Grab a seat by the fire and get your s’mores stuff ready, because Montana has a pretty sweet story (well, maybe more like a “tall tale”) to tell. You can be the judge because Battleborn’s fourth Story Op, Montana and the Demon Bear is available today! Get fired up and join Montana as he relays the harrowing story of his battle with the Demon Bear, a ferocious Varelsi beast. Want to get s’more of the story? You’re in luck, because each playthrough unlocks new details and insights into the epic confrontation. Pretty in tents, huh?We’ve got several character related adjustments to let you know about this week. This batch of hot fixes will begin rolling out today at 12pm PT (3pm ET).

Pendles:

Reduced the duration of the slow on Injection from 4 seconds to 2 seconds

Reduced the duration of the slow added by Potent Venom from 2 seconds to 1 second

Mellka:

Increased the duration of Venom from 4 seconds to 8 seconds and increased the tick interval from once every .5 seconds to once every second

Increased the amount of Health Regeneration granted by her Adrenaline Rush augment from 7 to 14hp/s

Increased the base damage of her Custom Machine Pistol by 12% from 24 to 27 at level 1

Beatrix:

Decreased Beatrix’s base health from 1310 to 1011 at level 1

Decreased the lifesteal on melee granted by her Bloodshot augment from 75% to 50%

Decreased the lifesteal granted by her Leech Therapy augment from 40% to 30%

Decreased the magnitude Speed buff granted by her Vitality Chirality augment from 50% to 30%

Fixed an issue that caused Outbreak to last longer than intended

Meltdown: Finale

Increased the experience gained by killing minions by about 50%

Increased the “advantage” threshold from 30 points to 50

Decreased MX.Ultra Bot base health approximately 30% from 6300 to 4500 at level 0





Upcoming Queue Changes

As always, we’ve kept our eye on how you have played in the queues (a.k.a. playlists) and have some new fun and small adjustments this week!

This Week:

Quick Match – Unchanged, and going strong! Again, this is a great way to get into the casual “Normal Game” and we’ll keep it that way for now.

Bots Battle – So, we hear you folks love some Bots Battle! Well, it’s here to stay on all platforms! We continue to believe that this is a great introductory / casual experience, and we’ve seen very active play and short queue times here across the board. We have heard some great feature requests here, so we’re looking at some possibilities for enhancing bots in a future update.

Big Head Rumble – As we mentioned in the Montana Stream last week, Big Head Rumble is appearing as a fun queue to celebrate the big man with a small head. Big Head Rumble features all maps and modes and enforces character uniqueness within your team. However, every character’s heads are sized up to mega-supa-size! And yes, we expect critical hitting to be ridiculous. This queue will run until Monday (February 6th) morning at 8am PT!

Versus Draft – We’ve certainly watched some great teams queue up in Versus Draft and have experienced some really tightly competitive matches there! Many others have gotten their fill of the high-tier competition and have moved back to more casual queues. So, we’ll be taking a break from Versus Draft queue on PC this Thursday February, 2nd, and will be rotating it out from Xbox One and PS4 on Monday, February 6th. Read below for future draft plans!





Upcoming changes (What’s in store for Draft):

First reminder, Ban and Pick draft and Captains draft modes are always available in Private Match. If you want your custom private tournaments, grab 10 players and go!

For public draft, we believe that drafting is an important part of the competitive future of Battleborn, and we have some enhancements in the works to take drafting and competitive further than we’ve gone before. To get the most out of our current draft system, we want to move to a regularly scheduled appearance of draft queues so that people who really want good draft play can better coordinate play times and get the most out of their experiences. With that in mind, here’s the current plan for the near future of draft queues:

Next Thursday, February 9th, a new queue will appear called “Solo Queue”. This queue will use Ban/Pick Draft mode like Versus Draft, but will restrict entry into the queue to single players. We’ll use a new ELO ramp for this queue and start everyone at a fresh new ELO rating as we kick off solo queue play.

The following Tuesday, February 14th – yes, Valentine’s Day – Solo Queue will become Solo/Duo Queue allowing of single players to match in as well as teams of 2 players. Solo/Duo queue will be active until the following Monday morning.

In the following weeks, we will move to a weekly schedule for both Solo draft queue and Versus Draft queues. The current plan is for Solo or Solo/Duo queue to be available every Wednesday as a mid-week competitive draft queue, and for Versus Draft to be available all day Saturday a weekend competitive queue.

As we’ve mentioned in previous Battleplans, we have some other fun in store for temporary event queues in the future, so stay tuned! Also, as always, we look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas.











Choosing this week’s Community Spotlight was a no-brainer. Last weekend, we had the opportunity to attend PAX South 2017. Going to PAX is always fun, because we get to see so many of our friends from the community (and meet new ones). This time around, we ran into an old friend named Cris, known here on the forums as @RollingEwok. Cris has a knack for creating amazing and larger-than-life cosplays. This time around, she created an INCREDIBLE Kleese cosplay that really blew us away. You can see a couple photos and a video below. All we can say on this one is “WOW”. Nice job, Cris!

















