Soul-Boards

Noteworthy Game/Mechanic stuff:
 
 - Staggered Ladder Queue

• At the request of many, I've implemented a system for ladder games to take into account who you've matched against over the last several games, and attempt to match you against a different person. I could explain the algorithm at hand, but I feel like I'd be wasting my breath when I can sum it up relatively quicky. The queue waits some time, letting people enter queue. Every period of time, it attempts to create battles with the people in queue. Now, if you've matches against someone recently, it will skip over them for one of these periods of time in an attempt to match you against someone else. Perceptive readers might come to the conclusion that it doesn't guarantee you don't rematch. That is correct, this change simply makes it take more time (time where you could match with someone else instead) to rematch the same person you just faced
  
• There might be some tweaks to the specifics of this algorithm, especially since it introduced a slew of issues for people "winning" the battle without ending it and other shenanigans. I think I've fixed all of those, but nothing ever stays fixed when I want to work on new characters or just getting the game out of unity
  

Buffs:

 - Ashido Kano

• "Mask Absorption" damage cap lowered to 15
  
• "Group Slash" cooldown lowered to 1 turn
  
• Not much to say here. He's a little harder to kill now, and can make some use of "Group Slash" a bit more frequently
  

 - Choe Neng Poww

• "Gigantic Cero" cooldown lowered to 3 turns
  
• Having been around long enough, people more or less have figured out that "Whale Rush" means it when it says "THE FIRST SKILL THIS CHARACTER USES THIS TURN WILL BE COUNTERED." It's no longer completely unreasonable to buff him, and in my time using him (as well as at least a few people in the community), "Gigantic Cero" always seems to be on cooldown when you need it
  

 - Ryujin Jakka

• "Flame Tendrils" damage increased to 20
  
• "Entrapment" no longer damages Ryujin Jakka
  
• This character is fairly expensive, and his damage output should reflect that, given his overall lack of utility. Similarly, with him costing a decent chunk of energy to use, his passive more often then not ends up hurting him more than helping
  

 - Uryuu (TLA)

• "Analysis" is now invisible. Only boosts non-affliction damage
  
• I'm frankly not sure why this skill was boosting all damage, but that doesn't make much sense for him to boost affliction damage. He doesn't want to hurt himself more with "Ginrei Kojaku" (he wasn't, which was a bug. That said, I don't want him to, hence the wording change). It isn't uncommon when facing Uryuu to see who has analysis on them, and just not use any harmful skills for 2 turns, causing him to waste the energy using the skill and see no benefit from it
  

 - Yuzu Kurosaki

• "Special Home-Made Cooking" heal increased to 30
  
• "Medical Treatment" destructible defense increased to 15
  
• I've had decent success in the past increasing the destructible defense a skill provides by 5, I wonder if it'll work again?
  

Tweaks:

 - Jackie Tristian

• All harmful skills now apply mud
  
• "Sludge kick" damage now only deals 10 more damage per stack of mud
  
• The original intent of "Sludge Kick" was to punish people for "dirtying" up the battlefield. However, skills apply a lot of effects, and balancing around that is not an easy task. The aim here is to shift her power to be more self reliant and allow her to still be a strong anti-stun character. She's on my radar, and if she continues to be a problem, I now have substantially more straight-forward avenues to nerf her
  

Random Tip:
When using characters with counters/reflects, your opponent might anticipate you using it to protect your most important character. It might be worth using that counter on someone weaker that your opponent might try to spike out while anticipating the counter isn't on them

Noteworthy Bug Fixes:

• Jackie Tristian's "Mud" no longer reduces duration of stuns when the person affected by mud is ignoring harmful effects
  
• Winning battles now correctly affects clan statistics
  
• Hueco Mundo Kenpachi's "Kendo" is now correctly classified as a damaging skill