Avernus Preview Patch Notes: NW.122.20200601a.1

nitocris83

Release Notes
Content and Environment
General

• Healing marks are now visible only to the caster.
  
• Dragonborn’s collision area now matches all other playable races
  

Combat and Powers

Classes and Balance

Barbarian
Sentinel

• Unstoppable
  • The block from Sentinel’s Unstoppable is now correctly set to 50% of the player’s maximum hp.
    

Cleric
Devout

• Light of Divinity
  • The cost of Light of Divinity now properly decreases when the effect of battle prayer is triggered.
    
  • Light of Divinity now becomes highlighted when battle prayer activates if Swift Prayer is slotted
    

Fighter
General

• Kneebreaker
  • Cooldown reduced by 5 seconds
    

Dreadnought

• Commander's Strike and Mow Down now properly benefit from melee enhancing powers
  
• Striker's Mark
  • The text was updated to match the current functionality. This allows Fighter daily powers to gain 400 bonus magnitude from any source of Physical Vulnerability Up but will also consume the debuff, whether applied by the Fighter or not.
• Ricochet
  • Damage reduction from shield bounce has been lowered
    
  • Now has a 10% chance on powers that hit multiple targets to proc a Shield Throw without incurring a cooldown.
    

Paladin
Oathkeeper

• Timely Intervention has been adjusted so that heals that would fully restore the target’s hit points without the effect of Timely Intervention now erect a Divine Barrier instead. The tooltip has been updated to reflect this change.
  

Warlock
General

• Soul Spark
  • Text error fixed in description
    

Hellbringer

• Blades of Vanquished Armies
  • AP generation increased
• Power of the Nine Hells
  • Cursed Bite no longer summons a Soul Puppet
    
  • Infernal Spheres now summons a Soul Puppet on both activations
• Fiery Bolt
  • Changed to 200 magnitude
    
  • Removed the AoE penalty
    
  • Cooldown time increased by 6 seconds
    

Soulweaver

• Soul Scorch
  • AP generation increased
• Vampiric Embrace now removes one detrimental effect from nearby allies and oneself in addition to its existing effects.
  

Wizard
Thaumaturge

• Shatter Strike
  • Fixed an issue where Critical hits with a control power would proc shatter strike twice and ray of frost would proc shatter strike continuously.
• Rimefire Weaving
  • Fixed a bug that was causing stacks of chill/smolder or rimefire smolder from other wizards to stack its damage increase.

Enemies and Encounters

Zariel’s Challenge

• The outer radius of the damage area of Anthelion and Parhelion are no longer larger than expected.
  
• Penance and Reprobation no longer function incorrectly due to latency.
  
• Celestial Armory damage has been increased
  
• Swordfll should no longer affect players with Resurrection Immunity
  
• Fixed issues with Zariel’s audio getting interrupted
  
• Zariel should no longer leave behind collision when she exits the platform
  

liadan1984

Glad to see warlock got their cleanse ability back. That ability should ALWAYS remain on ALL healer classes, as a remove on others and on self.

bifflinculte

Rimefire Smolder from Chilling Advantage doesn't crit. Moreover, Critical Conflagration has to be deactivated, else smolder/Rimefire is broken. As always Smolder deals minor damage, picking Chilling Advantage will reduce it even more.

Shatter Strike is fixed and Rimefire grants personal damage buff (15%, 10% if a second thauma is attacking the same target, don't ask why). The thaumaturge hence becomes worst dps paragon of whole game. Low spell magnitudes, long cooldowns, bad mechanics (smolder/rimefire is a mess since day 1) and boring gameplay. On preview, all wizards went thauma for new trial, now they'll go back to arcanist.

sekosek

nitocris83 said:

Barbarian
Sentinel

• Unstoppable
  • The block from Sentinel’s Unstoppable is now correctly set to 50% of the player’s maximum hp.
    

I dont understand this change. You were supposed to give some love to Sentinel this mod. But with this change Sentinel will be even in a worse place compared to mod18. We already lack tankiness and aggro. High hp with high stamina was the only good thing about Unstoppable.

