Congratulations to the winners of last month's Nova Cup!
- D1: Barneskirænn (Drachir & FC Lucy)
- D2: sending machina (e1detic & skillz)
- D3: income and chill (warnessa2007 & King Bonobo)
- D4: SinCross_Calisca (SinCross & Calisca)

Missed the action? Check the brackets, team lists, & VODs for all divisions on the Legion TD 2 eSports portal[beta.legiontd2.com]!


The upcoming November Nova Cup takes place November 23 - 24.

$875 in prizes and sign-up is free - first come first served!
There are up to five skill divisions, so no matter what your rating is, you have a chance to win.
Participation prize: Every participant who plays all of their matches will receive a FREE random card. If you haven't played a tournament yet, this is a great time to join.
- Everyone that is level 3 or higher can join for free! First come, first served. So even if you recently joined the game, feel free to participate!


When you watch Nova Cups on the official channel, aside from enjoying shoutcasted top-tier Legion gameplay, you'll also receive in-game rewards based on how long you watch!

Watch the official Legion TD 2 Twitch[twitch.tv] stream during a Nova Cup to earn the following rewards:
- Watch for 60 minutes: 2,000 essence- Watch for an additional 90 minutes: 4,000 additional essence- Watch for an additional 120 minutes: Random cardIn other words, if you watch the Nova Cup both days, you'll earn 6,000 total essence and a random card!
IMPORTANT: You'll need to link your Twitch account to your Legion TD 2 account in order to earn the rewards.
Link Your Twitch Account[beta.legiontd2.com]

• Sign-ups are open from NOW until November 23 9am PDT / 6pm CET.
  
• To sign up, find a teammate and form a party. After you're both in the party, have one player type "/signup [team name]" (e.g. /signup Snail Kings) in chat. You should see a confirmation message that your sign-up went through. For those who participated in previous Nova Cups, you no longer need to do /join to signup.
  
• The first 16 teams to sign up in each division can participate. For division 1 and 2 the top 8 teams are drafted per division. Other teams are waitlisted. There are usually no-shows, so waitlisted teams are encouraged to be present in the Discord and ready to play. {LINK REMOVED}View the team list to see your sign-up position and division.
  
• If there are more than 32 teams checked in, there will be an additional best-of-1 qualifying round to allow more teams to participate. It is a best-of-1, rather than a best-of-3, to keep the event from running overly long.
  
• Both players must join the Legion TD 2 Official Tournament Discord[discord.gg]. Make sure to set your server nickname[support.discord.com] to match your in-game name.

• You may sign-up as a solo with a suggested team name using the "/signup [team name]" command. Solo teams will be added to the Public Teams list, then be formed into teams on the day of the tournament. Solo teams will be randomly assigned a team name from either of its members.
  
• If there is a waitlist, team sign-ups will always take priority over solo sign-ups
  
• If you sign up as a solo, but then you find a teammate, you can re-sign up as a team any time before check-ins start. Just use the /signup command again with the new teammate. The tournament organizer will void your old solo signup after they process your new team signup.
  
• After check-ins are over, all checked-in solo players will be randomly formed into teams by the tournament organizer. You cannot request a specific teammate at this point; if you want to play with a specific person, you should have signed up as a team instead.

It is still strongly recommended to sign-up as a team to guarantee your spot in the tournament and to give you time to practice with your teammate beforehand.


Saturday, November 23

• Check-in window: 8:45 - 9:15am PDT / 5:45 - 6:15pm CET
  
• Games: 10am - 1:30pm PDT / 7 - 10:30pm CET
  
  • Round of 16 (Best of 3)
    
  • Quarter-finals (Best of 3)

Sunday, November 24

• Check-in window: 9 - 9:30am PDT / 6 - 6:30pm CET
  
• Games: 10am - 1:30pm PDT / 7 - 10:30pm CET
  
  • Semi-finals (Best of 3)
    
  • Final (Best of 5)

Check-in

• Teams must check in via the Legion TD 2 Official Tournament Discord[discord.gg]. Waitlisted teams should also check in.
  
• Any team that fails to check in will be disqualified. The next team on the waitlist that checked in will earn a spot.