This week, our informants on Tempest intercepted Nova’s emergency broadcast log…

[Activity log from the UPR ship Nova, dated 19959.56]

.>>Initiate docking procedure with Eidolon-class battlestation, “The Brothership”

.>>Requesting clearance from General Mike…

.>>Request confirmed, cleared for docking and disembarkation

.>>Updating passenger count: 7> 0

NOVA: Oh no, they left Montana behind. Cheer up, big guy. You know, I got left behind, too. A bunch of times, actually, now that I think about it.

MONTANA: Ehhh, it’s no problem, Ghalt says someone’s gotta watch the ship while they’re shmoozin’ with the Mikes. Besides, I don’t really go in for that “intel briefing” stuff, ya know?

NOVA: I do know. These “diplomatic” missions are like, really, really boring. Lots of sitting around, which is pretty much the worst if you’re a ship. Oo, hang on, incoming uploads.

.>>Updating navigation maps:

.>>Detritus Ring> Chunks Wishingbone, Wishingbone II, Wishingbone III […] Wishingbone X

.>>Allied Ship> The Brothership (current location: Detritus Ring)

.>>Portal Dense Regions> Sec. 759.k62, Sec. 684.c12, […] Sec. 215.y69

.>>Imperium Outposts> Quietus (voidsap refinery village)

NOVA: A refinery village? Buckle up, Montana, we’re going on our own mission.

.>>Begin engine ignition sequence

MONTANA: Woah, WOAH, wait up!

.>>Updating passenger count: 0>1

.>>Initiate undocking procedure

MONTANA: Uhhh, what’s going on?

NOVA: No biggie, we’re just going to swing by Tempest, shouldn’t take more than half an hour. Depending on how fast your skinny legs can go.

MONTANA: Hey, cool it with the commentary, these babies carried me through nearly 30 years of combat.

NOVA: That’s a lot of combat.

MONTANA: Plus 2 months of tap dancing lessons. Speaking of fast, how are we gonna get to Tempest in half an hour?

NOVA: Shortcuts are everywhere, you just have to know where to look.

.>>Calculating route…

.>>Factoring gravity assist maneuver via: [emergent portal bloom sequence: VP A156631.0-049722]

.>>Estimated travel time: 11 minutes 38 seconds

MONTANA: Didn’t Kleese say something about those portals making your head go screwy?

NOVA: I’m sure it’ll be fine.

.>>Engage drive

//WARNING: PROXIMITY ALARM [GRAVITIC ANOMALY]

//WRRIRNG: PRZMMIYALAALMR [[[GGVIMONMATICL[[[

//WRAIGI!H:::FPIORITT^ALARMxxxxx[{{{ANMGER…>][[&

.>>…

.>>…

.>>…

.>>Restarting core systems…

.>>Navigation, online

.>>Engines, online

.>>Comms, online

.>>Shields, online

.>>Systems nominal

.>>Updating passenger count: 1>2

NOVA: See? What did I tell you. Totally fine, just not so great at math.

.>>Initiate landing procedure

MONTANA: Man, and I thought Echelon was creepy! Who’s building and abandoning fancy houses way out here?

NOVA: I blame gentrifica–

MONTANA: HOLD ON, Nova, don’t make any sudden moves.

NOVA: I’ll try and contain myself. What’s going on?

MONTANA: There’s some kind of bear! And I don’t have my gun on me. I guess I’ll have to WRESTLE it into submission!

NOVA: Your gun is right behind you.

MONTANA: Shhh! I don’t wanna spook the bear! I’ll just put it in a gentle headlock…

NOVA: Hey, no wrestling in the engineering bay, there’s fraaa-g-gg-llll

//WARNING: PROCESSING CORE DISCONNECTED

//The core was not properly ejected

//If possible, always safely eject a core before disconnecting

//Data may have been lost or corrupted

//Before disconnecting, consult the Use Guide for instructions on safe core removal

//Running minimum systems in Safe Mode

.>>Updating passenger count: 2>0

NOVA: That was SO not a bear. Great.

.>>Scanning for local Battleborn…

//WARNING: Scanning range reduced to minimum proximity while in Safe Mode

.>>[6] Battleborn detected (Tempest): Alani, Boldur, Deande, Montana, Shayne, Thorn

.>>Transmitting distress signal…

.>>Receipt confirmed: Alani, Boldur, Montana, Shayne, Thorn

.>>Additional message (Shayne): “It’s cool if I bring the big guy, right?”

.>>Auto-response (Deande): “Currently overseeing Constable Cuddles’ walkies with his caretaker.”

NOVA: Well? Are you going to stand there and tap dance, or get that bear?

MONTANA: MONTANAAAA!







You’ve probably heard about the Choctaw Festival of Gaming that’s taking place in Durant, OK between March 3rd-5th. We mentioned it in last week’s Battleplan because Battleborn will be one of the games featured during the three day tournament. In preparation for the tournament, the online qualifiers will be held on February 11th at 9am PT (12pm ET). If you’re planning to compete in the tourney, make sure to get all the details and get signed up as soon as you can If you’re a fan of skins, then the next couple of weeks should be pretty exciting. We’ll be rolling out several new designs for some of your favorite Battleborn including Shayne and Aurox, Boldur, and Kelvin. Not to be out done, you’ll see Whiskey Foxtrot and Ernest in there as well. You’ll be able to find these skins in the Battleborn Marketplace today. With all that in mind, don’t forget – you can now earn Platinum in-game through the newly introduced Quests system! Now get in there, do those quests, and get all the skins!