OFFICIAL: 3.1 Update Notes (LIVE!)

[Seanci]

I am happy to see a change to That's All Folks, but unfortunately it is not the change she needed. Her SA1 sadly still relies on the opponnent hitting her, which is quite bad for offensive viability. As a defender I feel like That's All Folks gets slightly worse because the precision stacks don't help her against someone who is playing perfectly. The enrages had let her at least do more chip damage on block. As for Stand Out, I still think she sucks. Sure, she regains health faster and can eek out some health on block. However she still only regains health until her health percentage is equal to her opponent. Also they did not touch the issue with her SA2 being a coin flip. As a Primed main I will say this: Critical Mass is just way better than having the bleeds. Critical Mass lets you hit over 100,000 damage with a Napalm Shot or Silent Scope on a crit. The bleeds were only something I pulled out against Grudge Painwheel anyway so that I could damage her through her armor.

Couldn't agree more, for a gold peacock she is quite underwhelming with this update. Stand out still stands as the worst natty diamond. RIP Diamond 4 for all the players who don't use pay to win to get more rift tickets.. RIP Gold 1 players as all those diamond 4's are going to be taking your places. No longer is Bella effective in reducing meter without max MA. As if getting Diamond keys wasn't already difficult for players out of diamond ranks. I feel bad for players who started later in this games life cycle who will never catch the top 200 players unless one of them quit, or they grind/ and pay to make up the difference.

 

[Reshiram18]

Goodbye diamond 4, it was nice while it lasted. On the other hand it will be easier to climb.
And is node 6 (armor node) still a 200% increase? That makes it more menacing than boss node itself

The Reactive Armor node is a 100% increase, not a 200% increase.

 

[TonyPartridge30]

So Diamond 4 is top 200 players now, instead of top 1%. Probably means I'll be kicked out of Diamond 4.

Guess a consolation is that I can get Diamond shards in Gold.

 

[Veeko]

Okay obviously the fixes are great and much appreciated but I feel the need to weigh in on the other changes.
Maybe this update will make Rifts more enjoyable, but the matchmaking has always been the issue. Unless I’m completely misinterpreting the notes, this’ll make it even worse? I am a Gold 1 who doesn’t have a full map of fully leveled Golds, let alone Diamonds, but I get put against people with way more. The change with fighter energy should help with that, yes, but my map would still be easy for them. And now people in the Diamond ranks will be getting pushed down, potentially making things... chaotic, at least for a while? I’m at least going to keep trying them as you guys keep changing them, though. That sweet spot is out there somewhere and we’ll reach it together. Also I need Diamond Keys.
As for the fighter changes. I’m probably not saying anything especially unique but I’ll still toss my coin into the fountain. I’ll just say i like, but have no real comment on the changes for Dragon Brawler, Bassline, Armed Forces, Idol Threat, Grim Fan, Myst-Match, Raw Nerv and Scared Stiff.
Bad Ms. Frosty- I actually like this change a lot. The blockbuster disabling was always the most important part of her SA to me, and adding Armor Break will help set her apart more from No Egrets as well as deal a bit more damage. Good change, for my tastes, and I’ll probably give my evolved-but-hardly-upgraded BMF some more love after this update.
That’s All Folks- That is... not the change she needed. For offensive use, she has to be hit to trigger her effect, and that isn’t viable for high streak use. For defensive use, she still doesn’t really do anything against people who aren’t getting hit- in fact the unchanged half of her SA just cripples certain other defensive fighters like Dread Locks and any marqueed Painwheel. I would say that Precision is much worse than Enrage for defensive purposes- even if she does hit, most people aren’t using a fighter who can be derailed by Precision offensively. What is this fighter meant for? I adore this Peacock palette but man.
Stand Out- Okay so I don’t have Stand Out, but I love Eliza, as I’m sure anyone would’ve guessed, so I want to give all of her variants at least a chance. That SA is still really bad. Bloody Valentine both heals and gains meter way more reliably than SO does. Diva also heals very easily, without needing prior damage or needing to be at any percentage, Bloodbath stacks regen like crazy- you get the point, healing is a common ability for Elizas, and that particular way of achieving it is not anywhere near good enough for a Diamond. There’s also the fact that any of them can remove buffs but I don’t think her SA2 is bad, we’re talking about her SA1 here. It doesn’t need to be an improved version of itself, it needs to be something completely different. Maybe, to fit with her consuming buffs, she could also consume her own debuffs and replace them with a buff, or some health regen? I don’t know.
Graveyard Shift- Great ability. However, attached to a fighter with abysmally low attack, and meant for a point fighter. Her issue is still that she hits like a wet paper bag- either she needs an attack boost or her ability should be purely support/defensive. Common issue with Valentines. Our girl just doesn’t have the right stats to be a great carry.
All in all. Thanks devs for your hard work as always and for listening to our feedback. Peace, love and Robo Fortune hype.