Right now opening Unstopabble nerfs us, instead of buff. It blocks the same amount of normal block, so why would we use it? It does not provide damage resistance like in Blademaster, it does not provide party buff, it does not give anything useful. Attack speed is not something for tanks. And on top of that, it reduces stamina gain, and with auto block you end up with no stamina. Once you open Unstoppable, you gotta wait until it ends to rebuild stamina, while gaining no bonuses meanwhile. It will be 99% of the time useless.

Sentinel has no Damage resistance, has no stamina regen power, has no party protection and our aggro is worse compared to other two, and we cant even control our tab mechanic, once its open we have to wait until its over. So actually not opening at all gives better control and better rotation.
New added feat was a good idea, but now since opening Unstoppable basicly gives us nothing, and actually nerfs us, it seems like feat is not gonna be that useful anyways.

Both op and gf has damage resistance resources, party protections, stamina regeneration powers and 75% hp stamina pool with their mechanics. Right now Sentinel basicly lacks every single item in this list. Sentinel was already in a worse place compared to other tanks. Now this makes Sentinel the worst tank by far.

betepok

I dont understand too...why dont you give sentinel barb damage resistance, group shield or idk...omg , for the name of god reduce cool down for punishing charge at least or make come and get hard taunt and increase magnitude for blood letter ...gosh

darthpotater

Thanks to that bugs, thauma was used as debuffer, at least was more or less usefull. Now is "fixed" is where you want to be? Is the worst path of the game by far, useless in all the scenarios. We will have to wait until mod 20 (6 months) to have something functional?

nova

So we're going to just leave Chilling Advantage how it is? So Thaum wizards again are now as useless as a fish out of water.

Can we get an explanation, as to why the changes were made, and why these changes are viable in the developers eyes for the wizards is current module, that being M19?

malistaire

It's like the devs hate the barbarian sentinel and are actively trying to make it undesirable in endgame content. We have the worst aggro, worst survivability, and again the worst tab power.

Unstoppable only serves to make barb tanks easier to kill.

Compare the tab powers of the 3 tanks and it becomes obvious which one is not like the others.

Fighter Tank tab power:


Paladin Tank tab power:


Barbarian Tank tab power:


Not only does using the tab on the sentinel not provide any additional shield compared to a normal block, it doesn't provide any form of damage mitigation. Both paladin and fighter have 75% of their HP as block while using Tab and gain a damage mitigation effect (paladin - decrease damage by 10%, fighter - negate combat advantage against you).

Using Tab on sentinel does not provide any benefit to tanking. Higher attack speed is virtually pointless on a tank if using tab only increases our risk of getting killed. Enemies don't wait for our unstoppable to run out before they attack us. Using unstoppable means giving up our block to be able to hold aggro.

Lets talk about Zariel. Her tank buster can take out paladins while they are using all their damage mitigation powers. How exactly are barb tanks supposed to be able to complete the trial?

Either give the barb tanks tab 75% HP and a damage mitigation effect or keep the tab at 100% HP. As it stands right now, the tanks are not even remotely balanced.

carloswartune

nitocris83 said:

Cleric
Devout

Light of Divinity
The cost of Light of Divinity now properly decreases when the effect of battle prayer is triggered.
Light of Divinity now becomes highlighted when battle prayer activates if Swift Prayer is slotted

...

Paladin
Oathkeeper

• Timely Intervention has been adjusted so that heals that would fully restore the target’s hit points without the effect of Timely Intervention now erect a Divine Barrier instead. The tooltip has been updated to reflect this change.
  

Players: The healers are not balanced, Paladin is way better.
Cryptic: Don't worry, we'll make improvements to the Paladin so it's even better! And we might fix a bug or two for DC.
Players: What???
Cryptic: ...
Players: What about SW?
Cryptic: Wait, what? SW can be a healer? LMAO, I forgot. Don't worry, we'll make it better in, like, 2 years tops. Maybe. At least you have a cleanse now, go remove those annoying expedition debuffs while you wait.

