Dungeon Defenders II PATCH 16.2 Monthly Pets, New Bug Reporting System and More!

By Michelle-Louise Janion,
Dungeon Defenders II


Patch 16.2 is live now on PC & PS4! Here's what it contains:

Return of the Monthly Pets

  • The old Monthly Pets are back! You can find them in the Defender Medal shop.
  • These pets have been reskinned from their previous inclusion in the game, so long-time players have some cool collector’s edition of these pets.

New Bug Reporting System!

  • We've released a new community bug reporting site! You can find it at http://bugs.dungeondefenders2.com. We’re directing players who’d like to report a bug to this new site.
  • We wanted to open up the entire bug cycle - from finding, reporting, fixing and shipping - and give everyone more reassurance that we take all issues seriously and that submitting bugs is never a waste. It all matters, and we appreciate it each time folks take the effort to help us make the game better.
  • The old system had a bunch of flaws, some of which we couldn’t find a good way to fix. One of the biggest flaws was updating and tracking bugs from the public and player perspective. Once you submitted a bug, it would be gone and you’d rarely hear back from us unless we needed more information - this sucked because other players would submit the same bug, and with big issues, we’d see multiple submissions over multiple days and weeks, and with everyone reporting the same issue it’s easy to ignore little details that could be unique in each case or get lost in the pile.
  • Speaking of lost in the pile, it was very difficult to track all of our community bug submissions and difficult to understand which bugs required the most immediate attention. We receive reports on our forums, Steam forums, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, old bug reporting form, Twitch chats, private messages, support emails...it’s a lot to stay on top of, especially for our small team. It’s our hope that a public, more accessible site will allow us to gather bugs in one place and give us greater visibility into which bugs are currently causing the most frustration. It’s our goal to fix as many bugs as possible, but with your help, we can prioritize the most devilish ones first.
  • So this new system works a little bit like Reddit. You submit a bug, you provide the details and then it’s posted for everyone to see. You can upvote bugs that you think need the most immediate attention. You can also reply to a bug and add more details. This way other players can add their unique details all under the one umbrella.
  • Thanks for helping us squash those bugs!

Aiming Improvement

  • Projectiles should now move more towards the crosshairs. This is a subtle change, but hopefully it improves the overall accuracy of shots.

New Lavamancer Costume: Risen Cinders

  • As seen at the top of this post! Available now!

Pet Ability Balance Changes and Fixes

Pet Abilities have been completely rebalanced from the ground up! With this rebalance, we wanted all pet abilities to feel much stronger when used, bringing all pet abilities closer to the impact level of abilities like Poisonous Tips. To hit these targets, we've significantly increased both the damage output and the cooldown of most pet abilities. Our goal was to make pet abilities stand out more from spammable hero abilities, so pet abilities are used less frequently but have a more profound impact.

Most pet abilities will see their cooldowns increased to 30 seconds, 45 seconds, or 60 seconds (a few outliers). In conjunction with these changes, the damage output of most pet abilities will be increasing substantially as well. For example, abilities on a 7 second cooldown that previously did 675% Hero Damage per attack now have a 30 second cooldown but deal an amazing 2,745% Hero Damage per attack!

The rebalance affects all 47 Pet Abilities, so go check out the new damage numbers and cooldowns!

Accompanying the rebalance are a number of fixes and other changes to pet abilities:

