Developer Update April 2021 Discussion - Nightmare / Huntress / Demo / Twins & Perk Changes
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/241887
We’re back with another Developer Update, a series of posts going over the biggest changes coming to Dead by Daylight. This time around, we’ll cover a long list of Killer, perk, and quality of life updates that’ll appear in the upcoming Player Test Build (PTB).
KILLER UPDATES
THE NIGHTMARE
For some time, The Nightmare has stood out from the crowd with a particularly high kill rate, averaging roughly 3 kills per match. With that in mind, we’ve made some slight tweaks to bring him closer in line with the rest of the roster.
We’ve decreased his movement speed while placing a snare to 4.0m/s (previously no speed change) and reduced the maximum number of placed snares from 8 to 5. Likewise, the maximum number of dream pallets has been reduced from 10 to 7.
A handful of add-ons have also received changes. Add-ons which previously reduced action speeds now make various actions louder (repairing generators, grunts of pain, and footsteps). Black Box also has a brand-new effect: When an exit gate is opened, it is blocked for sleeping Survivors for the next 10 seconds.
Alarm clocks have also received some tweaks to make their effects clearer and more rewarding. Using an alarm clock will now make you fully immune to sleep— including sleep caused by a Killer hit — for 30 seconds. This effect is now shown on the HUD by turning your sleep timer yellow and having it tick down.
With these changes, we hope to promote more strategic use of his Dream Traps rather than placing them constantly during a chase, as well as encouraging Survivors to seek out and use alarm clocks. We’ll monitor his performance closely and adjust where necessary going forward.
THE DEMOGORGON
Our focus for The Demogorgon is to give it more mobility with its portals. We’ve made the following changes to base portals:
- Increased speed while in a portal
- Reduced cooldown after exiting a portal
- Increased Undetectable length after exiting a portal
On top of these changes, we have done a complete pass on The Demogorgon’s add-ons to make some of the lesser used ones more appealing.
THE HUNTRESS
Don’t panic: We have not changed The Huntress’ base kit. We have, however, done a pass on her add-ons to bring them up to modern standards. Yes, this included the infamous Iridescent Head.
THE TWINS
Last but not least, we have a small set of tweaks for The Twins.
- Increased cooldown after successfully downing a Survivor with Victor from 3 to 5 seconds
- Camera control is now immediately restored when taking control of Charlotte
- Silencing Cloth: Increased Undetectable duration to 20 seconds upon taking control of Charlotte
- Iridescent Pendant: Increased Exposed duration to 30 seconds when a Survivor crushes an idle Victor
PERK UPDATES
SMALL GAME
It has come to our attention that some of you really hate small piles of bones. To aid you in your totem destroying mission, we’ve made some long-requested changes to Small Game:
- Small Game now shows the number of remaining totems as tokens on the perk
- The detection range decreases by 5° for each totem cleansed
- Small Game no longer detects Killer traps
These changes improve Small Game’s ability to track and cleanse totems while also removing the antiquated part that only applies to specific Killers with traps.
LUCKY BREAK
Lucky Break now hides scratch marks in addition to blood pools to help you lose the Killer. To compensate, the total duration of has been reduced to 70/80/90 seconds.
SOUL GUARD
A small change here: Soul Guard now has a cooldown of 30 seconds after activating.
Realistically, this won’t affect the vast majority of cases. This change is purely to prevent stacking healing speeds and Soul Guard from getting out of hand.
OPEN HANDED
Take two for Open Handed: We’ve slotted this update back in for the upcoming PTB.
Open Handed now has an increased effect (8/12/16 meters), but no longer stacks with itself. This makes the perk more appealing on its own without needing to stack it with other Survivors in the match.
ZANSHIN TACTICS
A very straightforward change: Zanshin Tactics is now permanently active and also has a larger range.
BORROWED TIME
To remove some confusing intricacies with how Borrowed Time interacts with some Killers and the Oblivious status effect, we have removed the terror radius condition from the perk. To compensate, we have reduced the duration of the Endurance effect to 8/10/12 seconds.
OBJECT OF OBSESSION
This PTB also features the newly reworked Object of Obsession: Any time your aura is revealed to the Killer, their aura is revealed to you and gain a 2/4/6% bonus to healing, repairing, a cleansing speed. If you are the obsession, your aura is revealed to the Killer for 3 seconds every 30 seconds.