The custom game room creator should enable Tournament Mode in the room. This will ensure the following settings:

• 2v2
  
• Mastermind only
  
• Hybrid disabled

Division 1 & 2 Only
- Conquest rules apply. (Once you win with a Mastermind playstyle, you and your ally can't use that playstyle again for that series)


For a full list of rules, prizes, and other details, visit the following link:
Nova Cup Rules & FAQ[beta.legiontd2.com]For questions & support, please join the Legion TD 2 Official Tournament Discord[discord.gg].

See you on November 23rd! The Nova Cup will be casted and streamed at https://twitch.tv/ltd2. Check the Tournament Discord on the event day for links to the other casts.

Sincerely,
Your Legion TD 2 Tournament Staff

Expected patch release: Monday, November 18 (Pacific Time)

• Check out Lisk's Game Dev AMA and Jules' Gameplay & Balance AMA from this past month
  
• Next Nova Cup is November 23-24! Join the Tournament Discord[discord.gg] to participate and receive tournament notifications. View all past Nova Cups here: Legion TD 2 Esports Portal[beta.legiontd2.com].

From Thursday, November 21 at 10am PST → Monday, November 25 at 10am PST, Legion TD 2 will be FREE TO PLAY! Invite your friends and your enemies and bring them to the dark side To celebrate, we’re giving away lots of freebies:

Card Drop Gigaboost
Massively boosts your chances of finding a card in-game for matchmade games. Lasts until you find a card. Log on at least once during the free weekend period to claim this bonus. After you find a card, drop rates remain moderately boosted for the rest of the event.

Twitch Drops
Free rewards for watching Legion TD 2 on Twitch during the event! Details here: Legion TD 2 Twitch Drops[beta.legiontd2.com]

• Watch for 1 hour and earn 5000 Essence!
  
• Watch for 3 hours and earn a random card!
  
• Watch for 6 hours and earn 1000 Premium Essence!
  
• Watch for 10 hours and earn a random *secret* card!

Nova Cup
The next Nova Cup will be hosted November 23-24. Watch the highest level of competitive tower defense gameplay in the world!

Essence Boost200% Essence gains for all matchmade games!

Premium Essence Boost30% Bonus Premium Essence when you enter a Creator Code! (Normally 10%)


Power Play / Game Changer
When one team’s win probability (as determined by Jules a sophisticated formula) changes by 25% or more, a “Power Play!” announcement is made in-game to commemorate the big play. If the winning team switches, a “Game Changer!” announcement is displayed instead.

Giving more oomph to big plays. The formula takes into account power scores, mythium, king health, and king upgrades.

Not Even Close
A similar announcement called “Not even close!” is shown when a king takes a lot of damage, but isn’t killed.


Link your in-game account to your Discord account to show off your hard-earned ranked badge! Simply type /rank in the Legion TD 2 Discord to begin the linking process. As a reward, you’ll receive 500 Premium Essence the first time you link your account!

Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC5cEMkoLZU


Rumored to have collected more cards than even nattodog.


Stay true to yourself~


Legion’s reputable financial adviser, now available as a secret card and avatar.


Read more about our design philosophy on game balance, and use drachbot[stats.drachbot.site] to see mastermind, unit, and spell win rates and pick rates!

King - Health now scales slightly exponentially, instead of linearly
— Net effect is -15% on wave 1 scaling to +15% on wave 21, with a breakeven point on wave 16
- Giant Slayer: 12% current health → 5% max health
- Lightning Hammer: 8% current health → 3% max health
- Upgrade Attack: 12.5% → 12%
- Upgrade Spell: 5.5% → 6%

Goals:
- Reward aggression and allow for occasional quick wins to happen in the early game
- Reduce 1-shotting in the late game
- Shift power slightly from Upgrade Attack to Upgrade Spell
- Buff the king against heavily damaged bosses and nerf the king against healthy bosses (previously, 2 low health bosses did significantly more damage than 1 high health boss)

Breaker Gold - Increased from waves 16-21 by +10% scaling to +40%

This increases gold earned from breaking your opponent, which buffs non-lethal undercutting in the late game.


Divine Blessing - Attack speed: Additive → Multiplicative

Now behaves more expectedly on units with attack speed buffs built into their kits.

Giant Snail - Health: 510 → 540
- Damage: 17 → 18

Last patch’s nerf was a bit too much.

Glacial Touch - Damage: 50 → 45

Reverting the buff from a few patches ago. High win rate.

