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- Axe Orb: for each level above 50, the Axe Orb has twice as much health and one extra point of armor .
- "It matters not," he continued, after it became clear that Isin Dule would not reply. "Thy treachery has been useless. In moments, I shall rip the beating heart from the boy-mage Asheron's chest and savor its taste. Then thou wilt receive thy punishment." He gestured to the greatest of the Shadows who attended his throne. "Ferah! Remove this traitor from my sight. See to it that he does not escape his bonds."
- The improvement to Forage is possible thanks to the Durability Point system we added for Crafting 2.0. In essence, we're creating a single potion that has 5 durability points! Every time you drink the potion, it loses a point of durability. The DP system has many other interesting applications, as you'll see in coming months…
This class is working great, and is very popular . There are only some touch-ups here, most importantly improvements to post-50 pets.
- Embolism: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill.
- We want to avoid changing people's play style whenever that's an option, and of course we have to avoid accidentally overpowering classes with our buffs. So this is the reasoning behind the changes below. We're still debating a couple of changes to the plans, so there's a small chance there will be a couple of other adjustments. But here's where we are today:
The original nerf here was rather small in terms of reduced damage potential. It was simply not a big change. But it did affect play style a bit, because you had to use other attacks between combos . We have decided to switch to an alternate scheme for the left side of the Berserker tree.
- When pathing issues aren't bothering them, though, the Elementalist is extremely potent... a bit too potent, unfortunately. Elementalists are able to solo several different group monsters… a sure litmus test that they are more powerful than intended.
- Only one tiny change here, to Challenge. Funny story there – during testing it worked very nicely. It taunted an individual monster, and detaunted all the other monsters around it. Perfect! However, in the same month the new Juggernaut was introduced, we also cleaned up and improved the taunting system… and the new behavior caused detaunts to still be entered as attacks. So Challenge is actually working as advertised. However, detaunting a monster still gets its attention! So instead of pulling a single monster out of a group, Challenge tends to pull a whole cluster of monsters. We'll remove the detaunt aspect.
- The other reason that their dual-wielding ability doesn't shine as brightly is that the Bounty Hunters lacks a combat speed buff. A combat speed buff would let them amplify the advantage of their multiple attacks much more noticeably. Under normal circumstances, a single-weapon wielder might get about 45 auto-attacks per minute, while a dual-wielder gets 65-70 per minute. This is a pretty nice bonus, but when you speed up their attack rate, that difference gets multiplied. Dual-wielders get much more out of combat-speed increase skills than single-wielders do. So we'll be giving Bounty Hunters a combat speed increase. They lose their run-speed boost in the process, which will make a few people unhappy, but the replacement is much more powerful for any Bounty Hunter.
- Scourge: This skill now taunts the target for 1% to 5% of the opponent's max health.
- Blur: the damage for all three hits of Blur are now 7-200-600. In addition, there is a 10% chance per use that the skill will have a fourth full damage hit. Vigor cost becomes 220 .
- All of the changes listed below are going to appear in August. September will have the accuracy improvements for Ranger and Raider, and Hero 2.0 .
If you receive nerfs this month, you will receive one or more Eater of Souls tokens. These are tokens that can be given to an Eater of Souls for a free single skill sellback. We are using Eater of Souls Tokens as a compensation for nerfed classes, to help them change their template if they want to. We don't actually believe any of the nerfs are so damaging that they would cause you to change templates, but the option is at least there. And you can sell them to other people – you could think of them as small candies to help offset the pain, if you like. Nerfed classes will receive Eater of Souls Tokens to match the severity of their nerfs. You can use an Eater of Souls Token even if you've already visited the Eater of Souls five times that week – it doesn't count towards the limit on skill sellbacks.
- Swipe: This skill now taunts the target for 1% to 5% of the opponent's max health.
- Finally, though, Bael'Zharon's eyes focused on the prisoner at his feet. Still, there was no flicker of recognition. Instead, Bael'Zharon howled in rage at the interruption. Who dared disturb his presence with this cringing wretch? He pointed a finger at one of the Shadows who had captured Isin Dule, and that Shadow dissolved instantly into nothingness, without even the time to shriek. The others shrank back in terror. One, braver than the rest, stammered out that this was Isin Dule. Isin Dule, the reviled traitor whom Bael'Zharon had dispatched hundreds of his greatest champions to capture. Confusion played across the overlord's grotesque features for a moment, but finally, there was a look of understanding.