This new version has a few benefits:
- Being able to track the Killer
- Being able to deduce which aura reading perks the Killer is using when Object of Obsession activates
- Being able to attract the Killer and then sneak away before they can get there
With these changes, we hope to make Object of Obsession a more fun and interactive perk for both sides.
MISCELLANEOUS BALANCE
TOOLBOXES
The chance to receive a skill check while using a toolbox has been increased. This change makes toolboxes feel more interactive while they’re in use and is totally not because the lead designer had a skill check challenge and got unlucky three matches in a row.
HATCHES
Another small tweak: We have decreased the time the hatch remains open after a key is used from 30 seconds to 10 seconds. Like before, if the hatch closes naturally (is not kicked shut), the End Game Collapse will not start.
Please note that this is not the final change keys will be receiving. We’ll share more info on the future of keys as soon as we can.
HUD UPDATE
For the 4.7.0 PTB, we have made some more changes to the HUD; this time focusing on the visibility of Killer powers on the Survivor portraits. In this update, we have made improvements to:
- The Doctor’s Madness effect (also made it easier to differentiate between different levels of Madness)
- The Nightmare’s Dream World effect & sleep timer
- The Plague’s Infection meter
- Stalk meters & Ghost Face’s mark
Additionally, we’ve also adjusted the Survivor portraits so they no longer obstruct the bottom of power indicators.
STRUGGLE UPDATE
In an ongoing effort to improve accessibility, we have changed the way struggling works starting in the PTB. Rather than needing to mash a button, Survivors in their second hook stage will now receive occasional skill checks. The success zones are fairly large as we’re not looking to make struggling more difficult/deadly at this time.
Missing one of these skill checks will remove a chunk of your struggle meter. If you do not attempt to hit two consecutive skill checks, you will be immediately sacrificed. As you receive skill checks, your struggle meter will gradually decrease at the same rate as before.
Our goal with this change is to make struggling more accessible to players with repetitive strain injuries while keeping struggling as an interactive mechanic.
GRAPHICAL UPDATE: COLDWIND FARM
I was going to put a funny intro here, but it was too corny.
In case you missed it, the next realm slated for a graphical update is the Coldwind Farm! Check out some concept art from the upcoming rework.
On that note, we’ve reached the end of this Developer Update. All of the changes mentioned above will be available for testing in this week’s Player Test Build, starting April 13th. We look forward to reading your feedback once you’ve had a chance to try them out!
Comments
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You guys post fast
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My copy & paste ability is unmatched.
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No rat liver basekit for demo, meh, still one addon slot for him.
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Liking that Small Game change.
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Usually I am disappointed with recent updates, but this looks pretty good. Can't find anything to complain about (yet)
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The ONE change I didn't want to see was "move speed lowered while placing traps." Reducing number of traps and entirely removing the slowdown addons were not unexpected, but slowing way down to use your stupid power feels so BAD on Pyramid Head, Myers, Wraith, Plauge and they've done it here too. That's awful. Wildly over-reaching nerf
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Lucky Break isn’t paused when healing? Kinda wished it did from the start. Not Twins getting nerfed. Other than that, pretty solid update
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Just for clarification: Borrowed is now always active if you unhook someone even if the Killer is chilling on the other side of the map?
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Yeah, this was the one changed I hoped for as well. But I need to see the complete Add On-Pass, maybe at least there is more variety for the remaining Add On-Slot, because currently, all of the Add Ons are "meh", aside from Rat Liver.
Its fine. Makes reverse-bloodlusting aka Snare-Spamming less effective. Reducing the number of Snares would have done exactly nothing, because they are replaced anyway.
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I don't know what I'm going to do if rat liver jumps a few tiers of rarity. Don't they dare.
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A lot of this sounds good to me. Idk about specifics with demo but it seems some aren’t happy with buff his power speed so hopefully they’ll look into that.
I feel like huntresses new iri should be basekit for trickster.
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-I love the new Coldwind's look ! It's a big change from the usual color palette, but I think it looks great and that's literally all that matters.
-Nightmare nerfs seem okay, even more of his addons will be useless though, and also it looks like they didn't change the Z block, which is just ...
-Demo buffs nice, that's all
-Huntress addon changes are ... meh ? They ended up not going for the "one shot over x distance" variant because they want bad players to get some use out of the addon, that's fine.
The second one is just weird though, I really feel like they should've done something more like this: "Gain 1% additional movement speed for every hatchet missing" (Imo that should be a basekit change, but that's off topic)
-Twins Changes are so miniscule I don't think they'll have any impact
Now onto the perks:
-I love new small game
-Lucky Break shouldn't have received a duration reduction, but overall it's a buff, not that anyone will use it anyway lol.
