Agents, as discussed last week, we are rolling out a hotpatch to address a variety of issues reported since season 4’s launch. As we are looking for a quick turnaround time for this update, we have kept the scope of changes quite focused. Let’s dig into it.

General

• Reduced smoke build-up in front of vigil’s weapon 1 when overheating to prevent obstructing the view.
• NPCs will no longer be scared from extremely far away when the extract is called.
• Abilities that stick to characters will no longer stick to allies to prevent unfair strategies (Vigil mines, Yu-Mi Expertise 3).

Balance
Agents

Vigil
Weapons
Our main angle of adjustment is on Caliburn that has become the clear standout in terms of raw prowess in Vigil’s kit. We want the overheat management to be a bit more of a factor and the melting potential of the weapon to be slightly slower so that enemies get a better chance to counterplay.

Additionally, we are tweaking falloff ranges on Arondight to make it more in-line with the Duke rather than Ace’s snipers.

Weapon 1 :Caliburn

• Damage 9 => 8
• Headshot Damage 12 => 11
• Heat generated per shot 0.05 => 0.06
• Heat Decrease per second -.65 => 0.6
• Delay per heat starts decreasing .25s => .45s
• Max Ammo 150 => 140
• Starting Ammo 50 => 35
• Ammo gathered per pack 25 => 35

Weapon 3 : Aarondight

• Now uses the “high caliber” falloff preset instead of a sniper preset.
• Damage falloff start distance 55m => 25m
• Damage falloff maximum distance 75m => 35m
• Max damage reduction beyond falloff range 80% => 70%

Passives
Our main design goal with this balance pass is to remove the possibility for Vigil to have infinite uptime on all her passives. Having a device with the property to lock a door is an extremely powerful ability and rival players should have the possibility to exploit a downtime that is long enough for them to hack even a purple door.

We want Vigil’s passive to be a bit less spammy while staying very powerful options that can benefit your playstyle. We are already thinking about ways to better handle these cooldown vs uptime in the future so that they do not feel too limiting for Vigil players, but this is a bit beyond the scope of a hotpatch.

To close things off, we are aware that the proximity mine is currently seen as the underwhelming part of the passive kit. As you can imagine, having bonus AOE damage at your fingertip is easy to overtune, so we want to take our time to consider what we can do to make it a bit more useful without making it a monster, especially in team fights.

Passive 1: Sonar

• Cooldown 5s => 15s
• Duration 20s => 10s

Passive 2: Proximity Mine

• Cooldown 5s => 12s

Passive 3: EMF Jammer

• Cooldown 5s => 16.5s
• Duration 20s => 8s

Gadget
Umbrella Shield

• The umbrella shield no longer lets bullets pass through for .5 seconds when dropped, only characters. This allows you to drop it in front of you while running but will prevent you from getting shot after a drop, sometimes resulting in frustrating deaths.

Bug Fixes
General

• Fixed loading screen tips becoming very small (is this a tip for ants?!)
• The mythical avatar of Squire holding his spyglass is now part of loot briefcases.
• Fixed an issue where the controller was not able to enter the pause menu while spectating in some instances.
• Added distance checks to prevent NPCs in large rooms from being scared from very far away.
• Fixed Gold and purple field upgrades not awarding any XP.
• Fixed spectator mode having extremely slow sensitivity depending on player settings.
• Fixed an issue where network info would display incorrect ping information.

Levels
Sound Eclipse

• Fixed stuck spots for NPCs in Sound Eclipse purple rooms inside the vault.

Fragrant Shore

• Fixed disappearing book case when at a certain distance in Fragrant Shore’s vault.

Silver Reef

• Fix to problematic spawn points in team modes

Diamond Spire

• Added a ‘kill plane’ on elevators outside of level bounds in Diamond Spire, preventing players from stalling the game there with the package.
• Fix to problematic spawn points in team modes

Agents
Ace

• Fixed an issue where Ace’s big blind could be seen by enemies in some situations.

Sasori

• Fixed an issue where storing kunai after a sword swing with Sasori can make players shoot an additional dart.

Vigil

• Vigil mines will no longer obstruct first person view if stuck on your character’s face.
• Fixed an issue where Vigil’s proximity mine could cause damage behind glass walls.
• Vigil’s missing intro pose has been restored and is now available to unlock.
• Corrected Galatine’s description to remove mention of projectiles (it’s not a projectile weapon)

Octo

• Fixed Octo’s neutralize on expertise 3 having a set duration that expires even when he is currently looking at you.

Yu-Mi

• Fixed an issue where victims of Yu-Mi’s bubble could have a stuck status effect that would not go away when mixed with bubbles from the booby trap passive.

Hans

• Reduced instances of flashing lights in Hans’s kit.