Big changes are coming to Paladins with the recently announced OB 64 patch that was showcased that will completely change the way the game is played.

What changes are these you may be asking? Hi-Rez Studios is doing away with the Essence system and making every card free. Yes, free. Not only will every card be free, but every champion’s legendary card will also be free and a fourth legendary card will also be introduced for every champion.

You can catch the details of this major change below:

• Essence is gone.
• Paladins is even more free to play. All Cards (Basic and Legendary) are now free and immediately unlocked, and can be levelled up by collecting duplicates.
• In the new over-the-top Quick Play mode (replacing Casual queue), you can play exactly how you want to play. Just build a loadout of your five favorite Cards — no point limit restrictions.
• Ranked Mode is now more balanced and competitive than ever before, with all Cards unlocked and set to Level 3. ”(edited)
• Essence has been removed from the game. Players with Essence will have the currency converted to Gold at a 1-to-1 ratio. And all previous Essence rewards have been changed.
• Level 1 of all Cards (Basic and Legendary) for all Champions are now free and immediately unlocked
• A new Legendary has been added for each Champion. Like all other cards, all players will be granted these new Legendary Cards at Level 1 for free.
• Cards and Legendaries can now be upgraded from Level 1 to 5 by collecting duplicate cards.
  • Cards and Legendaries come from the Radiant Chest and a new Champion Chest, which will drop champion-specific Cards and champion-specific Legendaries.
• Cards will auto-upgrade when the requisite number have been collected. There is no currency required to upgrade cards.
• Champion Chests are unlocked free via Champion Mastery and for first wins of the day with a Champion.
• Players who have already unlocked Cards (Basic and Legendaries) will receive those Cards at Level 3.(edited)
• All Champions now have 3 default loadouts to accommodate different playstyles. Custom loadouts can still be created.
• Quick Play Queue is new mode replacing Casual Queue. In this Queue the player can build a deck with no point-limit using the Cards he or she has acquired. Up to 5 Level 5 cards can be used in a loadout.
• In Ranked, all player loadouts will have Cards and Legendary automatically set to Level 3. If your loadout contains cards higher than 3 they will be set to 3 in Ranked. If your loadout contains cards lower than 3 they will be set to 3 in Ranked.

Aside from this major overhaul to the card system, Hi-Rez Studios is also set to make the following changes:

General

• New Rarity: Limited
• New Match Lobby presentation
• Default Crosshair Changed for below champions
  • Jenos
  • Kinessa
  • Lex
  • Strix
  • Lian
  • Ruckus
  • Skye

General Bug Fixes

• Daily Quests – We are continuing to address issues with Daily Quests and hope to have them all fixed for OB64 release.
• Fixed an issue with Audio levels for Inara and Bomb King
• Fixed an issue with Auto Item Purchase with Vivian
• Fixed a visual issue with Vivian’s Sentinels
• Fixed an issue with Grover’s Blossom not healing multiple Alllies

General Balance

• Movement speed from abilities (eg Hustle and Prowl) will now properly diminish with other movement speed effects.

Item Balancing

Resilience:

• Will now reduce the duration of crowd control effects by the indicated percentage and no longer reach a floor of 0.5s.
• Polymorph in an exception and its minimum duration is still 2s.

Champion Balance

Buck

• Shotgun
  • Damage decreased from 800 to 700.
  • Ammo increased from 4 to 5.

Cassie

• Crossbow
  • Addressed an issue where sometimes Cassie’s projectile sounds could get stuck on.

Drogoz

• Fire Spit
  • Projectile Speed increased from 40 to 60.

Pip

• Potion Launcher
  • Self Damage reduced from 400 to 200.

Vivian

• LMG
  • Damage reduced from 200 to 170.
• Sentinel
  • Fixed a bug where Sentinel’s explosion radius was larger than it appeared.

To round up the OB 64 patch, here’s the latest round of cosmetics that will be introduced:

VIP

• Androxus – Imperator skin and weapon
• Seris – Divine Seris collection
• Inara – Ice Walker collection (rotation skin)

Festive Chest

• Christmas themed chest that contains numerous different holiday cosmetics including the snow man themed Bomb King skin.

As always, this isn’t the final patch notes as somethings are likely to change between now and the patch release. But if there’s any changes to OB 64 we will be sure to inform you guys.

Source: Paladins (Reddit)