MOBA Vainglory Receives New Update, New Character Added And More

Vainglory, the MOBA game developed by Super Evil Megacorp, has received yet another update which introduces a new character and several new features.

The new character is called Celeste, a powerful new character with new special abilities that expand the gameplay experience considerably.

Celeste isn’t the only new addition of the new Vainglory patch. The new update introduces new tactical pings, changes to the matchmaking system, balance tweaks for some of the available characters and more.

Here are the full patch notes for the latest Vainglory update.

NEW COMMUNICATION PINGS!
More ways to communicate on the battlefield.

“Communicating with your team is now much more fun and tactically effective without being cumbersome. Just being able to indicate ‘It’s OK’, ‘Sorry’ and ‘Thank You’ has been transformative for our games in the Lair. ” —Kraken

There are now 5 tactical pings above the mini-map, including new pings for “group up,” “caution” and “enemy hero missing.”

Tap and hold the new social pings button in the upper-left corner of the screen to reveal new ways to communicate with teammates.

FOLLOWER NOTIFICATIONS
Making matches with friends just got easier.

“How many times have you wanted to get your friends to pop back into the game for one more match? Or, you just signed out only to learn later that your favorite Vainglory crew signed on just after you? Well, hopefully you can now ‘keep the band together’.” —Kraken

Receive a notification when people you’ve “starred” come online.
Notify your followers that you’re looking for a Party Queue match.
You may turn off these notifications in the Settings app on your device.

MATCHMAKER AND KARMA IMPROVEMENTS
Step by step, this gets better.

“Some players were reporting hyper-uneven matches where they get paired with (or face) players either WAY better or WAY worse than them. We’ve been digging deep into match breakdowns and have uncovered better strategies for dealing with these uneven-match scenarios. The goal of these changes is to better help create matches with players of similar skill.” —Mightier

The Matchmaker may hold you in queue longer than before. This allows the Matchmaker to be more picky about the quality and skill level of allies and opponents.
Your Karma level now almost entirely relates to your Glory bonus rewards. Instead of considering your Karma level, the Matchmaker largely considers your recent behavior; if you have recently AFK’d, you will likely be matched with other recent AFKers.
Please share with us your new Matchmaking experiences in the forums or email us at [email protected].

HERO BALANCE CHANGES

KOSHKA
No longer energy-starved, she’s back in the hunt.

“After the Frostburn change from previous update, combined with the loss of energy from this update, Koshka is being hit really hard by these energy changes. This severely limits variety in her item builds and locks up inventory slots that could otherwise be used for power. Also, at high skill tiers, her ultimate was being Reflex Blocked with supreme ease, so we’re going to narrow the timing a bit and truly test your reflexes!” —SurpriseBirthday

Pounce energy cost reduced by 50%.
Twirl energy cost reduced by 45%.
Yummy Catnip Frenzy delay reduced by 20%.

CRYSTAL SAW
No time to bleed.

“For abilities that take a long time to execute, cooldown acceleration is doubly effective because the time between activation and finish was also being reduced. By moving the cooldown phase to after Roadie Run completes, we ensure SAW cannot build so much CDA that he is almost always running. We’re also dropping the crystal ratio on Mad Cannon, which previously allowed Crystal SAW to have almost all of the benefits of a Weapon SAW when spun up.” —SurpriseBirthday

Roadie Run does not enter cooldown until the full duration of the run is finished.

Mad Cannon crystal ratio lowered from 1.2 to 0.6.

SKAARF
Bug fix.

Fan the Flames was incorrectly escalating its burn duration; it is now always 3 seconds.

ITEM CHANGES

CLOCKWORK
Your build-path options just opened wide up.

“We want to open up Clockwork as a generalized item to help anyone use their abilities more often — not just crystal-hungry mages. Removing crystal power and replacing with energy means any protector or sniper who wishes to spam their skills can pick this up without worrying about wasting gold on crystal power.” —SurpriseBirthday

Changed build path to Void Battery + Chronograph.
Hourglass & Chronograph no longer grant energy regen.

FROSTBURN
This is basically stat-swap with Clockwork.

“Frostburn has always been intended for helping secure quick kills with the extra slow, which fits better with more crystal rather than more energy. Also, now that we’re going to see a lot more crystal in the game, we’re weakening the maximum potential of the slow.”
—SurpriseBirthday

Changed recipe to Heavy Prism + Eclipse Prism.
Max slow capped at 35%.
Grace period where the same target cannot be slowed again increased from 1.5s to 2.0s.

SHATTERGLASS
People gunna melt.

“A major theme of the next three item changes is to make crystal builds a viable path to becoming a late-game powerhouse. In this case, we want Shatterglass to stand toe-to-toe in late game power with Sorrowblade.”
—SurpriseBirthday

Crystal power raised from 115 to 150; price raised from to 2550 to 3000.

ALTERNATING CURRENT
Now a serious late-game threat.

“We are shifting damage from early game to late game, allowing high-crystal builds to deal even more damage using this item.” —SurpriseBirthday

Damage changed from 20 + 75% of crystal to 0 + 115% of crystal.

BROKEN MYTH
Try it with Shatterglass. You know you want to.

“Broken Myth’s previous mechanic was too awkward, requiring you to be nearly dead to use it effectively. Now, you only need to fight for 5 seconds to achieve maximum potential. You won’t reach stratospheric heights like with Breaking Point, but it will be much reliable. Think of this item as giving you 35% pierce, granted with a 5 second ramp-up time.” —SurpriseBirthday

New passive: Gain 5% shield pierce per second as long as you are in combat with enemy heroes, turrets or Kraken. After 5 seconds, lose a stack each second. Max 5 stacks.
Base shield pierce of Piercing Spear and Broken Myth down from 15% to 10% piercing.

SERPENT MASK
More clear. More effective.

“Losing the Barbed Needle passive was an awkward downgrade, since sometimes the heal is even stronger than the extra 10% lifestreal if you’re not yet dealing tons of weapon damage.” —SurpriseBirthday

Retains Barbed Needle passive.

BREAKING POINT
“Breaking Point was already a very strong item. On top of that, it countered armor way too well! Replacing the armor pierce with crit will keep Breaking Point roughly as effective as before against normal opponents, but heavily armored opponents will feel appropriately harder to kill.” —SurpriseBirthday

Passive: Removed 5% pierce per stack; replaced with 5% crit chance & crit damage.
Build path changed to Blazing Salvo + Lucky Strike.