Update #45 Release Notes June 24 2015

Contracts

Added Contracts which are gameplay objectives that can be completed at your own pace over the course of multiple games. You can choose which contracts you want to accept in Profile->Contracts.



You can have up to 5 Contracts at any one time.



New contracts are offered daily.



You can remove Contracts you previously accepted but no longer wish to continue.



Completing a contract will earn you 250 experience.



Completing a contract will also earn you a loot drop from the same drop table as when you achieve 100 reward points at the end of a match.



First Win Of The Day has been removed.

Quests

The first quest start time has been reduced to 300 from 360 seconds.



The inter-quest time has been reduced to 120 from 360 seconds.



A second quest item slot has been added because it is now possible to have both a current quest item and the previous quest's reward item in-hand at the same time.



Tower Siege quest's Fortified buff's Armor and MR bonus reduced to 150/190/230/270/310 from 180/220/260/300/340



Divine Lost Army now spawns 6 waves of heavenly soldiers instead of 9.

Heroes

Lithoron's Landslide can now travel through blocked areas of the map so long as he could end up at a non-blocked area of the map at the end of his travel.

Shepherd's Flock

Spell casts to spawn Sheep reduced to 5 from 6

Sheep lifetime increased to 10 from 8

When Sheep spawn from Penn's spellcasts they now spawn within a radius of 4 instead of 2.5



Torchflies

Magic Damage increased to 60/95/130/165 from 45/80/115/150



Battering Ram

Slow reduced to 35%/40%/45%/50% from 50% (with Ramhorn Staff: reduced to 15%/20%/25%/30% from 30%)



Penn now has steam stats and achievements.



Fixed up of Penn's tool tip strings.

Glyphs

Reduced Bonus Damage to neutral monsters +5% (from +10%)



Reduced base gold given from baited large monster to +25 (from +30)



Offering buffs no longer expire on death. Susceptibility to strong counter jungling was already a relatively large risk with Offering so we're softening the penalty of worst case starts.





Offering Buff Changes:

Thorn Armour Buff (From Wood Imps)

Bonuses now scale with Hero Level

Default

Increased Bonus Armour to 9 + 0.4/Hero Level (from +10)

Increased Damage Reflection to 6 + 0.6/Hero Level (from 6)

Strong Plant Upgrade

Increased Bonus Armour to 12 + 0.53/Hero Level (from +15)

Increased Damage Reflection to 10 + 0.67/Hero Level (from 9)

Predatory Senses Buff (From Dagger Tusks)

Removed vision granted at killed Large Monster position.

Added Marks the first enemy undetected hero to come within a moderate radius of you, granting vision of the area surrounding the marked Hero's position for a short duration.

Default Detection Radius 8.0

Strong Beast Upgrade Detection Radius 9.5

Added When an enemy hero is marked, you gain a temporary bonus to your movement speed for 5 seconds.

Default Bonus Movement Speed: +15%

Strong Beast Upgrade Bonus Movement Speed: +20%





Default

Increased Bonus Damage to neutral monsters to +12% (from +10%)

Strong Passive Damage Upgrade:

Increased Bonus Damage to neutral monsters to +16% (from +15%)



Match Making

Added party break up functionality for matchmaking. If the party size is greater than 2, the party may be broken up to create balanced teams but all players will still be in the same match. We will adjust the threshold as the population changes and based on player feedback.



Added a new Easy Ai Cooperative mode for players who find the default Ai too difficult.



The auto-accept game assembly dialog now informs you that you have auto-accepted.



The match searching activity box is alway shown in the front end even when you are setting up a challenge or other single player game.



Match search tool tips now show region breakdowns again.



Match search tool tips now show the number of players searching.

Community

Players are no longer able to send whispers to non friends though the in-game interface. There was too much verbal abuse.



Auto join general chat is now disabled by default to help minimize verbal abuse.



Players can now enable/disable team chat and its disabled by default. If its disabled players will only receive messages from their friends and party members. This is to help reduce verbal abuse.



NOTE: All communication options have been reset.

Twitch

Fixed a bug that resulted in Twitch ratings looking like they were reset if multiple accounts were sharing the same Twitch stream.



Just for this update, players will have to relog into Twitch to count as having logged in before to be eligible for viewing rewards.

Misc

Numerous optimizations.



Spelling and grammar fixes.



Unique UI Sounds for Hero Selection for non-default skins.

We took a pass on our two jungle-centric Glyphs and adjusted their values to further differentiate their roles (Offering grants jungle sustain and the special buffs, while Slaughter grants increased jungle clear time and monster objective control). We also tweaked the values of the buffs granted from killing baited Wood Imp camps and baited Dagger Tusk camps bring their power levels up to comparable levels to the buffs granted by the Veric and Leaf Scorpion camps.