Matches now run on a 20-minute clock with a payload race finale. Mid pays the players who fight for it, Game Show events shake up the middle of the match, and every class has been rebalanced so fights last longer.
How a match plays now
Every match is a 20-minute countdown. The big moments happen at set times, so you always know what’s coming next. The clock on the top board counts down, and the last minute flashes red.
20:00 → The match starts.
18:00 → Mid opens for the first time.
15:00 → The siege begins. Bot waves get tougher.
13:00 → Game Show event, 2 minutes.
10:00 → Each team’s Goliath XL walks out. Mid’s prize becomes the Annihilator.
8:00 → Second Game Show event, 2 minutes.
5:00 → The Payload Race starts. It’s announced a minute before.
0:00 → Overtime, or the match is decided.
Respawns
- You respawn in waves with your team, so players who die together come back together.
- Waves come further apart later in the match: every 7.5 to 9 seconds while the XLs are out, and every 8 seconds during the Payload Race.
- You never wait more than 13 seconds.
Mid: The Main Stage
Capturing mid wins your team a strike: an Orbital Strike, an EMP or a War Chest. Now it also pays the players who take it.
- Strikes are free. Capturing one no longer costs coins. The Annihilator, mid’s late-game prize, still costs 1,000.
- Mid opens sooner and more often. It opens at 18:00 and comes back 1:30 after every capture.
- Captors get a prize. Everyone who helps finish a capture gets +150 coins and a 30-second power. Standing just outside the circle still counts.
- Stage kills. While mid is open, killing an enemy on or near the point pays +50 on top of the kill. Both teams can earn it.
- Mid never closes. After the strikes run out, captures still pay the coins and the power.
Powers
- Orbital Strike → Power Play: your hits deal 35% more damage and pop up as yellow MINI CRITS.
- EMP → Haste: 30% faster movement. Rush the towers while they’re down.
- War Chest → Mega Health: a full heal plus a full overheal.
- Annihilator → Power Play.
- Powered players glow in their team’s color, so enemies can spot them. Your power ends when you die.
The Crown
- The first team to land all 3 strikes before 10:00 earns the Crown. Their Goliath XL walks out with +25% health, a gold glow and “CROWNED” on its health bar.
- A sweep ends the strike race for both teams. The remaining strike slots are crossed out, but captures still pay coins and powers.
- The mid banner tells you when a capture decides the Crown: “ONE MORE CROWNS YOUR XL” or “THIS ONE CROWNS THEIR XL · DENY IT”.
The Payload Race
At 5:00 both carts arm, and mid becomes King of the Hill. Whoever holds mid pushes their own cart toward the enemy core.
- Taking mid during the race takes 15 seconds and is free.
- Stand on mid to push. More teammates on the point push faster, up to double speed.
- If you hold mid but nobody is standing on it, your cart crawls at half speed.
- Any enemy on the point stops your cart.
- Carts never roll back.
- An enemy tower in the way stops a cart until the cart shells it down. That includes bought towers still standing when the race starts.
- Towers no longer lose health on their own during the race.
- The race bar shows who’s ahead: the leading cart is in its team color with LEADS, and the other is darkened. It also shows what your cart is doing: PUSHING ×2, CRAWLING, MID CONTESTED or CART STOPPED.
How the match is won
- Destroy the enemy core, or deliver your cart to it, and you win on the spot.
- If the clock runs out, the cart that got further wins.
- If both carts are level, the team that got there first wins. You have to pass them, not just tie them.
- If neither cart moved, the team with more core health wins. If that’s level too, it’s a draw.
Overtime
- At 0:00 the match keeps going while anyone from the losing team is standing on mid.
- Once they step off, a 3-second fuse starts burning. Getting back on refills it. After 20 seconds of overtime the fuse drops to 1 second.
- Overtime can’t last longer than 3 minutes.
- A big red OVERTIME bar under the race bar shows the fuse and tells you what to do: STAY ON MID and GET BACK ON MID if you’re losing, CLEAR THEM OFF MID and HOLD THEM OFF if you’re winning.