- In addition, the Feral Intendant will receive Eater Tokens when they first log in. These tokens can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free. The number of tokens they receive will depend on their level:
* Level 20 or below: 1 token
* Level 21-30: 2 tokens
* Level 31-40: 3 tokens
* Level 41+: 4 tokens
The Zealot is an interesting class, but a bit underwhelming, especially at lower levels. Only 2.78% of characters are Zealots… the second lowest percentage of the Tumerok classes. The Zealot tree has lots of minor issues; we'll make some improvements here. First, we're giving the Zealot's non-bleed attacks a bit more kick.
- So clearly, we have to fix the middle power levels of this skill. Our data shows that most Tumeroks actually play Feral Intendant til at least level 30, regardless of what class they intend to eventually be. It often just doesn't make sense to switch before then, because the buff from Lumbering Might is so great that it overrides everything else out there.
- The major cause of their solo overpoweredness is Soft Underbelly. This skill causes all their attacks to be much better, and their pets' attacks, too. We had hoped that we could make this work in a tanking tree, but it just doesn't. Soft Underbelly no longer debuffs armor. The vigor cost is normalized; it was much too low before.
- So we have to go back and make some more changes to our plan. I'll give you more details and time estimates as we go along.
While completely new game systems such as Hero 2.0 should be delayed as long as necessary to make them fun, monster balance tweaks go the other way – it makes more sense to tweak balance incrementally over a long period, rather than to try to balance everything and then release it all at once. So in September you'll see the first monster rebalancing changes in quite a while.
- Onslaught: the damage for both hits of Onslaught are now 7-200-600. In addition, there is a 10% chance per use that the skill will have a third full damage hit. Vigor cost becomes 140 .
- But then Asheron worked his last, greatest spell, and Bael'Zharon's invincible confidence faltered. Isin Dule sensed a wave of surprise from Asheron as well. Something had gone wrong, the magic was too potent to control. Isin Dule watched as the searing mystical flames overwhelmed and consumed Asheron, then leapt forth to engulf Bael'Zharon as well. And then the masters of Light and Dark were no more. In his heart, Isin Dule sensed that his old friend was truly gone. He sank to the ground in misery.
- And for the most part, things are going well. A few of the nerfs here may seem dramatic on paper, but in actuality, they are all fairly minor modifications. None of them will change the way you play the game significantly.
- The right-side AoE combo chain will still have its timers increased. There are two issues with the AoE line, and to some extent this change addresses both. The AoE chain can just generate too many AoEs… so reducing the number of times you can use the skills is a clear improvement there. But the other problem with the AoE chain is that these skills can be used to spam monsters while running around them in circles. We don't have a very good way to fix this, aside from just forcing the Berserker to stand perfectly still to use their AoEs. When we tested this, it was not a very fun change. The timer change is a partial fix for this problem – although you can still spam AoEs while running, at least you can't spam as many of them. We are still exploring technical solutions that would help us correct the problem more completely.
We have decided that our original plan was a bit too much. At low levels, the proposed changes were just a little bit overpowered… nothing to get worried about, really; they overshot by only a few percent. But at very high levels, the problem became amplified by the large skill bonuses and Major Damage Boost until the Zealot was very overpowered by level 65. So we've changed how we're buffing these skills to alleviate this issue while still improving their damage potential.
- Remedy, Disperse Heat: these skills now scale to 150; only the group-healing aspect increases past level 50. The group heal is now 25 – 250 – 500 . Previously, the heal was 20-200.
- Blight: This skill has been using the wrong experience-cost table, causing it to cost twice as much as it ought to after level 50. This will be fixed. Any Alchemist who had this skill raised above 50 will find that the skill has been lowered back down to 50 and their XP refunded.
- Also note that Moon's Madness no longer claims to raise in-combat health regeneration by 50% at level 50. This was never happening--there are built-in limiters that keep in-combat health regeneration from raising above 40%, so the skill was not getting above that level anyway. It now reports reality accurately.