Magician - Mana regeneration: 0.52 → 0.5

High pick rate.


Howler - Health: 360 → 350

Sunfang - Health: 1990 → 1930

High win rate.

Bazooka - Health: 320 → 300

Pyro - Health: 1780 → 1750

Slightly high pick rate and high win rate.

Infiltrator / Orchid - Shuriken damage: 37 → 40

Slightly low pick rate and low win rate.

Leviathan - Health: 1730 → 1700
- Damage: 69 → 68

High win rate.

Iron Maiden - Blade Storm: Damage reduction: 5 → 6

Low win rate. Also, compensation buff for changes to late game waves, which indirectly nerf Iron Maiden.

Warp Wing / Void Manta - Plasma Decay: Damage reduction: 3 → 4

Low win rate. Also, compensation buff for changes to late game waves, which indirectly nerf Warp Wing and Void Manta.

Priestess of the Abyss - Invigorate: Heal per second: 35 + 1.5% health → 10 + 3% health

Azeria - Invigorate: Heal per second: 100 + 2% health → 20 + 3.5% health

Partially bringing back Priestess and Azeria’s synergy with health buffs. Nerf on their own (high win rate).

Soul Gate / Hell Gate - Summons’ health increased by 3.5%
- Now lose 400 and 1040 health, respectively, instead of 20% max health each time a unit is summoned

Low win rate and pick rate. Now more viable with health buffs.

Banana Haven - Health: 7700 → 7740
- Damage: 58x3 → 60x3

Compensation buff for changes to late game waves, which indirectly nerf Banana Haven.


Small, across-the-board buffs to power mercenaries to nerf income-centric playstyles and reduce average game length.

Robo - Health: 420 → 430
- Attack speed: 1.25 → 1.28

Brute - Health: 840 → 860
- Damage: 54 → 55

Hermit - Healing Aura: 7 (14 for bosses) → 8 (16 for bosses)

Imp - Health: 730 → 750
- Attack speed: 1.06 → 1.07

Safety Mole - Health: 1500 → 1550
- Damage: 72 → 74

Pack Leader - Leadership Aura: 4 (12 for bosses) → 5 (15 for bosses)

Mimic - Health: 2270 → 2330
- Damage: 115 → 118

Honey Bear - Pot O Honey: Heal: 600 → 650

Witch - Health: 1500 → 1550
- Damage: 80 → 82

Ogre - Health: 2800 → 2870
- Attack speed: 1.11 → 1.13

Ghost Knight - Health: 3800 → 3900
- Damage: 168 → 172

Four Eyes - Health: 2500 → 2550
- Attack speed: 2.06 → 2.17

Centaur - Health: 3920 → 4020
- Damage: 84 → 86

Shaman - Blood Rush: 25 damage + 10% attack speed → 30 damage + 10% attack speed

Siege Ram - Health: 5300 → 5430
- Damage: 266 → 272

Needler - Health: 3750 → 3840
- Damage: 126 → 129

Kraken - Health: 7450 → 7630
- Damage: 289 → 295


Wave 11: Quill Shooters - Damage: 34 → 35

Wave 12: Mantises - Health: 1290 → 1310

Wave 13: Drill Golems - Health: 3450 → 3500

Small buffs to mid game waves to encourage aggression and reduce average game length.

Wave 18: Wale Chiefs - DPS: 323 → 330
— Damage: 134 → 184
— Poison-Tipped Pole: 60 → 80
— Attack speed: 1.89 → 1.25

Wave 19: Dire Toads - DPS: 250 → 255
— Damage: 150 → 230
— Attack speed: 1.67 → 1.11

Wave 20: Maccabeus - DPS: 2150 → 2500
— Damage: 215 → 400
— Attack speed: 10 → 6.25
- Insatiable Hunger (0.16% heal and 1% damage) replaced with Feast (0.1% heal and 0.5% attack speed)

Wave 21: Legion Lord - DPS: 342 → 350
— Damage: 205 → 350
— Attack speed: 1.67 → 1

With the addition of Feast, late game waves don’t need such fast attack speeds.


PvE
- Redraw, Lock-In, Double Lock-In, and all legions are now disabled
- The AI is now more likely to send power mercenaries

The meta in PvE is favorable towards value-generating units (Banker, Eggsack, Sakura, and Angler), as well as certain combos like raid boss Lioness. To address this, in PvE, we're disabling the masterminds that allow you to consistently access these units.

