ROCKET ARENA 3.1 UPDATE NOTES

The 3.1 update contains several Competitor and Artifact balance updates and a Game Mode change.

Bug Fixes

• Added a fix for a crash that was sometimes caused by Bot Mysteen.
• Added a fix for an Out of Memory crash experienced by some Xbox players.

Competitors

As promised in our 3.0.0 update notes, we wanted to make some fairly significant changes this update to help shake up the meta. Our goal was to target some of the Competitors that have been dominant for a long time, as well as bring up some of the underperforming ones.

Blastbeard

Blastbeard has long been able to take a lot of damage and deal a lot in return. So, we addressed both of those issues by making him a little easier to KO and reducing his Primary damage.

• Passive
  • Reduced Megablast Danger threshold from 240 to 220
• Rocket Cannonball (Primary)
  • Reduced damage from 30 to 25

Boone

Boone is tricky to balance because in the right hands he can be incredibly oppressive. However, as the resident sniper of the Tour, Boone was sometimes out classed by other long range characters (Kayi, Flux). So, we decided to improve Zik’s Vortex’s (Special) offensive capabilities, making it easier to hit and Megablast players with.

• Zik’s Vortex (Special)
  • Increased projectile speed from 6000 to 9000
  • Now causes 20 damage on initial impact
    • Removed ticking damage cause to opponents caught in the Vortex

Flux

Flux has a fairly high skill floor and her primary takes some effort, but good Flux players can be very hard to KO. A lot of that has to do with Fluxverse (Special) being a get-out-of-jail-free quite often. Our changes are targeted at reducing the effectiveness of Fluxverse by giving players a bit more time to do damage to her and reducing how much she can do while inside of it.

• Fluxverse (Special)
  • Increased time to enter Fluxverse after ability activation from 0.25s to 0.7s
  • Reduced additional jump scale from 1.0x to 0.8x
  • Reduced additional movement speed from 800 to 600
  • Increased minimum time to start Blast Meter regen after exiting Fluxverse from 2.5s to 3.0s
  • Black Hole Cat (Secondary) now cancels Fluxverse when activated instead of on cast completion

Kayi

Kayi has always been a very strong character at all levels of play. Her combination of strong defense and high burst damage has kept her a popular pick since the game’s release. We’ve tried to reduce how long and how powerful she can be while inside her Snow Globe and reduced some of her burst with increasing Grapple Hook’s cooldown when hitting opponents.

• Snow Globe (Secondary)
  • Reduced duration from 10s to 7s
  • Removed Charged Bolt's (Primary) damage and impulse increases while Kayi is inside the Snow Globe
• Grapple Hook (Special)
  • Increased cooldown when hitting an opponent from 4s to 6s
  • Reduced normal cooldown from 11s to 10s

Leef

As a Competitor encouraged to get in close range, we decided to let Leef take more damage before being Megablasted. We also increased his damage a bit by making his Charged Beam do more consistent damage.

• Passive
  • Increased Megablast Danger threshold from 120 to 140
• Charged Beam (Fully Charged Primary)
  • Increased damage interval from 0.3s to 0.25s
    • Charged Beam deals damage up to three times as long as the opponent stays inside of it. This change makes the beam do damage faster.

Plink

Like Leef, Plink is a close range Competitor, so he also needs to be able to take more damage.

• Passive
  • Increased Megablast Danger threshold from 120 to 140

Rev

This change should give Rev some extra survivability and make it much easier to play her aggressively, which has always been our intent.

• Shatter Slam (Special)
  • Now reduces damage taken by 40% while active

Artifacts

The damage Artifacts have been benched for too long! Put ‘em in coach! We also brought Bastion Bell down a bit and brought up the early levels of the Item Artifacts.

• Blastbird (Slot 1)
  • Increased from (3, 4, 5)% to (5, 6, 7)%
• Desolation Rounds (Slot 1)
  • Increased from (8, 9, 10)% to (10, 11, 12)%
• Digsite Magnifier (Slot 1)
  • Increased from (50, 75, 100)% to (80, 90, 100)%
• Bottomless Box (Slot 2)
  • Increased from (50, 75, 100)% to (80, 90, 100)%
• Powder Keg (Slot 2)
  • Increased from (8, 9, 10)% to (11, 12, 13)%
• Unstable Canister (Slot 2)
  • Increased from (8, 9, 10)% to (11, 12, 13)%
• Bastion Bell (Slot 3)
  • Reduced from (40, 45, 50% to (30, 35, 40)%
• Boom Bit (Slot 3)
  • Increased from (8, 9, 10)% to (13, 14, 15)%

Game Modes

We’ve always thought it would be nice for there to be some more incentive to get KOs in Treasure Hunt, but figuring out how to properly balance it has been tricky as KOs are an unknown quantity. We specifically wanted there to be an incentive for the Treasure Chest Carrier to get KOs in order to encourage more offensive gameplay. So, with this change, if the Treasure Chest Carrier scores a KO or an Assist, they will immediately remove 3 coins from the chest and add it to their total. Note that this is NOT an additional 3 points, but rather it’s effectively speeding up the rate at which your team earns points from the Treasure Chest, thus making KOs speed up the round. Because at the end of the day, the entire point of adding any incentive to KOs is to make it easier and faster to win the game, and we hope that this change helps accomplish that.

Treasure Hunt

• Scoring a KO or Assist while carrying the Treasure Chest will immediately remove 3 coins from the Treasure Chest and award them to the Chest Carrier’s team.

As always, we value your feedback and if you’d like to leave us some now, or in the future, hit us up on the Rocket Arena Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch Streams, DMs, etc. - we read as much as we can!

Thanks for being part of our community and we’ll see you in Crater! #LETSROCKET

The team at FSG