ASSASSIN CHANGES
A series of changes aimed at preserving the assassin playstyle (perma-stealth, can re-stealth in combat) while making it less oppressive in PvP and giving the opponents a chance to react.
Detection
If you have same same Stealth as the Detection of your opponent, they will be able to see you as semi-transparent up to 8 meters away. Each 100 points of difference between Stealth and Detection swing the distance one way or the other, with a min cap of 4 meters and max of 12 meters.
In practice this means that, assuming you are an assassin who maxed out Stealth (as you should, if you are a assassin), regular players will be able to see you 4 meters away, while dedicated detectors who can match your Stealth will see you 8 meters away. See you, not reveal you.
Please note:
The talents haven't been updated yet. The Seer talent does nothing now. True Sight works, and we are still considering if/how to change it, because now revealing is not so bad - see next paragraph.
The formula will be different for monsters. If you have very high Stealth, most won't detect you at all.
Assassin Set
We've decided to shift the burst of the assassin set away from immediate critical damage and towards damage increase + utility that last for a longer time. More in detail:
- Being Hidden alone provides no bonuses (no guaranteed crit, no accuracy).
- Wearing the Assassin Set gives you a buff that stacks up to 5 times, 1 stack added per second spent hidden, with the first stack applied right after you hide.
- At 5 stacks, you get +25% Weapon Damage (same bonus type as that given by the Rogue armor, but higher), +200 Accuracy, and +200 Accuracy Cap - you can get to 1200 Accuracy, yes, or even 1400 if you combine this with a Potion of Sharpness.
- All stacks are lost if you are no longer hidden for more than 5s.
AEROMANCER CHANGES
The boost in the last patch has made the Aeromancer an S-tier build in both PvE and PvP. We want to keep it this way, but make the secondary damage dependent on the Magical Power and Aeromancy profiency of the caster, instead of being fixed.
- The secondary damage of Shock changed from a fixed 80-160 (values at 0-100 stacks on the victim), to 3-6 (values at 0-100 stacks on the victim) multiplied for the amount of stacks added by the spell (before reductions).
For instance, provided the target is already at 100 stacks, a source adding 20 stacks will passively inflict 120 extra shock damage (6x20). - The secondary damage of Shock now triggers even if the victim wasn't already Shocked.
- All spells have been rebalanced so that they apply a lot more Shocked stacks than they used to, now being on par with Pyromancy. Conversly, their base damage has been generally reduced or even completely removed in a couple of instances.
DAMAGE CHANGES
We found several issues with damage calculations when it came to melee classes, now fixed. This deserves a whole section.
Damage Increase
Sources of damage increase (e.g. Rogue, Assassin, Ranger sets) now impact the whole damage of physical abilities, not only basic attacks and the basic attack portion of physical abilities. This means that if a Slashing Wave or a Lethal Strike do 1000 damage and you have +20% from Rogue, they will now deal 1200, while before they respectively dealt 1000 and 1000 + 20% of your weapon damage.
This issue was likely the reason behind the lack of competitiveness of most light melee classes in PvP vs a light mage class (e.g. PYRO): their Scholar Clothes would increase their Fireball damage by 20%, while your Rogue/Ranger would only really benefit your basic attacks, which don't matter much in PvP.
Damage Reduction
The issue for physical abilities and sources of damage reduction was the same as above, and it's been fixed as well. Encumbrance, for instance, would only decrease the damage of your basic attacks....
This issue was likely the reason behind the power of Knight Armor in PvP: heavy users weren't really trading resists for damage!
Other Dmg Fixes
There were multiple other issues, although less relevant. Just a couple examples:
- If you had Fire Damage Increase your Fire Staff would not deal more damage.
- Your Scholar bonus would not give damage to your Mage Staff (but your Rogue bonus would!).
- The Expert Tactician talents would only give damage to your physical abilities that didn't include the weapon damage...
Really, a lot. Won't even list them all.
Other Dmg Changes
- Damage Reduction at 100 Encumbrace is now 35% instead of 40%. With the fix above, you actually feel the 35% now A LOT MORE than the 40% before.
- Damage increase is capped at +40%.
CITY MANAGEMENT CHANGES
- Cities can be renamed every 30 days or after conquering them.
- Governors can evict owners of land parcels in the city (eviction takes 7 days, can be canceled by the Governor). Once the 7 days have passed, the land claim becomes unclaimed (all its content is deleted) and can be reassigned or deleted.
- Free accounts (those created during Open Events), refunded accounts and inactive ones no longer count in the 20 citizens / 3 vice governor requirement.
- An account is considered inactive if no character of that account has logged in in the last 30 days. Last login has been set to today (5/8/2024) for everyone, to give all governors some time to re-organize.
OTHER CHANGES
Abilities Fixes and Adjustments
- Strike Wounds has been moved to Assassination, so it's now available to all users of 1H weapons + light armor. Going forward, all Stances will be placed either under Warfare, Assassination, or Hunting.
- Strike Wounds no longer deals Pure damage. Instead, it increases weapon damage the same way Bloodlust and Vicious Attacks do, up to 91% depending to how many percent points of Health the victim has lost. Note that it's now based on percent HP lost, while previously it was absolute HP lost. The net result is that the dmg it deals is overall lower, unless the victim is naked. It's now a fair alternative to Vicious Attacks.
- Lethal Strike now deals a lot more extra damage, [400-600]xPP, but can no longer be Critical, putting it in line with all other ultimates in the game. The duration of healing reduction has also been increased to [3.2-4.8]xPP.
- Heart Piercing Strike and Impale have been tweaked. The former gained extra damage but can no longer be Critical and doesn't ignore armor, the latter ignores more armor but no longer applies bleed.
- Added a delay of 0.5s to Burning Pillar effects (stun and damage), matching the pillar animation.
- Guided Shot is now considered a Physical Ability.
- Rooted Duration fixed for several spells like Entangling Roots and Bramble Wall. Now it lasts the right amount of time.
- Draw Back now frees you from snares, as expected.
- The visual effect of Aura of Oppression now scales in size matching the actual range of the effect.
- Fixed and issue that prevented Totems Area Effects from working correctly under certain circumstances.
Monsters Fixes and Adjustments
- Elder Forest Troll now uses the Black Ooze spell as intended.
- Elder Mountain Troll now uses the Aura of Oppression spell as intended.
- Tremora (Termidian Matron Legend) now alternates between basic attacks and Earth Spikes attacks. Basic attacks no longer always miss the target.
- The reagent "Plagued Remains", needed to start the Undead Ultimate Legend Spawn on Aerhen, now drops more frequently from Ghouls (20% => 30%) and Felghouls (40% => 80%), and has a small chance of dropping from Zombies (10%) too.
Other Fixes
- Charcoal Piles can be placed next to houses and no longer become "owned" by a land parcel if placed adjacent to it on the outside.
- Fixed an issue with fortress circles and guild control.
- Fortress doors now block projectiles.
- 5x5 houses on Terra now have the correct size.
- The prison building is now easier to select for deletion.
- It's no longer possible to rank up a city without it having enough citizens / vice-governors.
- Marketplace Filters now reset correctly when switching to objects that don't have those filter options.
- Stealth users can no longer see the detection circles of other stealthers, unless they can detect them. This happened only under very specific circumstances, but now is fixed.
- Beastmen or Iridra can no longer activate their Primal Form or Primal Ability while channeling primal energy from a Large Crystal on Terra. Similarly, while a Primal Form or Ability is active, they cannot gather primal energy from said crystals. Under certain circumstances, this led to a weird chain of issues that broke Primal Forms in multiple ways.
