You can play War Robots in many different ways. Be a nimble mecha-assassin. Or a walking fortress that won't budge even if you drop a nuclear bomb on it. Or a 40-feet high mobile ambulance that repairs other robots with its nanomachine magic.
The new Workshop opened up lots of play styles that were hard to reach before — with it you have an access to almost any robot and weapon. Now we have to ensure that all options are equally playable and have their place on the battlefield. For this to be the case, we have to constantly review War Robots roster to find problematic equipment and tune it up or down.
Our goal right now is to make if not all, but most tactics equally desirable. We know you have a lot of things collecting dust in your storage because they stopped seeming as viable as they once were. Update 4.3 will introduce a large-scale rebalance that should put them back into action.
Rebalance goals
More variety on the battlefield
We keep hearing from veteran players: it is not fun when every match boils down to a pure Dash-Descend extravaganza. Spectre, Bulgasari, and Haechi paired with Shocktrain, Scourge or Orkan are just too good to pass by. High-damage, high-mobility burst builds dominate all over the Expert league and higher. They are good at pretty much everything and overshadow all other options.
You asked for this — we are doing this. Among other changes, we are lowering the power of these items.
It doesn't mean the death of top-tier builds though. Many enjoy using their dashers, and we want them to stay powerful. With more breathing room for other builds, there will be more variety on the battlefield. How so? When heavy robots enter the fight — nifty beacon hunters appear aiming to outrun them. And with more beacon hunters — there are more interesting targets to burst down.
Variety is what we strive for. In a long run, this should make War Robots an even more interesting place.
More viability for heavy, team-oriented builds
To carve a space for more methodical, team-oriented play style we are giving multiple buffs to Weyland and Bulwark. Lancelot, Fury, Natasha and Ancile/ECU shields will also become stronger. This should give you more reasons to team up and protect each other instead of always going for the kill.
New life for heavy weapons
Even though there are tons of powerful weapons for heavy slots, not many robots are able to utilize them to a full extent. So first of all, we are buffing robots with heavy slots: Weyland, Bulwark, Carnage, Fury and some others.
Additionally, weapons like Ember, Nashorn, Redeemer and Exodus get extra damage.
Falcon has the biggest change.
Remember Falcon? When in the air, this robot unfurls 2 additional medium slots. This is strong in theory, but the real combat showed that this amount of extra firepower doesn't fully justify being exposed to all winds. We switch 2 medium slots to 2 heavy ones — this should give you more reasons to play aggressively and pull your Thunders and Exoduses from the closet.
New options for light/heavy hybrids
Robots that utilize both heavy and light weapons required our attention too. Natasha, Leo, Mercury, Hellburner and Strider are solid machines by themselves, but their weapon choice left a lot to be desired.
To address this, we're tuning up Molot, Arbalest and light lock-down weapons. This should open more room for experiments on these robots.
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All these tweaks come in a single pack, and it will definitely take some time to adapt. We will keep fine-tuning these numbers to reach the goals we listed above. For those willing to switch to a new, now-viable playstyle there are some things in the works to help you retool your hangars. Coming soon.
You can find the full list of balance changes on the test server page or by using the links below. And yes — you can try everything in action by joining this weekend's test server session.
We are looking forward to your feedback. See you on the battlefield!