- Bulwark: This skill no longer applies a combat-speed debuff. Defensive scores now increase by 50 to 500 . Previously, the defensive scores scaled to 1000.
- Something touched him back. Touched, and then gripped him, with the hunger of a thousand raving spirits. The grip pulled him forwards, but Isin Dule was prepared. Speaking a single word of power, he broke free. And he fled for his life, back through the corridors of enchantment, back through the pathways of his mind, and finally into his old, familiar body.
- Agitate Nest: the wasp now gets more health , more armor , and more damage per level after 50.
- The other major concern with Feral Intendants is their damage dealing ability. This is partly due to their specialization tree, and partly due to their first hero skill. We'll increase the Focus cost of their hero skill in September; right now we're only looking at the spec-tree changes.
- At mid levels and higher, they are able to solo reasonably well, while providing intense damage and good crowd control in groups. The changes here are minor. First, there are changes to post-50 play:
- The goal of these changes is to make every monster “worth killing” by one or more templates. I think this will greatly improve the variety of hunting options at all play levels, so I'm looking forward to seeing what these changes do for the game.
- So what we're doing is changing the Max Shield Level cap, and at the same time, we're redoing Emblem of Might so that it is no longer artificially restricted by the Max Shield Level cap. It amounts to about the same power level, but this way you are clearly getting something for each point you buy. To give you an example of how it will work, here's a chart. It assumes that you keep your Emblem of Might skill at the same level you are, which isn't quite realistic, but is close enough for the chart:
- Circle of Pain, Wheel of Pain, Storm of Pain, Vortex of Pain, Flurry, Cascade, Deluge, Avalanche: the reset time on these skills becomes 10 secs. The linker for the next skill in the chain is also a static 10 seconds. So you can only use the skills one after another.
- Honey Drop: this skill now scales to 150. It heals 25 – 250 – 500 .
- Balance: the vigor-cost-reducing aspect of this skill now reduces vigor cost by 8% to 30% . It previously maxed out at 20%.
- Berserkers are supposed to be able to assist in agro management – to help them do so, we are improving the base tree skill Ignore.
- First, let's talk about Lumbering Might. This is easily the most broken skill in the game at low levels. So what's wrong here? First, we did a really stupid thing by basing this skill around the power level of Emblem of Might. EoM grants 10-100 shield armor, so we made Lumbering Might do the same. But actually, EoM doesn't really give you that much shield armor. Throughout all the early and middle levels, EoM is artificially capped by the Max Shield Cap! Sure, it SAYS it gives you 52 armor at level 25, but really your shield is capped at 34 anyway. Lumbering Might, on the other hand, really DOES give you 52 extra armor at level 25. Plus it gives you 315 extra health! At level 30 you only have 800 health anyway… 315 extra health is an insane amount. These are rookie mistakes that we should have caught. We were just too rushed, and we didn't catch them in time.
- Shred Hope: this skill gains a second attack. Both attacks will do 3-75-300 bonus damage.
- As he prepared to dispel the wards, Isin Dule noticed something that gave him pause: the gnawed bones of a longdead Tumerok scattered beside the door. It was curious and alarming that a mortal had penetrated so far into the labyrinth. Equally disturbing were the deep tooth?marks on the faded skeleton. Clearly, some animal had fed on the Tumerok's body after it died. But how could a beast, a mere scavenger, draw so near to Isin Dule's sanctuary? It should be impossible for a lesser animal to find this place. The simplest of the outer wards should have kept it wandering the outskirts of the maze for the rest of its life. Unless the outer wards had been compromised....
- August will see a new batch of skill rebalancing. This will be the only skill rebalancing done this year . Skill rebalancing is sort of like a type of surgery – we do it for the long-term health of the game, even though it shakes up the game, which causes a short-term stress.
- Sinew Snap: The animation for Sinew Snap is sped up slightly.
- In a nutshell, there are absolutely no changes to this tree! I think that's the only class that's totally unchanged.
This is the most popular Tumerok specialization class, with 8% of the player base. The Feral Intendant is surely the tree we've had the most trouble with. And the trouble isn't over. Our last batch of changes was not sufficiently tested, and resulted in more power than intended. Feral Intendants are tiny gods at low levels – I don't think there are very many players who would contend otherwise – and still somewhat overpowered at high levels. The combination of huge armor boost, huge health boost, major health recovery powers, pets, and damage dealing potential, mean that they can take on anything we can throw at them. We cannot make solo content that is challenging to Feral Intendants, without that same content being impossible for other classes. In a nutshell, they are too powerful for the content.
