Season 12 (Halo Wars 2)

Season 12 is the twelfth season of Halo Wars 2 to launch (not including the Yappening in-game event), beginning on December 13, 2018. The season followed Season 11 and was succeeded by Season 13 in May 2019. The season's emblem is represented by several Protector Sentinels. Notably, this season oversaw the release of the map Fort Jordan.

Season 12 Title Updates
Season 12 accompanied the release of two Title Updates.

December 13 patch notes
Hello Halo Wars Community, Season 12 is upon us! Thursday of this week we are planning on updating Halo Wars 2 to the newest season as well as adjusting matchmaking rules for all 3 of the ranked deathmatch playlists. We are working on the next balance update, but this will not be coming until sometime early next year.

Ranked Deathmatch Changes
The changes to Ranked Deathmatch include a new set of matchmaking rules that is much stricter on skill level matching. With this change, you likely will see increased search times especially at the lowest and highest levels of rank. This is a change that has been requested by the community for quite some time and we are going to let the community give us feedback on how the rules feel once updated. These changes to matchmaking rules will apply only to Ranked deathmatch for 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2, and 3 vs 3 for now. We will be monitoring the health of these playlists after these changes are implemented to see if they need to be loosened or tightened even further.

Season Update
Season 11 was a fun one for many. During the season there were several balance updates that were shaped by members of the community that are a part of our Halo Wars Private Test Realm. A huge shoutout to these members who have been helping us to shape balance updates for the past several months working in conjunction with Wrensi.

We would like to offer a heartfelt thank you to ASolidConviction, BreezyStarfish1, BtC Slick, CarsandCamera, EdPeter, Flame Pieman, Hosticide, LargoPancake40, metaloidmonkey, mightyhoax, MikeBeastON, TPietro76, Vexed, Viper Skills, xandy92, and Yodesla. Your help and contributions have helped in the shaping of Halo Wars 2 and where it is today. Thank you!

As always, please use the forums here for leaving feedback, telling us what you would like to see next season, any balance concerns you have, or to have discussions around Halo Wars. We look forward to hearing what you have to say!

January 29 content update
Today, January 29th, there is a build update for Halo Wars 2 that includes rolling all the prior balance patches into this build, adds a handful of bug fixes, and adjusts some game files for better balancing in the future. The road to making this happen has been a passion project of several people in the studio to continue ongoing balance and development updates. With the Publishing team focused heavily on MCC, it has been a challenge, but a few on the team were very happy to take it on and make it happen. You can read more further down below in our first ever Halo Wars 2 edition of “The ScoopTM.”

Today’s update is on the larger side, clocking in at around 12GB, but there’s a lot of optimization and re-configuring occurring with this patch which will actually result in your overall Halo Wars 2 installation being SMALLER than it was prior. This ‘plumbing’ work will allow the team to better deliver updates in the future. This coming year is going to be a fun one with the 343 Publishing Team’s continued efforts to support Halo Wars 2 and its passionate community. The team has some cool plans in store for 2019 and we’re excited to share them with all of you in the coming months.

But for now, let’s take a peek at what’s in today’s Halo Wars 2 update and get the scoop on how we got here!

Global

 * Fixed hardlocks encountered while downloading a balance patch update
 * Fixed hardlocks at the main menu while booting the title
 * Removing duplicate files
 * Fixing a desync issue that could occur after a balance patch
 * All balance changes of the past year included into the content update
 * Addition of 20+ MP tactic files to help balance units

Win10
Game start delay at launch of Multiplayer match improved for those with an AMD graphics card

February 26 patch
The map Fort Jordan was released in this update.

April 18 balance patch
Hello Friends,

This morning we have pushed live the latest balance patch for Halo Wars 2 that we have had in preview leading up to today. Below are the changes that are coming with this update to help improve your experience in multiplayer. As a note, we are working on a future update that will help us address balance for Decimus by altering code that will require a full build update. We will be as transparent as possible around when we believe this change is coming online, but I do not currently have an ETA on this. We also have other feedback that has come in on the preview thread we will look at and discuss internally to see what we want to address in the next future balance update. Thanks again for all of the feedback!

Banished Global
Jump Pack Brutes JPBs have been strong for a very long time. These changes aren't drastic, but we believe will help in countering them more appropriately. Build time increased from 15s to 17s Speed reduced from 12 to 11 Cleansing Beam Tier 3 Tier 3 Cleansing Beam is currently too strong, nerfs are coming to the speed the beam moves at as well as giving an additional second of telegraphing on the T3 version. Speed normalized across tiers Tier 2/3 reduced from 18 to 17 Tier 3 telegraphing increased by 1 second.

Kinsano
Hellcharge

Fixed an issue that caused Hellcharge to not affect units correctly in the targeting radius.

Pavium
Burnout Tier 3

Burnout is still very strong on Pavium so nerfs to the T3 version of the ability are being made to reduce its ability to buff an entire base. Duration reduced from 50s to 45s
 * Radius reduced from 24 to 17

Arbiter
Conduit of Rage Tier 1 & Tier 2 Buffing Tier 1 and 2 of Conduit of Rage to improve Arbiter’s early game effectiveness. Plasma Bolt
 * Tier 1
 * Speed buff increased from 20% to 25%
 * Damage Buff increased from 15% to 20%
 * Area of Effect increased from 40 to 50
 * Tier 2
 * Speed buff increased from 28% to 30%
 * Damage buff increased from 30% to 35%%
 * Area of Effect increased from 80 to 90

Buffing the damage across the board on this power as it has been historically very weak and even with the triple shots at Tier 3 it did too little damage to be effective and is only used to proc CoR. With the damage buffs the ability will now be a viable option for attacking units as well.
 * Tier 1: Damage increased from 3000 to 3300 per shot
 * Tier 2: Damage increased from 3000 to 3600 per shot
 * Tier 3: Damage increased from 3000 to 3900 per shot

Colony
Goliath Goliath rushes are currently very hard to deal with. To diminish the power of a rush, we are reducing their health so that rush counter-units can better deal with them if scouted early.
 * Overall health reduced by 15%

Serina
Cryo Troopers

Serina struggles in her early game because once players counter her chill, she doesn’t have a lot to fight back with. For now, we are rolling out a small buff to her early game Cryo Troopers to help with map control. We will monitor balance data in the future to see if additional buffs are needed.
 * Base DPS increased by 10%
 * Chill Rate vs Infantry increased by 5%

Isabel
The Best Offense

Currently she is struggling in competitive and in the short term we are looking to buff her late game passive and give her Nightingales and Scorpions more survivability. We will monitor balance data in the future to see if additional buffs are needed.
 * Nightingale Health and Shield buffs increased by 10%
 * Scorpion Health and Shield buffs increased by 10%

Please feel free to discuss these proposed changes on this post. We look forward to additional feedback from the community on the next upcoming balance update. But be aware, the scope of changes is locked at this time. Please focus feedback on the changes contained in this preview.