Patch Notes: NW.45.20150618a.2

strumslinger

Classes and Balance
• Difficulty
o We are adjusting difficulty for all critters that are 61-70+ using some general guidelines:
o All enemies now have roughly 50% more Hit Points.
o All enemies deal roughly 25% less damage.
Our reasoning behind this is to address the main concern of enemies doing too much damage. With an increase in HP, it balances things to create more of a strategy than simply being killed in one hit.
o Bosses are unaffected.
• XP given, current XP and overflow XP has been adjusted at levels 61+ so that it is more rewarding to do at level content.

Content and Environment
• Knox and Lord Neverember have updated and new quests to better direct players about what to do at level 70 including. Dungeons, Campaigns Artifact Equipment and Enchantments.
• Drowned Shore
o Attack on Blackdagger Keep: The supplies should no longer show up on the map as an objective once the objective is complete.
o Subterranean Surge: The encounters should now fully despawn when the heroic encounter is over.
• Fiery Pit
o Geyser Samples: Geysers should now change up more frequently while Emberclaw is not active, making the objective a little easier to complete.
o Hot to Handle: Reworded the objective text to make it more clear that there was a difference between the total number of armor required, and the current objective to collect one before dropping it in the well."
o Torch Bearers: ncreased the Torch drop rate. Increased number required for objective from 6 to 8.
o Traitorous Scum: Changed the names of the Duergar in the Crystal Fields to make it more clear what the objective was.
o Trial by Fire: In order to reduce confusion about the objective, all Fire Archons in the Fiery Pit now contribute towards the objective, not just those within the Fallen Halls, but the Fallen Halls remains a good spot to go to for the quest.
• Reclamation Rock: In Memorial: Quest clicky credit is not shared with nearby party
• Spinward Rise
o Birds of a Feather: Added more kenku eggs.
o Clearing the Air: Moved a brazier slightly and moved encounters closer to the braziers.
o Eyes in the Sky: Increased the drop rate from a 9% drop rate to a 17% drop rate.
o Slaad Summoner, Lore of Chaos, Feeding the Slaadi: Added a campfire before the boss room in the Howling Maw.
o Tempest in a Bottle, Cloud Magic, Giant Tribute: Cleaned up cutscene for Cirrus Skyseeker in Nimbus Tower.
o The Seed of Air is now more closely guarded by a cloud giant and his minions.
o Whispers on the Wind: Increased the drop rate from an 8% drop rate to a 15% drop rate. Increased number required for objective from 10 to 12.

Items and Economy
• Armor Kits and Jewels can now be slotted in much lower level items.
• Dell Mccourt has once again opened up his store for business in the Dread Ring.
• Harper Bard Companion now works in SCA.
• Harper Bard Companion power descriptions have been clarified.
• Invocation
o All Invokes now give a buff item. Use of this item gives 1 of the 4 invocation buffs from before M6.
o All XP Boosts given by Invocation now SET the bonus to the amount instead of adding it.
o All existing XP boosts that did give 25% bonus now gives 100% bonus XP
o Made the 4th Invocation give a bag for the Refinement Point item.
o Made the invocation buffs give more stats from levels 61-70.
• Legendary Companion bonus power descriptions have been clarified.
• New and Improved XP Boosts available in the Zen Market. Existing XP Boosts have had their bonus pools increased but are no longer available.

User Interface
• Bonus XP can now be seen in the XP bar tooltip information after level 70.
• Invocation: Pressing Ctrl-I now invokes immediately then shows you what you were awarded.

rinat114

Not bad. Some enchants (like Trans vorp, Trans negation) are still bugged though, and what about inspection?

Saw the invocation change in Alpha, it was refreshing, I missed those boons and it's nice you can use them now whenever you want to and it's not forced.

martanis117

how about fixing classes too while you're at it lmao. honestly i could have seen you guys increasing the mobs HP by 25% instead of 50%.

mamalion1234

About the monsters those changes are for leveling areas only? 70 Level mobs are not in dungeons.
Monsters in dungeons are 71+

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mamalion1234

revjimjones wrote: »

All enemies now have roughly 50% more Hit Points.
o All enemies deal roughly 25% less damage.

