The update you’ve all been waiting for, 1.0.6, is almost here! We wanted to thank everyone who tested and provided feedback on this update’s content.
On Tuesday, 12/2/08 all servers will be brought offline to begin the update. North American servers will be brought down at 6:30AM EST with Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00AM EST.
This is our biggest update yet! It’s chock-full of exciting career changes and heralds the debut of the highly anticipated Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun careers.
If you’ve finished the Heavy Metal event and have opened your Heavy Metal Chest, then you will be able to play a Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun when this patch goes live (before anyone else!). For those of you who did not complete the Heavy Metal event, don’t fret! You, too, will be able to play these two new careers starting next week.
This update is so massive that we needed to split the notes into two sections.
Highlights
- New Careers Released! – With this version we are happy to announce the release of the Empire’s Knight of the Blazing Sun, and the Dark Elf’s Black Guard! These new careers are available early for players who have successfully completed the Heavy Metal Event!
- Mastery Point Refunds – Due to a number of significant changes to many of our careers, we are providing a full Mastery Point refund to certain careers. Players who belong to one of the careers below will need to speak with a Trainer to retrain their Career Mastery:
- Bright Wizard
- Chosen
- Engineer
- Ironbreaker
- Magus
- Shadow Warrior
- Sorcerer
- Squig Herder
- Swordmaster
- Morale Responsiveness – Morale abilities will now be much more responsive. These abilities will now fire immediately when activated by the player on the first attempt, and will display their cooldowns correctly at all times.
- Root Responsiveness – We have made a number of adjustments to root spells to ensure that they break properly and feel more responsive to players. Changes include a chance to break on ANY damage including DoT damage, as well as a 5 second immunity to being rooted again after the current root effect breaks.
- Auto-Attack Animations – Improvements have been made to auto-attack animations. Players will now see smoother, more consistent weapon swaps when players change from ranged to melee auto-attacks, and vice versa.
- Ability Activation Responsiveness - 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.
- Guild Promotion/Demotion – Fixes have been made to issues which were causing guild promotion and demotion to not work properly.
Combats
General
- We’ve fixed an issue that was causing the buff icon on various marketing rewards to display incorrectly.
- We fixed an issue that was causing weapons and armor to not display their proc effects in the item display.
- Opponents may no longer right-click item effects to remove them from themselves, and the Boost, Blades, Barrier, and Barricade effects will now proc far more reliably.
- Tactics gained from Tome Unlocks have been renamed.
- Damage over Time abilities: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of these abilities has been made consistent across the board. This generally resulted in an increase in damage, but some abilities have also been brought down. Individual abilities are noted in the specific careers’ sections below.
- All Unstoppable tooltips will now mention Knockdown.
- Root effects, with the exception of Morale Roots, will now grant a 5 second Freedom effect to the victim when they break, and will no longer stack with other roots.
- Root effects will now properly have a chance to break on ANY damage event. This includes individual tics of Damage over Time spells.
- Fixed assorted issues where certain movement reductions/increases would stack, slowing or speeding targets more than intended. This also addresses cases where snared players would find themselves essentially rooted when in lava.
- All Tactics now give their bonus when the character that has them slotted is stealthed, mounted, or has a Standard out.
Racial Tactics
- Centuries of Training (Elves): The tooltip for this Tactic has been changed to be more clear.
- Sigmar’s Favor (Empire): This Tactic will now be triggered only by direct heals.
- Stoutness of Stone (Dwarfs): This Tactic will once again reduce the effectiveness of Stuns and Knockdowns.
- Tzeentch’s Warding (Chaos): This Tactic will now get the bonus when the character is mounted.
Archetype Abilities
- Alter Fate: This ability’s tooltip now displays the correct values.
- Champion’s Challenge: Neither the player nor the player’s enemy may be knocked back while this Morale is in effect.
- Divine Protection: This ability now lists the amount of damage absorbed in the tooltip.
- Force of Will: This ability will now display a visual effect when used.
- Frenzied Slaughter: This ability will now display a visual effect when used.
- Juggernaut: This ability will only fire when the player is rooted, snared, silenced, or disarmed.
- Misdirection: This ability will now display an effect on the caster while the ability is active, and place a brief effect on anyone damaged by the effect.
- Point Blank: This ability will now correctly ignore Knockback and Knockdown immunity, as well as not trigger it.
- Rampaging Siphon: This Morale ability will no longer be affected by points spent in Career Mastery. Additionally, this ability now heals the group for each target hit, instead of only once.
- Raze: This channeled ability will no longer be interrupted while on the move.
- Relentless Assault: This ability will now display n visual effect when used. Additionally, the ability will no longer remove snares and roots.
- Restorative Burst: This tactic’s tooltip now correctly states the number of Action Points gained from triggering it.
- Balance Essence: The damage for this ability has been increased.
- Balanced Mending: The HoT portion of Healing Energy will now benefit from this tactic. Additionally, this ability will now correctly provide a bonus to heals on other players, and a penalty to heals on the caster.
- Boon of Hysh: This ability has had its cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds, and the setback amount reduced to half a second.
- Dissipating Energies: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased slightly to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
- Drain Magic: This ability will now increase in potency with High Magic. In addition, damage will now correctly increase based on Career Mastery Points spent in the Path of Asuryan instead of the Path of Vaul.
- Funnel Essence: This ability will now correctly behave like a channeled ability, will channel correctly, and will correctly heal the target.
- Healing Energy: The stat contribution for this ability has been fixed. This was previously receiving more stat benefits than intended.
- Hurried Restore: This tactic will now stun the player when the resurrect is cast, instead of when it is accepted.
- Increased Conductivity: This Tactic will now increase the damage for all abilities listed in the tooltip.
- Law of Conductivity: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been slightly increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
- Mistress of the Marsh: This ability has had its cast time reduced.
- Prismatic Shield: This ability will no longer fail if the caster’s defensive target is not a group member.
- Radiant Gaze: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities. Also, this ability will now correctly reduce the target’s chance to critical hit and damage by the correct amount.
- Radiant Lance: This ability will now reliably consume High Magic.
- Rain Lord: The tooltip for this effect now lists all stats affected.
- Scatter the Winds: The amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased slightly to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
- Storm of Cronos: This ability will now correctly reduce Spirit resistance for the correct amount.
- Transfer Force: This ability’s damage has increased. Additionally, the amount that stats contribute to the damage of this ability has been increased to make it consistent with other Damage over Time abilities.
- Wild Healing: This tactic will now correctly provide a 50% reduction to AP costs on direct healing abilities when triggered.