena so they would see less usage overall and there are several to choose from (aura blessings, polymorph, lightning cage, temporal chain, ward of the fallen) so they compete with one another for slots. With speed team being the way for most players I can see a fair amount of players would choose aura blessings and temporal chains to win the speed race, or damage dealer picking lightning cage because it's likely the best option. However, no matter what the usage rate of Polymorph is compare to the other blessings, it does not negate the fact that blessing is problematic and very annoying to play against. Due to my focus on PvE and preferrence for flexible blessings I haven't used Polymorph myself but I have fought against Polymorph team and if I remember correctly I have never won a single one of those fights and they all feel extremely frustrating because once even just one of my champion got Sheep it's basically game over, even when my team seem to have the upper hand at times. There's no defense against Polymorph if it happens, with only RNG deciding because against Polymorph team, if the we don't put debuff we lose since our champions are not doing their job and if we do that, we also have a good chance of getting sheep and lose. Even if I only meet 5 Polymorph champs for every 100 Brimstone champs in Arena, the experience with all of those Polymorph matches that I got Sheep will always be miserable. That difference in usage rate does not negate the negative experience people have against Polymorph so even if your argument is Polymorph is the least used blessing in the entire game, even if it is used less than the most "useless" blessings around like Incinerate and Lethal Dose, then playing against it would still be the same and players' opinion about it won't change. A bad thing, no matter how rare, is still a bad thing (there are tons of thing that can be used as example but I want to keep it civil and constructive) and Polymorph not being the most used blessing in Arena is not an excuse to think there's no problem with it when the playerbase's opinion about it is widely known to be overwhelmingly negative.
Overall, I feel like this argument about Brimstone vs Polymorph usage rate is not a good defense for the decision to nerf Brimstone and leave Polymorph as it is. I think the community has already let their opinions be known in one way or another regarding these changes and once again I hope Plarium would really and seriously listen to their players' feedback, dive deep and truly get to know how they play the game and how they feel instead of just looking at the surface level data and numbers and get to own conclusion about the state of the game while ignoring the players' feelings. The players, myself included, would really appreciate if Plarium can make the game more enjoyable for all of us.