Trash mobs will still 1 hit with Combat advantage.
Trash are were the problem
well that and the ridiculously high Control Resist on L70-73 mobs.

Gentle Targeted Adjustments please......Not Excessively Broad untargeted Strokes...

We are adjusting difficulty for all critters that are 6-~70 using some general guidelines 6-70 says here

nosimo

strumslinger wrote: »

Classes and Balance
• Difficulty
o We are adjusting difficulty for all critters that are 6-~70 using some general guidelines:
o All enemies now have roughly 50% more Hit Points.
o All enemies deal roughly 25% less damage.
Our reasoning behind this is to address the main concern of enemies doing too much damage. With an increase in HP, it balances things to create more of a strategy than simply being killed in one hit.

I just love this change, now the greatest risk of death while in combat with a healer or tank will be falling asleep while trying to kill a mob....

Undefined

On top of my bugged Transcendent Vorpal, enemies now take 50% longer to kill. This and you just nerfed Storm Spell. Wonderful. More reason not to play.

Where are the dungeons?

Is fun too much to ask for?

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zebular

Lost of nice little things that all added up to some major annoyances, thanks!

rversant

I understand the change behind Invocation, But Please tell me that if we have like 50-100k bonus xp currently waiting its not going too set it DOWN to the 10k. This could cause MASSIVE amounts of QQ if it does. it should work like a Top-up. If the xp bonus pool is above the amount offered, it should do nothing.

sher0013

when are you going to make Tiamat's orb of majesty possible to use to refine other artifacts?

abxyxxx

All the big changes like trans fixes and class fixes are probably planned to roll out with strongholds

Undefined

People do you understand what is happening here? 50% more HP on enemies is the equivalent of an across the board all classes, all builds 33% damage nerf.

Way to go devs. *Shakes head* I give up. you win. I don't care anymore.

canmann

No change to the invocation timers? Still casual unfriendly I see. FYI some of us "adults" in the world don't have 4+ hours a night to play a game.

Edit: and 50% hp increase? Really this is your answer to the difficulty... wow you just don't get it.

mjytresz

Classes still unbalanced.
PvP still as stale as it was 4 modules ago.
Gear still as stale as it was the last 2 modules.
PvE still as stale as it was for the last few modules.

All this time and all you managed to do was tweak some numbers for mobs?
My company opened a new center in Europe and the one developer we have there achieves more than the Cryptic development team.
How laughable.

getafiksx

Good job guysyou killed you new shining class OP. We have the lowes damage no daylies and now more HP for the mobs. With this change there will be no tanks and clerics. Guys if you are smart enough you will take a peek of WOW or Aion and there you will see that every class do enough damage to clear the trash mobs verry quickly. I sugest for this two classes to make a special power or mechanic or what ever to change from tank/cleric to DPS and take HP/deffence/... of us. In this way we can do effectivly our daily quest. example: this change can be done out of fight and every 1.30 min. We dont want to be best DPS but when wight a groop of trash mobs it frustraing to not be abble to kill fast and slice piece by piece from every mob or group. Think about it, you make a new class and crippled it. Please do some changes in this direction.

ireneadl3r

So Cryptic takes time out of their day to reduce "confusion" on quests in Fiery Pit (the objectives were quite clear already to me, but that's just my experience), fixing drop rates (the drop rate on the torches was already very good, IMO...) and do a worthless "decrease" in difficulty that likely won't increase my 70+ survivability at all, if not worsening it, but fixing properly broken stuff is apparently not on the board yet. I realize that some of that stuff takes a lot of time and effort to fix, but simple stuff like fixing a few lines of code for a broken enchant or fixing some achievements, even (because I do find those quite enjoyable and a nice way to find new stuff to do when I run out of quests), shouldn't take longer than clearing some confusion in Fiery Pit.
Well, at least the invocation changes seem good. Let's just hope that those don't come broken inside the packaging...

archimagas

CRYPTIC stop destroy game,please remove that "All enemies deal roughly 25% less damage",you again do one step back, again SUPPORT CLASS by dont needed on party. REMOVE THAT!!!

indalord

Ok some changes ok....Life will be a bit hard for OP, DC and some gf. They need to make a team to do daily quests, now more than never.
I want to ask about trans/pure enchants. Lot of ppl wrote about as bugged they are. And trans/pure means a lot of ZEN.
So can we have a DEV answer !!!