- All tacticians will receive one Eater of Souls Token when they first log in. This token can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free.
The Elementalist is now a great, reliable damage dealer, and very popular, with 5.52% of the population. Their biggest issue is pet pathing, which makes it difficult for them to achieve great success in dungeons. We're still working on pet pathing; it is being incrementally improved each month.
- We're past the stage where we want to make dramatic changes to classes. The only really dramatic changes are to the Invoker, which is getting the rewrite in August. Otherwise, we've tried to make surgically precise changes to classes; every change has a specific reason, and a specific goal in mind. There are no changes being made just because it seems like a good idea. For over half a year we've made absolutely no class changes – but that doesn't mean we've been ignoring class balance. We've been collecting data and improving our analyses to figure out where we made mistakes earlier, and why.
- We've often been asked to increase the cap on the percentage bleeds of Zealots. But that really isn't what's wrong with Zealots. They are nowhere near needing their bleed damage cap increased. Those four skills do a tremendous amount of damage… in fact, they do so much damage that they take away from what the rest of the tree can do. One option we were contemplating was to actually reduce the effectiveness of the percentage bleeds so that we could further improve the multi-hit attacks. But we opted not to do so at this time, as it would alter Zealot play styles too much.
- Blur: The three hits of this attack once again do 10 – 100 – 300 bonus damage. In addition, there is a 50% chance that the skill will do a fourth hit for 10 – 100 – 300 bonus damage.
- Leader of the Pack: this skill is now an aura buff; it stays on until explicitly turned off. The skill does NOT override Lumbering Might. You can use both skills at the same time. It increases run speed by 1% to 20% , and increases combat speed by 1% to 10% . These increases do not stack with other skill buffs.
- We're also taking the first step in giving monsters specific strengths and weaknesses vs. melee, missile, or magic attacks. So some monsters will be harder to hit for meleers and easier to hit for missile classes, and so on. This change won't be too dramatic, but it will be noticeable.
- Surprise, though: these changes aren't aimed at making the hard monsters easier to kill! Instead, the first step is making the “junk” monsters more worth killing. We're raising the XP rewards for a great many of the monsters in the game .
- Armor Piercing Ammo: The turret's vigor cost for using this skill has been lowered to 20 vigor per shot .
- It's not perfect – even the nerfed version is still so powerful that any decent-quality shield will cause you to hit the armor cap most of the time! But it's at least much better. The resulting power level, as I mentioned, is basically unchanged, except there's slightly more incentive to raise the skill in the lower levels.
- Rend Armor: the duration of the armor debuff is now 30 seconds.
- The last thing we want to do is swing the pendulum back the other way, though. So we've been trying to isolate a correction. We've decided that the crux of the problem is that the pets, while fragile at higher levels, can deal too much damage in a tiny period of time. So we're attempting to fix the damage output, while at the same time making the pets a bit more sturdy.
- This change is mainly for Dark Side Alchemists We like the idea of all melee-range damage-dealers having easy access to a detaunt.
Rangers are a bit underpowered compared to the top tier classes, but they really aren't that bad off. They are also reasonably popular . They are largely on target for where we imagine they should be, with the notable exception that they Miss their targets a bit more than we want them to. This is something that we are now going to fix through code improvements – in other words, arrows will simply hit their target more easily; it will be harder to Miss the target. However, this improvement will occur in September – it didn't make it in time for August.
- Cure Disease: Currently this skill works fine, but it can override fire protection buffs. This has been fixed.
- Bruise: This first hit of this attack does 7 – 200 – 600 bonus damage. The second hit does 3 – 75 – 300 bonus damage.
- This gives these skills the same range as Hive Keeper auto-attacks.
These are covered in a separate document. Invokers are being dramatically redone from bottom up. They are also the only class who will receive a skill reset in August. It will be a forced reset immediately upon login. Invokers make up 5.2% of the population.