Also leaning into PvE as a more hardcore survival mode. Thanks to laserpewpewak for the suggestion!

Tower Defense
- No longer Chaos-only. Redraw, Lock-In, Double Lock-In, and all legions are disabled

Applying the same solution to Tower Defense. This increases build freedom in Tower Defense.

Game Balance
- Indomitable: Starts at 0 stacks and gains 3 stacks each wave → Starts at 2 stacks and gains 2 stacks each wave
- Double Lock-In: Starting gold: 235 → 200
- Reverted the classic-only Crab Warlock / Crabomancer nerf
- Reverted the classic-only change that prevented you from building Eggsacks on waves 21+
- Giga Mercs: Fixed a bug where Honey Bear’s heal wasn’t stacking

The Indomitable change will make more games end on waves 21 and 22. In addition to reducing average game length, this indirectly nerfs value-generating builds that benefit from more overtime waves.

Significant nerf to Double Lock-In, as it remains a community pain point. The data shows there are 1.4 Double Lock-Ins per game on average. With 8 players in the game, this isn’t too crazy, but it’s a bit high, especially since it makes games more repetitive.

We’re continuing with our strategy of avoiding (and reverting previous) classic-only unit balance changes. This increases build variety by introducing competition to current meta builds. As of this patch, there are zero remaining classic-only unit balance changes.

Systems
- Improved the accuracy of classic's matchmaker, particularly for classic games with ranked mains.
- Short classic games, especially ones that are forfeited, now have significantly reduced rating changes

Among other benefits, this means high-rated ranked players are much less likely to get bonus income when facing high-rated classic players.

Fixed an abuse case where a small number of players in classic were intentionally forfeiting games to lower their rating.

The dev team is constantly monitoring game balance, between looking at data and listening to community feedback. If anything is being more closely monitored than usual, it will be listed in this Balance Watchlist section. For this patch, the following are on the watchlist:
- Redraw: This patch indirectly nerfs Redraw by reducing average game length, but it may need a direct nerf later. Let's see where it lands after this patch.
- Millennium

- Castle and Cartel: Fixed a bug where power score adjustments weren't being applied properly on wave 11
- Increased projectile speed for Dwarf Banker, Big Wig, Warp Wing, and Void Manta to match that of most other ranged units
- MVP Score: Reduced weight of fighter value
- New Player Experience: Fixed a bug where XP gained sometimes didn’t properly update after a match. This was most noticeable for new players in the early levels.
- Forfeit: Now limits you to -ff’ing once every 20 seconds at most, to reduce cases of spamming
- Takeover Bots: Fixed some cases where the bot would run out of time to spend its gold if it took over with not much time remaining till the next wave
- Estimated gold: Fixed a bug where estimated gold remaining was sometimes incorrect in PvE, with Cartel/Castle, and with Venture
- Mini & Wumbo: Fixed a tooltip bug where upgrades had wrongly displayed gold costs on Wave 1
- Stability: Fixed some rare cases of units getting stuck


Legion TD 2's translations continue to be improved, thanks to major contributions from community members! If you'd like to contribute to improving the game's texts further, visit the following link:

{LINK REMOVED} Help Translate Legion TD 2
HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped up to this point!
This patch shakes up the income-heavy meta in ranked and addresses pain points in classic, in addition to introducing some fun features.

We're really excited for the upcoming free-to-play weekend. Please let your friends know and support Legion streamers!

As always, with any major patch, we'll keep a close eye on things and rapidly hotfix as long as needed.

Thank you again for playing Legion TD 2! We hope you continue to enjoy the game. If you've enjoyed the game, but haven't left a review yet, please consider posting a short (hopefully positive ) review for the game! If the game reaches 90% positive, Steam will give it more visibility = more players = more freelo better matchmaking!
If you enjoy these updates, please give it a Thumbs Up, too!

If you have constructive criticism, let's chat about it. Discord[discord.gg] and /r/LegionTD2 on reddit are our main channels of communication, and aside from the development team, there are community helpers who can ensure your feedback is heard, as well as answer pretty much anything you've ever wanted to know about the game. If you want a guaranteed answer from the devs, the monthly AMAs on /r/LegionTD2 are your best bet.

Sincerely,
The Legion TD 2 Team