🆕 New Features

Summer PvP Season 2026 (Ranked Ladder Restructure)

The four-tier ranked bracket (Bronze / Silver / Gold / Diamond) has been replaced with a six-tier system:

  • Bronze (0–999 ELO) — Full AP refund on losses, no ELO decay
  • Silver (1000–1499) — Standard rated play
  • Gold (1500–1999) — Gold-exclusive matchmaking pool
  • Platinum (2000–2499) — Platinum reward cache unlocks weekly
  • Diamond (2500–2999) — Diamond title on profile, top ~15%
  • Void (3000+) — Top 100 players only, exclusive cosmetics and seasonal leaderboard recognition

Season duration: June 1 – August 31, 2026. Rewards distributed at season end based on peak rank achieved.

Clan War ELO Bonus

Participating in weekly Clan Wars now awards a +0.5% ELO bonus per war, capped at 10% maximum per season. Players in active clans who participate in all 13 summer wars receive the full 6.5% bonus. This bonus applies to ELO gains from ranked matches, not to ELO floor.

Loss Streak Catch-Up Modifier

After 4 consecutive ranked losses: ELO loss per match is reduced by 25% and ELO gain is increased by 15% until the next win. The modifier resets on any win. Designed to reduce tilt incentives and smooth downward variance without eliminating meaningful ELO consequences.

Diamond+ ELO Decay

Players in Platinum rank and above lose 50 ELO per week if fewer than 5 ranked matches are completed that week. Decay does not apply to Bronze, Silver, or Gold. Players who fall below the bracket floor due to decay remain in the lower bracket with no further decay that week.

⚖️ Balance Changes

Blood Mage — Hemorrhage Rebalance

The Hemorrhage stack/burst combination introduced in v1.4 meta produced consistent two-shot scenarios against non-Paladin builds at equal gear. This patch normalizes Blood Mage damage output:

  • Hemorrhage maximum stack count: 8 → 5 (reduces total DoT ceiling by 37.5%)
  • Hemorrhage tick rate: unchanged (application speed is preserved)
  • Blood Cascade base damage: +8% (partially compensates for DoT ceiling reduction)
  • Overall Blood Mage DPS: approximately -12% vs. pre-1.5 in burst scenarios; +3% in sustained combat

Pack Shaman — Moonrage Improvement

  • Moonrage cooldown: 45 seconds → 35 seconds
  • Moonrage duration: 8 seconds → 10 seconds
  • Lunar Howl (Pack Shaman passive): now grants +5% Pack bonus to clanmates in the same zone during Moonrage window (up from +3%)

Sunforged Paladin — Healing Normalization

The Paladin passive healing that was reduced in v1.4 is partially restored with a new mechanic distinction:

  • Paladin passive self-healing: restored to 70% of pre-v1.4 value (v1.4 had reduced it to 40%)
  • Paladin healing-to-allies: unchanged at v1.4 level
  • Holy Aegis (Paladin active): cooldown reduced from 60 to 45 seconds

🌸 Seasonal Content — Blossom Dungeon

The Spring Awakening event (April 15 – May 15) has concluded. Patch 1.5 ships the Summer Solstice event (June 21 – July 21) with its own dungeon variant: the Solar Forge Dungeon, featuring fire-elemental bosses and dropping the Sunforged gear set (Item Level 92, +10% fire damage modifier).

Spring Crystals from the Spring Awakening event have been converted: any unspent crystals at event end were exchanged to standard Gems at 10:1 ratio automatically.

🐛 Bug Fixes

  • Fixed: Blood Moon event timer sometimes displaying incorrect countdown when viewed from mobile PWA installed via iOS Safari
  • Fixed: Auction House listing sometimes persisting visually after the auction expired, causing confusion about item availability
  • Fixed: Clan War score sometimes updating with a 3–5 minute delay during peak server load — now updates within 30 seconds
  • Fixed: Character profile page not correctly displaying Prestige level 5 badge for recently prestiged characters
  • Fixed: Pack Shaman subclass skill "Spirit Link" occasionally applying healing bonus to the caster instead of the targeted ally
  • Fixed: Shadow Assassin "Phantom Step" cooldown incorrectly resetting when entering a dungeon with the ability on cooldown

⚙️ Technical

  • WebSocket connection stability improvements for mobile PWA sessions on iOS 16.4+
  • Auction House search index rebuilt — search performance improved by approximately 40% on large item queries
  • Push notification delivery reliability improvements for Android Chrome (affected Samsung Galaxy S22 and older models specifically)
  • Database query optimization for Clan War score calculations — reduces server load during peak eclipse event periods

📋 v1.5 Developer Notes

The Blood Mage nerf is the most discussed change in this patch. Our data from v1.4 showed Blood Mage accounting for 31% of top-100 Void-eligible player builds — significantly above the 12–15% target any single class should represent in a healthy meta. The Hemorrhage cap brings the expected Void composition closer to parity.

We're watching Sunforged Paladin carefully after both v1.4 and v1.5 changes. The healing-to-self restoration is conservative intentionally — we want to see how the partially-restored kit interacts with the new six-tier ladder before committing to further buffs.

The Clan War ELO bonus system is new and we're expecting to adjust the cap (currently 10%) after seeing summer data. If active Clan War players significantly outpace solo queued players in rank, we'll reduce the cap. If the bonus is too small to incentivize War participation, we'll increase it.