Battleborn patch adds Alani, adjusts Incursion, rebalances Ambra and Gaililea

New character, balance fixes, QOL improvements and much more.

Battleborn patch adds Alani, adjusts Incursion, rebalances Ambra and Gaililea

Battleborn has been updated with its first major post-launch content drop.

The update delivers new character Alani, one of five planned DLC heroes. She's free for open beta testers and included in the season pass.

The patch also added new skins and taunts, as well as Hero Keys, but perhaps more importantly there have been some balancing changes worth highlighting, as both Ambra and Gaililea have been tweaked.

"Ambra’s Extinction Event provided unnecessary crowd control due to the large area of effect," Gearbox wrote.

"We removed the slowing effect to allow for better counter-play options around her ultimate.

"Galilea’s desecrate was never intended to constantly apply crowd control or debuffs on enemies throughout the duration. We changed the augmentations to only apply the effects at the cast of the skill.

"This change now requires Galilea players to use Desecrate more effectively and allow some counter-play if players find themselves falling into the Desecrate. In addition, we made some fixes to her melee attack so Galilea is now moving like all other melee when attacking."

Most other changes to characters seem to bug fixes rather than anything likely to effect balance; visit Gearbox for more information.

There have also been some changes to Incursion mode:

"We made a few changes to Incursion to prevent teams from snowballing to victory after defeating the first sentry," Gearbox said.

"Now both teams get equal opportunities of lane pushing power at select times during the match. In addition, we added some extra power to the Thralls so that they help expedite team pushes."

Below you'll find patch notes on that, changes to maps, matchmaking improvements, some quality of life tweaks and more. The details below are for PC but you can check the PS4 and Xbox One details at the links provided.

Incursion
• Empowered Minion Waves no longer spawn for a team after killing the enemy's first Sentry. They now spawn for both teams every fourth minion wave.

Incursion Thralls
• All Thralls, when captured, no longer target enemy players
• All Thralls no longer flinch when hit in the legs by players or minions
• All Thralls no longer get knocked off the map
• Thrall Crushers
  • Now only attacks minions directly
  • No longer charges
  • New Skill: Has an area attack that destroys minions instantly and knocks up players (Usable once every 7 seconds)
• Thrall Guards
  • Now only attacks minions directly
  • New Skill: Targets a sentry with a mortar that deals heavy damage to the Sentry (Usable once every 10 seconds)

Overgrowth
• Modified the sniper nests to prevent players from engaging the first sentry from across the map.
• Shepherds spawn every fourth wave instead of after the first Sentry is destroyed.
• Various level geometry changes to reduce collision issues.
• Fixed a rare issue with the central Thrall mercenaries not pushing.

Echelon
• Shepherds spawn every fourth wave instead of after the first Sentry is destroyed.
• Various level geometry changes to reduce collision issues.

Non-Player Characters
• Fixed an issue where minions could become very difficult to kill after being affected by certain healing sources.

Gear
• Character Legendary gear no longer uses randomized values.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from acquiring the “Medical Nano-Colony” Legendary gear.
• Fixed an issue with the “Sentinel Reset Switch” Legendary gear.

Quality of Life
• Added “Faction”, “Character Rank”, “Lore Challenge Completion” and “Unlock” sorting for Battleborn in the Command menu.
• Fixed a “Player Initialization Failed” error when users first attempt to sign in.
• Fixed a rare issue that prevented players from controlling their characters if they were modifying their key bindings when starting a boss encounter. (PC)
• Fixed a rare issue that resulted in black flickering on the main menu. (XB1)
• Fixed an issue where an incorrect skin would appear for the second split screen user in the post-match screen.

Match Making
• Fixed an issue with matchmaking hosts that should reduce the number of connection failures. (XB1)
• Various improvements have been made to reduce the number of matchmaking failures. (PS4)

Audio
• Added unique sounds for attacking Immune and Overshielded
• Fixed an issue that allowed critical hit sounds to play against shielded players.
• Fixed an issue that occasionally prevented music from playing in Incursion.
• Various audio mix changes.

What do you think of Battleborn? I quite enjoyed it after a rough start, but I haven't been back since.