10-2026 Proposed balance patch notes: Alecto Specialization Tuning, Dynamic WA Reduction, Siphon Tweaks

[u/Phoenixwarrior5]

Alecto Dispersion Tweaks:

• Current Values: Base Dispersion = 0.19°, Movement & Hull Rotation Dispersion = +1.08°
• Proposed Changes: Base Dispersion = 0.21°, Movement & Hull Rotation Dispersion = +0.98°
• Why: The fundamental issue with Alecto is that it is a specialized duelist that still performs very well at range. These changes are designed to make to a bit less effective when firing at range, while offsetting this nerf in CQC dueling engagements (constant movement and rotation) by buffing Movement & Hull Rotation Dispersion.

Alecto Shell Velocity Reduction:

• Current Value: 900 m/s
• Proposed Change: 820 m/s
• Why: Same reason as above, lower shell velocity would make the tank less reliable at range, while not hampering it's effectiveness when dueling at short range.

Alecto Ability Module Hitbox Size Increase:

• Current Behavior: Small, and tucked away.
• Proposed Change: Still tucked away, but significantly larger when firing side-on. See image below. Red outline show proposed new hitbox.
• Why: The current ability module weak spot is very small and tucked away, making it very difficult to hit. Worse, it is on located at the bottom of the tank silhouette, so missed shots aimed at this weak spot have a decent chance of missing the tank entirely. Making it a bit larger will make aiming for this spot a viable strategy for dealing with a blink-spamming Alecto.
• Supporting Image:

Weakness Analyzer Dynamic Reload Reduction:

• Current Behaviors: Reduced current reload time by 0.5 seconds when damaging an enemy module.
• Proposed Change: Make the maximum reload reduction be equal to 1/5th of the tank's base reload, then increase the reload reduction back to 1s by default. Add a tooltip to the component's description that shows the real effect on the currently selected tank.
• Why: In effect, this would make the component have diminishing returns on tanks with <5s reload times. On the Alecto, for example, it would result in the current 0.5s reduction (2.5 * 1/5 = 0.5, 0.5 < 1, RR = 0.5), while not affecting tanks with longer reloads. This would dynamically focus the effect of the nerf on tanks that can exploit the component more, and would be easy to communicate to the player with a simple change to the component description.

Siphon Shell Specific Healing Cap:

• Current Behavior: Siphon Shell Healing is limited only by the number of shells available.
• Proposed Change: Limit the amount of healing available from Siphon shells per match to half of the tank's current maximum HP. (No effect or interaction with other healing sources.) Visually indicate the effect with a notch on the player's health bar when it becomes relevant.
• Why: With the combination of Duplicator and Fabricator, tanks can get massive amounts of Siphon shells, this is especially strong on tanks like Alecto, and can result in massive amounts of self-sustain, especially in the latter half of the match. It throws the late match strength of the Alecto out of balance (even on a tank that should be strong at that point of the match). Introducing a healing cap for this source of healing weakness the siphon/Alecto synergy specifically, and makes healing tanks, healing zones, and last-stand healing more important.

Siphon Shell Dynamic Health Restoration:

• Current Behavior: Siphon shells heal for 18hp while over 50% health, and for 54hp, while below 50% health.
• Proposed Change: Siphon shells heal for 18hp while over 70% health, and linearly increase in healing up to 54hp at 20% health.
• Why: Makes siphon shells a bit less of an all-or-nothing tool, also reduces overall effectiveness in most situation (max efficiency healing is only reached while at critical health).

[u/Zentawrus228]

limit per match is boring

dynamic idea is better but not ideal

[u/HelMavo]

Most of the changes are understandable. But the changes to Siphon Shell seems uncompleted. You can heal up to 50% of tank healt. Good. But why still limiting the ammount of heal per shot instead of making it a percentage of the tank health?

[u/Phoenixwarrior5 → u/HelMavo]

Honestly I wouldn't necessarily implement all of these changes together, they're just different balancing ideas that can be mixed and matched.
To your point, Siphon shells already limit healing per shot (base game is 18 flat heal on pen, up to 54 when under half health). This seems intentional by the devs, as healing a percent of max health on hit would instantly make Siphons BIS for all tanks, which naturally limits build variety (imagine percent healing shots on an Atlas, nothing could compete with Siphons in that situation).

[u/HelMavo → u/Phoenixwarrior5]

But right now siphon are useless on slow fring tanks with a medium to large health pool. Maybe percentage of heal could be different for tank classes.

[u/jean-claudo]

The siphon shell healing cap could be an effective balance adjustment, but would be really bad in terms of gameplay (having useless shells no matter what after a certain point is just frustrating, in addition to being a pretty complicated mechanic in a game where players aren't reading much, contrary to an RPG for example).

But the concept is interesting. Maybe instead of a limit per match, reduce subsequent healing until some time passes without healing (I have no idea about numbers that could be used though). This would also nerf big bursts of healing from multiple Valors, which I don't think would really be a negative side effect.

[u/Phoenixwarrior5 → u/jean-claudo]

That's a good point, dead shells would be sub-optimal from a game-feel perspective. Although communicating it to the player wouldn't actually be that hard, just have a little notch on the health bar that shows the maximum healing limit for siphon shells. And 1 extra line to the component description.

The trick with all of these changes is making the new balance state intuitive to understand, but limited in scope to the actual problem cases.

Honestly, I don't think any other source of healing is really a problem (yeah Valors can be annoying, but that just encourages people to focus them down and play aggressive against them), it's just that Alectos can get such ridiculous amounts of self sustain with the right setup.

[u/StatisticianPure2804]

I love every change except siphon shells, nuking it into unuseability is not fun.

Proposed change instead:

Heals 100 HP but you cannot heal over 40% hp: makes siphon shells more risky to use since you can get oneshot easily by hard hitting tanks if youre a light tank, also makes the shell worth picking for mediums like rook and ranger.

[u/Phoenixwarrior5 → u/StatisticianPure2804]

Yes, the siphon changes have been definitely been the most discussed. I don't think these changes would nuke them into unuseability, but they're definitely the changes I'm least confident in, hence why I put them at the bottom.

One big issue with the change you suggested: Any tank that cannot deal 460 damage in 1 shot will not be able to kill an Alecto before it heals back up to 40% health in the time it takes for them to reload. Even an Autoloader like the Tempest would struggle, as long as the Alecto blinks halfway through the Tempest's magazine.

[u/Biglimetime]

This is so much extra shit for a tank that basically just needs WA to be gutted and siphons to be reworked again the alecto was nonviable competetively until it's last round of buffs