Ravenloft Preview Patch Notes: NW.100.20180529a.0

terramak

Patch Notes: NW.100.20180529a.0 - On Preview as of 2018-06-01


Release Notes

Known Issues

• Castle Ravenloft: If a player or party re-queues for this dungeon while they're still inside, certain logic will break. Please leave the map before re-queueing for the time being.
  
• Bonding Runestones currently don't proc. This is a bug.
  
• Enchantments on Companion gear currently don't provide their full stats. This is a bug.

Content and Environment
General

• 2x Seals: This event no longer shows obsolete seals in its description.
  
• Various quest, achievement, and conversation text has been updated.

Barovia Hunts

• Tarokka Card effects that cause enemies to spawn no longer do so at the respawn campfire.

Castle Ravenloft

• Strahd Encounter
  • Strahd no longer has a chance to ragdoll when he's defeated.
    
  • The damage of Shadowcrash has been significantly increased.
    
  • The manner in which the sunsword loses and gains influence has been adjusted:
    • The sunsword now gains influence passively while held.
      
    • The sunsword now loses influence passively when not held.
      
    • The sunsword's powers now grant less influence when used.
      
    • The sunsword now only loses influence when the bearer takes damage from certain abilities. (Not any party member.)
      
    • The amount of influence lost when being struck by these abilities has been increased.
• Sunsword: Coronal Slash now shows more accurate damage values in its tooltip.
  
• Sunsword: Dawnstrike now shows damage values in its tooltip.
  
• There are no longer spots where players can be killed just by walking against a wall.

Combat and Powers
General

• The Dragonborn trait tooltip now properly states that it boosts Critical Strike, not Critical Severity. The functionality has not been changed.

Classes and Balance

• Hunter Ranger: Piercing Blades now deals damage based on post-mitigation damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.

Enchantments, Enhancements, and Runestones

• Prominence: The bonuses of ranks 12 and 13 are no longer swapped.
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Stun duration changed to be 2.5 seconds for ranks 7/8/9/10/11.
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Stun duration changed to 3 seconds for ranks 12/13.
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Rank 13 has had its chance to proc increased to 55% (up from 50%).
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Fixed an issue where the Sparks portion of Ranks 11/12/13 did not properly have an Internal Cooldown.
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Internal Cooldown of Sparks reduced to 2 seconds (down from 10 seconds).
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Fixed an issue where this could proc multiple times in a row.
  
• Thunderhead Enchantment: Fixed an issue where this could deal damage twice to enemies in close proximity.

Item Sets and Powers

• Lycan Boots of the Pack: This item's power now works properly at 50 feet or more.
  
• Poisonous Haired Gloves: This item's power now affects enemies, not the player.
  
• Set of the Dead: This set bonus now has a 45-second internal cooldown.
  
• Sunset Weapons: The buff provided by these weapons no longer applies outside of Barovia.
  
• Sunset Weapons: The related buff no longer looks like that of the Ironwood buff.
  
• Sunset Weapons: The night version of the related buff now properly applies at night.
  
• Thirst: This artifact's power now consistently deals damage where it visually appears.
  
• Warden's Chestplate: The creatures spawned by this item are now weaker.

Items and Economy
General

• Invisible items no longer appear in certain reward displays.
  
• Relic Armor and Restoration items have been removed from the Seals store, and moved instead to the Storm King's Thunder campaign store. In the move, the costs of Restoration items have been adjusted.
  
• Various item typos have been addressed.
  
• Vistani Shirt and Pants now have the correct type of gem slots. This may cause issues for characters on Preview who already have them slotted.

User Interface
General

• A more appropriate error message now pops up when trying to use powers that have been disabled by non-Daze effects.
  
• Visual polish and upgrades have been applied to various interfaces new to Ravenloft.

Character Sheet

• Boon categories now highlight if the character has unspent Boon Points in that category.

Collections

• Various items have been added to Collections.

Convert RP

• Equipment no longer shows a "compare to equipped" tooltip when selecting gear for RP conversion.

Loadouts

• Swapping loadouts no longer messes quite as much with the inventory.

Queues

• Offline characters can no longer incorrectly be actively matched in queues. If a queue group has an offline character, its matchmaking will be paused.
  