- So that's the bad news. But there is always a bright side – we also have a couple of happier changes. First up is Leader of the Pack. Our vision for this skill didn't work out – it's hard to make this compete with Lumbering Might. We're tossing the whole skill and redoing it:
- Splinter Bone: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill.
- These changes will help push Zealots up into the upper ranks of damage-dealerdom. In addition, Rapid Healing is being redone.
- Note that Oxidize is the only ranged attack in the tree that is NOT an area-of-effect attack! This is why it gets range when no other skills do. Alchemists already have the King of the AoE's title; giving them very long-ranged AoE's has dramatic impacts on their power level – more than one would guess at first glance. So that's why we're not increasing the range of any other skills. This change makes Oxidize a nice “puller” skill... and it makes sense as a puller anyway, since it's a debuff for their other fire-based attacks.
- So that's the bad news. On the good front, though, we've decided Expel just doesn't fit well. It's not useful enough, especially at low levels when it's supposed to be a mainstay. When Berserkers do use this skill, they inevitably get yelled at by the group. Expel is changed into Phantom Blow.
- As Isin Dule's senses continued to expand, he pieced together the intruder's means of entry. It had obviously possessed the dead Tumerok's body, using him to pass the many wards that repelled creatures of Shadow. Then it had solved the labyrinth, a difficult feat, but not impossible for a creature of vast intelligence. And finally, it had flung the Tumerok's body against the final door. Of course, the deadly runes had annihilated the poor creature. But at that moment, with the runes' curse focused on the sacrificed mortal, the entity itself had slipped through the weaves of the magic and entered the sanctuary itself.
- Finally, a minor change to Fate's Forgiveness.
- Finally, we're improving Remedy and Disperse Heat.
- First, Rotten Core is improved:
- Now Isin Dule's confidence turned to near-panic. He hurriedly cast the counterspells that would allow passage, and watched as the glowing runes winked out, one by one. Once the runes were dispelled, the stone doors began to grind open on their own. Isin Dule stepped through as soon as the gap was wide enough, but already, he sensed the missing powers that should have lain in wait for him. He scanned each of the five daises lining the vault's walls. All empty. The five artifacts he had hidden here, walled in behind magic strong enough to repel Bael'Zharon himself, were gone.
- Finally, a couple skills increase in range slightly.
- The Claw Bearer is still a bit above other missile classes. However, we'll be buffing the Raider and Ranger soon by giving them better projectile accuracy. After that, we'll look again to see what should be done with these classes in the future.
- Hailstorm: vigor cost becomes 270 instead of 210.
- This change means that you can only go Flurry-Cascade-Deluge-Avalanche. You can't go Flurry-Cascade-Deluge-Avalanche-Cascade-Avalanche-Deluge. This reduces the sheer number of attacks by a little bit.
- But before you read too much into these numbers, remember that racial breakdown has a dramatic effect on these numbers. Humans make up 47% of all players, while Tumeroks make up 27.4%, and Lugians make up 25.6%.
- Mortar: vigor cost becomes 350 instead of 300.
- He had nearly been trapped. He had nearly been destroyed.
- Next are two small buffs for left-side Alchemists:
- Next, a small improvement to Mighty Blow:
- Hail of Blows: Skill damage already scales to 150, so no change there. This skill is now fully affected by Defender Adept; its accuracy improves with higher Defender Adept skill.
- Dishearten, Puncture, False Pretenses, Ruse, Betrayal: These skills will do a second attack when the Bounty Hunter is dual-wielding. These second attacks don't have bonus damage – they are just weapon damage attacks.
- One other touch:
- Bladeskin: this becomes an aura buff and no longer has a limitation on how long it lasts.
The Sorcerer is a popular class, with 8.6% of the character base. This class's total power is greater than many of the other classes. In that regard, they're a bit overpowered. However, as mentioned above, we aren't nerfing classes in order to balance them amongst each other. The only reason we're nerfing classes is when the classes are too powerful for the content. In this regard, we don't think Sorcerers are over the bar. So other classes are gaining a bit of power so that they can better compete with Sorcerers.
- Insult, Begrudge: these base-melee-tree taunt skills are now fully affected by Defender Adept. Their accuracy improves with higher Defender Adept skill.
- Rampage has a slight increase in vigor cost:
- Rampage: vigor cost becomes 250 .
- So now it's much better balanced at lower levels.
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