-Soul Guard change will have no impact 99% of the time, it makes sense.
-Finally new Open Handed, overall I think the perk is a lot healthier now.
-Zanshin Tactics is now a great perk for new players ! It's behind a paywall cuz BHVR though, so nothing changes, nobody will use it.
-I hate the new Borrowed Time, it reduces the perk's skill ceiling by a mile on both sides.
-New Object seems like a genuinely fun perk. It's a big change so I need to test it out before making any claims, but so far seems nice.
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As someone who plays mostly killer I like most of these changes. Lucky break seems OP as ######### though.
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My problem with it is that a LOT of the power of undetectable was countering BT, and BT has been a long term problem in how it weirdly ENCOURAGES camping because it makes the zone you can punish a sloppy unhook smaller.
Uts still better than launch BT where you had to actually grab the rescuer to get anything off the rescue, and I get why TR interaction was a weird requirement, but I would vastly prefer something that makes it more of a 'shift your target' perk rather than shutting down wide patrols so hard.
Legitimately tricking someone into thinking the rescue is safe (rather than sitting in a dude's face crouched as pig) is super interesting play that should be rewarded but now if you want to snowball off an unhook you REALLY need to be close enough to at least get a hit during unhook.
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Is the small game range decrease for every totem YOU cleanse, or for each totem total?
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Very happy with a lot of these changes, especially BT being based on proximity but uh... why is the endurance duration on BT getting nerfed instead of them just losing collision or something so they can't body block?
Also the Lucky Break change sounds insane tbh. Even though it's only one time use, pair that with Iron Will and it will be a nightmare to track that person.
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Thats a massive buff for endgame.
And Hag got nerfed too with it. But I won't complain, at least the timer was reduced.
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Yeah, same here. But I doubt that, for now. But I would be fine with Rat Liver not being Basekit when there are more Add Ons to actually be useable. Because currently, everything above yellow is basically a waste of BPs for him.
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No baseline Rat liver for Demo. No fixes for huntress latency problems. That's just sad.
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the latency problems have nothing to do with huntress so it wouldn't be listed as a change for her, lol.
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I mean I don't know what other addons provide as much value as rat liver that literally makes shred playable in chase survivor can't just w+shift it.
Also, considering that they made freddy's black box into the most niche, useless and worthless addon ever, I highly doubt that. Whoever is making these addons doesn't deserve the money they make.
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Still sad
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Freddy..meh I don't play him that much so don't really care. Demo no rat Liver base kit so these "buffs" are useless.....LOL "undetectable buff" when he makes enough noise to hear him from across the map. Whistle effect should be base. Also got a meme addon...gg design team gg...lol
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Removing the range at all makes sense. It is, ultimately a good perk for the game. It just is in a tricky spot because it creates the classic game design problem of 'negative reinforcement encouraging the undesired behavior more and causing LESS interesting gameplay.'
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I like most of the changes
Freedy - don't know what reducing the number os snare or pallet will do... like... at all. it feels like an unnecessary nerf, but at the same time, probably won't have any effect...
new addons could be interesting, new clock interaction is potentially great. might make going to the clock a good strategy.
Demo - good qol... let's see to what extent it helps it.
whistle seems good, pumpkin is very weird but might come in clutch... who knows...
Huntress - iri head is surprisingly still a thing, and does what most people agreed would make it fine. impressive.
other iri addon is meh...
Twins - seems good...idk... I don't play twins much, so I can form a good opinion
Small game - good buff to it. side note, mini buff to trapper \o/
lucky break - 90 seconds without scratch marks can potentially be amazing... if you can save it for the correct time
Soul guard - K
Open handed - good
zanshin - finaly... make it the same for windows.
borrowed - fair
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YES... ######### old OoO!
toolboxes - k
hatch - k
HUD - gotta see it to judge
Struggle - great
map rework - looks great, but corn still exists so 1/10
seems like a great ptb.
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A good update for once
WHAT THE BHVR BABY THIS IS NEW FOR YOU
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The freddy changes are a bit disappointing. Like I knew the action speed addons were going to go away. I figured snares were going to get nerfed, because they were a bit too effective as you lost no distance placing them. The alarm clock preventing falling asleep for 30 seconds by any means is a nice buff to alarm clocks.
