Welcome to Glitched Out!!
Interdimensional rifts have brought new champions and traits into the city, created Glitched Out Carousels, and welcomed in a whole host of new Tacticians that thrive amidst the chaos. For these notes, I’ll cover the changes to existing systems within Monsters Attack! but for a detailed breakdown on the new champions, traits, mechanics, or cosmetics, check out any of the above links.
Alright, let’s portal to the notes. ***PORTAL NOISES***
We hope you all are enjoying the Glitched Out Carousels, InfiniTeam combos, and more, but with our first week of the mid-set coming to a close, we’re ending sustain-carry-week in favor of diverse-meta-week. Jeez none of that rolls off the keyboard like Warweek does.
One thing to note is that we are limited in what we can and cannot do with B-patches, so while we are aware of some of these swings being exceptionally large (Vex nerf and Hacker movement), these are changes that must be made for the better of the meta. Expect us to do some cleanup with patch 13.7 that put these overnerfed units and traits into a more healthy state.
The clear winners of the mid-set are comps that can utilize a combination of powerful A.D.M.I.N. bonuses, Hacker 2, and a singular carry that can sustain themselves throughout the fight.
You’d think these carries were Glitched Out! With how strong they are. No, not you Samira. Can’t find the Warwick nerfs here—check the section above!
LaserCorps Heart and Soul provide too much access to steep damage thresholds early on in the game, so while you can still pick up the Emblem via Tome of Traits, we’ve removed the guaranteed access to higher trait breakpoints with the base Augments.
True to its name, Vex’s Joy Siphon, was just taking away too much joy for her opponents. How vexing.
Making the way too powerful Rule of Four make more sense, by making less gold.
Riot Mort and Peter Whalen go over TFT’s swap to three sets a year after our final mid-set during our ninth set in our latest Dev Diary!
The best place to read about the new personalization content coming in Glitched Out!! is right here, but the second best place is just below this context line. As a reminder, all our cosmetic content goes live March 23rd at 5 AM (AEDT), which is a bit after the rest of the mid-set goes live, so be sure to refresh the store then!
Just like all our Passes, the Glitched Out!! Pass gives you a bunch of free content as you play and collect XP, but if you upgrade to the Pass+ for 1295 RP/TC, you'll have access to ALL the level rewards throughout the pass. That includes additional Little Legends, Star Shards, Ultra Threat Whisker secret lair arenas, and eventually Whisker’s Mewtant Lab Tier 3 Arena (below)! As a reminder, you can always upgrade to the Pass+ later, and retroactively receive everything you would have unlocked with the Pass+ active.
The Pass+ will also grant you access to Pass+ exclusive Little Legends: Nemesis Nimblefoot and the super evil, Super Evil Sprite (they’re super evil).
During your hectic navigation of the portal-riddled streets of Spatulopolis, you may discover even more of Whisker’s favorite evil places to sit (if they fit).
The only place to sink your claws into the new Monsters Attack! Mythic arena with the vicious villain themselves, Ultra Threat Whisker!
First on their list of things to destroy: your favorite sweater. Next: the world. You can creep on their creepy new animations in our Pass and More article...is that a Dango in their stomach?
Monsters Attack! is more than just a set name now. It’s also the name of our brand new Mythic arena, where your Tactician can pull up to the afterparty on a Star Nemesis inspired monster! As a Mythic arena, it comes with dynamic board elements, ceremonies, and the imminent destruction of Spatulopolis—I hope everyone found a portal to escape in time.
Cache moves everything around him, the Zed with the data, big data rules over you, yo.
You don’t have to come from the PROJECT universe to be on the cutting edge. Chibi Zed is available for direct purchase alongside his boom, Razor Shuriken for 1900 RP. Both Chibi PROJECT: Zed and Chibi Zed have some rather dashing animations to distract your foes as you clean their boards. Check them out below:
It’s time to meet the heroic, the villainous, and the Rango squad.
Everything is bite sized for Shork. Shork and their variants are available for direct purchase for 750 RP (rare) and 925 RP for their epic variants. Check out their variants below: Shork (Base), Super Shork, Bite Sized Shork, Star Guardian Shork (Epic), Star Nemesis Shork (Epic), Kingpin Shork (Legendary).
Commonly found in rivers, but recently found adrift in the Convergence, Scuttle learned to walk on two legs so as to be more easily seen by the commuters of Spatulopolis.
You can find the newly bipedal Scuttle and their variants for direct purchase for 750 RP (rare) and 925 RP for their epic variants. Check out Scuttle’s variants below: Scuttle (Base), Swole Scuttle, Star Guardian Scuttle, Dapper Scuttle (Epic), Super Scuttle (Epic), Star Nemesis Scuttle (Legendary).
