So the big Career and Combat patch, that so many people were hoping would balance things out, so far seems like a whole lot of fluff, and not much change.

The big things that stand out are the Electromagnet/Chaotic Rift nerfs, where the two abilities now have longer cooldowns, cast times, knockback/down immunities, and a limit on how many players can be pulled in.

Roots will now break from DoT damage, and all damage, which is a huge blessing for melee.

Playing with Fire cannot crit anymore and doesn’t proc off HoT ticks.

Bright Wizard’s are still in check. Nothing has been done save a longer cooldown on their Fire Cage (Sorc’s root also with longer cooldown now). In fact, due to INT being fixed and adding the proper amount of damage to DoTs, we can expect an INCREASE is BW DoT damage. Hurray.

I wish there was more worthy of note, but there isn’t. The majority of the patch just saw an increase in damage for various abilities from different classes. Nothing gamebreaking. The rest of the patch could have been summed up with ‘Certain moves and abilities now do extra damage with higher AP cost, check your tooltips.’

Nothing to fix broken/useless class mechanics?

Nothing to fix itemization?

Nothing to balance out mirror classes?

This is the big balance patch?

Hm.

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Patch Notes, QQ |

 

Here they are:

1) The changes laid out in these patch notes are preliminary. They are not final (nothing in an MMO is final until the game is dead) and they won’t even be official until after they go through testing on our PTS.

2) If you feel your career has been dealt with unfairly, feel free of course to let us know here and but most importantly inside the game. I will not respond to every post here nor engage in endless debate about whether these changes are necessary, especially in this topic. These changes are the result not of my or any one individual at Mythic’s decisions but rather what the entire team has felt will be best for the game going forward based on all our sources of data. Again, these changes are preliminary and if we made any mistakes, we will correct them.

3) With the upcoming opening of the PTS, our players will have the opportunity to help us test the latest patch before it goes LIVE. We urge you to take advantage of this opportunity to help us but to also help you as in the end, you are the guys/gals who play the game.

4) As always, we thank you for your support and patronage. I hope that these notes are another indication of how seriously we take the long-term future of WAR.

In order to prevent eyestrain, I’ve broken up the notes into sections to make it easier for people to find, read and digest the information without having to deal with a monstrous wall of test.

Mark

The purpose of the Public Test Server is for the players to help us refine and test the latest version of the game by participating and providing feedback and bug reports to Mythic. As such, we want to remind you that the content there is still considered “in development” and that bugs and issues not found on the LIVE server may occur on the PTS. All features and fixes listed below are subject to change until we release Game Update 1.0.5 to all live servers.

Game Update 1.0.5 - Public Test Server

Highlights

• Each career has been reviewed, and we have made many changes to improve career balance and playability. Players who belong to one of the following careers will need to speak to their trainers in order to re-train their Career Mastery abilities:

Black Orc
Bright Wizard
Chosen
Engineer
Ironbreaker
Magus
Shadow Warrior
Sorcerer
Squig Herder
Swordmaster

• Players who go AFK while in Public Quest areas or during keep sieges will no longer receive contribution credit towards those encounters.

• Players are now able to set their rally points in warcamps.

• Fixes have been made to issues which were causing guild promotion and demotion not to work properly.

• Several issues have been addressed that previously allowed players to get to locations they were not supposed to
be able to reach.

• Morale abilities will now be much more responsive. These abilities will now fire immediately when activated by the player on the first attempt.

• Morale abilities will now display their cooldowns correctly at all times.

• Root effects, with the exception of morale roots, will now grant a 5 second immunity from all roots to the victim when the effect breaks, and in addition will no longer stack with other roots.

• Root effects will now properly have a chance to break whenever a player takes ANY damage. This includes individual tics of Damage over Time spells.

• To promote population balance among the various scenarios, we have added a feature that reduces the number of times a scenario can launch in a short period of time. This will give scenarios which are launched less frequently an opportunity to catch up in the queue population and launch more often.

• Improvements have been made to auto-attack animations. Players will now see smoother, more consistent weapon swaps when players change from ranged to melee auto-attacks, and vice-versa.

• The responsiveness of ability activations has been improved. Players will now see less of a delay between the activation of aann ability and the corresponding animation.

General Changes and Bug Fixes:

• There were some instances in which the reticule for ground-target-area-effects was allowing these spells to be cast in areas which were not originally intended. This has been adjusted.

• Several issues have been addressed that previously allowed players to get to locations they were not supposed to be able to reach.

Combat and Careers

General

• Tactics gained from Tome Unlocks have been renamed.

• Damage over Time abilities: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of these abilities has been made consistent across the board. This generally resulted in an increase in damage, but some abilities have also been brought down. Individual abilities are noted under each career’s section.

• Unstoppable: Knockdowns will now be listed on all tooltips for this ability when applicable.

• Point Blank will now correctly ignore Knockback and Knockdown immunity, as well as not trigger it.

• Fixed assorted issues in which certain movement reductions/increases would stack, slowing or speeding targets more than intended. This also addresses cases in which snared players would find themselves essentially rooted when in lava.

