Legends:Patch/2.8

Released on March 21, 2019.

The latest version of The Elder Scrolls: Legends is live! This patch includes balance changes and the new and improved Edict of Azura VFX!

Balance Changes

In our continued efforts to make playing The Elder Scrolls: Legends as fun as possible, we are making balance changes to Siege Catapult, Indoril Mastermind and Sword of the Inferno. The next time you log in to Legends (within the next three weeks), we will credit your account with Soul Gems for each copy of an affected card you own (up to three). An explanation behind the changes is available here.

• Siege Catapult: Now 4/4
• Indoril Mastermind's Summon effect is now: "Summon: Draw a card."
• Creatures destroying themselves will no longer trigger their Slay effects.

Animation, Visual and Audio Effects

• Edict of Azura now has a new VFX for its summon ability.
• Mighty Conjuring's premium card FX has been fixed.
• Creatures that have their stats lowered will no longer display the lowered number before the debuff VFX animates to the target card.
• The VFX position for The Red Year has been properly aligned when the card is used by the opponent.
• Mudcrab Anklesnapper's VFX no longer pops during the beginning of the animation.
• Equipping an animated Legion Shield will no longer prematurely show a partial guard border around the card before it applies its effect to the target card on the playmat.
• Cards summoned or drawn into hand by a creature with guard no longer display the guard aura VFX when summoned or drawn.
• "Kill the Messenger" support will no longer trigger a card's destroying VFX animation when they pilfer the opponent.
• When Drive Mad is played on a card, both cards will no longer display any text during the VFX animation.
• The Core Classics alternate art card now properly play their VO lines.
• The post-match dialogue of The Other Half, from The Shivering Isles, Episode 1 of Isle of Madness is no longer missing Talym's VO for the second half of his Sheogorath comment.
• Fixed an issue that would cause the hover-over SFX for packs to disappear at times.
• Treasury Guards and Elite Treasury Guards have new VO.
• Green Pact Ambusher has been given a cheeky new summon VO.
• Multiple cards with cutoff localized VO have been fixed. More fixes coming in Patch 2.9.

Gameplay

• Bedeviling Scamp will no longer become invincible when Sentinel Battlemace applies its ward.
• When an opponent has Bolvyn Venim in their deck and rallies with no creatures in hand, triggering Bolvyn Venim's ability, it will now draw face up into their hand for both players to see.
• The wielder's state will now be considered when targeting effects like Quicksilver Crossbow and Sword of the Inferno. This means that enemy cliff creatures and dragons will no longer be able to target Grandmaster Delphine and Saint Jiub with these effects. Friendly cliff creatures and dragons will still be able to target them.
• In the Isle Of Madness scenario Darkened Grove, cards in hand will no longer have their Magicka costs changed when receiving buffs.
• Added the Atronach type to Fetcherfly Golem.
• Fixed an issue where Manic Jack did not properly receive a +1/+1 buff when gaining a keyword while being drawn.
• The opponent's card discarded by Cornerclub Gambler is now properly shown to the player on-screen.
• While the discard pile is open, summoning Skeletal Dragon will now show the buffs on the creatures it affects without having to close and re-open the discard pile.

UI

• We are happy to report that the missing Friends List bug has been resolved! All players suffering from this issue should have their Friends List restored. This fix was performed by Bethesda.net and does not require patch 2.8.
• An on/off toggle for displaying subtitles has been added to the options menu.
• Class/House names have been added to the tooltip when hovering over the attribute icons per player in-match.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes add the Dementia Lane icon to a lane that gained the Mania icon from playing a card such as Ulfric's Uprising to trigger the summon abilities of both Thadon, Duke of Mania and Syl, Duchess of Dementia.
• Card backs now properly display in the correct order during filtering.
• Naryu Virian's Slay aura now puts a hanger on the buffed card.
• All Atronachs will now display Atronach as an additional creature type.
• Training Grounds now displays the Ongoing banner.

Rewards

• The Reward Calendar will now display the green checkmark on the current day's reward after the user clicks the Claim button.

Upcoming Balance Changes with Patch 2.8

As we've watched the metagame develop post-Isle of Madness, we've seen several decks rise above the rest. To assist in keeping the meta balanced moving forward, we've identified a couple powerful cards, as well as one ability, that we're changing the functionality of as part of our upcoming Patch 2.8 later this week.

When the patch goes live and these changes are implemented, we'll be using the same refund policy we introduced in our last set of balance changes for the three cards shown below. These changes were made to simplify the process and ensure players didn't have to get rid of affected cards to get a refund if they don't want to.

Under the new refund policy, you will get to keep your card and the next time you log in to Legends (within three weeks), we will simply credit your account with the difference in Soul Gems between its Soul Summon cost and its Soul Trap value, based on how many copies of each card you own (up to three).

For example, if you own two copies of an Epic card that got nerfed, we will give your account 600 Soul Gems (since the difference between creating an epic card and Soul Trapping it is 300 Gems each). After this, you can either Soul Trap the card (which should give you the original 800 Gems back in case you Summoned them to begin with), or you can keep the card in addition to the 600 Gems you just got. This will be the case regardless of how you acquired the cards, so you don't have to keep track of what you summoned, opened in packs and so on.

Siege Catapult

• Stats changed from 5/5 to 4/4.

Aggressive Endurance decks have been very strong for a while and Siege Catapult is a big reason why. As a 5/5 that comes down as early as turn 1, Siege Catapult makes sure that, once a player loses control of a lane, they can never get it back. The introduction of Skinned Hound has also made it so that, even if the Catapult itself isn't "on," its big body will still be useful.

By making Siege Catapult a 4/4, we're hoping that there will be more counterplay to a quick Catapult and that players will feel less compelled to warp their curves to turn it on as soon as possible.

Indoril Mastermind

• Effect changed to "Summon: Draw a card."

Endurance control decks are eclipsing other control builds and are generally more consistent than we'd like them to be. Our data showed that, of all the cards regularly played in control decks, Indoril Mastermind's was the one that correlated the strongest with winning the game. By removing its filtering effect, we're hoping to bring Endurance control decks to a similar power level as the other combinations; they will still have access to powerful effects but not necessarily whenever they want them.

This change might seem minimal, but enough copies of Indoril Mastermind get played in long games (especially since it's such a common Odirniran Necromancer target) that we believe it will make a real difference.

Slay Abilities

• A creature destroying itself no longer triggers Slay abilities.

Right now, if you equip Sword of the Inferno to a creature like Archein Venomtongue, you will get two instances of the Slay trigger - one for the creature you're killing and one for Archein Venomtongue itself. Creatures triggering Slay abilities from destroying themselves was never an intended interaction and is quite unintuitive. Since we believe that goes against both good flavor and good game play, we are fixing Slay to trigger only when destroying another creature.

Note that because this change directly impacts the popular combination of Sword of the Inferno with Slay creatures, we will be refunding Soul Gems for Sword of the Inferno along with Siege Catapult and Indoril Mastermind.