• Vote Kick can no longer incorrectly become stuck while trying to boot offline players.

Art, Animation, Audio, and Effects
Animation

• Skeletal Riders' steeds now have a death animation.
  
• The ghostly dancers in Castle Ravenloft are now in much better sync.
  
• Vistani Hunters no longer hold their crossbows upside-down.

Audio

• More improvements have been made to the audio throughout Barovia.

Character Art

• Brown-furred werewolves no longer have a seam and mismatching gray feet.
  
• Various clipping and skinning issues have been addressed.

Visual FX

• Various VFX for weapon and armor enhancements display more consistently.

Performance and Stability
General

• A leak has been addressed in the Visual FX system.

Localization
General

• The localization for the French and German locales is now caught up with Italian and Russian.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Patch Notes: NW.100.20180514a.2 - Went to Preview 2018-05-24

Content and Environment
General

• The exit door for the quest, Chultan Treasures, is back.

Combat and Powers
General

• Hypnotic Gaze: This boon now triggers more consistently from different types of Control powers.
  
• Hypnotic Gaze: This boon now provides the appropriate amount of Combat Advantage bonus damage.

Items and Economy
General

• The Twig Blight companion is now named consistently regardless of location in the UI.
  
• The location of the Razorwood companion is now properly stated in Collections.

User Interface
Home Page

• The "What's New" descriptions for Module 14: Ravenloft have been updated.

Stability, Performance, and Graphics
General

• Laptops with both integrated and dedicated display adapters should now see better texture quality.
  
• Certain beam effects once again properly follow the target.
  
• A couple crashes have been addressed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

terramak

Patch Notes: NW.100.20180514a.1 - Went to Preview 2018-05-17

Preview-Only
General

• Sunsword Weapons and Enchantments have been added to the Wondrous Bazaar's Preview stores.

Content and Environment
General

• Audio has been implemented and improved in much of Module 14's content.
  
• Neverdeath Graveyard: Dragon Attack: Party members can now properly leave the instance once it's complete.
  
• Various geometry errors, such as floating or clipping objects, have been addressed.
  
• Various logic errors in certain Module 14 content have been addressed, allowing for smoother completion of instances.
  
• Various occurrences of the term "Nightstalker" have replaced with "Night Terror" instead.
  
• Various overlapping voice-overs have been addressed.
  
• Various typos and issues with confusing wording have been addressed.

Barovia

• Campfires now inform the player of the required quest to light them.
  
• Old Bonegrinder: A "gather your party" circle now properly appears when exiting the Old Mill.
  
• Old Bonegrinder: Cassandra's boss bar is no longer labeled with someone else's name.
  
• Skill nodes with associated encounters now properly give items.
  
• The poster for the Direfang Hunt no longer reappears if the player already has it.
  
• The Ruins of Berez now have fewer enemy encounters to help reduce enemy density.
  
• Thornspur's powers have been made a bit more dangerous, and require players to react a bit more.
  
• When walking into the river, the "Trudging through water" text no longer displays, it no longer slows the character quite as much, and it no longer slows characters who are on a mount.
  
• Yester Hill: The lightning storm now goes away more consistently after the encounter finishes.

Castle Ravenloft

• Enemies now properly leash to their spawn positions when the party wipes.
  
• If a character dies during Strahd's fight while not wielding the Sunsword, they can now properly return to watch the rest of their party perish.
  
• Sisters of Strahd have had their power timings and mechanics adjusted. Among those changes:
  • Chains of Spite now lasts 10 seconds, down from 30.
    
  • Pool of Decay now lasts 90 seconds in this dungeon, instead of sometimes lasting 15.
    
  • Theft of Vitae is now a cone that faces its current target.
    
  • Theft of Vitae is now properly used when the appropriate conditions are met.
• Skeletal Riders can no longer become stuck in the ground of the bridge.
  
• Strahd and the Arcolith should no longer hit players outside the arena.
  
• Strahd now properly disappears while he's charging up his Shadowcrash.
  
• Strahd should hopefully no longer become stuck when heading into his ultimate phase.
  
• Strahd's hit points have been increase.
  
• Strahd's powers "Ardor" and "Bloodflight" now deal unavoidable, unresistable damage. Their damage has been reduced in accordance with these changes.
  