• Image Changing Rewards: A player’s illusion will now break upon using an ability in addition to breaking on damage.

• Alter Fate: Tooltip should now display the correct values.

• Misdirection: This ability should now play an effect on the caster while the ability is active, and play a brief effect on anyone damage by the effect.

• Rampaging Siphon: Morale should now heal the group for each target hit, instead of only once.

• Frenzied Slaughter, Force of Will, and Relentless Assault: These abilities will now play an effect when used.

• Relentless Assault: This ability will no longer remove snares and roots.

• Divine Protection should now list the amount of damage absorbed in the tooltip.
Renown Rewards:

• Mission Focused: This tactic should now provide the correct bonus while fighting around objectives.

• Spiritual Refreshment: This ability should now show its bonus correctly in the Character Window.

 

Archmage

• Prismatic shield: This ability will no longer fail if your defensive target is not a group member.

• Transfer Force: The damage of this ability has been increased.

• Hurried Restore: This tactic will now stun the caster when the resurrection spell is cast, instead of when it is accepted.

• Healing Energy: Contribution from stats has been reduced to bring the ability in line with our design goals.

• Drain Magic: This ability will now increase in potency with High Magic.

• Balanced Mending: The HoT portion of Healing Energy will now benefit from this tactic.

• Radiant Lance: This ability will now reliably consume high magic.

• Law of Conductivity: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Radiant Gaze: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Transfer Force: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Dissipating Energies: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased slightly to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Scatter the Winds: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased slightly to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.
Lambent Aura: The duration of this ability has been increased to 24 seconds, and the overall amount healed over this duration remains the same.

Black Orc

• All Black Orcs have undergone significant changes and will need to reallocate their career mastery points as a result. Be sure to speak to your trainer right away to regain your abilities!

• All War Bellows will now persist through the Black Orc’s death. This means that you will not have to recast a War Bellow after respawning or being resurrected.

• Trip Em Up: The snare from this ability will no longer stack with other snares. Also, the damage has been reduced but no longer occurs over time. The AP cost has increased and the reuse timer has been removed.

• Da Big Un: The damage of this spell has increased, and its radius reduced.

• Skull Thumper: This ability now adds an effect that deals additional damage to the target whenever they are critically hit.

• Right in da Jibblies: The reuse timer of this ability has been lowered.

• Follow me Lead: The Toughness buff given to the defensive target should now work correctly.

• Juggernaut: This ability is now available at rank 12.

• Guard: This ability should no longer attempt to work on players outside of your group.

• Rock ‘Ard: This ability now starts a Plan chain.

Bright Wizard

• All Bright Wizards have undergone significant changes and will need to reallocate their career mastery points as a result. Be sure to speak to your trainer right away to regain your abilities!

• Flame Breath: Affected targets will now properly receive a debuff icon.

• Explosive Force: The damage done to the targets around the caster is now defendable.

• Fiery Blast: The tooltip now displays the correct damage and radius. In addition, this ability now builds the correct amount of combustion.

• Scorched Earth: This ability now builds 10 combustion.

• Playing with Fire: The damage from this ability is only triggered when the affected player casts a direct heal and cannot do critical damage.

• Detonate: Fixed a bug in which this ability was receiving double stat contribution on the direct damage portion of the ability.

• Combustion will no longer start to fade away if you continue casting spells after hitting 100.

• Fire Cage: This ability’s cost has been decreased, the cooldown has been increased and the ability is now available at rank 12.

• Pyroclastic Surge: This ability is now available at rank 10.

• Scorched Earth: The ability should now have the correct cooldown.

• Ignite: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Boiling Blood: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Detonate: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Flame Breath: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Spreading Flames: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Backdraft: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

Chosen

• All Chosen have undergone significant changes and will need to reallocate their career mastery points as a result. Be sure to speak to your trainer right away to regain your abilities!

• Suppression: The parry buff from this ability should no longer stack with itself.

• Mixed Defenses: The tooltip for this ability should now display proper values.

• Juggernaut: This ability is now available at rank 12.

• Guard: This ability should no longer attempt to work on players outside of your group.

• Seeping Wound: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

Disciple

• All Covenants will now persist through the Disciple’s death. This means that you will not have to recast a Covenant after respawning or being resurrected.

• Covenant of Tenacity: Fixed a bug that made the radius of this ability much too small.

• Covenant of Vitality: Fixed a bug that caused the healing portion of the lifetap to always heal the Disciple, instead of the player who procced the damage.

• Covenant of Vitality: The damage of this ability has increased.

• Consume Essence: The damage of this ability has increased.

• Transfer Essence: The damage of this ability has increased.

• Restore Essence: The stat contribution has been fixed. This ability was previously receiving more stat benefits than intended.

• Bloodthirst: The snare component for this ability has been removed, and damage has been increased.

• Lacerate: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Fell Sacrifice: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other damage over time abilities.

• Soul Infusion: The duration of this ability has been increased to 24 seconds, and the overall amount healed over this duration remains the same.