 

[Brother Null]

A lot of assumptions getting tossed about in this thread. Let's take a closer look, yes?

1: Diamond 4 is now harder to attain/maintain

This is likely true. D4 always had a crowded feel to it, compared to the higher ranks. I would guess this change will cut the roster in half at the very least. Diamond tier will no longer start at the mid-1800s, at the very least. I cannot guess as to where it will stop.

2: Gold 1 will get more difficult because of all the ex-Diamond players.

This is true-ish. Gold 1 will get an influx of returning top-end players, but that will have *zero* effect on the bottom end of the tier. Gold 1 is still a % of the total rift population, and it expands and contracts according to the fluctuations in the player base. If you are Gold 1 today, you will still be Gold 1 next week. Instead, Gold 1 will *expand* at the top as D4 contracts.

3: Only players who pay for extra tickets will get into D4

Nah. I've been at D4/D3 since the beginning, and I still have all of my free red tickets. 14 rift battles is plenty, and it is how much you win over how much you play that makes the biggest impact on your final score. You can play thirty battles in a week, but if you go 15 - 15, you are right back where you started.

4: No more Diamond Keys

Again, nope. No more *free* Diamond keys. The boost in rift coins for losing will almost make up for the lost key available in D4. Even a terrible and unbalanced pairing will still net you 35-40 rift coin. Seven lost battles in a week = at least 200 coin. 14 battles, going 7-7 = at least 600 coin. Save your rift coin, buy keys from CoC. It will slow you down, but only a little bit.

5: My Own Humble Opinion

The score to watch is 2,000. All scores above this will be reset to 2k at the end of every season. This puts a distinct flavor on all of Rift battles from here out. If you can hit 2,000 points then you are in competition for the top spot. I have a strong feeling that 2,000 will become the de facto stasis point for D4. (D4 may go lower, but players who get here will be all but guaranteed a place in D4)

6: Bio got nerfed

I quit. How could you?!

 

[Turtlewax64]

I'm not a fan of the changes to rift rating. It was already really hard to get diamond keys, and this makes it even harder. Adding diamond fragments to the gold reward tiers isn't that exciting since I already can't upgrade my natural diamonds to their full use anyways

 

[デービット（David）]

6: Bio got nerfed

I quit. How could you?!

LOOOL I’ll just start off by saying I know you’re just joking but i still think you brought up a good point. That ya this is a major nerf to Bio because I would often just stand there sometimes until they died when I was too lazy to kill them lol. HOWEVER, I don’t think this is a huge nerf to attacking Bio. defending bio is gonna suffer a lot though. In saying that, I think she’ll go down to S tier. Because once these changes go through she won’t be able to kill incoming attackers mid combo anymore.

Another point I thought about was, she will struggle against Meow and Furver like the rest of the roster. I used to never care when facing her because once I was stunned it was just a waiting game until she killed herself but now she might be a hard counter to high pf streaking with just bio.

 

[RancorSnp]

I did not actually plan on complaining on the forums here (blame Mentos), but after having a chat with the top players on discord it seems my opinion about the Frosty nerf is common - it is an unnecessary nerf, for a very fun to use variant that's already underused as it is.

Armor break does in no way compare to disabling enemy special moves and tag ins. It's objectively worse considering that Frosty has low damage, and relies on bleed as DPS. As she was before she was perfect, not overpowerd, but she had her niche that she almost ruled over.
Now she has two jobs - half control, half attacker and she is bad at both of them. Truly she is now the Bad Ms. Frosty (Credits to Potomiru for this line)

Disabling just the block busters does not give the player control over the fight, which renders the "control" invalid. And armor break is useless for Filia, since as mentioned before she does not have high attack value, relied on bleed which already counters armor, and if the enemy can't use blockbusters, special moves, nor tag in, you probably do not care if they have armor or not.

Some players did raise a point that Frosty needed something to differentiate her from No Egrets, and to that I would like to reply she already had something like this - ability to control by just doing her combos. But if we really need them to be completely different, give the armor break to NE who actually has any use of this ability, and damage to deal.

So, I would like to ask, in the name of discord players, not to kill our favorite Filia, we've already killed one variant with the last rework, and unusable characters are no fun and do not belong in the game. Of course even if would drop to being the worst Filia, she is still a Filia and as such she is always usable, but why would you use Frosty when any other Filia does everything better than her?