• Strahd's power "Ardor" now less frequently appears beside the nightmare enemies.
  
• The ambient occlusion in this dungeon has been reduced; this should improve the shadows on certain settings.
  
• The Arcolith no longer incorrectly drops Strahd's loot.
  
• The Arcolith's damage and hit points have been increased.
  
• The end chest now properly grants rewards for the opening character's class.
  
• This dungeon now properly grants end-of-queue rewards.
  
• This dungeon now properly has a queue background image.

Combat and Powers
Boons

• Elvish Fury's buff tooltip now properly shows that it gives 135 Power per stack, rather than 20.
  
• Hypnotic Gaze now properly buffs allies.

Classes and Balance

• Trickster Rogue: Shadow of Demise: The tooltip for this feat has been adjusted to reflect its buff to 75% of the damage dealt (rather than 50%). Note that this damage is now calculated against mitigated damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.

Mount Powers

• Swarm's power now debuffs enemies by 5%, down from 10%.
  
• Swarm's power now slows by 5%, down from 90%.
  
• Swarm's power now only buffs the player character's damage by 5%.
  
• Swarm's power no longer deals damage.
  
• Swarm's power no longer scales with other player stats.

General

• Gear whose powers / stats depend on Barovia's night or day cycle now properly syncs up with that cycle.

Items and Economy
General

• Bag of Holes is now classified as "Miscellaneous" in the Auction House.
  
• Campaign Currency provided by the introductory quest line to Barovia and Ravenloft no longer counts against the weekly cap.
  
• Hunts in Barovia can now award Omens. The amount of Barovian Coins awarded by these hunts has been adjusted to be in line with the amount of Omens given.
  
• Rider Greaves no longer display a buff on the character they belong to.
  
• Sunsword Hilt can no longer be discarded.
  
• The Seal store in Protector's Enclave has been updated to use Seals of the Brave.
  • Batches of Seals of the Protector can now be converted to Seals of the Brave at a cost of 3 Protector to 1 Brave.
    
  • Storm King's Thunder gear has been removed from the Seal Store and added to the Storm King's Thunder campaign.

Item Level Scaling

• Scaling has become a little bit more generous than it was the first week of Preview.

User Interface
General

• Players can now Invoke while using the Sunsword, Vampire Hunter's Tools, and other items that adjust power usage.

Auction House

• Double-clicking on an item with no buyout now properly throws an error, instead of trying to buy it for 0 AD.

Character Select

• Guild and Location for a character are now properly hidden (rather than stating "none") when the game hasn't yet loaded that info.

Collections

• New mounts have been added to the Collections.
  
• Vistani weapons have been added to the Ravenloft page.

Guild

• Guild Join messages for a character now properly display even if that character is no longer in the guild.

Art, Animation, and Effects
Animation / Visual FX

• The Swarm mount's "flourish" animation is now a little shorter, and as a result, shouldn't go invisible for a moment.
  
• Various creatures who can use Duelist's Flurry no longer take over their summoner's or target's camera.

Performance and Stability
General

• The crash in the Quest Path has been addressed.

hustin1

Enchantments on Companion gear currently don't provide their full stats. This is a bug.

This jumped out at me. A couple of nights ago on live I applied a reinforcement to a piece of companion gear, but it isn't reflected in the companion's stats. Could this be related?

archangelzorak01

terramak said:

Bonding Runestones currently don't proc. This is a bug.
Enchantments on Companion gear currently don't provide their full stats. This is a bug.

Hope this gets fixed soon as we can't really test anything in the dungeon without our usual gear setups. Would be impossible to balance the game with bondings and companion stats in mind if we don't have those stats.

ltsmithneko

> @hustin1 said:
> Enchantments on Companion gear currently don't provide their full stats. This is a bug.
>
>
>
> This jumped out at me. A couple of nights ago on live I applied a reinforcement to a piece of companion gear, but it isn't reflected in the companion's stats. Could this be related?


No, only one kit works on Companions, all the kits really do for them are extra IL otherwise. : P

therealprotex

terramak said:

Combat and Powers
Classes and Balance

• Hunter Ranger: Piercing Blades now deals damage based on post-mitigation damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.
  
• ...
  
• Trickster Rogue: Shadow of Demise: The tooltip for this feat has been adjusted to reflect its buff to 75% of the damage dealt (rather than 50%). Note that this damage is now calculated against mitigated damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.

