Looking at the quoted changes at the bottom, it seems that Garrison Arrow Attack Speed was “supposed” to go from 1.12 to 1.88, which means that they fire slower. Going from 1.12 → 1.88 is a significant ~40% DPS nerf, if that’s what was intended.
However, the real Garrison Arrow Attack Speed, by looking at videos of casted games before the patch to verify, changes from 2.375 (before Patch 20249) to 2.125 (after Patch 20249).
The developer note seems to indicate the Attack Speed of Garrison Arrows was to be nerfed to balance out the buff on Ram targeting (by not shooting the Ram), but the change from 2.375 → 2.125 is actually a ~12% DPS buff instead.
Is it intentional that Garrison Arrow Attack Speed was buffed, instead of nerfed? I lean towards thinking that it was unintentional, considering that Feudal Age aggression is more difficult now than before.
Relevant portion of Patch 20249 changes:
- Defenses
No longer favor Rams as a target.
- Developer Note: When defending a Ram push, defenses will get stuck attacking Rams since they do so little damage. It’s possible to force defenses to attack other targets manually but we want to give defenders more breathing space to focus on managing more interesting elements of combat.
Town Center Weapons
Reducing the number of Garrison slots from 20 to 15.
Default weapon attack interval increased from 1.12 to 1.88.
Garrison arrow attack interval increased from 1.12 to 1.88.
Town Center Garrison slots reduced from 20 to 15.
- Developer Note: This change in combination with the change to prevent defenses from prioritizing attacking Rams helps to even out the defender advantage. We want pushes in the Feudal Age to be more viable at punishing heavy greed strategies.
Outpost
- Health reduced from 1000 to 750.
- Build time increased from 45 to 60 seconds.
- Outpost garrison attack interval increased from 1.12 to 1.88.
- Developer Note: Tower Rushing has been a consistently strong strategy for a long while and our changes to Towers are to make it more difficult to place them offensively. Now they take longer to build and have less health it should give defenders a larger window for counter play.
Build: 5.0.20249.0