Illuvium Arena - Game Balance Thread

[dusky cloud]

This thread's aim is to gather community feedback in terms of game balance so it can be easily followed by the team.

Please try to be as constructive as possible.

[fallow girder]

Penguin in the Revenant build is too strong💪
The effect of Water 8/8 is useless🗑️

[fallow girder]

Illuvials with 0 Tier 3 stage are useless🗑️
Illuvials with 2 Tier 3 stage are used too rarely🤔

[fallow girder]

All locations that force players to completely change their established gameplay do not make the game fun. They are just frustrating.
For example: 2-stage Illuvials in the carousel or legendary augmentations in the carousel.

[fallow girder]

Add a function to disable gasoline Illuvials.
The Holo and Dark Holo effects are not visually appealing. They are not the kind of visual effects that should be showcased as expensive skins.
They look like a texture bug that distracts attention.

#1398262978469691455 message

[velvet yarrow]

I think there's a misunderstanding between players and the team when it comes to balancing. The team should be a little bit more transparent(open) to the players on what they are currently eyeing to nerf.
It's been so many weeks since Penguin with revenant chip has been dominating the arena and it feels like we're going to deal with this for a while and it feels forever as a player because the team is not that open on sharing their thoughts about our feedback.

[umbral jungle]

Revenant still dominate because they are too cost effective. Next balance patch will bring them down further.

Due to this, pterodactyl and penguins dominate as hyper carries.

Revenant acts as a strong tempo play early to mid game, and then slashin and/or rhamphy carry the late game.

We are nerfing revenant more, we are adjusting penguin line so that it outscales less crazily (although part of the issue is the legendary augment stacking with revenant chip on top). And we are exploring ways to make phantom less polarizing, still undecided.

[wild narwhal]

To me its the revenant aoe scaling everything out of control

It scales rogue 7, I think it scales vanguard, it scales phantom, it scales revenant shield itself

All very powerful on their own, incredible when scaled with number of targets

[velvet yarrow]

Same I also think the problem is in the 7 rogue buff. The difference is really noticeable once you get 7 rogues

[wild narwhal]

Overall I think the scaling in this game is completely out of whack

Having 3 augments scaling exponentially off eachother and drone augments, composites, base, hyper just means theres a bigger push to people who know the "spreadsheet complexity" of what pairs well with eachother. Imagine being a new player thinking "expensive unit gud" and you get obliterated by cheap monkeys with optimal augments vs your T5S3 team .Not saying it should be removed as that advantage should be there but its just gone way too far imo

Taking that even further, I dont think legendary augments belong in this game. Either we rework them in a standout mechanic (ranger-rpg-craft-like) or we try to get the game good without em

[lost grove]

I would love to try out same games without legendary augments and without composite chips just to see how they will actually play out

[lofty gorge]

Emblems are boring because we get to and have to build super 4 traits or even double 4 traits team every game

Its important to have those big hit sometimes but when we get it almost every game it loses its effect

I think making composite emblems every 3-5 games and double every 15-25 games or so would help balance and the experience a lot right away

[lofty gorge]

Also we shouldnt get composite emblems before r22 or 17 at worst

Emblem r7 or 12 game are a gigantic advantage for the comps that can hit it easier like revenant and it unbalance everything

[dusk lake]

I also think 4 revenant is that strong because of it's easy access. Compared to other 4 trait comps you do not need a stage 3 unit at all to get to 4 revenants. What was the reasoning to make Tirruo revenant and not shock? You already need Rai Lee as a stage 3 for shock?

[umbral jungle]

Totally agree, when I say tempo play I mean it's very cost effective: Accessible both from a level and economy standpoint, and very effective for its cost.

[umbral jungle]

I don't know. Wasn't in the team when that was decided. But we will adjust these composite distribution imbalances with a set extension.

[lofty gorge]

Agree that patch A was really good

My feeling is that now its more balanced following data and while data is important to consider its also very dangerous on its own

Best/easiest comps are the most played by the average joe players and also most contested so the results are much worst then what they would be and then you have the best players in no matchmaking lobbies that mostly win no matter what and will just scout to play uncontested so that also screws data

Weve seen the this when earth wasnt nerf when clearly the best and recently revenant/pinguin unnerf of only slightly nerf

Then theres also that data doesnt consider how hard units are to achieve so for example adorius/geyyser might have insane win rates but only because they are filler units high tier/high stage. If you are spending gold for them you were most likely already winning the lobby

Its also hard because we always have to foresee how the first change will affect the rest. For example revenant was dominating and then less so because the earth shields were found to be completely broken. The patch fixed the shield but that only made revenant back even stronger (even with a slight nerf, because fixing the shield was a giant buff to revenant)

Like right now if we only nerf revenant we will simply go into a corner comp meta

[umbral jungle]

Don't forget guys than patch A was much easier to balance than current state of the game. There's 3x more features and each one of these add layers of interaction on top of each other.

That being said, next balance patch should make things better with revenant and penguin.

[lofty gorge]

Yes thats true, im confident we can get back there even with the new features

What do you think about less composite emblems and only having them from r17 or 22+?

[umbral jungle]

I am in favour of less composite emblems and legendaries. Make them feel more unique and special.

About the round of issuance, I need to think a bit more, but it shouldn't be super early in the game.

[lost grove]

Something with mud feels very off. The dmg scales way higher than it should be. Very similar to how slashin used to scale up with 2 arcane conduits. How does the atk value calculation work for mud units? Do the stolen atk multiply in one way or another?