10 comments:

Hudson said...

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.


OH SURE NOW they do this!

November 6, 2008 4:22 PM

ThinkTank said...

Seems almost pointless these days to point out shortcomings in the game - as two weeks later, Mythic rolls out a fix that addresses the issue!

Pretty impressed with the changes that are coming - fast and furious as they are.

I still have plenty of complaints and concerns. For example, they need to start dangling more carrots to keep defenders, not just siegers.

The game is getting better almost daily...

November 6, 2008 5:08 PM

Jason said...

"Locking the chat window will now persist upon logging out."

This was one of those annoying bugs that just made me want bang my head on my keyboard numerous times.

Definitely a minor issue, but sheesh...this couldn't have been fixed sooner?

Jason (resident drunken idiot of Channel Massive)

November 6, 2008 7:29 PM

Anonymous said...

I do believe is Magus' =P
-Beltorze

November 7, 2008 1:16 AM

Anonymous said...

"tier 2 is tired of Stonetroll crossing"
Does that realy pop on your server?
All I get is temple, temple, temple in T2...

November 7, 2008 2:30 AM

Anonymous said...

My chat box was fixed in 1.0.3 or 1.0.4 so it must only be a problem for certain people at this point, hopefully 1.0.5 throws them all a bone.

The root change was sorely needed, glad they reworked the levels and system a bit, although breaking on "all" damage may have gone just a bit overboard.

I think the reason Squig herders got a needed damage boost is because all of their abilities were over-gimped to account for the added dps of their pets. Even if you used the 25% dmg boost with no pet tactic their abilities are significantly less powerful than the mirror abilities from the shadow warrior.

As someone playing a healer main this patch annoys and worries me though. Time to kill (in RvR) becomes much to short by T3 and especially T4 and this patch will boost damage across the board (significantly for some classes that were hurting in that department) while generally decreasing healing power.

It really feels like healing needs a significant boost at endgame right now, especially with the prevalance of healing debuffs, yet this patch looks like it will make it even weaker while boosting everyones damage.

November 7, 2008 9:36 AM

Pamela said...

Not sure what the direction is for the end game, now they are making it clear that they are adding this grind for gear to be able to participate in a keep siege. My only guess is to give level 40's something to work on other than renown rank.

Healers have already been complaining about the difficulty healing through burst damage, now they have nerfed our abilities even more with this HoT change.

I've barely been logging into the game anymore, this patch is not the motivation I was looking for.

November 7, 2008 12:07 PM

Seamus said...

Just thought I'd point out that roots will not be breaking on all damage. The change was that all sources of damage, now including dots, have a _chance_ to break root.

Of course with the way some classes pile on the dot's root will break fairly often. However, with a well organized group, root can still be used to take enemies out of a fight.

As for the gear 'enhancements', for the love of god Mythic, if I wanted to grind for gear I'd be playing WOW.

November 7, 2008 1:58 PM

SlinkytheDrunk said...

i dunno if you knew this but the moral abilities are by default bound to F9 - F12 keys and since i started using those buttons instead of clicking the circle of the ui, it always goes off.

November 7, 2008 4:59 PM

Graktar said...

@Pamela,

HoTs are useless against burst damage anyway, so nerfing hots won't really effect healer's ability to protect someone from burst damage, it just reduces the healing-per-second over a sustained period.

Hopefully this reduction is a prelude to fixes to allow better frontloading of healing, as currently the only 'big' heals in the game take too long to get off (unless you're an AM/shaman with your mechanic maxed).

November 7, 2008 5:59 PM

Patch 1.05 is hitting the test servers soon and we'll all be able to log in and test it (what use are elder testers now?) by copying a character to the server. The full patch notes were also released, and I combed through them to find some things that jumped out at me. I can summarize these patch notes as far as career changes go really quickly. Casters will cry and melee (and Squig Herders) will cheer with joy. Aside from that, here are the things I identified as key to the patch and what they mean to you and I, as well as my usual opinion on the changes:

All classes have received balance tweaks.
Tooltips have been updated, damage based on stat contributions have been balanced, damage has been increased on many abilities (especially for Squig Herders), and a few nerfs/fixes (Engineers and Magus) are spread in. Doesn't look like anyone was seriously nerfed, and the Squig Herder looks to be the big winner after this balance pass.

