Hey all,

This update introduces many brand new combat animations. The goal of these new animations is to improve combat visually, but also make it easier to tell when abilities are being activated (both passive and active), when important status effects are being applied, and when some item effects are activating.

General Changes:

• Reworked combat animations.
• Additional sound effects.
• Reduced the chance of getting ancient items as random loot (3% > 2%).
• Start of combat effects now follow this order: ITEM > HERO > ENEMY. Since items effects were previously ordered last, this introduces new interactions. For example, the Ranger's pet can now snapshot the start of combat buff from Salem's Shadow Boots, or an enemy's start of combat debuff can be prevented with a Noble Ward negate.

Hero Changes:

• Ranger's defensive companion (Dragos) active ability - gain divine for 2 secs > 1.5 secs.

Enemy Changes:

• Some enemy passive effects, such as a passive shield or buff, will now be active before combat starts.
• Cave Crawler's active ability - 50% reduced speed > 30% reduced speed.
• Forest Guardian's passive ability - 20% of enemy healing > 40% of enemy healing.
• Forest Guardian's active ability - 100% Piercing Attack Damage > 50% Attack Damage & 50% Piercing Attack Damage.
• Card Shark can no longer hit the same enemy twice with his active ability.
• Preacher's active ability - 100% Attack Damage & 250% burn > 150% Attack Damage & 150% burn.
• Healing Ward active ability - 50% absorbed healing > 30% absorbed healing.
• Boiling Mess active ability - now only applies a burn and a poison, dealing 100% Attack Damage less damage overall.
• Corrupted Avatar active ability - 80 MP cost > 70 MP cost.

Item Changes:

• (Common) The Impaler - reworded to more accurately explain it's effect.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a rare tooltip crash.
• Fixed a positioning bug when swapping hero positions.
• Fixed a bug where animations could stay on the screen after a restart.
• Fixed a bug where Spore Spewer was applying double poisons.
• Fixed a bug where the Lost Merchant event was leaving the screen dimmed.

~ Dale