On to this patch. Four Agents get some polish, with Viper coming away with a series of buffs, including a per second increase of her decay against enemies. You’re also gonna have to work a bit extra now if you wanna use those powerful Brimstone and Raze ults.
A bug fix for the Classic gave us an opportunity to go in and tune the weapon’s behaviour. Hey while you’re in the pre-round buy menu, take a look at those new easier-to-compare stats!
Duration Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from 5>>>15 seconds
Quality of Life Viper can hold the ability key to drop her ult early
Vision Enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap obscured and do not provide minimap detection to their allies
Quality of Life Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper's near-sight
With Viper being allowed out of her ult for such a short period of time, we felt that she was not only limited in the plays she could make, but also gave too much continuous information to her enemies. The ability to move outside the ult smoke more freely should provide some new and interesting mind games for Viper to play—and hopefully puts the strategic pressure back on the enemy. The other improvements should push Viper’s advantage in her own smoke and help her avoid getting traded by enemies using minimap vision to target her.
Decay
Duration Enemy decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources.
Duration After exiting Viper's smoke, enemy decay sustains for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade
Viper's decay depleting so quickly from enemies was limiting the advantage it provided and wasn't creating the threat we had hoped for as a result. Adding a delay before it fades will hopefully widen the window where Viper and her team can capitalize and pair with the Viper's Pit updates (above) to provide fresh ways to play around her ult.
Fuel
Quality of Life Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having one active
The reduction in total uptime when both her vision blockers were active was making it difficult for Viper to use both tools together. Since Viper's smoke has so much commitment and makes up so much of her kit, we want to free her to use them in tandem to create powerful options for her team to take sites.
Raze’s ultimate is one of the most impactful in the game and useful in almost any situation. As a result, it is being used a bit too often. So we’re upping the cost by 1, which should help reduce how often players have to face her Showstopper.
X - Showstopper
Ultimate Showstopper ultimate Cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points
Ultimate Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points
Much like Raze’s Ultimate, Brimstone’s Ult is very impactful and useful in a wide variety of situations. We feel like it was impacting rounds a little too frequently, so decided to up the cost slightly.
C - Stim Beacon
Quality of Life Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies
The Stim beacon is meant to be a pretty situational ability but we felt that revealing Brimstone’s location and having the potential to accidentally buff enemies was making this ability significantly weaker than we’d like.
Brimstone's Arms Fidelity
When you really think about an FPS, you’ll notice you spend an awful amount of time looking at your arms...like all the time. Before launch, we intended to increase the fidelity of Brimstone's arms to match the overall quality of the game. We did it—now look at those guns!
The Classic right-click was the primary bug fix here, but we saw an opportunity to make the weapon behave a bit more consistently. We slightly tuned efficacy of jump right-clicks, but (hopefully) haven’t taken away their viability in close-range scenarios
Fixed bug where running inaccuracy on the right-click was much higher than intended
running was adding a 1.5 penalty because it was referencing our generalized running error curves for pistols
Fixed bug where jumping had no inaccuracy penalty
Running spread is changed from 3.4 >>> 2.1
primarily a bug fix
Jumping spread changed from 1.9 >>> 2.3
Walking spread changed from 1.9 >>> 1.95
Added a 10% bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary
Intent is to feel consistent with crouch providing an accuracy benefit
Observer minimap vision cones are now colored by team
Replaced Reyna's Voice Over for Italian and Mexican
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the talents we identified for the role were not able to record due to regional restrictions. You can now find in-game, the voices we originally intended for Italian and Mexican Reyna!
Adjusted the volume on the Elderflame Operator equip animation
Fixed bug that would cause the volume to stack if you spam equipped the Operator
Enemy footsteps duck cosmetic bus properly
This means that enemy footsteps will always lower the volume of the skin sound effects that are not important to gameplay, like the flame whooshes, dragon roar, etc.
Elderflame Melee inspect animation now has sound effects for level 1 and 2