Electromagnet/Chaotic Rift: This ability has undergone significant changes. The cost of the ability has been significantly reduce while the cooldown has been increased. In addition the build time has been increased,the ability can no longer be cast on the move, and the maximum number of targets affected by this ability has been decreased and it can now be defended against. Lastly this ability will grant immunity to knockback effects.
These nerfs couldn't have come soon enough. Players on both sides were pretty tired of the pull/root/aoe death trains running around with Magus(es?) and Engineers at in the front car, pulling large groups to them while teammates immobilize and burn them down. Its not completely nerfed, but its going to be much harder to pull of the things they have been doing up to this point.

Juggernaut/All roots: This ability is now available at rank 12.
This is huge for lower level melee. I often wondered why casters got a root spell several levels before melee classes got a spell to get out of them. Evidently, I wasn't alone in that thinking and now it is balanced. It will certainly make tier 2 scenarios/rvr less irritating for melee classes.

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.
No more chain rooting, hooray for melee! Boo for casters.

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.
This just might have nerfed all roots into complete uselessness in large scale fights. Casters, prepare to be face bashed by melee as your roots break constantly.

Players are now able to set their rally points in warcamps.
Pretty cool that you can now bind right next to the place where the flight master is. Now you don't have to look for a PVE camp that is next to the RVR war camp to be able to have this convienience.

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. The responsiveness of ability activations has been improved. Players will now see less of a delay between the activation of an ability and the corresponding animation.
I combined those 3 similar items into one, just so I can say YAY for more responsive UI! It will be a great boon to the game for players to not feel so disconnected in combat because of these ill timed, poorly displayed and unresponsive UI elements.

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.
Scenarios really need variety. Tier 1 folks are tired of Nordenwatch, tier 2 is tired of Stonetroll crossing, tier 3 is tired of Tor Anroc, and tier 4 has seen all the Serpent's passage it can stand. Here's to hoping this actually brings some variety back to the scenario lovers.

Non-humanoid monsters will no longer hit for 50%+ of player’s health on critical hits.
Thank God, I've seen some retarded damage coming from the mobs in Bastion Stair. It looks like this was the culprit, hopefully it is really fixed.

When conquered, Keeps and Fortresses will now offer one or more guaranteed gold loot bags as part of the chest loot.
Long overdue and yet another good boost to RVR. Dangle some good carrots and we'll chase them. Better loot, and more of it is a key part needed to boost RVR.

In addition to reducing the amount of damage received from high-level encounter NPCs, each Ward on high-level armor set pieces worn will now affect the amount of damage players are able to do to those NPCs. Players not wearing any pieces of the appropriate armor set will see their damage greatly reduced. For each piece of the appropriate armor a player wears, their damage against the boss monster will increase.
Well, this just further enforces the fact that you absolutely must have this gear to participate in high end encounters like city seiges and king kills. I think nerfed damage as well as no surviveability without this gear should do the trick. I have yet to fully experience how much this sucks yet, so stay tuned for my bitching if that turns out to be true.

A time delay has been added to the preliminary spawns of flags and murderballs in several scenarios. This change was made in order to ensure that both sides have a chance to run to the spawn location of the flag or murderball at the start of the match, and battle for control of the area even before the object has spawned. The affected scenarios include the following: Mourkain Temple, Stone Troll Crossing, Tor Anroc, Howling Gorge, Talabec Dam, Serpent's Passage.
A good change. Now it doesn't matter if you have a mount in Stonetroll crossing or Morkain's Temple. It will provide for some nasty throwdowns at the top of the hill in Tor Anroc for sure though!

Locking the chat window will now persist upon logging out.
This better work. I'm very tired of this small and annoying bug, every time I log in (usually from crashing prior) my chat box is about 2 inches higer than it should be, and unlocked desptite the fact that I loced it before.

All in all, there's alot of good stuff there. I didn't go through every class with a fine tooth comb, so you may want to check out the full patch notes (linked above) to see the full impact of 1.05 to whatever class you play.