First take on patch 1.9

Let’s have a first look at the patch notes for 1.9

• 2x new Immortals
• New artifact upgrades
• New passive skills (VERY STRONG ONES)
• Passives will now be restricted to Immortal types
• Passive balance adjustments
  • Berserker nerfed hard
  • Sniper buffed

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Patch 1.9 – My 2 cents on the patch notes

2x new Immortals

Atalanta

• Element: Wind
• Rarity: Epic
• Troop Type: Bowmen     
• Class: Range
• Skill: Sniper’s Stance – Entering the Sniper’s Stance for 10 seconds, reducing 25% attack speed and gaining a 50% increased normal attack damage. Every normal attack has a x% chance of piercing the target and cause damage to the enemy behind that target.

Chance of Piercing(x): 30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100

• How to get fragments: You can obtain Atalanta’s starting fragments from the King of the Hill event. After fully summoning her, you can obtain more of her fragments by unlocking and purchasing them with Mystery Pearls at the Mystery Pearl Shop in Daily Deals. Make sure to check the King of the Hill event schedule on your server’s Calendar.

Atalanta provides Wind marches a much needed opportunity to max out on physical damage. Physical damage seems plain and simple stronger than magic ever since patch 1.8 introduced new magic damage mitigations.

Wind marches are promising as a counter to Holy marches, since Qin’s wounds negates dragon and Theo heal, while the element has access to top tier physical damage from Saladin, Hannibal, and now Atalanta.

Seondeok

• Element: Fire
• Rarity: Epic
• Troop Type: Bowmen     
• Class: Range
• Skill: Might of the Phoenix – Shoot a fierce arrow that concentrates the power of a phoenix, deal physical damage (Damage Rate x%) to the current target. For the next 6 seconds, an explosion will trigger whenever the enemy receives 3 critical attacks: Cause physical damage to all enemy units (Damage Rate y%).

Damage Rate (x): 195/260/325/390/455/520/585/650

Explosion Damage Rate (y): 75/100/125/150/175/200/225/250

• How to get fragments: You can summon Seondeok’s fragments at the Hall of Immortals. You can also obtain them by buying Ancient Remnants at the Legion’s Vendor after the Legion of Frostborne ends.

Seondeok is a VERY important release. With her out on the field, Fire marches can finally complete a setup in a viable manner.

This release is very similar to Atalanta, in the sense that it allows fire element marches to finally max out on physical damage and compete in the physical meta resulting from patch 1.8 attribute releases. Fire already has a nice damage setup with William’s crit buff and Hippo’s amazing damage output, and with Seondeok on the backlines next to Wu the damage will be off the charts!

Especially with the new passives being released in patch 1.9. Have a look further down, these look amazing for Hippo and Wu!

New artifact upgrades

After reaching Season 2, there will be even more ways to enhance artifacts. Artifact empowerment is divided into a Bronze Stage, Silver Stage, and Gold Stage.

Unlock Conditions

• Server

1. When your server reaches Season 2, a new Artifact Empowerment tab will be added to the Forge. Smelted artifacts start at the Bronze Stage by default and can be empowered to Silver Stage.

2. When your server reaches the Conquest Season, artifacts can be empowered to Gold Stage.

• Artifacts

Artifacts can be empowered after reaching max level (Level 15).

Empowerment

• Empowerment Materials

Version 1.9 comes with two types of empowerment materials which are used to unlock the Silver Stage and Gold Stage respectively.

• How to Obtain

Check the Calendar and the Special Bundles regularly so you can obtain empowerment materials.

Artifacts will be getting an additional upgrade path. Besides leveling and developing artifacts, we must now also boost their “Stage value”.

The impact on the game is hard to predict as we do not know any stat yields from these stage upgrades – but we are 100% going to need more crafting materials from events and bundles in the store.

New passive skills

Desire of Life (43F, L2)

• Category: Triggered
• Effect: Every 6s after battle starts, deal physical damage (Damage Rate x%) to 2 random enemy units. If the target is Wounded, damage increases by 50%, and the caster recovers HP equivalent to 50% of damage dealt.

This might be strong if the damage rate is high enough – who knows..

Total Coverage (43F, L3)

• Category: Passive
• Effect: 70% chance of dealing physical damage (Damage Rate x%) to all enemy units when casting an active skill.

BIG ONE! This has a high proc chance, hence likely to be steady damage. With a high active skill usage, this skill could be an absolute MONSTER on Immortals like Hippolytta sporting Burst/DB = DB procs and almost 0 downtime between her Ultimate Ability casts from Burst energy regen.

Smite (47F, L2)

• Category: Triggered
• Effect: Every 6s, deal physical damage (Damage Rate x%) to 1 random enemy unit. If the target has less than 50% HP, deal the same damage to 2 nearby enemy units, and reduce their Physical Defense by y% for 6s.