But Alarm Clock spawn is still furthest away when you fall asleep and I doubt survivors are going to be running across the map to wake up more with these changes. I guess I was just hoping there would be more work around the Dream World to make it more interactive, but it's still largely just a passive thing.
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The BT change is great, this pairs a lot better with the DS nerf now because if a killer comes running back to an unhook, the survivor has a few more options to get away and not be tunneled down again.
Overall, everything seems pretty good and healthy on here!
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RIP Iridescent Head.
I know it was OP,but that's gonna be her worst addon now.
What i would have liked to see is that successful hatchet throws shouldn't decrease her ammo (e.g Huntress has 5 hatchets,throws one at the survivor and still has 5 hatchets)
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I like almost everything in this patch! Gripes:
- I see no reason to change the detection cone radius for Small Game based on the amount of totems cleansed. Just keep it simple.
- Coldwind looks gorgeous, but way too bright in those photos. I hope the PTB version is substantially darker than that.
- Lucky Break might be a bit OP. I'd reduce the timer further.
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Increased undetectable status when leaving portals
Stomp Stomp Stomp
happy mapwide shrieking noises
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Rat liver base kit would basically make him into a baby Deathslinger, even if they removed all add-ons that speed him up while preparing to shred, and the last thing DBD needs is more killers with zoning potential. I like the buffs they gave him, but if anything I would remove rat liver entirely and reduce his speed while preparing to shred a bit more in exchange for charge time buffs. That way landing a shred is easier but he has to pick his spots well and commit to a quick shred or he'll start losing distance, Huntress style.
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A lot of extremely good changes 👍 the only thing I'm disappointed with is Soul Guards weird nerf. It ruins my meme builds!!
I really want to use new Object. I really like aura perks. Finally an obsession will be in my matches 😂
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Well, let’s discuss this in order that they posted it:
I like the reduction in movement speed and snares/pallets for Freddy, as well as the changes to the alarm clocks, but the addon changes were a massacre- the addons mentioned went from super OP (slowing down repair and healing speed) to super crap (making louder noises). Black Box is a step in the right direction, but still bad IMO. Almost no one is going to run these addons now, I’m guessing Freddy’s top addons now will be the power recovery and maybe some niche addons like Class Photo.
Demogorgon needed some love, they only showed a few addons so we’ll need to see them all to be sure. The ones they showed looked OK for what they were (meme addon and decent instinct addon). I kinda like the focus on traveling via portals but they should also give more options for his Shred attack (same with Pig’s Dash).
Huntress addon pass- again, we’ll need to see them all to be sure. I think Iri Head won’t be good since it now caps at 1 hatchet (making Infantry Belt and Leather Loop useless), Soldier’s Puttee looks like something from Trickster’s decay addons when out of blades; Essentially, addons that reward running out of ‘ammo’ aren’t good.
Twins… Cam control and Iri Addon changes are great, but why change Victor’s cooldown??? They weren’t good to begin with, there are much better ways to nerf their slugging potential! Smh this is gonna make them worse overall, put them near Legion and Trickster levels of bad.
Perks: Small Game, Lucky Break, Open Handed and Zanshin Tactics look good (Windows of Opportunity should’ve gotten the same treatment, seeing as how they’re the same but I digress). I like that Soul Guard can’t be spammed in that niche scenario but think BT should be the same, where a protection hit on the Survivor w/BT after 3-4 seconds of being unhooked should negate the Endurance status effect. Its kinda BS that Survivors can abuse this to protect their unhooker- like DS its an anti-tunnelling perk that is abused in this scenario, needs to be looked at. The Object change looks good, but I’ll wait till PTB to say for sure.
Toolbox changes are meh, don’t think it’ll change much. Hatch change is nice, but more should be done for keys soon (I know they said that I just hope it 2-3 months soon and not 2-3 years soon).
HUD Update has me worried, they thought they made it better the first time so Im not sure what this will bring. Struggle update is really nice, won’t entirely prevent hook suicides but at least slows it down a bit (and saves my spacebar from more abuse :p).
Finally, Coldwind! I LOVE the daylight look, hope it’ll stay because it looks amazing. I don’t see too many changes to loops shown but it kinda looks more open? Will have to check again on PTB.
Overall not a bad update- there’s a few things they need to look at and improve like Twins cooldown (again, why???) and some addons for Huntress and Freddy, but not a bad job Devs.
