Patch notes 22/12/2018

[mikke]

The 5th bonus proc together with subjugator 2h proc can be a deadly combination.

If it only was something like 5 sec RD proc....

[Hargrim]

The missing Gunbad bosses are back.

[naugrim]

Party keg will be remove at the end of event? because I can see any decay on it...

[Nabaro]

Shroud of Magnus now totally reduce dmg from undefendable ability's. For example "Bolt of Change". This is bug or now we can defend against undefendable??? This is not in the patchouts and skill description.

[Sulorie]

Shroud of Magnus now totally reduce dmg from undefendable ability's. For example "Bolt of Change". This is bug or now we can defend against undefendable??? This is not in the patchouts and skill description.

Should be an oversight, when making all spell dmg 0 during buff duration.

[Illiyara]

Wargrimn, I agree that the AM mechanic had several issues and could benefit from a rework, but as someone who regularly switched between heal and dps spec and loved using the mechanic to the max, I think you have a few misunderstandings about how the mechanic worked.

Heres what it DID - 40% cast time reduction, 40% ap reduction and 25% augmentation on instants AND movecast on certain abilities, converted all your willpower/intelligence from items to the other depending on ability type cast AND made said abilities behave as if the AM/SH had full 15 point investment in respective trees, oh and additional strikethrough on various abilities. On top of that, the conversion was not grabbing an average, it was grabbing ALL of your base stats, adding them together, and reducing it by 70%, then using that TOTAL value for the modifier. Not at average of your stats * .7, but the total of your stats * .7, which is ridiculous.

You seem to think that the mechanic gave you an absurd stat modifier much higher than you could get actually building for it. First of all, affected your bonus stats, not base stats. In my glass healer build, I have a bonus 62 int, 38 toughness, 67 init, 726 wp, and 136 wounds. The sum of my bonus stats is 1029, and 70% of that is 720. So that scary modified TOTAL of ALL my bonus stats actually comes out a bit less than my base wp was, not at all ridiculous imo. It's a weighted average, aimed at reproducing your main stat (in a rather clunky way imo). TLDR; my mechanic would never make my heals or dps spells stronger than when I was actually geared for it. And of course, that doesn't include stats like strikethrough and crit/healcrit, or tactics, which only widen the gap between offspec and true spec performance.

Secondly, the mechanic used that value for your stat contribution, but didn't actually give you bonus int or wp for that cast. That's a big difference for a healer using the mechanic for dps spells, because it means you'll still lack the strikethrough gained from int, so you'll get disrupted a lot (which is why lifetaps got a strikethrough bonus instead of bonus damage).

Lastly, I'm quite sure the mechanic didn't do anything to mastery lines. While playing with dps masteries, I would often end up healing (with heal gear and tactics) when there were none in the sc, and my empowered heals would still hit for substantially less than when I was a specced healer, ignoring crits.

However, if as said, you were a full heal spec, will some in the "lifetap tree" and zero in damage tree you could hot 5 people pretty fast and then drop 5 massive attacks on people with a huge intelligence boost AND as if you had a full 15 points invested in the DPS tree, if you cant see how this was exploitative and overpowered there may be no convincing you.

It would hardly be 5 massive attacks. Besides my corrections on how the mechanic actually worked above, an AM as a mainly dot class doesn't have massive attacks, but dots you stack for a slow "burst" with your channel. The dps AM burst is mainly Scatter the Winds, Radiant Gaze, Law of Conductivity, then channel Searing Touch. Healers lack the strongest dot in that "burst", Scatter the Winds. They will lack the Searing Touch tactic, so our best direct attack will tick twice as slowly. All those attacks will have a high chance of being disrupted because they lack int (remember, it was not a stat conversion) and any additional strikethrough from gear and tactic. They'll lack crit compared to a real dps. They'll also lack 25% damage from not having Divine Fury (somewhat debatable, since the mechanic boosts damage on those spells by 25%, but dps AMs can also build mechanic for the same effect). All that likely adds up to less than 60% dps in your burst compared to a dps AM, whose killpower outside of 1v1 scenarios is already substantially worse than dedicated dps classes. It was pretty op for 1v1 though.