PS: I know, I know. The change for Timely Intervention isn't really relevant. This is just a joke.

ivanrichma

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ivanrichma

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sa1985666

sekosek#5740 said:

nitocris83 said:

Barbarian
Sentinel

• Unstoppable
  • The block from Sentinel’s Unstoppable is now correctly set to 50% of the player’s maximum hp.
    

I dont understand this change. You were supposed to give some love to Sentinel this mod. But with this change Sentinel will be even in a worse place compared to mod18. We already lack tankiness and aggro. High hp with high stamina was the only good thing about Unstoppable.

Right now opening Unstopabble nerfs us, instead of buff. It blocks the same amount of normal block, so why would we use it? It does not provide damage resistance like in Blademaster, it does not provide party buff, it does not give anything useful. Attack speed is not something for tanks. And on top of that, it reduces stamina gain, and with auto block you end up with no stamina. Once you open Unstoppable, you gotta wait until it ends to rebuild stamina, while gaining no bonuses meanwhile. It will be 99% of the time useless.

Sentinel has no Damage resistance, has no stamina regen power, has no party protection and our aggro is worse compared to other two, and we cant even control our tab mechanic, once its open we have to wait until its over. So actually not opening at all gives better control and better rotation.
New added feat was a good idea, but now since opening Unstoppable basicly gives us nothing, and actually nerfs us, it seems like feat is not gonna be that useful anyways.

Both op and gf has damage resistance resources, party protections, stamina regeneration powers and 75% hp stamina pool with their mechanics. Right now Sentinel basicly lacks every single item in this list. Sentinel was already in a worse place compared to other tanks. Now this makes Sentinel the worst tank by far.

youre absolutely right.

lardeson

Wizard
Thaumaturge
Shatter Strike
Fixed an issue where Critical hits with a control power would proc shatter strike twice and ray of frost would proc shatter strike continuously.
Rimefire Weaving
Fixed a bug that was causing stacks of chill/smolder or rimefire smolder from other wizards to stack its damage increase.

Im always in for bug fixes but why do you guys insist on only fixing bugs that benefit players and not the ones that have been around for several months? Can any dev explain?

Several bugs have been reported about the wiz since mod16 and are yet to be addressed. Rimefire weaving lasted a mod, shatter stike 2 weeks, lightning bolt bugged since mod16, arcane powerfield bugged since mod16, storm spell still bugged on live (i know its been fixed on preview but wont be live till end of june). I cant understand your priorities.

gabrieldourden

Why no updates for Hunter Rangers?

cecil2xs

Am I missing something? How is using unstoppable worse than not like people are saying?

rualkgreywolf

cecil2xs#3048 said:

Am I missing something? How is using unstoppable worse than not like people are saying?

Unstoppable makes you block anything that comes at you and the stamina regeneration is almost nonexistent. The issue is that you need to have some rage to activate it cannot be interrupted before the rage is depleted (except with a skill that specifically does that but it's not good enough to use it in hard contents). So basically you have this enrage that you need some resource to activate, that you cannot interrupt, that usually make you waste stamina, that doesn't reduce damage taken compared to the normal block, that leaves you defenseless, and that the only "buff" it gives is to make you attack faster... not exactly what a tank needs. I found myself using it much less in order to have the stamina to block the big hits, after the patch,

jimmypdt

rualkgreywolf said:

cecil2xs#3048 said:

Am I missing something? How is using unstoppable worse than not like people are saying?

Unstoppable makes you block anything that comes at you and the stamina regeneration is almost nonexistent. The issue is that you need to have some rage to activate it cannot be interrupted before the rage is depleted (except with a skill that specifically does that but it's not good enough to use it in hard contents). So basically you have this enrage that you need some resource to activate, that you cannot interrupt, that usually make you waste stamina, that doesn't reduce damage taken compared to the normal block, that leaves you defenseless, and that the only "buff" it gives is to make you attack faster... not exactly what a tank needs. I found myself using it much less in order to have the stamina to block the big hits, after the patch,

Paladins have the same issue with their Tab mechanic. It burns divinity to use it and since most of our aggro or hard hitting powers for generating threat use divinity I never use it. On the plus side, at least unstoppable give full control immunity compared to the other 2 only giving immunity to most controlling effects. But yes the Tab mechanics should be reviewed and modified in my opinion.

