izigame.me

Hello gang! It's about that time of the week again: micropatch day. We're only making a couple tweaks today, adjusting just two characters and some awakening adjustments (rip sparks). Let us BEGIN.
STRIKERS
Atlas
Atlas should be a great pick against brawl-heavy teams, but he still seems to be falling behind competitors, even when his stars align. To help with that, we've giving his heal more... heal?


Celestial Intervention


Percent of max Stagger healed per second :: 10% → 15%
Juliette
Juliette has been an incredibly strong choice since *checks notes* ...forever. She also happens to dominate at high levels of play AND for the average player, so we're setting our sights on her before Rasmus and Zentaro, who are only problematic in the uppermost echelons. Yeah, that's right you two, we're watching you.


Flame Flurry


Cooldown :: 30s → 35s
AWAKENING BALANCE AND ROTATION
All aboard!! Last call to Sparkington City! Sparkington Express is shutting down for Summer break (terrible timing if you were waiting for a Sparkington Summer) but, as with all rotated Awakenings, it may be back in one form or another. Which is exactly what we're doing with some old friends of yours this patch! Most of them are just as you remember, but Stagger Swagger splurged and got a bit of a makeover. Hopefully you dig the new look!
Rotated Out: Sparkington City (Spark of Focus, Strength, Resilience, and Agility)
Rotated In: Perfect Form, One-Two Punch, Stagger Swagger, Prize Fighter
Stagger Swagger
A fresh new, more consistently defensive look for an old friend.


Base Speed :: 2% → 8%

Enhanced (below 50% Stagger) Speed :: 40% → 20%

Healing :: 100 Stagger per second → 150 Stagger per second
Deadeye
It's still deadeye, just maybe less dead.


Hit units over 600 Range harder :: 35% → 30%
Glass Cannon
Because it can be shut down by opponents, Glass Cannon has a bit of additional power baked in compared to other awawkenings. It's just quite a troublesome task to actually shut it down, and we've seen it overperforming for a while, so it's getting a slight bump down.


Speed :: 5% (20% max after not being hit for 10 seconds) → 4% (16% max)

Power :: 10 (40 max) → 8 (32 max)
Orb Ponderer
The Orb enhancing Awakenings are sitting close to where we want them. Decent on most maps, excellent in Ahten City. Ponderer was part of the pack that wasn't quite living up to expectations, though, so we've given it a boost!


Active Cooldown Reduction :: 20% (40% when fully stacked) → 25% (45% when fully stacked)
Peak Performance
Move over Sparkington City. Staggerton Suburb is the new destination of choice. While most of the Stagger options are adding some heft, Peak Performance is losing a bit of the speed because it was already a dominant selection.


Stagger :: 250 → 300

Percent of Speed per 100 max Stagger :: 7% → 5%
Bulk Up


Max Stagger :: 250 → 300
Reverberation


Max Stagger :: 250 → 300
Quick Strikes
Quick Strikes has mostly felt like a niche X pick so we're making it stronger and making it play real nice with other Energy Awakenings.


Energy bonus for strikes :: 1 → 2
Matchmaking Adjustments
We recently upgraded our matchmaking tools to let us fine tune our matchmaking system to a more precise extent.
Using these new tools, we're rolling out some new matchmaking systems to NA, EU, and JP servers first as a trial to see how it performs on a larger scale.
We'll be looking to eventually use these new tools to improve the matchmaking experience in other regions as well. However, due to regional differences, the changes on other servers will likely be different from the changes below.
To better suit the variety of ranks on the ladder, this system will differ depending on the ranks.
Here's a rough breakdown of what we expect to see per rank:
Omega+: The matchmaker will wait longer before matching into players below challenger, and generally make it much less likely to match with diamonds and below.
Challenger: The matchmaker will create fewer lobbies with both Omegas and Diamonds. Instead it will create more lobbies with only Challenger+Omega or Challenger+Diamond. It should also be less likely to match with players below diamond. Queue times on average should be slightly higher as a result.
Diamond: Similar to challenger, there will be fewer lobbies with both Challenger and Platinum, with more matches dedicated to Diamond + Plat only or Diamond + Challenger only. It should also be less likely to match into players below Platinum. As a result, high and mid-diamond queue times will be slightly longer.
Platinum: There should be fewer games with players from three different ranked tiers. Queue times should be roughly the same.
Gold and below: Matchmaking will take slightly longer to find matches as it will spend more time looking for players near your rank.
TL;DR: Matchmaker will take a bit longer to find games, but there should be fewer lobbies with high rank disparity.