[PTS] Patch Notes 23/07/2026 - RDPS Patch and New Scenario Mechanic

[ronago]

minor balance issues ?

SW, Engi, Magus or whatever being stronger or weaker, in the long run isn't game breaking. Most classes are quite (up to some extent) balanced even though people cry as if they were absolutely unplayable, just because they struggle facing 1 or 2 classes 1 on 1, on a game fundamentally balanced on wb gameplay.

[OcecoOtto]

So you lowered the damage on Withered Soul and then what could be seen as a tradeoff we got Crit damage for Baleful Transmogrification. We also got some more consistent Pink horror damage with the buff there. But then we go and nerf the Pink Horror buff, and remove DoT the crit damage addition and then on top of that lower Daemonic Withering to 10%.

I dunno why these people are complaining about ST on Magus or Engi like yes they do damage but these weren't buffs that made them outshine any of the other range DPS in some insane way. Like you could hit that same sort've burst with big shootin' on PTS, but with the revert it tanked for magus. I was honestly looking forward to some ST changes but this just lost interest might as well keep playing the other RDPS for ST if it's gonna be more of the same but with a wither nerf.

[Gaave]

Oh Black Horror has 10s CD finally. Yea that makes sense, 0 cd was a bit much, kinda weird to not mention it at all in the PTS update notes and just ninja edit it in though. Even if the plan was all along for it to have CD, which I'm guessing it was, and you just forgot it on the initial patch, at least put line on the notes to say it's changed or something.

It wasn't ninja edited in. The 10 second cooldown was in the original PTS patch notes.

The whole point of the PTS is, in addition to receiving feedback on the patch notes, to bug test everything.

Hey, nice to know. Could you please elaborate the reason for nerfing dps of ST engi and ST magus (compared to live the dps on PTS is now lower on both)? Magus at least has received a teleport.

Both classes are not really the strongest in current ST meta, both classes are not rly wished in warbands because of low burst aoe from the distance.

Is the melee aoe spec - the only way how both classes should be played now?

Wait until you find out about Squig Herder.

[Gaave]

and there's other concerns such as disrupt rate?

Ranged can easily target people out of guard range, ranged doesnt get shouted or CCed nearly as much, magic damage bypasses armor and has a super low soft cap, and a lot of people hardly have any disrupt

Disrupt stops ranged from just blowing up a healer right away, and is good for the game as it is, reducing it makes magic ranged OP

Disrupt is probably too low right now across the board

I take it you are unfamiliar with Hold the Line which increases Dodge/Disrupt by 15% for everyone up to 50ft away. Not to mention Healer's main stat is Willpower which increases Disrupt as well.

[Mishas]

So you lowered the damage on Withered Soul and then what could be seen as a tradeoff we got Crit damage for Baleful Transmogrification. We also got some more consistent Pink horror damage with the buff there. But then we go and nerf the Pink Horror buff, and remove DoT the crit damage addition and then on top of that lower Daemonic Withering to 10%.

I dunno why these people are complaining about ST on Magus or Engi like yes they do damage but these weren't buffs that made them outshine any of the other range DPS in some insane way. Like you could hit that same sort've burst with big shootin' on PTS, but with the revert it tanked for magus. I was honestly looking forward to some ST changes but this just lost interest might as well keep playing the other RDPS for ST if it's gonna be more of the same but with a wither nerf.

You know what is the worst part? All the people complaining about the changes were mostly testing on a dummy!!

No scenarios
No RvR
I bet not even some duels.

And the funny part is that after all the changes they might leave the ST worse than it was in the first place wich was never a real threat if you had a healer behind you

The only thing Magus/Engineers needed was:

- Rework of unused/outdated skills and tactics.
- 50% heal debuff on the pet
- Some strikethrough improvements.
- Improved movility for the AoE tree (very static atm, not fit for WB gameplay)
- A real overhaul of the class mechanic so that the class feels different from other rdps. Magus/Engineer were always a support+utility class that never shined because they lack of impactful skills in group content were there was some other character that did it better. (An example in case of Magus could be the AoE pull was our "special move" until it was given to Choppa or the AoE stagger vs Chosen)

[Koryu199X]

Ok I have just tested the Magus proposed changes on the PTS. Ok lets be blunt because I have compared my magus on the live server as well. Now I am aware dummies are no real substitute for in game players, here is what I have found. At the minute on the live server my damage is good but not super high, if all the planets align I can get a very high burst of 4 - 4.2K on average and from my experience solo roaming is not really breaking the game. On the PTS using the template that drops by quite a bit sometimes it is 3.5K most times it has been about 3.2K or less. But I am practical and I've looked at what the issue might have been that led to such high damage spikes last weekend. So removing Baleful transmogrification from surging power was probably the right call. However, by subsequently reducing the damage bonus from daemonic withering this basically results in an overall nerf to the magus. Making it undefendable whilst a cool idea perhaps ignores the main issue which is flexibility in the tactics which is something that most classes have across the board and is something the pvp dev team need to think about. Some classes are locked into BiS tactics as a lot are generally too niche or not good enough or in the case of magus niche and require two or more to be of good use and even then it's niche. I ran the self heal spec briefly on live and there was only a few situations where that played out really well. Overall the tactic fiery winds granting a dot is a cool idea the dot is perhaps too short and does not stack with or at least that's how it appears to be when you cast both violet and red fire in quick succession. I would perhaps have put this idea into infernal pain and have certain skills now add a dot.

I've said this often enough and I'll say it here. The PvP team need to roll out a vision. I would ask the devs in a game of gimmicks what do they want each class to do. If we take just the dps for the moment we need to be asking who counters who? Does a Slayer counter the mara, if so does the magus counter the slayer, then if that is so what counters the magus. We also need to consider soft and hard counters. Thinking about what each class can bring to the group dynamic is important. Both in small scale and in warband play. If one side plays ranged what can the other do to counter that.

So my final takeaways are:

Revert Daemonic withering to 15%, why remove it's CD when it can still only be applied to one person, this is perhaps a performative move instead of a functional one.

Can the relationship between the daemon/turret be looked at more, we seem to be going in the right direction but it needs more thought. Three tactics to make daemons good need to be much better to slightly offset what a player might have to give up. Not saying they should be insane but careful balance and thought needs to be taken. 3 tactic slots is a bit of a sink.

Fiery winds sounds good and looks good on paper but certainly for my rotations brings nothing to the table.

I will continue testing and post further thoughts.

Regards, Koryu

[Fontaami]

I may have missed the explanation behind 35 pages of this discussion - but what is the rationale behind armor talismans nerf?
First they were +180, then were nerfed down to +136 (reasons unkown to me), now at PTS they are +96 (and new Pure ones are +100).
If this also tied to "itemization balancing" (or whatever it is called), why not mentioning this anywhere in patch notes?

[Goryak]

PTS Update 29/07/2026

Balance
Sorcerer
- Wind-Woven Shell: Replaced by Shatter.

Or... you know, just remove the useless Morale 2 ability (Siphon Power) that no one cares about, instead of the one that contributed something to the party.

BW with that bonkers M3 that will be providing group utility, whereas sorc will be left with none. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[buerdig]

Ok I have just tested the Magus proposed changes on the PTS. Ok lets be blunt because I have compared my magus on the live server as well. Now I am aware dummies are no real substitute for in game players, here is what I have found. At the minute on the live server my damage is good but not super high, if all the planets align I can get a very high burst of 4 - 4.2K on average and from my experience solo roaming is not really breaking the game. On the PTS using the template that drops by quite a bit sometimes it is 3.5K most times it has been about 3.2K or less. But I am practical and I've looked at what the issue might have been that led to such high damage spikes last weekend. So removing Baleful transmogrification from surging power was probably the right call. However, by subsequently reducing the damage bonus from daemonic withering this basically results in an overall nerf to the magus. Making it undefendable whilst a cool idea perhaps ignores the main issue which is flexibility in the tactics which is something that most classes have across the board and is something the pvp dev team need to think about. Some classes are locked into BiS tactics as a lot are generally too niche or not good enough or in the case of magus niche and require two or more to be of good use and even then it's niche. I ran the self heal spec briefly on live and there was only a few situations where that played out really well. Overall the tactic fiery winds granting a dot is a cool idea the dot is perhaps too short and does not stack with or at least that's how it appears to be when you cast both violet and red fire in quick succession. I would perhaps have put this idea into infernal pain and have certain skills now add a dot.

I've said this often enough and I'll say it here. The PvP team need to roll out a vision. I would ask the devs in a game of gimmicks what do they want each class to do. If we take just the dps for the moment we need to be asking who counters who? Does a Slayer counter the mara, if so does the magus counter the slayer, then if that is so what counters the magus. We also need to consider soft and hard counters. Thinking about what each class can bring to the group dynamic is important. Both in small scale and in warband play. If one side plays ranged what can the other do to counter that.

So my final takeaways are:

Revert Daemonic withering to 15%, why remove it's CD when it can still only be applied to one person, this is perhaps a performative move instead of a functional one.

Can the relationship between the daemon/turret be looked at more, we seem to be going in the right direction but it needs more thought. Three tactics to make daemons good need to be much better to slightly offset what a player might have to give up. Not saying they should be insane but careful balance and thought needs to be taken. 3 tactic slots is a bit of a sink.

Fiery winds sounds good and looks good on paper but certainly for my rotations brings nothing to the table.

I will continue testing and post further thoughts.

Regards, Koryu

Fiery winds is odd because the DoT itself isn't necessarily bad but it doesn't add anything special for taking up another tactic slot. The way swift flames works now, the version of fiery winds on live (hits two targets) actually would work better with the changes to swift flames. Withering/signal flare shouldn't have gotten nerfed but it did for complaints about ST havoc build. Magus changes are still good and I feel they are stronger overall. The problem is as you mentioned, there was a lot of changes to the pet via more intelligence, shriek giving it abilities but for those tactics to actually be worth taking the pet itself has to be strong and pink horror was nerfed because it was too strong when used in a construct test.

The pet buffs and 20% damage instant is huge but is something that usually happens in static fights (which engi/magus are supposed to be the experts in) so people argued that this was too strong even though this was a convivence fix not even a mechanic difference. Daemonlogy/Tinkering add a new playstyle that is really effective, but again does it make it better than bringing another up close dps?

[Keula]

I may have missed the explanation behind 35 pages of this discussion - but what is the rationale behind armor talismans nerf?
First they were +180, then were nerfed down to +136 (reasons unkown to me), now at PTS they are +96 (and new Pure ones are +100).
If this also tied to "itemization balancing" (or whatever it is called), why not mentioning this anywhere in patch notes?

Yes it is the itemisation changes, armour is worth 0.25 stat is worth 1, hence 96/100. Could be worse, at least armour is considered an "expected" stat for a talisman so it doesn't get a conversion penalty, unlike jewelry with armour instead of res that does.