HONicle : 2.2.0 Patch Analysis

Sexy new Magebane is sexy

To start, I just want to say thank you to S2 games for really stepping up their game with listening to the community and for recognizing their own mistakes and handling them well.  Now, on to the details.

Version 2.2.0  

Kongor Changes

There are several relatively large changes here that make Kongor much more of a threat, even as the game draws on and the heroes become more powerful.  Most notably is that his armor increases doubly fast and cannot be reduced in any way.  While this makes it much more difficult to defeat the giant monkey at level 1, although not impossible.  It does mean that a team built to take Kong early will be plainly obvious and likely quite rare.  It also means that Pestilence will no longer be able to hit level 6 and just laugh at Kongor.   

HON Newsletter Vol. 13 with Monarch

Read the Full Newsletter here !

Patch 2.2.0 - Magus Bane and Huge Balance Patch

Version 2.2.1.2
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- Fixed the game crashing when you hit the Disconnect button

Version 2.2.1.1
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- Fixed Replays

Version 2.2.1
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- Fixed the Forsaken Archer bugs

Version 2.2.0

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- The current Free Heroes have changed. The current available list is:
* Magebane
* Dark Lady
* Moon Queen
* Night Hound
* Wildsoul
* Dampeer
* Armadon
* Electrician
* Geomancer
* Parasite
* Gauntlet
* Slither
* Demented Shaman
* Vindicator
* Glacius

- Fixed problems caused by using child interfaces in overlays
- Fixed two different server crashes
- Fixed consecutive bonuses not falling off
- Post-Game Chat Channels will no longer display the option to add the channel to the auto-join channel list
- News has new countdown timer system
- Fixed a bug where some of the midbar icons would be grayed out after playing a Matchmaking game

Druid the Next Upcoming Hero?

I know its a bit late to post about it since the Cthulhuphant Hero Spotlight was out last week or more, we got another Blacksmith Censored Hero and a Clue about his skill, it shots green thing to the front of him, you guys can see it in 03:03 mins.Here is the screenshot, so do you guys think its Druid?

Temporary Matchmaking Bans

The intent of this post is to explain a bit about a new feature we will be turning on soon called Temporary Matchmaking Bans (TMB). The hope is that it will curb some of the abusive behavior we have observed in matchmaking, and ultimately decrease the percentage of matchmaking games that fail to start.

The vast majority of matchmaking games that are aborted are caused by one of following three scenarios:
1) Players are unable to connect to the game server once the match is announced. This is mainly due to a player’s computer never actually getting the connection message from the matchmaking server (normally caused by network/router/ISP restrictions).
2) Players are able to connect to the game server but take too long to load. This one is pretty straightforward - the player’s computer takes too long to load all the map data for the match. Sometimes this is due to a player having other memory/hard drive/CPU intensive programs running while in HoN or being Alt+Tabbed when their client receives the connect message.
3) A player leaves the match before all players have finished loading.

67% Off Goblin Store Gold Prices!

For those of you who've been dissatisfied with our normal gold prices in the goblin shop, we're happy to announce that your pleas have not gone unnoticed. We're reevaluating our gold prices to make sure you're getting a better value for your purchases! Starting now, everything in the goblin store (minus sub-accounts, nickname changes, and stat resets) are 67% off the gold price and will remain that way until this Thursday at 5pm EDT! We'll be gathering data during this time to sort out our future pricing plans.

Thanks to everyone for your feedback and support


[S2]MsPudding

S2 Staff Member

EU Server Lag

As of now I've taken about 40 boxes temporarily offline while we investigate potential problems with them, please post servers you continue to have issues with so we can look at those too. Please understand there are approximately 250+ servers in EU providers so simply pulling them all down at once isn't really an option and we appreciate your help in reporting problem servers.

Please ONLY provide a server name if it was giving you consistent issues throughout the game, if there's 1-2 lag spikes this is not something we are looking for but rather issues throughout the entirety of the game.

If you have an MTR from your computer to the server this will also be helpful.

Also, this is from NOW going forward, I don't need reports from servers last week or a month ago, just after we have made some changes today.

Thank you

[S2]Toolz

S2 Staff Member

Semi-Downtime tonight

We will be taking half the servers down between the hours of Midnight to 3 AM EST for a server-side only patch to fix the " has died" bug.

If you are ingame you should notice no changes or anything. If you are looking for games in this time you might have longer waits or a hard time finding an empty server.

We apologize for any problems during this time. 

[S2]Idejder

S2 Staff Member

Source

Play HoN and Win Over $5,000 in Prizes via XFire !

From now till October 5th, you'll be rewarded for your time! Play HoN on Xfire and you'll have a chance to win $5,000 in prizes. The person with the most hours played will win an Alienware M17x Laptop (MSRP $1,499)! Five 2nd place winners will win SteelSeries Siberia V2 Headsets. Three 3rd place winners get the entire HoN store unlocked! Fifty random winners will receive 2,000 Silver Goblin Coins.

Go to http://goo.gl/bnwgR for more information and to download Xfire. Contest ends October 5th. Get rewarded for playing your favorite game. Play HoN on Xfire now!

Contest is open to everyone. It is NOT restricted to US residents only. Ignore the copy on the Xfire page where it says that it's restricted. It is open to ALL.