As a healer trying to use the mechanic to its fullest, I would rarely dps because it still wasn't often worth it; better to use my stacks on lifetaps. Maybe you could argue that heal AMs were still capable of too much damage, but it's hardly the scary healer/nuker you seem to think.



I do think the mechanic was horribly convoluted and unintuitive, but it did solve many issues AMs had and create the most engaging playstyle yet for both dps and heal AM. I hope it is fixed with an accurate and not inflated understanding of how it actually did work. If the benefit from using the mechanic is too weak, it'll become mostly useless, and I personally think the AM as a hybrid should have an optimal situational use for all of its skills. That will be hard to do without any sort of stat conversion.

I'm also curious as to your thinking on what the direction for AM should be. Should dps AMs be able to offheal well? Should their kill power rival dps archetypes? Should heal AMs be able to do any substantial damage?

Do you want to go back to the old divide between lifetap and Isha heals, where only dps AMs can use ever use lifetaps effectively and only heal AMs can ever use Isha heals effectively?

[Arbich]

I just bet you loved it because it was abusive and I would suggest that it is you who has the misunderstanding of how the overcomplex, overengineered omni mechanic worked because just about everything you said was wrong. As a heal caster it amplified your damage up through the roof while having literally no offensive stats and no negatives, oh and it gave copious amounts of strikethrough so you are wrong about that as well as your mastery theory. Your "corrections" are nothing of the sort.

Go and look what the RP/Zealot mechanic is, and what other class mechanics are, then think upon the unholy bastardization that AM/Shaman ended up with.

Its gone, it will never be returned in the form that just left us, we dont fix class issues with an all encompassing omni mechanic. If you want to TAP someones life currently then you had better have some offensive stats to do it with because if you dont, then you better be casting which you can do pretty easily.

Another mechanic will show up at some point in the near future.

Sorry, almost everything you and wargrimmir said is different from how the mechanic was explained in the past. You have any proof to show how overpowered AM/Shaman was? I think you are wrong.

And a hint about RP/Zealot mechanic: crit

[Xergon]

I'm just gonna put my 5ct if anyone cares to read.

I mostly play pure healing AM and i had no issues playing it, and i noticed how broken/overperforming/overpowered mechanic was, with 900 Willpower and 300 Intelligence SearingTouch was be able to hit enemies for 600 and 1k crits (not all squishes even on healers or tanky dps like maras) so yea it was clearly overperforming mechanic you should not be able to do that as Pure Healer spec class.
With these changes there should still be no issue playing Pure Healing or Pure DPS AM.
Ofc ppl who wanna build hybrid they will struggle and they should although there should be a viable hybrid spec but it should not be able to overperform in DPS or Healing area.

Only thing i would like to address is lifetap abilities like BalanceEssence or TransferForce should still provide some strong healing from damage done just like WP last changes to Grace, they provide very strong healing and its even AoE/Group healing although we know that WP is risking when going into melee fight more than AM who can lifetap from range.

So overall very good changes and hope to see more.
That's my opinion.

- Pets will now disengage from their target if said target would go into stealth.

Finaly !

[Haskr]

Spoiler:

Man guys take a chill,
don't bring back those times banning everyone again,
one of the few good changes from the azarael comeback was that there was a better handling of these many forum bans.
I thought the community managers were to handle this now? I didn't see torque post and ban that much the last weeks and that was a good thing, why start it all again now?

Not related to patch notes, warning given.

[DanielWinner]

Man guys take a chill,
don't bring back those times banning everyone again,
one of the few good changes from the azarael comeback was that there was a better handling of these many forum bans.
I thought the community managers were to handle this now? I didn't see torque post and ban that much the last weeks and that was a good thing, why start it all again now?

There always will be a bigger fish in the pond...

Though, let’s not derail it any futher.
Hopefully, you got that patchnotes were not the place for complaining about stuff. At least, it’s not appreciated :shrug: