Update 70 shipped one of the wider balance passes of the year. Rather than just list numbers, here's the reasoning behind a few of the changes that matter most for the current meta — the full grid with every buff and nerf is always live on the Balance Changes page.
Overview
This patch leaned buff-heavy on a handful of underused picks (Shelly, Colt, Rico) while reining in a couple of Brawlers that had been dominating lobbies (Shade especially). A few gadgets and Star Powers also got quieter, quality-of-life tweaks that won't show up as dramatic swings but change how those kits actually play.
The headline changes
Shelly was struggling to survive her own engage window at close range — the health buff gives her enough of a cushion to actually land her shotgun combo before dying to counter-fire. Colt and Rico both got straightforward damage-side buffs aimed at making them viable outside of niche compositions.
Melodie and Colonel Ruffs got smaller, kit-specific adjustments: Melodie's slow gadget covers more ground, and Ruffs' Star Power salvos fire noticeably faster, both quality-of-life buffs rather than raw number increases.
Shade is the clearest nerf target this patch — a slower gadget and a weaker shield Star Power directly target the parts of his kit that made him oppressive to play against, without gutting his core identity.
A caveat worth repeating
Community balance-change trackers (including ours) compile these numbers from a mix of official patch notes and datamined sources before Supercell's own documentation catches up. The grid on balance-changes.html is explicitly marked as work-in-progress until every change is cross-verified — treat exact percentages as directional until then, especially for anything not shown here.
Read next
For the full picture of what else shipped in Update 70 — new Hypercharges, the NanoNoodles season, and Sprout's visual rework — see the Update 70 patch notes.