Balancing is a game design concept to change gameplay elements and features to make the game's components similarly desirable and effective.
In Skylords Reborn, balancing mainly focuses on tuning the playable cards. When balancing, influences on the different game modes (PvE and PvP) have to be kept in mind and the principles of the philosophy documents have to be employed.
Contents
Current Iteration
| This page documents upcoming content. |
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Certain over- and underperforming cards have been proposed for balancing via the Forum Balancing Section and/or the Balancing Discord and will be tested over multiple iterations on the test server (initially English only).
Shown below are all changes of the currently available iteration compared to the live servers. Keep in mind they can change any time and are not official live server patch notes. If not specified, these card changes apply to all upgrade versions of the cards, if background information or context was provided, it is displayed as a quote.
The last balancing update of the test server happend on 02 September 2021 and the current iteration 18 now includes the following changes including mid-iteration hotfixes:
Systematic Changes
These are changes that affect a bigger number of cards in a similar fashion:
- Adjustment of PvE entities orb and power costs:
- Spawned in NPC units in PvE maps now also use their assigned orb and power costs. This means that certain abilities, like
Nightguard's Swap will not work anymore. - This will not yet be included in a live server patch.
Card Changes
- Added the following changes to a shadow affinity for easier comparison:
- Added a new active ability Aegis:
Activate to shield up to 5 nearby friendly units without an ice shied in a 20m radius with an Ice Shield that absorbs up to 1500 damage for 30 seconds. However it instantly loses 1100 strength when being applied. Has a 30 seconds cooldown.
- Added a new active ability
- Added the following changes to a shadow affinity for easier comparison:
- Passive ability Blessed Genius Loci:
- The aura's effect is now different for own units and allied units and the description was updated accordingly.
- Own units still take 25% reduced damage, whilst allied units now only take 10% reduced damage.
- Passive ability
- Added the following changes to a nature affinity for easier comparison:
- Increased the unit's movement speed to the default 6.4 of L/XL units.
- Increased the unit's life points from 1100 on all upgrades to 1700 on all upgrades.
- Active ability Healing Song:
- Removed and replaced with active ability Bond of the Dryad:
Grove Spirit connects herself with a friendly unit. As long as the bond exists Grove Spirit and her target will be immune to any kind of crowd control. Lasts until Grove Spirit or her target dies or when they move more than 50 meters apart from each other. Grove Spirit can only create a bond with one unit. Can still move and act during the bond. Reusable every 10 seconds. Cannot be cast on Grove Spirit. - Reduced activation cost from 90 on all upgrades to 80 / 80 / 60 / 60.
- Removed and replaced with active ability
- Added the following changes to multiple affinities for easier comparison:
- Fire Affinity: Decreased the unit's life points from 600 to 480.
- Frost Affinity: Decreased the unit's life points from 600 to 510.
- Nature Affinity: Decreased the unit's life points from 600 to 570.
- Autocast ability Crossbow Attack:
- Fire Affinity: Increased the damage per bolt from 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 to 6.5 / 7.5 / 8.5 / 9.5.
- The attack value of total damage dealt over 20 seconds thus was changed from 480 to 570.
- Frost Affinity: Increased the damage per bolt from 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 to 6 / 7 / 8 / 9.
- The attack value of total damage dealt over 20 seconds thus was changed from 480 to 540.
- Nature Affinity: Increased the damage per bolt from 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 to 5.5 / 6.5 / 7.5 / 8.5.
- The attack value of total damage dealt over 20 seconds thus was changed from 480 to 510.
- Fire Affinity: Increased the damage per bolt from 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 to 6.5 / 7.5 / 8.5 / 9.5.
- Added the following changes to a shadow and fire affinity for easier comparison:
- Blessed Teleport / Gifted Teleport:
- Can now port every unit only once during its runtime.
- Interactions with cards that enable units to ignore Teleport Immunity do no longer work.
- Other means of teleportation are no longer prevented by Nether Warp's Teleport immunity.
- Added the following changes to a nature affinity for easier comparison:
- Intoxication:
- Changed damage type to piercing damage.
- This damage can neither be increased nor decreased by incoming damage modifers on affected targets.
- Changed damage type to piercing damage.
- Intoxication:
- Added the following changes to a fire affinity for easier comparison:
- Removed the passive ability Looter.
- Added a new passive ability Plunder:
As long as the unit attacks enemy non-amii buildings, they gain piles of spoils depending on the damage they deal to that building. - Added a new active ability Drop the Loot:
Once they collect enough piles, they are able to cash out a certain amount of piles at an own power well by draining 20 of the stored power from the power well and adding it to the power pool. Can be used every 5 seconds.