Also do keep in mind that all the players who invested in Frosty move sets end up with a set of useless moves, as Frosty benefits from different stats than most Filia's.

Thanks for listening, and sorry I will not elaborate on the other changes in the patch notes due to the post already being fairly lengthy, but I am very happy with pretty much everything else in this update.

 

[Seanci]

Couldn't agree more, I myself have been in diamond 4 since second week of rifts, I've been hovering around 1990-2000 the past couple weeks and I have to say, this drastic change wasn't really necessary, although a change was needed. I think the main issue is the matchmaking as someone else had mentioned. You're right, rift tickets don't guarantee higher scores but they certainly give an almost guaranteed edge to be higher then everyone else. By resetting players at 2k and assuming that's where diamond 4 will be, what's stopping stronger players from destroying the lower ranks that are 1900's for example, further discouraging people from even participating. The incentive imo to be in diamond 4 was the diamond key. With people having to compete with players who are months ahead of them will just discourage people even more from even trying. Guess we will wait and see how this plays out. All in all I like all of the functional improvements and player tunings minus the bad Ms frosty change, Bella's pummel and Diamond 4 change, but those could be just personal bias. Thank you Devs for all of your hard work and listening to the community! Always a pleasure.

 

[LanaDelHeyyy]

Regarding cerebella, are her bb throws not supposed to drain meter or is that a bug? Now that pummel horse isn’t as good I feel like diamond drop and such should definitely activate her marquee too

 

[TonyPartridge30]

For the rarity skulls on character icons, how will evolving play into it? Like, does only a natural Gold get 3 skulls? Fighter cards have the number of skulls change with the evolution star, but at that point they aren’t rarity markers, just tier markers, synonymous with bronze/silver/gold/diamond.

Maybe you could change it so that the number of skulls stays static on a fighter despite evolution state, thereby making them true rarity markers and not redundant with the bronze/silver/gold/diamond tier indications. I.e. a natural silver will have 2 skulls, even when evolved to gold or diamond, while only naturally diamonds will have 4 skulls.

 

[rexturtle1120]

Yay! Love updates. Fighter changes are nice but I still wish we could have decrypteds old SA back. I don’t understand why Sketchy Peacock was nerfed since not a lot of people really abuse her SA but whatever. Looking forward to 3.2 and keep up the good work!

 

[PycoBeg]

So...

• Primed and Frosty goes R.I.P.
• No changes to J.I.Jazz
• Rating reset
• No new chars
• No guilds (at least basically elements as friend/black-lists)...

<sarcasm>Great!</sarcasm>

P.S. but anyway i should say Great thanks for characters' limit in chat... for russian (it,es,ger etc.) languages it is very good news for rise of max.lengh of message in chat.

 

[Dr_cpt.]

This is the first update since I downloaded this game that I'm really not excited about.

Do any of the devs aside from Zug actually play this game? Because the majority of these changes not only hurt the current meta, but seem to show a clear lack of understanding of what makes a character "good" in the first place.

#sorrynotsorry

 

[lothorie]

Mostly wonderfulupdate. I’m glad that that character balance improves, but mostly fixing these bugs, really appreciate it, hail to the HV team :O

Ps: Bones is really have the mustaches? Gentleman must have a couple updates notes!

 

[That nub]

Hmmm yes the big brained individual at ch0



These devs are really amazing with the community kudos

 

[cappatacus]

This is the first update since I downloaded this game that I'm really not excited about.

Do any of the devs aside from Zug actually play this game? Because the majority of these changes not only hurt the current meta, but seem to show a clear lack of understanding of what makes a character "good" in the first place.

#sorrynotsorry

Saying "this is bad" isn't exactly constructive. The devs stay pretty active in the community, so I'm sure they'd listen if you provided them specific feedback.

I did not actually plan on complaining on the forums here (blame Mentos), but after having a chat with the top players on discord it seems my opinion about the Frosty nerf is common - it is an unnecessary nerf, for a very fun to use variant that's already underused as it is.

Armor break does in no way compare to disabling enemy special moves and tag ins. It's objectively worse considering that Frosty has low damage, and relies on bleed as DPS. As she was before she was perfect, not overpowerd, but she had her niche that she almost ruled over.
Now she has two jobs - half control, half attacker and she is bad at both of them. Truly she is now the Bad Ms. Frosty (Credits to Potomiru for this line)

Disabling just the block busters does not give the player control over the fight, which renders the "control" invalid. And armor break is useless for Filia, since as mentioned before she does not have high attack value, relied on bleed which already counters armor, and if the enemy can't use blockbusters, special moves, nor tag in, you probably do not care if they have armor or not.