Towers & spawns
Bought towers are worth it now
- Bought towers have the same health and damage as lane towers. Before, a single bot wave could kill one.
- Bought towers still standing when the Payload Race starts block the enemy cart until it shells them down. Building up your base before the race slows their push.
Spawn rooms
- Spawn doors are now nearly solid. Nobody outside can see players waiting inside, so snipers can’t pre-aim the doorway.
Game Show & bounties
Two Game Show events run each match, at 13:00 and 8:00. Each one lasts 2 minutes and is announced 20 seconds ahead.
The Giant
- The losing team’s top player becomes a Giant: bigger, double health, +25% damage to players and +50% to towers and the core.
- Taking the Giant down pays every player on the slaying team 150 coins.
Marked Tower
- Each team has one of the other team’s towers marked in gold. It’s a race: the first team to destroy its target wins a 400-coin jackpot for every attacker and ends the event.
- If time runs out with both towers standing, every defender gets 150 coins.
Death Match
- Every kill pays +100 coins. The team with more kills during the event takes a 250-coin pot, and a tie splits it.
Bounties
- Kills, assists and the coins you earn build up a bounty on you. It goes live after about 3 kills without dying, and tops out at 500.
- Kill a player with a live bounty and you collect it, with a bonus if your team is behind.
- Only the leading team’s bounties are live. The team that’s behind keeps building theirs, but they only count once that team takes the lead.
- Spot a bounty by its gold glow, the coins that fly off when it’s shot, the coin trail behind it, and the big coin burst when it dies.
- The top three bounties are listed on the Game Show card, and the TAB scoreboard shows each one. When you have a bounty, your screen gets a pulsing gold border.
- Damage numbers turn gold when you hit a bounty player or a marked tower.
Classes & combat
Fights now last longer. Class health, weapon damage, crits and magazine sizes were retuned together, so every class takes a set number of shots to bring down.
Class health
- Scout 115 → 125
- Soldier 150 → 200
- Sniper 120 → 125
- Heavy 170 → 300
- Medic 130 → 150
Bots, towers and hazards still hurt each class exactly as much as before. The extra health only matters against other players.
Weapon damage against players
- Heavy minigun: 12 → 24 per bullet. The Heavy now shreds up close.
- Sniper rifle: body shots 46 → 50. Fully charged shots and headshots hit for 150.
- Sniper sidearm: 22 → 8 per bullet. It’s a panic button, not a second primary.
- Medic SMG: 9 → 6.7 per bullet, about 100 damage per second.
- Unchanged: the Scout’s double-barrel and pistol, the Soldier’s rockets and both shotguns.
- Bots, towers and the core take the same damage as before from every gun.
Crits, magazines and the knife
- Random crits now deal 3× damage (was 2×). A crit shotgun blast kills anything but a Heavy. Bot weak spots stay at 2×.
- Medic SMG magazine: 30 → 60 rounds, enough to kill a full-health Heavy.
- Sniper sidearm magazine: 18 → 25 rounds, enough to kill a full-health Soldier. Spare ammo is unchanged.
- Knife: front stabs deal 150 (was 130), so they still one-stab Scouts, Snipers and Medics. Backstabs still kill anyone.
Sniper
- Charging is slower now: the charge starts 0.3 seconds after you scope in and takes 3 seconds to fill. It used to start right away and fill in 2.
- Damage is unchanged: body shots go from 50 to 150 as you charge, and headshots are always a 3× crit.
- Headshot kills: Scouts, Snipers and Medics die to an uncharged headshot. Soldiers need about 0.8 seconds of charge, and Heavies about 1.8 seconds. A Heavy with a full Medic overheal needs a full charge.
- The FAST CHARGE upgrade still speeds up the charge.
Medic: Juice
Juice charges differently and has new rules for objectives.
- It charges at full speed until your patient is past 142.5% health, then at half speed.
- Unchanged: 40 seconds of healing to fill, it can only be used at 100%, it lasts 8 seconds, and your patient stays protected for about a second after the beam leaves them. You keep your charge while holstered and lose it when you die.