- Removed the passive ability
- Added the following changes to a shadow affinity for easier comparison:
- Active ability Metal Spikes:
- Increased damage to units from 216 / 227 / 250 / 275 (325 / 340 / 375 / 410 in total) to 291 / 302 / 325 / 350 (437 / 453 / 488 / 525 in total).
- Damage against strucures remained unchanged.
- Active ability
- Added the changes both to a nature and shadow affinity for easier comparison:
- Infused Defense / Blessed Defense:
- Affected melee units are no longer immobile but can move at walkspeed for the duration of the effect.
- Affected melee units are now properly steadfast and cannot be knocked back.
- The effect no longer lasts an unlimited time on melee units.
- Improved description to explain the new effects.
Non-Player Card Entity Changes
- None
Map Changes
General
- None
PvE
- All presets are now available for each game mode in random PvE.
- Prior to this change they were limited as follows:
- 1 Player rPvE: Greenland, Frostland and Cactusland
- 2 Player rPvE: Bushland, Ghostland and Twilightland
- 4 Player rPvE: Luminousland, Jungleland, Winterland and Lavaland
- Below is a gallery showcasing the 10 currently existing presets:
- Prior to this change they were limited as follows:
Bushland
Cactusland
Frostland
Ghostland
Greenland
Jungleland
Lavaland
Luminousland
Twilightland
Winterland
- Prevented construction of buildings inside the path of the Raven Walkers as depicted below.
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- The southern flame field is no properly dealing damage.
- Prevented construction of buildings near the map border in the top left and bottom right corner as depicted below.
●●▮PvP
- Remove the 4 walls surrounding the monuments at both sides (✖).
- Fixed an issue where it was not possile to spawn non-s-sized units at the outer power wells (1).
- Added two 600 capacity Power Wells at each of the 4 Monument positions in the corners as depicted below (2).
✖✖✖✖✖✖✖✖112222- Fyre:
- All changes to this map will be reverted and an entirely new version will be put onto test server soon:
- Increased the cost of all walls to 50 energy
- The side walls at the top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right cannot be taken by the enemy anymore if you own the power well closest to the wall.
- The power wells in the top left of the upper starting base now provide spawn presence for units and buildings.
- All changes to this map will be reverted and an entirely new version will be put onto test server soon:
- The wall near the starting monuments will now start as unbuilt. All players start with 25 energy more.
- Adjusted the position of the walls, monuments, and powerwells in top and bottom bases. The wall now cannot be built by enemies anymore if you have a amii structure in the base.
- Removed all walls in the center bases of the maps.
- Increased power costs of all walls to 50 energy.
- Moved the power wells near the outer left and outer right bases closer to the center.
- Removed two power wells in the center well cluster.
- Adjusted the player starting positions so they are symmetrical.
- Change the starting position for each player, including monument and wells. The old starting positions were swapped with the respective outer position (red numbers).
- Added 1 ramp to each of the sides of the new starting position, to make the outer plateau behind it more accessible.
- Opened up the plateaus in the corners by creating connecting ramps towards the diagonal of the map.
- Adjusted the positions of wells, so that they are further away from the nearby wall and thus hostile units mounted on the wall cannot attack the wells anymore (5).
1234🡫🡫🡪🡪🡨🡨🡩🡩🡮🡬🡭🡯🡬🡮🡯🡭55555555
- Added one 1200 capacity Power Wells at each side of the center Monument position as depicted below (1).
- Adjusted the positions of these monuments and walls, so that these wall cannot be taken anymore, if an enemy has taken the adjacent monument (2).
- Adjusted the positions of monuments, so that they are further away from the nearby wall and thus hostile units mounted on the wall cannot attack the orb anymore (3).
1122223333
- Opened up the middle of the map by creating 4 connecting paths between the well clusters and the central monument.
🡮🡯🡬🡭
- Adjusted the positions of the 4 outer walls by moving them outwards and thus closer to the wells and monuments there, to prevent offensive walling.
- Opened up the plateaus by adding 2 ramps to each of them (1).
- Widend one of the ramps leading to the small plateau (2).
- Increased the cost of these walls from 25 to 50 (3).
- Moved these 2 well clusters more towards the center of the plateau, but remain close to the wall to prevent offensive walling. (4).