Some players did raise a point that Frosty needed something to differentiate her from No Egrets, and to that I would like to reply she already had something like this - ability to control by just doing her combos. But if we really need them to be completely different, give the armor break to NE who actually has any use of this ability, and damage to deal.

So, I would like to ask, in the name of discord players, not to kill our favorite Filia, we've already killed one variant with the last rework, and unusable characters are no fun and do not belong in the game. Of course even if would drop to being the worst Filia, she is still a Filia and as such she is always usable, but why would you use Frosty when any other Filia does everything better than her?

Also do keep in mind that all the players who invested in Frosty move sets end up with a set of useless moves, as Frosty benefits from different stats than most Filia's.

Thanks for listening, and sorry I will not elaborate on the other changes in the patch notes due to the post already being fairly lengthy, but I am very happy with pretty much everything else in this update.

Honestly, I had no idea anyone was this passionate about BMF. Personally, though, I would take a damage increase to a tag in/sm disable any day. I'm curious why you and so many others see this as a nerf? Genuinely curious, not trying to come off as passive aggressive lol.

Also, super grateful for AF's nerf. I have a feeling she'll still be annoying, but...less so. Almost had a heart attack when I saw Primed on the list, but this nerf doesn't really attack her main source of damage so I'm not upset. Hope to see more balance changes in the future!

 

[Mentos]

Honestly, I had no idea anyone was this passionate about BMF. Personally, though, I would take a damage increase to a tag in/sm disable any day. I'm curious why you and so many others see this as a nerf? Genuinely curious, not trying to come off as passive aggressive lol.

Also, super grateful for AF's nerf. I have a feeling she'll still be annoying, but...less so. Almost had a heart attack when I saw Primed on the list, but this nerf doesn't really attack her main source of damage so I'm not upset. Hope to see more balance changes in the future!

Armor Break is not as good as it sounds, not on BMF anyway. She has only 4k atk when maxed in gold and a 25% boost does nothing to help that. But it's okay, she's a Filia and relies on bleed to do damage. Bleed is already a counter to armor, it goes straight through it, what in the world is that armor break going to do for you? She counters RE now, i guess - her only niche as of now, and she doesn't even do it properly, there's still a chance to get stunned even if you build crit rate.

And before calling tag and sm lock useless consider this: If you miss a hit while trying to punish, the AI will use BBs. If they can't use BBs, they tag out. If they can't tag out, they use SMs. If they can't use SMs, they simply block, but at least you're still alive and haven't eaten a diamond to the face, right? They just removed a whole layer of safety that BMF had while at the same time ruining Filias ONLY control variant.

I seriously think this change would've suited NE a lot more. She relies on raw damage a lot more and is able to dish out tons of it with her MA. Parasoul also has 2 control variants that basically do the same thing while Filia has none now.

also nice to see this change right after they added inertia to rifts - amazing!

 

[cappatacus]

Armor Break is not as good as it sounds, not on BMF anyway. She has only 4k atk when maxed in gold and a 25% boost does nothing to help that. But it's okay, she's a Filia and relies on bleed to do damage. Bleed is already a counter to armor, it goes straight through it, what in the world is that armor break going to do for you? She counters RE now, i guess - her only niche as of now, and she doesn't even do it properly, there's still a chance to get stunned even if you build crit rate.

And before calling tag and sm lock useless consider this: If you miss a hit while trying to punish, the AI will use BBs. If they can't use BBs, they tag out. If they can't tag out, they use SMs. If they can't use SMs, they simply block, but at least you're still alive and haven't eaten a diamond to the face, right? They just removed a whole layer of safety that BMF had while at the same time ruining Filias ONLY control variant.

I seriously think this change would've suited NE a lot more. She relies on raw damage a lot more and is able to dish out tons of it with her MA. Parasoul also has 2 control variants that basically do the same thing while Filia has none now.

also nice to see this change right after they added inertia to rifts - amazing!

Hm, I guess I was taking into account more her stats and SA than Filia's natural moveset. I notice AI does tend to tag out if inflicted with a debuff, like bleed, so preventing that is probably a good thing if you're using this playstyle. Interesting. You almost make me want to build one up. Hmmm. How does she hold up in streaks?

 

[Mentos]

Hm, I guess I was taking into account more her stats and SA than Filia's natural moveset. I notice AI does tend to tag out if inflicted with a debuff, like bleed, so preventing that is probably a good thing if you're using this playstyle. Interesting. You almost make me want to build one up. Hmmm. How does she hold up in streaks?

She's essentially a safer bhd, but she'll probably be a meme after this change