evolve

This is a partial summary of all changes made to the game Evolve since its release in February 2015, current to January 19, 2016. Updates occur in major Title Updates across all platforms (7 so far, with an 8th arriving shortly), with smaller micropatches in between for PC users that are later rolled into the title updates.

UI/Menus

Matchmaking Changes

Gameplay Improvements

Free DLC Content

Game Type: Arena, a best two out of three deathmatch against a Stage 2 monster in a permanent dome.

Map: Broken Hill Foundry, a small, heavily vertical map with a new boxed food mechanic

Map: Broken Hill Mines, a large map divided into three large and different areas around a circular hub.

Map: Broken Hills Murder Pits, an Arena Only map consisting of tailor-made domes such as the Tyrant Pit

Monster: Meteor Goliath, a variant on Goliath with longer traversals, higher cooldowns, and a focus on area of effect and DoT abilities.

Hunter: Rogue Val, a variant on Val with a focus on AoE healing, personal survivability, and heavier damage. (Gorgon Patch)

Hunter: Blitz Markov, a variant on Markov with a focus on careful placement and positioning for accelerating returns in damage. (Gorgon Patch)

Hunter: Wasteland Maggie, a variant DPS focused trapper with a single flame harpoon and a burst fire pistol. Also, someone put a flamethrower on her dog. (EMET patch - upcoming)

Hunter: Tech Sergeant Hank, a variant support with a continuous fire laser cutter, an orbital drill beam weapon that tracks monsters in its radius, and a personal shield charger that grants temporary shields.

Tier 4

Support: Sunny, a mobility focused support with a jetpack booster, stationary defense drone, and mini-nuke launcher.

Medic: Slim, a combat medic with a health sapping shotgun, defensive spore cloud launcher, and healing drone.

Trapper: Crow, a ranged offensive trapper with a chargeable stasis gun, chargeable armor piercing rifle, and tracking bat familiar

Assault: Torvald, a ranged area control assault with a weak point grenade, automatic shotgun, and targetable mortar cannon launcher

Monster: Behemoth, a tanky combo-heavy monster with a rolling traversal, rock walls, lava bombs, ground-based fissure attack and a tongue grab. (preorder bonus, not in Monster Race but in Ultimate Edition)

Tier 5

Assault: Ida Lennox, a melee Assault with a leaping slam attack, comboing plasma lance, and AA cannon with an enormous magazine.

Trapper: Jack, a blocking/DPS trapper with a laser-satellite for tracking and damage, multiple pistols, and a repulsor gun that blocks monster movement.

Monster: Gorgon, a fast, agile spider monster that can stick to walls and web around the map. Uses a web blast, acid breath, controllable mimic, and spider trap.

Medic E.M.E.T., a robotic split personality medic who uses healing buoys, some kind of homing rocket and a respawn beacon for dead hunters.

Upcoming Support ("Kala") to be announced January 21st

Balance Changes by Character:

Goliath

The most popular and well-loved monster, Goliath has seen little changes other than the big Hunt 2.0 rework. He's a little less jumpy in domes now, and like any good monster he generally wants to be in the hunters faces to be fully effective.

Kraken

A #1 pick in the competitive league, Kraken's changes have generally been focused on making his attacks more readable and either encouraging or forcing him to get close and interact with the hunters.

Wraith

One of the core influences on the early player drop, Wraith was completely out of control month one and has taken a series of heavy nerfs before being patched back into a more interesting and dynamic monster. No longer able to escape domes with ease, nicely balanced and bugfixed, the new Wraith sees competitive play occasionally but has no major balance issues. Heavy focus on making Decoy less toxic have encouraged the rise of both aggressive and defensive "Sky Wraiths", who usually don't take the skill at all.

Behemoth

The Tier 4 release demonstrated quite palpably that T4 characters had not been "held back" from the core game, and indeed, weren't really finished on release. Behemoth has been on the uptick ever since his disastrous launch, with a wide host of bugfixes and power boosts culminating in the new plate armor patch, which hopes to make it a viable competitive choice for the first time ever.