🡬🡭🡯🡮1111223344Halted Testing Changes
A few changes have been removed from the test server for now. They were disenabled to focus testing on other subjects or due to implementation issues and might see a return in some form at a later date. The respective latest form of these cases is listed below:
- System Changes
- Adjustment of squad knockback interactions:
The following attacks' damage radii were changed to no longer be applied at the center of squads but on the unit hit. Thus even if split up enough, targets will always receive at least some damage and no longer become invincible to these attacks:
- Bandit Sorceress (Fire) / Bandit Sorceress (Frost): Autocast ability Bandit Sphere
- Grim Bahir (Fire) / Grim Bahir (Nature): Autocast ability Infectious Spit
- Infected Tower (Fire) / Infected Tower (Frost): Autocast ability Slime Cannon
- Ironclad (Fire) / Ironclad (Frost): Autocast ability Snowy Bomb
- Lost Spirit Ship (Fire) (incl. Revenant) / Lost Spirit Ship (Nature) (incl. Revenant) : Autocast ability Torpedo Gun
- Lost Vigil (Nature) / Lost Vigil (Shadow) (incl. Revenant): Autocast ability Celestial Blast
- Satanael (Fire) / Satanael (Shadow): Autocast ability Crystalline Shock
- Shadow Insect: Active ability Soul Shock
- Skycatcher (Frost) / Skycatcher (Nature): Autocast ability Twisted Wake
- Swamp Drake / Swamp Drake (Promo): Autocast ability Acid Breath
- Twilight Creeper (Fire) / Twilight Creeper (Shadow): Autocast ability Infused Spit / Tainted Spit
- Viridya / Viridya (Promo): Autocast ability Power Flux
- Windhunter (Nature) / Windhunter (Shadow): Autocast ability Wafting Spit
- Adjustment of healing stacking:
The following regneration effects are now stackable:
- Crystal Fiend (Frost) / Crystal Fiend (Nature): Blessed Use it well / Gifted Use it well
- Forest Elder (Nature) / Forest Elder (Shadow): Forest's Charm
- Fountain of Rebirth: Ritual of Rebirth
- Healing Gardens: Aura of Recovery
- Infernal Chain (Nature): Gifted Bond
- Lost Spirit Ship (Nature): Gifted Crystal
- Nether Warp (Nature): Gifted Teleport
- Revenant's Blessing (Nature): Gifted Immortal
- Rioter's Retreat (Nature): Gifted Retreat
- Twilight Hag (Nature): Gifted Femme Fatale
- Viridya / Viridya (Promo): Viridya's Blessing
- Wheel of Gifts: Gift of Juvenescence
- Card Changes
- Disclaimer: New placeholder affinities are already on test server.
- Infused: Friend or Foe?:
- Confusion affects only hostile units now.
- Increased the number of affected targets from 5 to 10.
- Added the following additional changes to a nature affinity for easier comparison:
- Increased the card's charges from 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 to 4 / 6 / 7 / 8.
- Infused: Friend or Foe?:
- Increased the duration of the effect from 15 to 20 seconds.
- Affected units additionally gain a buff to deal 20% increased damage.
- Protective Ice:
- Increased the area of effect from 15m to 20m.
- Affected units are now Steadfast, meaning they cannot be knocked back.
- Map Changes
- Added 2 gold chests to match the standard 4 chests per each single player map.
- Chests were added in the top left and bottom right corner of the map as depicted below.
◯◯
- Added 1 gold chest so that the tutorial also introduces new players to the concept of gold.
- Chest was added in the camp south to the camp before the final boss as depicted below.
◯
- Removed 2 of the 6 gold chests to match the standard 4 chests per each single player map.
- Chests were removed on the island with the concealed mines and on the one in the top center as depicted below.
✖✖
- Added 1 gold chest to match the standard 4 chests per each single player map.
- Chest was added at the other side of Titan's wall as depicted below.
◯Patch History
So far there have been the following balancing iterations:
- Iteration 1: 14 July 2020 - 21 August 2020
- Iteration 2: 21 August 2020 - 5 October 2020
- Iteration 3: 5 October 2020 - 7 November 2020
- Iteration 4: 7 November 2020 - 26 November 2020
- Iteration 5: 26 November 2020 - 12 December 2020
- Iteration 6: 12 December 2020 - 01 January 2020
- Iteration 7: 01 January 2020 - 07 January 2020
- Iteration 8: 07 January 2021 - 01 April 2021
- Iteration 9: 01 April 2021 - 06 April 2021
- Iteration 10: 06 April 2021 - 24 April 2021
- Iteration 11: 24 April 2021 - 03 May 2021
- Iteration 12: 03 May 2021 - 19 May 2021
- Iteration 13: 19 May 2021 - 29 May 2021
- Iteration 14: 29 May 2021 - 9 June 2021
- Iteration 15: 9 June 2021 - 16 July 2021
- Iteration 16: 16 July 2021 - 08 August 2021
- Iteration 17: 08 August 2021 - 02 September 2021
- Iteration 18: 02 September 2021 - today
