BUILD 1215 - Rebalance and Fix Central

New build for KAG - potentially a little rough around the edges but what's there needs to be tested with the public before we can move much further. Now with extra flammable platforms! New build is going out at the moment, should be a long build but out in 30 minutes or so from this post. There will be the usual lull as servers patch over between maps and the client builds aren't done, and again as the steam build propagates out - don't panic if you see lower than average numbers in the next few hours. Here's a summary of the more serious changes, split by section: Balance Changes:

• Knight Rebalance There have been some long-standing complaints about the knight; this should help to address a lot of them and help reign in some of the more obscure parts of current knight play.

  • Shield Glide is no longer infinite Your shield glide will gradually lose its effectiveness as you fall through the air - you can put more wind into your sails with multiple bomb jumps, but this alone makes knights a lot more prone to gravity (like every other class). You can also no longer infinitely climb up walls with wall jumping.

  • Jab does minor stun Players from classic era will remember "slash cancelling" with jabs - while this is very ping dependent, we've decided to try it out again. It lets you get a quick, reactive cancel to someone charging a slash or double slash in front of you with jabs.

  • Slash doesn't break shield for as long Slashes will not break a knight's shield stance for as long, giving them a chance to attack back with jabs if you're "slash surfing" them.

  • Circle of Power All of this together helps enforce a circle of power in knight combat options: slash > double slash > shield > jab > slash - there's still the wildcard of shield bashing and bombs in the mix to keep things fresh of course, but this should make knight combat a little less slash-heavy.

• Archer Tweaks

  • Reduced stun range The range at which arrows stun players has been reduced a little.

  • Special Arrow spam discouraged When firing special arrows with legolas, you will automatically switch to normal arrows for the 2nd and 3rd shots. This is to further encourage actually aiming with special arrows instead of just spamming 3 bomb arrows at a tower with triple shot.

• Drills builder only At the request of the community by poll, drills have been made builder only for now. We'll see how this change affects their use and the builder's place in the game.

• Map Borders The map borders are active on all edges, including the top of the map - this prevents simply "jumping over" tall structures.

• Weaker Wall-run Wall running has been reduced from 3 tiles to 2, making smaller structures more significant.

Fixes and Smaller Changes:

• Platform Fixes Lots of issues with platforms have been cleaned up, most notably grappling them, wallrunning on them, and fire spreading through them. They also got a small sprite facelift.

• Mine Fixes and balances Mines explode with much smaller radius, collide with platforms, don't explode with materials on them, and shouldn't go invisible any more.

• Spawning timer no longer resets on click This only really applies to CTF - TTH still has wave respawning and some limitations there, though it should fare a little better