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This week, PrimeWiki welcomes MadProf as a contributor. She brings years of experience and understanding of the Parallel ecosystem and TCG. This week, she reviews Patch .52 to help the community understand the major takeaways. Check out the details below!
Patch .52 is one of the largest updates we’ve seen since Open Beta. Season 5: Forgotten Relics brings with it a new legendary card, a rule change, and a prime load of card changes to shake up the game once again. It also includes updates to MMR calculations, bug fixes, a refresh to Bounties, and the Parallel League which upgrades the competitive scene of Parallel TCG. There’s a lot to break down in this patch, so this article will focus on the greatest impacts to your game time.
Let’s start with the newest card addition: Helm of Avigdor! This 3 energy cost card is an Earthen specific Upgrade with lots of potential. The ability states:
“Upgraded unit has ‘On attack, put the bottom card of your deck into your bank.
If you have 8 or more cards in your bank, upgraded unit has +3/+3 and if this upgrade would be destroyed, you may put it into your hand instead.”
The versatility of this card is fantastic for Earthen players. Early game, the player gains an energy advantage by placing an additional card in the bank each turn they attack with the upgraded unit. Paired with units like Primea Conduit or Mercenary Gunslinger, a player can charge their energy bank quickly for mid-game control. There’s also Steward of the Garden which helps to get this upgrade out if you are lucky enough to draw it early.
Once the player has 8 or more cards in their bank, the upgraded unit gains +3/+3. If that wasn’t enough, should the upgrade go to the waste, it goes back to the player’s hand instead! Which makes this card a great late game play, as well. Use it to clear the board of that pesky big baddie or defender and clear the way to strike for face damage.
There are a few notable card changes to cover, as well as rollbacks for two of the Paragons; Gaffar and Scipius.
Gaffar was rolled back to his former glory and is once again a viable Earthen paragon. After a unit gains “Pacifist”, friendly units gain +1/+1. As a pacifist and a defender, the choice to make Gaffar’s passive +1/+0 instead of +0/+1 felt odd. And the decision to bring it back to +1/+1 still feels overly strong. Earthen as a whole leans more into health vs attack, so why change that? Overall, it’s a good change, because he will return to the battle for Earth and he has been missed.
Scipius’ rollback no longer adds +1/+0 to the Scipius Adjutant unit created by banking a unit if one is already on the board.This is a step in the right direction. The board presence and the Hydrolist Chamber’s sacrifice remain unchanged, while the adjustment allows for the use of other paragons in Kathari or even different factions. He remains strong and popular among Kathari players, but is now more balanced.
Kathari had the most card changes in this patch, due to the overrepresentation of the faction in the game. The Game Team says they hope this will increase diversity in the meta and game overall.
First up is Triumph of Europa, which gives the player a seemingly endless supply of answers. Instead of wasting three cards, the player now wastes two cards and any units played from the waste through ToE gain “if this unit would enter the waste, remove it from the game instead.” As someone who loves to play Aetio, this change is terrible. As someone who also loves to play other factions, this change is fantastic. For balance reasons, the change makes perfect sense- it was simply too powerful before. As an Aetio player, however, it means a potentially great sacrifice to play units this way. Recycle, Reuse, and Reduce in full swing with the new Triumph of Europa.
Another big change came to The Rubicon. The ability now reads, “After a friendly, non-token unit is destroyed, create a 1/1 Convergent,” and this is a greatly needed change. In its previous iteration, it was just too strong. Being able to sacrifice a 1/1 Iterant to your Hydrolist Chamber for an extra energy and have your Rubicon print out a Convergent… isn’t really a sacrifice, now is it?
What is a sacrifice, though, is losing a turn to the new Hydrolist Chamber cost. This feels like an excessive change with all the scaling back the Kathari have already endured. But at least the Game Team knows that. In the notes about the change, the team has already said they’ll be watching to see if it needs rolling back. This means the community can keep the pitchforks in arms reach- as they may not be needed just yet.