For Noctero, justice never sleeps! At least…not at night. Let’s see WHO you can pick up for 750 RP (rare) and 925 RP for their epic variants. Check out Noctero’s variants below: Noctero (Base), Pulsefire Noctero, Star Guardian Noctero, Star Nemesis Noctero (Epic), Super Noctero (Epic), Gentle Hoot Noctero (Legendary).
By their powers combined… they’re still not very powerful. The Rango Squad rolls in to prevent crime and stop villains, and they never roll out. You can roll down with any of the Convergence’s best rollers directly from the shop for 925 RP. Check out the Rango Squad variants below: Red Hot Rango (Epic), Swift Blue Rango (Epic), Lightning Quick Rango (Epic), Fierce Rose Rango (Epic), Resplendent Rango (Epic).
Bundle | Contents | Price |
Beyond Human Bundle | Glitched Out!! Pass+ Chibi Zed 27 Zed’s Data Cache 4 Bonus Zed’s Data Cache |
13150 RP/TC |
Full Scale Bundle | Glitched Out!! Pass+ 27 Ultra Nefarious Capsule 4 Bonus Ultra Nefarious Capsule |
11630 RP/TC |
Righteous Attitude Bundle | Smug Emote 1 Ultra Nefarious Capsule 1 Zed’s Data Cache Pulsefire Noctero |
550 RP/TC |
All rewards will be distributed throughout this patch! They may not arrive day of, but expect to see them slowly roll out throughout this patch’s live duration.
You’ve defended the city for half a set, and if you made it to Gold or higher during this time, then there’ll be a special Chibi Star Guardian Lux emote for you to flex with!
And for those trading Heroes and items as a team, if you obtained Double Up Gold or higher, then you’ll get the following emotes to celebrate with your partner(s)!
If you played Hyper Roll and finished Green, Blue, Purple, or Hyper tier then you’ll get a heroic Sprite emote to flaunt!
While these notes are scratching the surface of the changes to the existing systems in Monsters Attack!, you can explore new units, traits and more in a lot more detail thanks to our 3rd party friends. Check out a couple of their sites here:
Threat Hero Augments were showing up too often with our updated Hero Augment distribution system. Unlike Spatulopolis, we’re protecting you from seeing too many Threats by implementing a few rules.
Interdimensional-rift-sized changes are coming with our mid-set mechanic, Glitched Out Carousels, that you can read more about here. It’s worth mentioning that you can read up on some of our newest Hero Augments using the above link, too!
Glitched Out Carousels make each game feel distinct as early as Stage 2 by imbuing comps with items and tools from beyond that add variance to your comp despite your limited early game access to units, economy, and traits.
With the mid-set goal of doubling-down on the best aspects of a set while doing away with the not-so-great parts of the set, we’ve retired a few Hero Augments that were either not working well in Monsters Attack! or that we just had more fun ideas for.
Recon had power and functionality issues throughout Monsters Attack! Even when the trait was strong, there would be the occasional Vaynespotting, a phenomenon from League of Legends where carries would attempt to make a highlight play only to lose the affection of their teammates due to over-aggressive positioning. While this may be fun for those who play against Recon, even after several AI corrections, the frustrating experience of having your Recon carry roll into the opposing Duelist frontline was not worth keeping around.
With Galio leaving and Sivir revealing her secret identity as an InfiniTeam agent, only Janna was left with the Civilian trait, which we opted to remove entirely and give Janna some compensation carry power. Expect more Janna context on the forecast, later in these patch notes.
A.D.M.I.N. has been adjusted to accommodate Soraka’s departure and Warwick’s return. For example, on cast was largely carried by Soraka’s spam casts, so without her we’ve had to ship some considerable buffs for the option.
With Twisted Fate subbing in for Zed, vertical Duelist is now in need of frontline for their late game carry to ramp. By adding damage reduction to the vertical version, we give the mostly-melee comp some much needed survivability. That’ll help their new carry (TF) pump out the damage in explosive end game fights. With this new Damage Reduction we’ve had to pull some power out of the ramping Attack Speed from the trait.
Hacker is being updated to a 5-piece trait, as you are now able to reach 4 Hackers without an emblem, thanks to the Riftwalker trait’s best friend, Zac. We wanted to keep Hacker Emblem in the game (the set IS called Glitched Out!! after all) so we added additional tiers to Hacker while keeping it splashable with easy-to-hit breakpoints.