With a good damage modifier on this passive it can be very strong. I especially eye the physical defense debuff. We are beginning to see a lot of these from water with the change to Atilla in 1.8. I can envision a water march performing very well in the physical damage meta by relying on Herald, Atilla and now Smite to amplify physical damage much higher than any other march.

Spell Disintegrator (47F, L3)

• Category: Triggered
• Effect: Every 3s after battle starts, has a 50% chance of dealing magical damage (Damage Rate x%) to 3 random enemy units, and reducing their Magical Defense (by y% of target’s level) for 6s.

BIG ONE! We have allready seen Casters like Merlin and Wu perform insanely well with a combination of Concentration, Annihilation and Chase. How we are throwing in another AOE magic attack, and more importantly another magical defense debuff!

Revival of the double mage backline? I have personally loved running fire with Wu, Baldwin as the backlines – but the power of magic declined so hard in 1.8 that it is no longer viable. However, this might chance everything for my fire march!

Combining Baldwins’ magic defense debuff from his Ultimate Ability with the debuff from Spell Disintegrator could be the key to a powerful magic-centric march viable in spite of the magic defense buffs of 1.8. Spell Disintegrator procs on a 3 sec timer, meaning it will proc debuff on the enemy BEFORE Baldwin and Wu attacks. If you run Baldwin with either Adrenaline Rush or Burst, you can ensure that WU’s massive Ultimate Ability hits up to 3 targets all afflicted with 2x magic defense debuffs!

I would run double mage as:
WU: Concentration / Annihilation / aura
Baldwin: Spell Disintegrator / Chase / Fire Nova or DB.

Passives will now be restricted to Immortal types

Tower of Knowledge Skill Tags

Added new class restriction tags to skills in the Tower of Knowledge. There are two types of tags. The first type states “No restriction”, while the second type states a specific Immortal Position restriction. Skills with restriction tags can only be equipped by Immortals of the corresponding position.

This is a big chance – and could pose disruption on a massive scale… let’s hope not!

All passive abilities will with patch 1.9 be either:
Type 1: Unrestricted, availble to equip on any Immortal.
Type 2: Restricted, only available to specific Immortals based on their positioning.
I.e. Defense, Attack, Ranged, Caster, and Support.

I sincerely hope ALL pre 1.8 passives will be classified as Type 1 “unrestricted” to spare everyone the horror of having maxed passive sets just to have them unusable.

In total sum, this is a restriction on how to play the game, and I am not a fan – I believe players should have the freedom to theory craft marches and passive combinations freely.

Passive balance adjustments

Two of these balance adjustments catches the eye, Sniper and Berserk. Yet I shall include them all in case I missed something you find valuable.

Tower of Knowledge Skills

• Wind Rage

1. Base Trigger Rate:  12% ⇒ 16.5%

2. Trigger Rate Growth per Level:  4% ⇒ 5.5%

• Sniper 

1. Base Damage Rate:  112.5% ⇒ 150%

2. Damage Rate Growth per Level:  37.5% ⇒ 50%

Sniper’s damage potential looked good even before patch 1.9 – now, it is one of the passives I look most forward to test out on my physical marches.

• Fear of Domination 

1. Base Damage Taken Increase:  4.5% ⇒ 6%

2. Damage Taken Increase Growth per Level:  1.5% ⇒ 2%

• Berserker 

1. Base Damage Increase:  30% ⇒ 15%

2. Damage Increase Growth per Level:  10% ⇒ 5%

3. Base Attack Speed Increase:  22.5% ⇒ 15%

4. Attack Speed Increase Growth per Level:  7.5% ⇒ 5%

BIG NERF! Berserker has gone from being one of the absolute best new passives out there to looking quite poor. I am still interested in seeing how it performs, but I will definetly not be rushing this passive now – as was otherwise my intention.

• Flame Protection

1. Base Crit Rate Increase:  4.5% ⇒ 6%

2. Crit Rate Increase Growth per Level:  1.5% ⇒ 2%

3. Base Crit Damage Increase:  30% ⇒ 21%

4. Crit Damage Increase Growth per Level: 10% ⇒ 7%

• Wind Protection 

1. Base Dodge Rate Increase:  6% ⇒ 7.5%

2. Dodge Rate Increase Growth per Level:  2% ⇒ 2.5%

3. Base Shield Absorption Rate:  30% ⇒ 36%

4. Shield Absorption Rate Growth per Level:  10% ⇒ 12%

• Lightning Protection 

1. Base Stun Rate:  10.5% ⇒ 12%

2. Stun Rate Growth per Level:  3.5% ⇒ 4%

• Water Protection 

1. Base Critical Damage Decrease:  15% ⇒ 21%

2. Critical Damage Decrease Growth per Level:  5% ⇒ 7%

3. Base Recovery Rate:  36% ⇒ 45%

4. Recovery Rate Growth per Level:  12% ⇒ 15%

Published: 16-02-2022