BALANCE UPDATE: Patriot and Leader

MCOC Team

Hey all,

Balance Team here again with an update on the latest round of Champions up for review, Arcade and Northstar!

Patriot

Patriot entered the contest targeting non-damaging Debuffs in a unique way. Weaponizing the new Reversal mechanic, Patriot was looking to counter Defenders who use a combo of threatening Debuffs, Miss, and Block Penetration (Photon likely being no surprise here). Unfortunately, we’re seeing Patriot perform lower than we’d like across his target matchups, Photon included. We will be looking to address this via rebalancing with the goal of reinforcing his identity as an attacker who can efficiently counter the target matchups above, with the upgrades also increasing his performance in day to day type matchups.

The Leader

An attacking Leader was designed to counter 2 common Mystic threats in Ability Power Gain and Regeneration, rewarding the right matchup and skilled gameplay with his Green Door mechanic. As The Leader is the first Champion to use the powerful Severe version of Debuffs, we’re pleased to see players capitalize on its versatility, as shown by his success in matchups where other Science options have traditionally struggled. The Leader’s Defensive kit was designed to disrupt and stall, forcing opponents to manage the damage mitigation attached to his Debuffs and the threat of an opened Green Door. His performance as a Defender so far is aligned with his targets, with his high average fight time as a Defender being a notable standout. Overall, we’re happy with how The Leader has landed so far and no changes are incoming.

What’s Next

Going into 2025 Balance is going to be taking a different approach to how we update champions in the “Rebalance” Process. Currently, the timeline is at 3 months, the Balance team will communicate whether or not a Champion will be Re-Tuned, then at 6 months after a Champions release their Re-tune will go live. For 2025 this second half of the process will be looking a bit different. We’ll be moving to “Batch” releases of re-tunes with two “Batches” a year as the goal. Patriot will be the first champion affected by this, meaning rather than his Re-tune coming out in 3-months, it will release with a later announced “Batch” of Re-Tunes. For more information on this, you can reference this post: (Balance Cadence Update).

Before that, you can still expect ARCADE, NORTHSTAR, and SILVER SABLE’s tuning updates to be released in January, with our (48.1) build.

You can also expect communication about BETA RAY BILL & ENCHANTRESS' Balance Review toward the middle of January!