Ox Force has always been in a weird spot for us. Is it a frontline trait, a self-peel trait for Aphelios, or an Attack Speed steroid trait? Since it was all of these, it never really shined as any one of these. We’re changing it to a purely defensive trait that gives both Armor and MR, so you can splash it for a strong frontline, or hit 4 Ox Force to run a more durable Viego (recommended with Bloodthirster or Gunblade) as your carry. The trait still has the brief invulnerability, since this feature is the most visible and interesting aspect of the trait—I’m a big fan of it, but someone on the team *cough* Mort *cough* thinks less of it. Good thing they don’t have power over what I write here, right DortMog? That’s right—this is the Prism show and Ox Force is the best Force.
Being able to hit 6 Renegade without Augments meant we should probably put a chase breakpoint in there. But since going 3/6/7 wouldn't really work, we restructured the trait to 3/5/7 to ensure there was still a vertical Emblem chase for the trait.
When players shot for the stars by building vertical Star Guardian they often landed on the moon, lost along with their LP due to how difficult playing early game versions of the comp was. Despite having Guardian in their name, the comp often needed their own frontline guardians. With the trait being a fan favorite (even Urgot loves them), we’re restructuring it to be easier to splash and for a less punishing vertical persuit.
The 2/4 Sureshot breakpoint felt a little clunky. Players should be sure about giving the trait a shot without the necessity of hitting an elusive 5-cost, Emblem, or Augment.
Reconnecting with her marksman roots, Ashe has joined a more accurate and AD focused trait that’s sure to prevent her from rolling into the clutches of the nearest Warwick.
We’re changing Lux’s targeting to make her more reliable and less luck based. By making her cast on her current target, we also don’t increase her power substantially. Now you have some autonomy over who your Lux targets, and hopefully can line them up against an AD enemy. With her newfound consistency in 2 Star Guardians and targeting, we also preemptively nerfed her mana making her take 6 autos to cast instead of 5.
Ezreal seems to be everyone’s friend nowadays, but most importantly, he’s a friend of himself. His newfound self-love and Quickdraw traits have added power to the Underground’s prettiest unit, resulting in our preemptive nerf of his base spell.
With her small Mana pool, Kai’Sa did not work well with Star Guardian, so we’re charging up her spell to make it worthy of carrying a reroll Star Guardian comp.
Vayne may have lost Recon, but we’ve been able to reconnect her with some buffs that will leave her rather strong in her remaining traits.
We’ve added quite a few new 4-costs that you can read about in gameplay overview. As for here, we will continue to discuss the units that are sticking around, but changing just a bit.
Bel’Veth’s ability to ramp is matched only by her ability to make new friends…with Void Remoras.
With the additional damage Miss Fortune can receive from splashing Quickdraw, we’ve had to remove some of the bullet from Bullet Time—I guess you can say she bit the bullet this time? Nope, going to have my editor delete that one. Editor’s note: Not a chance. You sit there and think about what you’ve done.
Is this how Isolde became smitten with Viego? With Heart as a new trait, and Ox Force no longer granting AS, these balance adjustments should keep Viego breaking hearts and wiping boards clean like his washboard abs. With a reduced max Mana, be sure to pair him with Heart to quickly regain the lost damage and then some—each recast will grant Heart stacks.
As forecasted in our Traits section context, Janna is getting some significant changes to allow her to be slotted in as a late game carry for Spellslingers, or any team comp that has a few AP items lying around.
In addition to our item bounce off Carousel changes described earlier, we’re shipping a few more subtle, quality-of-life UI changes.
We’ve significantly nerfed the Janna carry Hero Augment now that she’s a more exciting Spellslinger capstone carry on her own.
We’ve done some considerable balance explorations with one of our most exciting Augments, Cruel Pact, but we finally think we’ve found the goldilocks balance for it: putting the Augment in line with some of our other econ Augments that only proc during player combat rounds.
Currently, High Roller can only be played competitively to unlock very specific play patterns—the big one being its interaction with THREAT, which became a 100% force Threats situation if given the option for High Roller.
Double Up is the perfect mode to play with friends and have fun crafting stronger comps than you can in standard. Unfortunately, by the end of Monsters Attack!, Double Up was feeling solved. The most optimal duo was having one player play a tankier stall comp, and giving all their items over to their partner who played a high DPS comp.
With the changes below, we put more emphasis on cooperating with your partner to strengthen each other’s boards with more consistent Lesser Rune use, while also preventing one player from hoarding all the items (a behavior that stifled comp diversity). Happy trading, Tacticians!
To support the Glitched Out Carousel mid-set mechanic, Hyper Roll games will have occasional carousels added (in addition to the starting carousel).