[Plunderstorm] Correctifs, Équilibrage & Récompenses

Greetings fellow plunderers!

It’s been a great experience seeing the community having fun, posting about your wins, creating lists of the best builds, and taking to the forums with thoughtful feedback. We’ve been reading and listening very closely to a lot of feedback since we launched Plunderstorm, and the number one issue we’ve heard about is the Renown you earn.

We see that you care deeply about preserving the experience like we do, but you also feel that earning rewards should happen more quickly. And we agree.

With hotfixes that we’ve just made live to all regions, we’ve increased the amount of plunder that you’ll earn in a match of Plunderstorm, and the increases are nearly across the board:

• Plunder dropped by other players significantly increased.*
• Plunder from non-player enemies increased by 50%.
• Plunder from golden chests doubled.
• Top placement in a match now rewards 500 Plunder (was 100).

*Please note: when you die, you do not lose any of your own plunder. With this change, you’re now worth more plunder to others, depending on how much you’ve collected during the match.

We think the rewards available from Plunderstorm are super cool and our team couldn’t be more excited to see players flying around on the Polly Roger mount in Classic or running around with Captain Pepe by their side in Dragonflight.

We hope that this helps everyone get a bit further during their play and encourages everyone to have more piratey fun.

Please keep that feedback coming! We really appreciate it.

Today, with hotfixes that are all now live, we’ve made the following adjustments to offensive and utility abilities in Plunderstorm:

• Fire Whirl Movement speed bonus reduced to 70% across all ranks (was 140%).
  • Developers’ notes: Our goal is to balance Fire Whirl’s effectiveness relative to the performance of other offensive spells without detracting from the effectiveness of other utility spells.
• Star Bomb cast time reduced to 2 seconds across all ranks (was 2.25 seconds).
  • Developers’ notes: We’d like to improve the effectiveness of this ability.
• Toxic Smackerel cooldown reduced at ranks 1, 2, and 3. Rank 4 unchanged.
  • Developers’ note: This is intended to ensure this ability is more in-line with expected power at early levels.
• Explosive Caltrops trap radius increased by 40%.
  • Developers’ notes: The traps placed by Explosive Caltrops are intended to counter close-range aggression, but this felt a bit inconsistent because the traps were smaller than intended.
• Lightning Bulwark channel time increased to 2 seconds (was 1.25 seconds).
  • Developers’ notes: Our goal here is to extend the potential window for counter play opportunities.

We’ll have all of the above, along with more updates to Plunderstorm in our next hotfixes update.

Today, with hotfixes that are all now live, we’ve made the following adjustments to offensive and utility abilities in Plunderstorm:

• Fire Whirl damage reduced by 20%.
  • Developers’ notes: we want to reign in Fire Whirl’s damage a bit more, so that it’s close to the performance of other offensive spells.
• Faeform now provides a 50% damage reduction for the first 1 second you’re in Faeform (was 90%).
  • Developers’ notes: Faeform offered too much defense without providing for counterplay.
• Rime Arrow cooldown increased at higher ranks, and now has a cooldown of 10/8.5/7/5.5 seconds (was 10/8/6/4 seconds).
  • Developers’ notes: Rime Arrow’s short cooldown made it a too-low-risk poke, often used to deny healing and chase fleeing targets. Increasing the cooldown at higher ranks will give targets more chances to act against Rime Arrow.

We’ll have all of the above, along with more updates to Plunderstorm in our next hotfixes update.

Avast there!

After our changes yesterday to increase the amount of plunder you get in a match, we saw an unintended side-effect: players were leveling quicker in duos than expected! Plunder gold piles picked up in Plunderstorm contribute towards the overall amount of experience you gain during a match, especially thanks to a bug at level 3.

When leveling up in a match is too fast, some teams get ahead of others much quicker which can lead to less competition. Players hitting max level too early can remove the sense of power progression for the rest of a match, as well.

So this evening, we’ve deployed a hotfix to straighten that all out. We’ve lowered the overall amount of experience players are getting in Duos so that it’s more in line with the pace of leveling in Solos matches.

Keep on plunderin’!