  • Pet Abilities that deal direct damage or apply damage-over-time buffs have had their damage significantly increased to better compete with damage multipliers like Poisonous Tips and Ghostly Wail.
  • Cooldowns have been increased on all pet abilities, generally being 20, 30, 45, or 60s (some rare outliers). Simple abilities like Rock Throw have either a 20s, 30s, or 45s cooldown in most cases. More potent or complex abilities like Poisonous Tips, Maelstrom, or Ghostly Wail generally have a 45s or 60s cooldown.
  • Pet Abilities with multiple tiers now have the same gameplay balance at all tiers. The differences between the tiers are now visual only. Different tiers are now named differently, so players can correctly reroll a pet ability to the desired visual tier.
  • Pet Ability descriptions have been entirely rewritten to better explain what the pet ability does and how it scales from Hero Damage. Note that all Pet Abilities currently scale from Hero Damage; that’s not a change, we’re just making the scaling more apparent in the descriptions. Future versions will likely change some pet abilities to scale from other stats, like Ability Power and Hero Health.
  • Visuals on a number of Pet Abilities have been increased/improved to better match their actual area of effects. A few abilities, like Fire Pillar and Lightning Grenade, have significantly larger effects.
  • Collision on various piercing projectiles has been revised (Stranglethorns, Bouncing Fire, Boulder, etc.). In some cases, the collision was too small, and in others, much too large. The collision now much more correctly reflects the actual size of the projectile fired.
  • Pet Abilities that use reflective shield mechanics (United Defense, Fire Shield, etc.) now reflect a useful amount of damage, and reflection damage is calculated before your resistances are taken into account.
  • Pet Abilities that deal damage over time now apply their effects at 1 second intervals to minimize the amount of damage number spam.
  • Numerous buff application bugs with all Pet Abilities, but especially Curse Aura and Hex, have been cleaned up. Buffs should apply more consistently and with consistent damage/lifespan results.
  • Pet Abilities that apply combo-able effects (Drenched, Oiled) have had their combo effects fixed and now properly scale from Hero Damage.
  • Projectiles on some pet abilities have been adjusted in speed/size/targeting to try and improve their ability to hit enemies (especially nearby, small enemies).
  • All effects that decrease enemy movement speed are standardized to a -40% speed decrease.
  • All effects that increase player movement speed are standardized to +50% speed increase.
  • Effects that previously increased both basic hero attack’s damage and added on-hit damage now ONLY add on-hit damage. This affects Poisonous Tips, Sandstorm, etc. The on-hit damage bonus has been increased in most cases to compensate.
  • Ghostly Wail’s damage bonus is now +100% at all tiers and its duration and range have been slightly decreased.
  • Dragon Protection is fixed; it correctly applies an absorbing shield to nearby Defenses.
  • Projectile arcs for certain abilities (Oil Spit, Lightning Grenade) have been improved to make aiming easier.
  • Lightning Grenade now detonates if enemies touch it.
  • Boulder now deals crushing earth damage.
  • Bouncing Lightning has been renamed to Chain Lightning and updated to use a projectile more similar to the Storm Gloves’s projectile.
  • Sparkle Party now deals damage as well as stuns.
  • Encouragement restores 75 mana.
  • Soothing Waters restores 300% Hero Damage as health.
  • Hex no longer causes damage over-time, to separate its effects from Curse Aura more clearly.
  • Tormented Thoughts no longer causes initial damage. It still causes damage-over-time and bonus damage when the enemy dies under the effects.
  • Gravebolt’s heal % has been decreased to offset the massive increase in the damage it received.
  • Plague Claw damage bonus per-hit decreased to +50% and now has the same maximum targets as other piercing pet abilities (Boulder, Ice Ball, etc.).

Bug Fixes

  • The Invert Y Axis now works properly for the mouse. (You’ll need to turn if off and then back on to get it to work again.)
  • Earthshatter Tower no longer requires line of sight to attack.
  • Upgraded Skyguard Towers now properly slow enemies.
  • Changed Idle Flow passive description to fit how the rest of our slow effect descriptions are written (slowed by X% instead of slowed to Y%). The actual slow amount did not change.
  • Fixed an issue with the Altar Assassins death sequence.
  • Fixed an issue where melee combos unintentionally increased pet ability hero damage scaling.
  • Cleaned up formatting on the Daily Mission UI to make it more legible.
  • Tempered Anger Skill Sphere description changed for clarity. It now says this: “Mystic loses appeasement 50% slower and takes no appeasement damage when at 0 appeasement.”
  • Gun Witch animations while moving backwards diagonally no longer twitch noticeably while using a gamepad.
  • The Harbinger Huntress bow no longer shows grey boxes.
  • Crit Damage color is now properly applied to the correct damage number instance.
  • Adjusted the Mystic’s towers on the Create Hero screen.

Known Issues

  • The new defender medals pets are using the regular pet meshes in the Petrinarian.
  • (Intended) We’ve reset player custom keybinds so we don’t have any wonky issues. Sorry for the inconvenience and frustration.
  • There is a chance when loading into the Tavern or Heroes Marketplace that the Defender Medal pets will be shown as available for gold instead of defender medals. It’s a race condition that can occurs. You can’t actually buy them for gold as you’ll get an error message (inventory full) and transitioning can fix this.
Michelle-Louise Janion
Written by Michelle-Louise Janion
I tend to favour the puzzle, RPG, action-adventure and strategy genres. My particular favourites over the years have been Final Fantasy IX, Metal Gear Solid, Civilisation V and The Last of Us. I'm also a sucker for a series: Darksiders, Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider etc.

I am a bit of a lone gamer as I tend to steer clear of PvP, and only play multiplayer with close friends.
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