Balance Changes August 2019 – patch notes

These changes are live since a week. As I was on holidays, this blog post is a bit late. Apologies.

Buffs

• Banshee cost reduced from 60 to 50
• Stealth Tank speed increased from fast to fastest, hitpoints increased by +9% and cost increased from 90 to 100 Tiberium
• Orca reload time decreased to 9 seconds from 10 seconds
• Tick Tank cost reduced from 80 to 70 Tiberium and attack speed increased by +7%
• Jade Catalyst Missile cost reduced from 90 to 80 Tiberium
• Widow Maker air attack speed increased by +7%
• Flame Tank speed increased from average to fast, cost decreased from 110 to 90 Tiberium and structure damage decreased by -29%
• Basilisk turn speed increased by +66%
• Rock Worm speed increased from slow to average
• Avatar damage against vehicles +9%, damage against infantry +7%

Nerfs

• Nod Laser Drones attack speed reduced by 25%, vehicle damage reduced by 13% and harvester damage increased by 
• Artillery firing frequency reduced by -8% and damage to vehicles reduced by -20%
• Liang healing drone cooldown increased from 30 to 35 seconds
• Slingshot cost increased from 40 to 50 Tiberium
• Zone Trooper infantry damage reduced by -16%
• Scarab cost increased from 30 to 40

Nerf/Buff combined

• Solomon Ion Cannon damage now gradually decreases with distance from the center tile. This is a buff when you want to snipe a specific unit, but it is a nerf with regards to the damage to outer-tile units which try to dodge the strike

Thoughts on the patch

• Mostly, a sensible patch in my view. Especially the buffs seem all okay. Interesting to see how viable e.g. the Tick Tank might become.
• The Artillery changes makes it e.g. a bit easier to try to flank an artillery position with multiple tanks.
• Nod Laser Drone nerf seems too much. It's an anti-vehicle specialist and their vehicle DPS was nerfed by a whopping 41%! Yes, they were strong, but this is an unnecessary harsh nrf.
• The Scarab nerf is of course a bit ridiculous, as (at high-level play) they are one of the weakest units in the game. Yes, they might have been frustrating for newer players, but I'm in the camp that they are a good learning experience for newer players to teach them why it's good to scout and have some cheap unit in your deck. On the other hand, as they saw little play anyways, it's not really a relevant nerf.
• The biggest issue is that the patch was not communicated to players! Yes, Captain Benzie was sent the notes so he could make a video out of it, but that was it. There's tens of thousands of Rivals players, and Captain Benzie reached 2,700 views with his video. Yes, probably most active Tiberium league players got note of the patch through Reddit and Discord. But it's especially the newer players who were grossly neglected. For these newer players, Rivals can anyways already feel frustrating (as they usually play against higher levels). If then suddenly their units behave differently and they have no idea why, this is a big f***-up.  In my view, there is no excuse for this. The patch notes existed, and posting them through an in-app message would have been a (max) 30-minute job for the developers or product manager(s).

Video of the day

13lade is not just one of the best Rivals players, but also creates hilarious videos that showcase unusual strategies. I very much enjoyed this video: