Hello, everyone! We’re less than 1 week away from the 5.3 update and we’ve got some exciting news to share… 5.3 will contain the new Emerald Rank feature! This will allow you to create Subclasses for all of your Emerald Heroes by choosing which Level Scaling Stats you think work best for them. In preparation of this release, we wanted to give you another quick overview of how the feature works and highlight some of the changes that were made in response to the feedback you gave us a while back.
Emerald Rank introduces a new stat called Ambition
- Once you promote a Hero to Emerald Rank, that Hero will be granted a new stat called Ambition.
- Remember that Ambition adds Levels to a Hero when its Level would be used to determine the effectiveness of a Level Scaling Stat during combat.
-
New Behavior!!
- Based on your previous feedback, we’ve made it so that Ambition is only active in combat between two Emerald Rank or higher Heroes.
- This means that when a Yellow Rank or lower Hero is fighting an Emerald Hero, the effectiveness of their Level Scaling stats will not be affected by the Emerald Hero’s Ambition.
Creating Subclasses
- Hero Subclasses are comprised of a combination of two Stat Slots.
- Stat Slots can be filled in by selecting one of the seven Level Scaling Stats from the drop down menu.
- Level Scaling Stats include Normal and Fantastic Crit, Crit Damage, Armor and Reality Negation, Tenacity, and Evasion.
- When you choose a Level Scaling Stat a few things happen:
- That Hero gains enough of that stat to overcome the Ambition given to all Emerald Heroes.
- They also gain an amount based on their Emerald Stat Tier and Emerald Rank.
- To add clarity on how these stats work, the tooltips on the Edit Subclass Screen will calculate the base effectiveness to expect in combat against Emerald enemies.
- These calculations use the Hero’s total stat, taking into account the pre-combat amount gained from all sources.
- Each Stat Selection also corresponds to an adjective.
- These adjectives are displayed in the Stat Selection Tooltips and also get added to your Hero’s Subclass description.
- This description can be found on the Hero Info Flyouts so you can do any last minute battle prep before committing to an important fight
- Feel free to experiment with different stat combinations since there is no cost to changing your stat selections!
Emerald Stat Tiers and Rank Bonuses
- Every Hero is assigned an Emerald Stat Tier, ranging from 1-5.
- These Tier assignments may change over time as we continue to do balance changes.
- Emerald Stat Tiers control how much of each Level Scaling Stat a Hero gains when selected.
- Tier 1 Heroes will gain the most, while Tier 5 Heroes gain the least.
- To keep up with increasing Team Levels, Heroes will gain a bonus to each of their selected stats based on their Emerald Rank.
- Heroes will gain 5 of each selected stat for every Emerald Rank they have, starting with Emerald +1.
- Keep promoting your Heroes to the highest Rank available to ensure that your Subclasses remain as effective as possible!
Balance Changes to other Progression Systems
- Remember that our primary Goal for this feature is to improve the health of our Level Scaling Stats system.
- We are still planning to make changes to other areas of the game that provide Level Scaling Stats to Heroes.
- This would include areas like Hero Skills, Memory Disks, Mods, and Battle Badges.
- Our intention with any changes we make to existing systems will be to either:
- Keep as much of the current behavior intact as possible.
- Improve stats for Heroes that have them at ineffective amounts.
- Emerald will be an integral part of your Heroes moving forward but we’re striving to make sure that other systems continue to add meaningful power to your Heroes.
Well, that about wraps it up for Emerald Rank. There is one more slight improvement coming alongside the update that we think you’ll enjoy… but we’ll just leave that as a surprise. Are you as excited as we are?! Which Hero are you going to make a Subclass for first? Which Hero do you think will benefit the most from this feature? Let us know in the comments below, along with any other feedback you have. If you have more questions or feedback about the new rarity once it comes out, we’re also excited to announce that we’ll be having a Live Dev Q&A a week after its release! Keep an eye out for a definitive time as we get closer. Thanks for taking the time to read this preview and we’ll see you next week!