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Maybe I'm crazy, but I've felt that Soldier's Puttee would be fine as base kit for Huntress. You'd rather be 110 with even one Hatchet than 115 with none, anyways.
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I'm pretty positive they added that, because of edge cases where SWF groups could basically keep healing up the downed survivor in the killer's face faster than he can down another survivor.
I remember seeing a forum post about it months ago.
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Better idea- Iri Head instadowns Survivors further than 24m. This is inline with Deathslinger's Iri Coin addon, as well as rewards skillful play AND encourages people to go for the Skilled Huntress achievement.
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So are the Trickster changes going to come after this update?
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Trickster changes, as well as big bugfixes like Pallet stuns, are coming to the bugfix which will go live immediately tomorrow. Might be the same time as the PTB so you can test them all.
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Iri Coin add-on is terrible, FWIW. But that has more to do with Deathslinger having such a TINY window to trigger the Coin.
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:)
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So the trickster changes, and pallet stunt bug fix will be a hotfix essentially? And not be a part of the PTB?
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Nightmare Changes:
they have overall tried to address the main complaints about him: the slowdown Add Ons and the Snare spam.
i cant say anything about how good / bad the snares will be, but im very happy with the Add On changes.
the clocks are nice i guess.
regarding the Black Box change, the timer that exit gates are blocked for sleeping survivors should be longer. 10 seconds imo isnt enough to do anything significant with it.
Demogorgon Changes:
overall pretty good changes i'd say.
however, they still need to give Demo a way of destroying / replacing portals when they are in a bad spot, thats imo the main problem with the portals right now.
i hope the Add On changes will include some Add Ons that address his Shred ability.
Huntress Changes:
overall, i like them.
i am very happy they decided not to slap the range requirement on Iridescent Head and instead made it cap the Hatchets at 1 - though i was really hoping for the second UR Add On to be something that passively reloads Hatchets over time, but this one is okay i guess.
Twins Changes:
they failed to address the main problem with them: the hook camping.
the Add On changes seem good though.
Perks:
Small Game:
FINALLY!
it got the totem counter, makes it easier to locate totems AND its no longer an unnecessary slap in trap based killers faces!
Lucky Break:
i'd have to see that in action tbh. just from the description, it doesnt seem to be that great though.
Soul Guard:
thats a fair point they mentioned. not a change that should be a problem in 95% of your games with the perk.
Open Handed:
everything looks good to me.
Zanshin Tactics:
still useless.
Borrowed Time:
i dont mind the change. it helps against low TR / undetectable Killers that want to tunnel off of hooks. HOWEVER imo the unhooker should receive the unsafe unhook penalty when the unhooked survivor gets hit, so BT no longer guarantees safe hook rescues.
Object Of Obsession:
i still really like the change idea.
Miscellaneous Balance:
Toolboxes:
doubt that'll change much, i like the concept though.
Hatch:
that seems like a good change to me. im also very happy they confirmed this wasnt their final nerf to Keys!
HUD Update:
cool i guess
Struggeling Update:
i honestly can not wait for that! its going to make struggle on the hook much more interactive, much less keyboard destroying and makes hook suicides much harder!
Coldwind Farm Graphical Update:
looks amazing!
though im a bit concerned corn blindness is going to increase with the new corn field.
also, im a tiny bit sad its only one graphical rework this time. the quicker we get these graphical updates out of the way, the quicker we get to play on a new map!
and thats all my thoughts on the update SO FAR.
thanks for reading and have a good day / night ^^
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I loathe Freddy but this might be too big of a nerf. I dunno.
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Hey everyone! 😊
Thanks for leaving us all of this awesome feedback to go through! It's great to see what you all have to think about the upcoming PTB. ❤️
For those of you asking when the Bugfix Patch will go live, we can finally share the good news: the Bugfix Patch with The Trickster changes will be live this Wednesday.
Tomorrow's PTB will have all of the changes included in this Dev Update and The Trickster changes. With that in mind, feel free to consider the PTB as a bit of a "sneak peek" for Wednesday's Trickster buffs & bug fixes, aside from all of the other changes we announced in the Dev Update.
Please note: The 4.6.1 Bugfix Patch will NOT include any changes from this Dev Update. These changes will only be live in the PTB!
Keep the feedback coming - we'll be paying attention to what you all have to say after tomorrow's PTB and Wednesday's Bugfix Patch! 😊
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I agree, Coin needs a bigger window to trigger its effect. But the idea is really good, rewarding skillful gameplay.
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