The last of the notable changes are to Mechanize and Freydis.
Mechanize gets an overhaul for the better, Augencore rejoice! The new ability is as follows:
“Transform a friendly unit into an upgrade, then attach it to another friendly unit. This upgraded unit gains attack and health equal to the transformed unit’s attack and health. When the upgraded unit leaves play, create a copy of the transformed unit.” What does this mean? While the wording could use some cleaning up, it means that should your newly upgraded unit get banished or Annihilated right away, you don’t completely lose out- a copy of your Mechanized unit returns to the field. It’s a fantastic change in light of all the New Dawn currently on the battlefield. Plus, the cost of Mechanize was dropped to 3 energy, making it something to truly consider when building an Auggie deck.
Finally, there’s Freydis, Echelon Kingpin, sovereign beauty of the unaligned, gorgeous goddess of coin and fear… whose ability gets an upgrade, more than a clarification by the wording of it. Previously, the last boon of actions granted upon Freydis’ muster, should the player have only universal cards in their deck read, “Return a Unit that costs 4 or less Energy from your Waste to the Field.” Now it reads, “Play a unit with energy cost 4 or less from your waste.” What’s the difference? Play is a huge key word when it comes to how Muster works. As in, that’s the only way Muster abilities work, is when the card is played. Hello, Black Market Fixer. Round two?
The rest of the card changes and all the bug fixes, you can review yourself in the blog, here: https://parallel.life/blog/open-beta-season-5-forgotten-relics-patch-052
The last of the major in-game changes is a rule change to Flourish, one that was desperately needed for viability. Instead of meaning, “When this unit is healed at full health,” it now means, “When this unit is Overhealed.” Now, units like Moonlit Star of Alesha can use their heal on something with a single damage and activate that unit’s Flourish, instead of having to pick between healing to full or activating Flourish. For a faction that is traditionally slow, this change feels right in the naturally fast paced realm of Parallel.
Patch .52 also brought an updated Bounty system that creates a richer in-game experience. Now, bounties include Unranked games, which helps make the game mode more viable. Players can earn regular and premium Apparition Packs by completing “Easy” and “Hard” bounties, respectively. A player can hold seven “Easy” bounties and three “Hard” bounties at one time, gaining a new bounty of each category daily, until full. Simply put, the more you play, the more you are rewarded. Testing decks in Unranked counts towards these, without sacrificing your MMR, which saw some changes in this patch, too.
Since its implementation, MMR calculations have been a topic of debate in the community, and these changes haven’t changed that. The team continues to work on finding the right balance and this patch is a good step forward. Rank concealment is only one day long and your
performance in the previous season will now play a factor into the new season’s rankings. The subranks within a category (Gold, Platinum, etc.) and Early Concede Penalties have also been adjusted to better calculate placement on the ladder.
The most important adjustment, in my opinion, is to the matchmaking algorithm, which will help reduce the ranking gaps between match-ups. Silver and Gold ranked players have less of a chance to match with Diamond and Master ranked players. Typically falling into the Gold rankings myself, it can be disheartening to get matched up against the best of the best. There is a measure of comfort in knowing there’s an effort being made to ensure a fun and competitive match is more likely than showing up to be canon fodder for the Masters.
Despite all these changes, there are still number issues. In the game’s discord, there’s mention of unbalanced MMR loss vs gain from disconnects and unbalanced rank matchups. While the system still isn’t perfect, the team is working on improvements and actively listening to the community to create a better experience for everybody.
New in-game Tournaments and the new Parallel League are also mentioned in the blog. What the League is and how to get involved is another article altogether, so keep an eye out for that breakdown in future weeks. Overall, it’s a solid patch and the game continues to improve each month. Kathari and Earthen saw the most balancing in Patch .52, hopefully making way for new and exciting meta decks.
If you have any questions, please reach out to me @anothermadprof on Twitter. Don’t forget to follow @Primewiki so you don’t miss future posts. If you’d like to play Parallel, use our referral link!