[S2]S2Lulu

S2 Staff Member

HONKart Hidden Ending

Patch 2.1.10 Changelog - Cthulhuphant and 2 Alt.Avt

Version 2.1.10
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- The current Free Heroes have changed. The current available list is:
* Cthulhuphant
* Master of Arms
* Gladiator
* Drunken Master
* Hammerstorm
* Puppetmaster
* Moraxus
* Dampeer
* Magmus
* Chipper
* Revenant
* Blacksmith
* Hellbringer
* Jeraziah
* Empath

Cthulhuphant Hero Spotlight

 Coming this Friday with Chipper Alt.Avt also another BS Censored Hero !

Cthulhuphant Mini Hero Guide :

2-Day 25% off Sub-Account Sale!

All Sub-accounts are now on sale for 2 days only with a 25% discount!

Any Sub-Account you own shares both the Goblin Coins and the items you've purchased in the store. So if you've been thinking of changing your nickname or resetting your stats, you may want to consider buying a Sub-Account instead. You'll be able to maintain an independent stats record, use a different nickname, and maintain separate buddy lists, while any coins you earn are put into a single pool letting you work toward those big-ticket items in the store much faster! Sub-Accounts have the same standing as your main account- if you are a Legacy account, your sub-account will be legacy; if you are a verified account, your sub-account will be verified.

You can purchase a Sub-Account at https://www.heroesofnewerth.com/identities or by visiting our goblin shop in-game!

The sale ends at 7pm EDT this Thursday (9/22)!

 

[S2]MsPudding

S2 Staff Member

 

DotA, HoN, and LoL Comparison by WingFlier

Its a good to read article and its a huge wall of text, I wont copy paste this post since I want it to be exclusive in his blog (Now Im thinking to invite this man to HonBlog, what do you guys think about it?).
So this post contain the comparison of DotA, HoN, and LoL also The effect for the upcoming DotA2.

Table of Contents :

1. Intro
2. Game Engine
3. Payment Model
4. Learning Curve
5. General Gameplay
6. Hero Design
7. Item Design/Summoner Spells
8. Team Composition
9. Lane Composition
10. Rune Spawns
11. Denying
12. Ganking
13. Death Mechanics
14. Warding
15. Carries and Lategame
16. Competitive Play
17. Conclusion

You guys can read the article in :
http://wingflier.blogspot.com/2011/09/comparing-lol-hon-and-dota-and-what-it.html

S2RadioBlur Blog

Accidentally found this blog by S2RadioBlur, first time hearing this name.
He post about FrostRider Wallpaper, HillyBilly DM Concept Art, DarkJereziah and some alt. legion buildings design, please check it out in : http://s2radioblur.blogspot.com/

Cthulhuphant Abilites Preview byCadComic

Cthulhuphant and his Alt.Avt

So this is the preview of Cthulhuphant abilities, with some screenshots too, you guys can read the full article in cad-comic, link below.

Trample (Q)- Cthulhuphant is a melee tanky initiator, and this ability gets him into the thick of it. He charges forward in a direction, dealing damage and stunning any enemy heroes he connects with. If there are any creeps in his path, they are blasted away like projectiles, also dealing damage and stunning enemy heroes they hit.

 And here's our hero mid-trample!

Hook 'Em (W)- With Hook 'Em, Cthulhuphant uses his mighty tusks to skewer and immediately kill an enemy non-hero unit. The corpse creates a shield which blocks a large portion of damage coming at Cthulhuphant from the front. Strength of the shield is proportional to the target's max health.

 This is a shot of the shield that Cthulhuphant gets immediately after goring an enemy creep with Hook 'Em

Mortifying Presence (E)- This is a passive aura of fear and madness. Nearby enemy heroes have their attack and movement speeds slowed. When Cthulhuphant kills an enemy unit, the effect doubles for ten seconds. If he kills an enemy hero, the effect triples for ten seconds!

Obliterate (R)- Cthulhuphant draws on all of his awesomeness to fire raw, brutal energy blasts from his many trunks. Obliterate causes five pulses of devastating area of effect damage in front of Cthulhuphant.

Read the Full Article Exclusively in Cad-Comic.com

Cthulhuphant is not EA hero

As you may remember, last month we ran a little contest to design a new hero for Heroes of Newerth. David Flax's Cthulhuphant idea was voted most popular. At that point I brought my concept sketch for Cthulhuphant to the folks at S2Games, and we started designing his abilities and tweaking his final appearance.
I'm excited to show you guys the final artwork for Heroes of Newerth's Cthulhuphant!

I think he turned out pretty badass, and from what I'm hearing from the guys at S2Games, they're having a blast playing him in their test games.
Right now Cthulhuphant is scheduled to hit Heroes of Newerth on September 23rd. His model is done, and they're just finishing up the textures, so as soon as I get some in-game screenshots, I'll post them up. I'll also have the go-ahead to give you a preview of his abilities this Friday!

Its not an Early Access Hero

Patch 2.1.9 Changelog - Logger Legionnaire

Version 2.1.9
-------------
- The current Free Heroes have changed. The current available list is:
* Monkey King
* Emerald Warden
* Nomad
* Defiler
* Blood Hunter
* Forsaken Archer
* Legionnaire
* Pestilence
* Engineer
* Witch Slayer
* Torturer
* Rampage
* Martyr
* Accursed
* Andromeda

- The Friends List limit has been increased from 100 to 250
- Login and Server stability increased significantly
- Added more Log information for servers and failed connections
- Fixed a server crash

- New Alt Avatar: Logger Legionnaire

LumberJack Legionnaire Alt Avt

Got it from Reddit and apparently S2Los deleted the post in his blog, I cant find it, so here we go :