- Juiced players can’t capture or push.
- Juiced players can still block: a Juiced enemy on the point stops your capture and your cart.
Rockets
- A direct rocket hit on a bot’s weak spot (visor, crown, hopper and so on) now counts as a crit, with crit damage and the crit popup. Hits from behind don’t crit through the body.
- This includes the Goliath’s red rear cube and the Goliath XL’s crown. Rockets used to fly straight through them.
Bots
The Goliath is a walking shield
- It no longer fires plasma orbs and has no lock-on laser.
- It walks at the front of its wave and keeps its energy barrier between its team and incoming fire.
Black Jack
- Black Jacks no longer punch players standing on a ledge far above them. If you’re on a ledge overhead, they shoot you instead, as long as they can see you.
Teamwork
Pings
Talk to your team without saying a word.
- Hold middle mouse to open the ping wheel. Flick toward a call and let go: Go here, Attack, Defend, Need healing, Danger or Enemy.
- Tap middle mouse for a quick ping that reads what you’re aiming at: an enemy pings Enemy, your own tower, core or bots ping Defend, and anything else pings Go here.
- Double-tap to call Enemy. It replaces your first tap’s Go here.
- Pings stick to what you aim at, so everyone knows exactly what you mean. Enemy turrets and bots get their own icons.
- Enemy pings follow the target while you can see it. Once it’s out of sight, the ping stays at its last known spot.
- Pings show even when they’re behind you, with a distance and a line in the ping feed (“Hue: Attack the tower”). Pings at the edge of your screen are drawn larger so you don’t miss them mid-fight.
- Nearby teammates hear your pings.
Call for Medic
- Press X to call for healing. A green plus appears over your head so every Medic knows who to help.
Ally nameplates
- Teammates in view show their name and class above their heads. No nameplates through walls.
End of match
- New results screen. VICTORY, DEFEAT or DEAD HEAT, with a line explaining how the match was decided, like “WON ON DISTANCE · 71% — 54%”, “PAYLOAD DELIVERED” or “THEIR CORE DESTROYED”, plus “OVERTIME” if it went that far.
- Award cards flip in one at a time: MVP, Most Damage, Mid King and Lifesaver. If nobody earned one, it’s replaced by Tower Breaker, Most Eliminations or Coin King. Winners’ cards are trimmed in gold, and yours is tagged YOU.
- Your match: your kills, damage, mid captures, structures and coins earned count up on screen.
- The game goes quiet. When the result comes up, gunfire, footsteps, the crowd and the announcers fade out, and only the victory or defeat music plays, now at half its old volume.
- The results screen also runs smoother than before.
HUD
- The countdowns to the Goliath XL, the Payload Race and the next Game Show event no longer cover the mid capture bar. They sit in a strip underneath.
- Stage-kill and mid-prize popups now appear just above the elimination banner.
- Long event lines and player names on the Game Show card, the bounty list and the bounty banner shrink to fit.
Audio
- Removed the announcer’s “core is half” call.
- Walking away from a half-finished mid capture no longer sets off a crowd reaction.
Settings & menu
- New: Music volume. Under Settings › Audio, below Effects. It controls all the music: menu themes, match intro, victory and defeat, and the mid and Annihilator tracks. Turn it down to play your own playlist; gunfire, footsteps and announcers stay where you set them.
- New: Jiggle Physics. Under Settings › Video. It starts at 0. We don’t recommend going past 75.
- Controls: Ping (middle mouse) and Call for Medic (X) are under Settings › Controls › Combat and can be rebound. If X doesn’t work, press Reset controls once.
Bug fixes
- If the class-select timer runs out, you now get the class you were hovering over instead of Scout.
- Buying a tower on a tier-1 slot no longer makes your tier-2 tower impossible to damage.
- Class sizes now show for everyone, not just the host. Heavies look bigger and Scouts smaller on every screen, and hits line up with what you see.
- Damage numbers now show the damage actually dealt to players.
- The Sniper’s charge bar shows again while scoped. It fills as you charge and turns gold at full charge.
- Long player names no longer overlap the scoreboard columns.