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Patch Notes |

 

Another quick preview of what’s to come before the full patch notes for 1.05 are released, Mark Jacobs had this to say about the much talked about Electromagnet and Chaotic Rift abilities:

Okay, but just because it’s you. I hope the notes will go up early tomorrow and then we begin testing on it as well on PTS. Once the PTS is up and running players will begin to be able to play there and help test the patch. As to one tidbit per class, sorry but I have to turn that request down. However, here is a sample from one of the most talked about abilities on the VN:

Electromagnet: The cost has been reduced significantly. The cooldown has been increased. The build time has been increased. The ability can no longer be cast on the move. The pull-in maximum number of targets has been decreased and can now be defended against.

And remember, this C&C patch is only the first steps. Big steps, but just the first.

Mark

That seems like a lot. Granted, a good magnet Magus/Engie can pretty much win games for his side, this might be too much without buffing those respective classes in other areas, hopefully they will get some love elsewhere. I know a lot of people had rerolled Magus/Engie just for this move; a month ago you’d be lucky to see a Magus past Tier1, and now I’ve been in games with 5 Magi per Tor Anroc in Tier3 on my alt.

So much for the whole ‘more buffs than nerfs’ mantra. I guess it’s too early to judge though, we’ll see when the full notes come out.

source: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109321363/p15

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Patch Notes, RvR |

Just posted:

Folks,

Okay, here’s the first part of the 1.05 patch from us. The 1.05 patch is the anxiously awaited “Combat and Careers” patch. As I mentioned already, it is over 17 pages long and still growing and it includes, among other things, adjustments to every career in the game. Some careers got a special shot of extra-loving goodness and some careers also got some tough love as well as some goodness as well. We hope to post the full patch notes tomorrow morning but as we continue to conduct a final review of all the preliminary changes and the notes themselves, it might be held up a bit longer, but I certainly hope not. It is, by far, the largest WAR patch yet and is by its very nature, full of far-reaching and sweeping changes. Here are some of the highlights of the patch.

1) We are pleased to announce the official opening of our Public Test Server. Similar to our Pendragon sever for DAoC, this server will be both open to all players but players will be able to copy (not transfer, your original character remains on its server) their existing characters over to this server at anytime. This server will get the latest, but not final, version of the game and feedback from this server will be used in making any further adjustments to the version. We encourage all players who want to help in the development process to give it a shot. More information on the PTS will be posted on the Herald.

2) Rally masters have been put at every Warcamp to make moving around the world a bit easier and faster. This is only the first part of some improvements we are making to the transportation system to cut down on the time that players have had to spend simply running back and forth between places. The next step will be to allow players to have multiple bind points.

3) Players’ should be able to use the morale button abilities more effectively now. In other words, the darn thing should work every time.

4) Many of the issues with spell/abilities animations not firing off/ending properly have been corrected. Hopefully we got all of the issues but only time will tell.

5) An additional gold bag will be generated when a keep or fortress is taken.

6) Morale abilities will now display their cooldowns correctly at all times. This is just one of many UI fixes.

7) The “Ability Not Ready” message will no longer display when the remaining cooldown on an ability is less than or equal to the full global cooldown.

Corrected an issue with the cooldown timers on the action bar buttons that was causing them to count down improperly. The timers will now count down in half-second increments beginning at 3 seconds remaining. See, I said there was more than 1 other UI fix.

9) Another “warhammer to the head” to those that try to AFK in scenarios and PQs.

10) All classes have had some abilities buffed and some abilities have been debuffed a bit. For example, the Squig Herder has gotten 30+ adjustments to its abilities. Out of those 30+ adjustments, the phase “damage has been increased” shows up about 80% of the time. As part of this update, the team has looked at every career in the game and made adjustments. Things such as Electromagnet, Fire Cage and snares/roots in general have drawn particular attention from the team and have had numerous changes/fixes made to them. Of course, where major changes have occurred to the careers a free re-training has been offered. Tomorrow’s notes will detail all of the changes and considering that the career changes are about 14 out of those 17+ pages, I think you can say that we made a whole lot of changes.

So, hopefully qill tomorrow’s 1.05 patch notes will put an end to the “Mythic doesn’t respond, doesn’t want to make changes” threads eh? Nah!

Again, 1.05 is primarily the C&C patch, expect more other big patches coming as well over the next month or so. When you see the contents of the patch, I hope most of you, if not all of you, will see why we have been taking “baby steps” with C&C changes up to now.

Mark

Full notes tomorrow. Yay!

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109321363/p1/?57

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Patch Notes |

An Update on the latest patch notes. Mark Jacobs just posted this on the VN Boards:

I’m always hoping to post Part 1 of the update shortly (within 30 mins). The full patch notes will have to wait till tomorrow due to their rather hefty size and widespread impact and they need a little extra review time.

Mark

Looks like 1.05 is coming soon. Full patch notes tomorrow, with perhaps a good preview today. As said in the previous post, the patch notes are 17 pages long. Let’s hope for some good changes!

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News, Patch Notes |