All the best,

OPTank_

canuck1

Hello to the Devs.

Please stop nerfing stuff that actually benefits the characters without breaking the game. Please look at building classes up instead of tearing down.

As was said above - the thauma build was actually viable as a playstyle and now its totally useless - maybe you should have looked at trimming or adjusting it a little if it was WAY over damaging but totally nerfing was a worse option. I also have a Barb and the Sentinal build is brutal with this additional nerf - thank goodness you pushed the DPS back up (thank you)

Thauma was fun because it was good on Mobs and was finally good on single target again and I didnt have to play Arcanist for the millionth time in a row (PS Arcanist still needs Mob powers buff please).

Really - other than the DC which has 2 viable playstyles (including a way powerful DPS now) and the GF where tank and DPS is really good - none of your other playable classes have 2nd options that are actually viable other than for dabbling and killing mobs maybe.

Please build up to the better - its not like the Zariel loot has to be protected from too many groups running it.

Thank you for your consideration.

demarw2

Hey @nitocris83.

It is nice, that you want to buff the DPS Fighter (Dreadnought) next module, because in my opinion we will be in a very bad situation, especially after these buffs for Barbarians and Warlocks. Maybe we will be again the weakest dps class. But these changes are very minor and won't buff our damage very much. The only useful buff is the change on our Weight of Verngeance feat. The changes on Knee Breaker, Commanders Strike or Ricochet are useless because these skills/feats are still too weak to be used. I dont know, how you devs assess the situation, but the Fighter DPS will be still too weak next module. Maybe you have some data (from TOMM) that prove the opposite, but I and many other dps Fighters think that we are too weak and need a bigger buff. I have some suggestions for useful buffs, that would really increase our damage, from the Fighter thread:

- reduce the cast time of Griffons Wraths third hit (and remove that clunky animation)
- Vigerous Strikes should increase the Critical Severity depending on the remaining stamina (instead of the Critical Chance)
- Vengeful (vengeance gage above 50%) could increase our damage by 25% instead of 20%
- increase the magnitude of Heavy Slash up to 150 (now 135)

Hopefully you will look at the DPS Fighter again. I am not sure whether you don't see our problem or you don't want to solve it (maybe Fighters should be forced to be a tank?). But I am looking forward for some more balancing changes before Mod 19 goes live. Thanks for reading.

durugudesu

demarw2#2749 said:

Hey @nitocris83.

It is nice, that you want to buff the DPS Fighter (Dreadnought) next module, because in my opinion we will be in a very bad situation, especially after these buffs for Barbarians and Warlocks. Maybe we will be again the weakest dps class. But these changes are very minor and won't buff our damage very much. The only useful buff is the change on our Weight of Verngeance feat. The changes on Knee Breaker, Commanders Strike or Ricochet are useless because these skills/feats are still too weak to be used. I dont know, how you devs assess the situation, but the Fighter DPS will be still too weak next module. Maybe you have some data (from TOMM) that prove the opposite, but I and many other dps Fighters think that we are too weak and need a bigger buff. I have some suggestions for useful buffs, that would really increase our damage, from the Fighter thread:

- reduce the cast time of Griffons Wraths third hit (and remove that clunky animation)
- Vigerous Strikes should increase the Critical Severity depending on the remaining stamina (instead of the Critical Chance)
- Vengeful (vengeance gage above 50%) could increase our damage by 25% instead of 20%
- increase the magnitude of Heavy Slash up to 150 (now 135)

Hopefully you will look at the DPS Fighter again. I am not sure whether you don't see our problem or you don't want to solve it (maybe Fighters should be forced to be a tank?). But I am looking forward for some more balancing changes before Mod 19 goes live. Thanks for reading.

don't worry it will probably be the rangers at the bottom )