Gorgon

A strong pubstomper but a mostly untested competitive pick, Gorgon enters the field with a host of traps and AoE abilities. Only some bugfixes have been applied to her so far.

Markov

The most reliable assault for damage, Markov's mines have been tuned down a little since launch for damage. Not too much else has been needed over time.

Maggie

Trappers have been the closest balanced class in Evolve since day 1, and don't tend to see a lot of sweeping changes. Maggie has only seen some slowly increasing harpoon nerfs to prevent abuse cases where she kited the monster endlessly.

Val

Finally, Val is Viable! Always a strong newbie choice but also a juicy target for monsters, a long road upwards has made her an outstanding single target medic with a heavily offensive slant. Some healing burst buffs to prevent her from being the first tasty meal in every game.

Rogue Val

Rogue Val is the opposite of Val in many ways - her penchant for damage has seen a little tweaking, but her survivability and AoE healing powers remain untouched since release.

Hank

Consistently one of the most popular and reliable support picks, Hank saw some tweakdowns to his shield and orbital barrage to prevent him spiking out of the park in Hunt 2.0. Most notably, his orbital barrage duration was slightly reduced to prevent it from totalling newbies who didn't understand how to jump out of it.

Hyde

A few simple tweaks to Hyde has made him the crowd favorite assault for reliable damage and area control. He's seen very few patches since the first months.

Griffin

A competitive darling for his ability to shut down Goliaths, Griffin's seen some harpoon nerfs to make him a little less sticky. As compensation, his sound-based tracking is substantially better than it was at launch.

Lazarus

Always a pub stomper but only recently a competitive pick, Lazarus' behavior has generally been tweaked to decrease the teams dependency on his glove and decrease the window in which he can use it, making the decision to punish or go for a rez a tougher one.

Bucket

The most damaging support of the group, Bucket's tweaks have generally increased his volatility and zone control. The new Gorgon patch deployable changes look to be an interesting change to his overall style.

Parnell

The least popular Assault but the second most damaging (first, if you count the damage to himself!), Parnell's seen several useability tweaks to allow him to function better at range. He's a niche pick, but a strong one - try a Parnell-Cabot mix for a truly impressive burst.

Abe

Abe has to do a little more work nowadays to keep the name of "stickiest trapper", but remains a reliable damage dealer and tracking hunter.

Caira

Still the most reliable medic in Evolve, Caira's tweaks have mostly been minimal, but a small range decrease means she has to pick her targets a little more carefully and abuse terrain features a little bit less.

Cabot

The dominating force of the original competitive "god squad", it was eventually decided that Cabot could have harrassment power or damage on his rail gun but not both. With the nerfs to his railgun, Cabot comps now rely heavily on comboing his similarly aggressive Damage Amplifier with a good Assault, and while he's no longer a pub favorite he's suffered little for it.

Torvald

Still the highest damage Assault in the game, Torvalds tradeoff comes in inflicting that damage reliably and at the right times - a tradeoff emphasized by his patching

Crow

Virtually untouched. The smoothest release character.

Slim

While Slim is the combat medic of the group, he dealt a little too much damage on release. After tweaking that down, his clouds radius and reload were altered to give the monster the option of leaving the cloud to regroup.

Sunny

The problem child of Tier 4, Sunny caused mayhem when she first released. Even after all her nerfs, she's still a fantastic choice for a mobility support.

Lennox

With the slower release schedule, Lennox has needed very little tuning. A few number tweaks and an important day one bugfix keeps her damage right in the sweet spot of balance.

Jack

Jacks DPS came on a little strong at release, but is pretty reliant on timing and placing his relays correctly inside domes. A slight damage nerf and some Repulsor tuning has evened his winrate nicely.

Known Persistent Bugs/Workarounds

These bugs have been known to occasionally occur in the wild. While some have been reduced or removed, bugs with known workarounds will be posted here: