Server Patch Notes 20/07/2018

[Natherul]

Many of us have followed the World Cup this year as the French National team won match after match in their run up to the finals, eventually beating Croatia 4-2. Now that our resident French benefactor has returned from his holiday, and we don't have any events planned through the summer, we're going to let this celebration run for a week starting Soon™.

If you don't follow soccer, enjoy the celebration anyway!

I mean, if England had won it all we totally would have had them up there, but they didn't. Gonna have to get this tattoo modified... not that I'm bitter or anything.

[General]

Natherul
- Renown cap now conforms to renown boost weekends.
- Xp cap now confirms to xp boost weekends.

[Abilities]

Natherul
[Archmage / Shaman]

Mechanic

- Casting a damage spell with 1 healing point or a healing spell with 1 damage point will now result in having no mechanic points instead of 1 mechanic point of the opposite type to the one that was consumed.
- The mechanic now additionally reduces the AP costs of cast time spells by 40%.

Tactics

- Added new tactics Penetrating Siphon and Gimme Dat!. These tactics make Balance Essence, I'll Take That!, Energy of Vaul and Fury of Da Green 20% less likely to be blocked or disrupted.

Balance Essence / I'll Take That!

- Cost increased to 45 AP from 30.
- Casts on the move if mechanic points are consumed.
- Heals for an additional 600 + Willpower at level 40, but damage component does not benefit from Int.

Energy of Vaul / Fury of Da Green

- Cost increased to 50 AP from 35.
- Casts on the move if mechanic points are consumed.
- Cooldown increased to 8s from 5s.
- Functionality changed. At level 40, inflicts 299 Spirit damage on your target and 4 other enemies within 20 feet of them, and heals your defensive target and all allies within 20 feet of them for 299 health per target hit plus 150% of the total damage you dealt.

[Swordmaster]

Tactics

- Forceful Shock is now Dragon's Breath - Dragon's Talon will knock back players and knock down monsters. Moved to Vaul 11pt tactic in place of Vaul's Buffer.
- Dampening Talon is now Blinding Strike - Dazzling Strike will now reduce the target's chance to Block and Parry by 10%. Moved to Hoeth 11pt tactic in place of Blessing of Heaven.
- Blessing of Heaven is now the Hoeth 3pt tactic.
- Bolstering Enchantments is now core.

[Dungeons]
Gunbad
Hargrim
- Improvements to Masta Wrangla Glix.

Natherul
- Possible fix for nullref inside gunbad and other PQs.

[RvR]

Natherul
- New instadeath spell for lords when players try to pull them out of keep, this should lessen confusion with random terminates.

Hargrim
- Players no longer in the vicinity of the keep should no longer be targeted by the lords instakill mechanic.

[Scenarios]

Natherul
- There is now an icon showing on the map where the salvage is in the serpents passage scenario.

[Items]

wargrimnir
- Added 25% and 50% speed Squig Armor mounts to the appropriate vendors.

[dansari]

Spoiler:

Mechanic

- Casting a damage spell with 1 healing point or a healing spell with 1 damage point will now result in having no mechanic points instead of 1 mechanic point of the opposite type to the one that was consumed.
- The mechanic now additionally reduces the AP costs of cast time spells by 40%.

Tactics

- Added new tactics Penetrating Siphon and Gimme Dat!. These tactics make Balance Essence, I'll Take That!, Energy of Vaul and Fury of Da Green 20% less likely to be blocked or disrupted.

Balance Essence / I'll Take That!

- Cost increased to 45 AP from 30.
- Casts on the move if mechanic points are consumed.
- Heals for an additional 600 + Willpower at level 40, but damage component does not benefit from Int.

Energy of Vaul / Fury of Da Green

- Cost increased to 50 AP from 35.
- Casts on the move if mechanic points are consumed.
- Cooldown increased to 8s from 5s.
- Functionality changed. At level 40, inflicts 358 Spirit damage on your target and 4 other enemies within 20 feet of them, and heals your defensive target and all allies within 20 feet of them for 358 health per target hit plus 150% of the total damage you dealt.

Good stuff. Glad to see AM/sham changes.

Are Penetrating Siphon and Gimme Dat! core tactics?

[lefze]

Balance essence/EoV are not castable on the move anymore. With either of the mechanic points, or without any.

Edit: EoV still only heals for 100% of damage done.

[Arbich]

Oh, reallly interesting AM changes. Sounds like .ab ex lite. Big thanks!

[ToXoS]

Balance essence/EoV are not castable on the move anymore. With either of the mechanic points, or without any.

Yep, just tested the mirrors on my shaman. They don't work on the move.

[Telen]

Are the new tactics core or from the lifetap tree? What tactic do they replace. Id suggest at 3 from Vaul/Green.

[Telen]

One issue I can foresee with this is AM with Wild Healing being able to sit at 1 Traq and not go into Force for the AP reduction on their heals while always getting the reduction on their lifetaps. While Shaman will need to either cast twice or stay in Force for AP management and never get the benefit on their lifetaps.

[live4treasure]

From what I'm seeing, a lot of this is basically a straight nerf to DPS AM specifically, while being a sizeable buff to healer AMs. Not being able to juggle is going to make things a lot less smooth and fun gameplay-wise, because it pushes DPS AM to stick to DPSing mostly and a healer am to stick to healing mostly. It's a good change conceptually, but this means that you can't slot a DPS AM in a healer slot now because his healing will be far less reliable while he himself will still be far more squishy than other healing classes. So you have to occupy a DPS slot again, like before, but you don't do nearly as much damage as an actual DPS class, meaning people simply won't want you in that slot. To soon to say anything definitive of course, since I've not had enough time to test it yet, but at a glance, this seems to empower healers, but push DPS into the gray area in which it was before the first patch to AM. I'll come back to this after the weekends though, when I've had time to test.

- Heals for an additional 600 + Willpower at level 40, but damage component does not benefit from Int.

Does it benefit from anything at all, like willpower, or is it now just flat unscaling damage?

Energy of Vaul / Fury of Da Green
- Cooldown increased to 8s from 5s.

Again, I get why this change was implemented with the base healing amount changes, but this means that while before I was able to participate in big WB bombing groups by spamming EoV on enemies while in a party with a Whispering Winds SM, now I don't really have an option to do that as a DPS AM. I would still be able to occupy the healer slot in a warband though, because even with this change I could juggle between aoe heal and EoV, but the change to the way mechanic stacks behave at 1 stack prevent me from doing so. It may mean that DPS AMs only real place in the game is running around solo once again, but we'll see. Not terribly happy about the changes tho, certainly

[peterthepan3]

To be honest, if you are a DPS AM you shouldn't be able to fill in as a healer (maybe just the odd offhealing here and there). Personally, I don't think DPS AM is actually that much worse off than any other RDPS (if played well). It's incredibly potent vs certain comps, imo.

[live4treasure]

Well, I can agree that filling a healer slot is likely not a very good thing for the game in the long term, but while you are not that much worse, compared to many other hybrids, you're not exactly a DoK either who is literally as good as any other dps class, or an SM who can fill the tank slot while dealing damage that isn't very far from a true dps class, the same applying to a BG. You can see the impact of that by the amount of serious premades running dps AM in SCs (0, pretty much, at least none that I'm aware of. I think the only one was Dragons of Eternity with Rioz in their group when he was still active, however it wasn't an optimal group even then) vs the amount of premades running dps DoKs in their groups. (Some, which is more than 0)

So to sum it up, I don't think it was that bad that a DPS AM was capable of filling a healer role, because classes like SM, DoK and BG exist. It was quite unique even. However despite being good versus certain comps, it's likely still going to be left in the same gray area as it was before. I'm not making any statement here of whether or not this is a good or bad thing for the game balance at large, I'm simply saying that I'm happy to have had a place in quite a few effective groups, and sad that I'll likely lose it in the near future. Who knows though, it may not have quite as negative an effect on the spec as I'm thinking, of course.

It also creates design space for replacing the completely useless abilities like Dissipating Energies and the ranged punt ability, if the developers choose to do something with them, of course. I hope they will, at the very least it can create something to take besides the healdebuff.