It has been announced by the devs that the 1.6 will be available will all the features already today. The official forum post can be found here: forums.vainglorygame.com
New in this update will be:
New Hero Rona
The new melee warrior hero Rona. More here Rona. I’m excited about the new hero. I havent had time to grow tired of Fortress (since I haven’t had time to play / stream a lot lately), and here comes a new cool hero.
The hero will be as with the last 2 heros available with ICE the first week and with Glory or ICE after the first week.
Casual and Ranked game modes
I’m warmly welcoming this new feature. I wanted many times to have the ability to just play some matches without worrying about the Skill tier. On the other hand I wanted to be sure that when I am ready to play in order to improve my skill tier, the rest of my team also has the same goal.
With 1.6 the skill tier system will became more transparent telling you exactly how far you are from next tier or if you are near to fall to the previous tier.
Get cards
The “Get cards” section in the market will now be made available and it is supposed that cards will be purchasable with glory. I believe no one has been able to unlock a tier 2 skin so far mostly because the cards’ drop rate is too low compared to how many are necessary to unlock a skin.
Apart from these changes there will surely be a lot of balance changes on heroes and items too that will be announced on the official downtime stream.
This post has been updated in real time as the Vainglory official stream was revealing the news in 1.5
Note! Some things may be wrong or misinterpreted as I was writing while watching the stream.
Wolf hero – Fortress
Fortress gameplay
Perk – Runs faster when near allies.
Truth of the Tooth – Mark the target. Attacks became short-range lunge. Team mates can run towards the target.
Fortress’ Truth of the Tooth (click to enlarge)
Law of the Claw – Damages with crystal power and makes the enemy bleed. Bleeding heroes will take extra crystal damage over time and will give life steal to the attacker. It is also possible to apply stacks of bleeding with basic attacks from any allied hero, minions, wolfs from the pack or Fortress. After 5 number of stacks the target will get extra damage, will be slowed and will be inflicted with a mortal wound meaning that the target will get less healing and less hp barrier.
Fortress’ Law of the Claw (click to enlarge)
Attack of the Pack – Fortress gets extra health and attack speed and also summons pack wolfs that will chase and attack the enemy heroes. Each wolf will chase a different hero, even though they are not visible and apply bleeding upon attacking. The wolfs will die after 3 hits, regardless the damage.
The pack wolf will track Taka but will not be able to attack Taka until he becomes visible.
Fortress’ Attack of the Pack (click to enlarge)
Bots
Bots are added in 1.5. The bots are very basic and don’t have a high AI and are meant mainly for really new players, the ones that have never played a moba before.
Also the new players will have to level up before playing in solo q.
Minion mines changes
The minion mines can now genuinely be used to push the turrets. Minions buffed by minion mines now deal way increased damage to Turrets and Turrets alone, no change to damage to other minions or heroes. The buffed minions will still be worth more gold.
The minions are upgraded instantly when the minion mines are taken and not over time like before.
Hero balances
Skaarf
Removed piercing and reduced damage of Skaarf’s perk Fan the flames. It now has crystal ratio instead.
Spitfire got nerfed and is more of a skill shot and riskier.
Goup got buffed with increased crystal ratio.
Ulti got nerfed a bit with reduce damage
As Captain Neato said: “The goal wasn’t to make tank Skaarf not viable, the goal was to make sure tank Skaarf wasn’t the carry.”
Vox
Crystal ratio for the bounce reduced.
The bounce distance decreased.
Resonance doesn’t bounce off Kraken.
Attack speed increased.
Joule
Reduced piercing of Thunder strike
Cool down will be reduced with levels
SAW
Crystal rate increased for Roadie Run
Ulti will be considered a basic attack so it will be able to crit.
The crystal rates have increased for the Mad Cannon
Celeste
Does less damage to minions.
Koska
Base armor reduce. Too tanky in early game.
Item changes
Brokenmyth – No more shield piercing but amplifies the crystal power.
Scout traps – Timer changed from 1.2 to 1.3 seconds
Boots –Tier 1 less movement speed
Tier 2 increased movement speed and health
2 new items
Minion’s foot – will start the crits build instead of the Swift Shooter
Contraption – Combination of flares and scout traps. Gives you cool down acceleration and charges over time with flares / scout traps.
Warhorn changed – It builds from Oak and Dragon heart instead of the Hourglass and Chronograph. The utility has also changed but it is not revealed yet.
Ironguard Contract – grants 50% gold bonus for the jungle minions instead of the 30% now. It still grants 30% bonus for the lane minions.
Skins and Cards
Tier 2 skins and Epic cards are out.
Shogun Ringo Skin Tier 2
The Tier 2 Shogun Ringo and Kandi Twirl Koshka have been revealed in game.
A new Skaarf skin has been announced (leaked) but it will not make it into the 1.5 update.
Infinity Skaarf skin reveal
Bug fixes
Crit on SAW
Fan the flames. Extra tick of damage removed.
Spitfire was applying 2 stacks cosmetically. Removed.
Gold times fixed.
New app for iPhone
Last but not least. The iPhone users will be downloading a new app instead of updating the old one. This is because before there were different apps for the iPhone and the iPad. There is only one app to rule them all now. So the old iPhone app should be deleted and a new app will be installed.
A new setting for iOS. You can turn it on to hide the non activable items anymore and instead make the other item icons bigger.
I’m going to go and give the new update a test run!