And another step to reduce competition for the oh so beloved GWF class… I really wonder if I will ever see nerfs like this for the (apparently) dev's most valued class. :-(

pitshade

In PVE there should be no mitigated damage so that change has no real bearing.

jaime4312

@terramak @balanced#2849

No SW changes that actually address the class specific issues? Balanced said he would post mod 13 and he's gone for a while now. Won't you guys address the +500% effectiveness t9g/cradle warlock bug that is used to show SW dps on different websites?

therealprotex

macjae said:

therealprotex said:

terramak said:

Combat and Powers
Classes and Balance

• Hunter Ranger: Piercing Blades now deals damage based on post-mitigation damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.
  
• ...
  
• Trickster Rogue: Shadow of Demise: The tooltip for this feat has been adjusted to reflect its buff to 75% of the damage dealt (rather than 50%). Note that this damage is now calculated against mitigated damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.

And another step to reduce competition for the oh so beloved GWF class… I really wonder if I will ever see nerfs like this for the (apparently) dev's most valued class. :-(

For PvE, those are boosts, not nerfs.

Explain please. I thougt post-mitigation damage is the damage that is done after DR was calculated. So the post-mitigation damage is lower than the pre-mitigation damage. From my understanding the damage chain goes like this:

weapon damage --(buffs)--> pre-mitigation damage --(mitigation: debuffs incl. enemies DR)--> post-mitigation damage

Maybe I got that wrong - and in this case I apologize - but can you explain it to me?

pitshade

If your RI is sufficient for the content you are running (85% for Tomb, for instance) then the damage before and after enemy DR is applied is the same. No damage is being removed, so this change means nothing in PVE. TR is getting a buff to Shadow of Demise. I don't see any other changes to Piercing Blades, so it means no effect to Combat HR in PVE.

If your RI isn't sufficient, that's a major deficiency that should be corrected ASAP.

wickedduck22

@pitshade I think it has an effect for level 73 mobs' 25% damage mitigation. I think they should reconsider that change cause it's an unneeded nerf to HR.

pitshade

It is affected by the mitigation twice but also twice from debuffs, from what I've been told. In a good group, the extra damage from debuffs will outweigh the double mitigation.

carterhimura

Classes and Balance

Hunter Ranger: Piercing Blades now deals damage based on post-mitigation damage, rather than pre-mitigation damage.

*Facepalm* Who came up with this idiotic idea? Revert it for pvpsake.

wickedduck22

@pitshade yeah after reading it again it is possibly a big buff for HR's damage if it works like SoD on preview currently. But the changes have not been implemented yet. Went to preview with 5k armor pen at the level 73 target dummies it should have hit for way less. But it was still 50%.

therealprotex

macjae said:

It's exactly as pitshade explained. As long as you have sufficient RI, it should be a significant direct boost from 50% to 75%. On top of that, the way a lot of buffs work may mean the damage will increase further, especially in group content, because they aren't applied to the pre-mitigation damage. So that, and the change to HR Piercing Blades are significant PvE buffs, while simultaneously being (necessary, at least for TRs) nerfs in PvP.

In the latter case, the changes aren't sufficient, though. They're just undoing a really bad change they introduced relatively recently, but TRs will still very likely remain overpowered in PvP for other reasons that they should also address. They need to fix the excessive ability of TRs to stay alive in PvP (something they can probably do without impacting PvE at all in a negative way as well).

I am still not sure about that. Someone brought up the level based damage reduction of mobs that can not be overcome by a high armour penetration. Since end game mobs are at least level 73 this might still be a nerf. And for HRs, Piercing Blades are one of the main reasons why HRs could neglect to increase armour penetration to a certain degree. So once again, I am still not sure if it is a nerf or a buff in PvE.

For PvP, I do not make any statement except that in my opinion any attempt to balance PvE and PvP is futile. The only good solution would be to separate PvE and PvP completly (gear, powers, stats, ...)

pitshade

Piercing Blades doesn't change the fact that failure to have the correct amount of RI is just throwing away damage.

wickedduck22

It seems like it's not implemented yet on preview maybe next patch it will be implemented but im highly optimistic that it will be better than before in pve.