Valve’s latest Deadlock update is a singularly focused adjustment for Celeste, with reduction to her early game power and an ultimate nerf.
It's rare to see Valve drop a Deadlock update with such a concentrated singular focus, but the team behind the MOBA has clearly had enough of Celeste's antics to step in. The dazzling Coney Island unicorn isn't actually the most dominant hero in the Cursed Apple right now - others such as Graves, Victor, Ivy, Seven, or Paige can give her a run for her money there. A competent Celeste is one of the most annoying characters to face, however, with her combination of mobility and healing making her tough to handle in the early game, and her ultimate capable of single-handedly swinging teamfights without precise counterplay.
Don't panic too much yet, Celeste mains - Valve's actually been relatively careful on the touch here, which makes the decision to roll this particular patch out as a standalone all the more notable. Clearly the team felt there was enough player pushback to implement the changes immediately. There's a sense the next big Deadlock overhaul is due soon, because we're now seven months on from Old Gods, New Blood. Could this brief rebalancing be a holdover until that larger rollout is ready?
To start with, Valve has nerfed two of Celeste's favorite items. The heal effect from Radiant Regeneration when casting an ability has been dropped from 70 to 65, while Restorative Locket's Spirit Resistance is lessened from 10% to 8%. This is the one aspect that might impact other characters' effectiveness (apologies to the likes of Shiv or Lady Geist players), so keep that in mind.
As for the rest of Celeste's kit, Dazzling Trick's cooldown goes up by two seconds, although you'll get those back when you upgrade it to tier three. Alongside this, the silence boost at max rank has been dropped from +1.5 seconds to +1.25, making it a touch less oppressive in teamfights. The tier-two barrier increase has been reduced from 80 to 70, but the spirit scaling applied to it has increased from +0.7x to +0.76x, making her slightly more item-reliant but meaning she could end up a touch tankier with the right build.
Radiant Daggers loses 1% of its Spirit Amp per stack at base level, but this has been moved into the tier-three upgrade, so still caps at 11%. That's just a slight nerf to her burst potential early on, then. That leaves her ultimate, which is typically the aspect you'll hear most frequently moaned about, and faces the biggest changes. With its ability to bounce repeatedly between nearby foes, Shining Wonder can be an absolute menace if your team doesn't spread out.
The range at which Shining Wonder can bounce between enemy targets has been lowered from 17.5 meters to 16.5, and its base damage per hit dropped from 165 to 140, with the spirit scaling on it reduced from 0.9x to 0.6x. The tier-two upgrade, however, now boosts spirit scaling by 0.45x - so again, she could focus on building into it, hitting harder than before by the endgame. That range reduction will certainly make counterplay slightly easier, though, so please make sure not to clump up too tightly when Celeste's on the opposite team.
This Deadlock minor update for Celeste is out now. Given Valve's penchant for dropping lengthy patch notes on a whim, I'm still a little surprised it put this one out, over three weeks since the introduction of ranked matchmaking, and ten days since it carved through other heavy hitters like Doorman and McGinnis. I get the sense something bigger is right around the corner, perhaps even in the next couple of weeks, but even if that is true we likely won't find out until the day it arrives.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/deadlock/update-august-22-celeste-nerf