Now concerning, the recent HR life. we are still low dps but I feel better in pvp. Just to mention a point. Why on earth my DC is dodging better than my HR ?

ty

discorice

can't figure out what you all have against fixing the bloody enchants. it's been too long. no more excuses. fix them.

panteleelee

No announcement yet ...
and what will be double refine or double rune-ench ????

neirgara

Still no additional maximum passive slots for companions.

I sit on about 15 companions that I'm not able to bind. It would be great if you could include that in your next patch. I believe this would not take as much time and work to implement. And it makes some players spend some more zen. So double win.

Also I remember that making glyphs stackable was planned shortly after release of Mod 6.


I'm not sure about the enemy buffing/debuffing.

The bonus is very welcome, especially for Well of Dragons and dungeons where squishy classes get one-shotted regularly. But will 25% be enough? Even at 75% the damage of simple marksmen is so high, that many classes will not survive the first contact. And even if they do, where is the gain, when they go down at the second hit instead and have to fight 50% longer?

On the contrary every solo content will be even more time-consuming for GF, OP and DC as it already is. Needing help for a difficult Well of Dragons mini dungeon is ok, needing help for 4 easy DR daylies to be able to do them in under 1.5 hours is not.


In my opinion the most problems with difficulty (which are more than just being unwilling to adapt to a new situation) are in Well of Dragons, Icewind Dale and 2000 Ilvl dungeons.

For IWD it could be helpful to just reduce the number of random elite upgrades of mobs. Some times I run into a Beast Tamer with 2 War Dogs and I can kill them. Next time I run into an identical group and see that they have increased HP and damage and I'm not able to beat them. Or to run around the PvP area in search of enemy adventurers without the extra thick HP bar.

For WoD it could be a solution, to simply reduce the damage of non-elite mobs, like marksmen or black cultists for a higher number and instead reduce the cooldown of their base attacks. This would also reduce one-shots and will not take longer to kill them, but you still will be pressed hard and have to use your shift powers.

For dungeons the actual changes could work. There is only one thing that I imagine could be a problem. At the moment my GF is able to get the first impact of every fight, protecting the squishy damage dealers, but is not able to hold the aggro for very long, as the damage is big even with shield and with 3 enemies one will always run around me and attack from behind. Until now I have been dependant on the rest of the team to kill ranged enemies and the small mobs fast, so I can concentrate on taking non-lethal hits from the last few big guys. Now I have to be able to hold out longer, and I don't know if the damage reduction will compensate enough (especially for the attack-from-behind part) But I will have to test it and see how it works.

arabatur

strumslinger wrote: »

Classes and Balance
• Difficulty
o We are adjusting difficulty for all critters that are 6-~70 using some general guidelines:

The problem which has been glaringly missed again, is level 73 mobs. Anything less than those are easily manageable, or were seeing as this "improvement" is going to make certain classes wish they had never been released. It's worrying that it has taken this long to see a change that no one particularly wants or asked for.

commanderdata002

Tanks will be less wanted.
Is this applicated for Tiamat too...?

avengingangel93

This will be an interesting patch. I'm going to reserve my judgement until they roll it out. However, would you kindly FIX THESE DAMN OP BUGS?! ENCHANT BUGS! I am getting SICK of this.

v4sh89

what is the bug trans vorp and trans negation??

henryloenwind

Not happy with this. I built the chars I actually play to kill the mobs while avoiding being hit, so all I get is the "mobs have more hp" half of the change...

silverkelt

I do not like the change either.. not sure thats what we were looking for..

certain slow classes now will take 50% longer to kill things? you think thats ok? good grief.

My dc will be fighting a regular mob back for 20 mins at the way your changing things =P ..

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lirithiel

I think many people here are misinterpreting the adjustments to mobs. Shar, DR, WoD and IWD will NOT be affected. This was done to make lvling to cap easier. No change to max lvl/end-game content, which is where this change was sorely needed.