RESPAWN OPTIONS FEATURE
We are pleased to announce the respawn from hover window feature! Upon dying players will now be able to chose their home or bind as respawn options. Accepting a resurrect request will unlock the Resurrect option; be resurrected without zoning!
SEASON
Two weeks after this patch, we will be allowing players to leave the season early via a dialogue option. This option will not be allowed to guest locked characters. The reason for this notification is give players time to properly protect themselves from griefing. Please note that once you have left the season, under no circumstances will you be readded.
RANGER
We primarily see a Ranger as the masters of ranged bow combat. They are a master of all forms of weapons, being closer to the warrior side of a warrior/druid hybrid. Melee weapons are not the preferred choice, only chosen in situations when bowing is not possible or to fill an auxiliary tank roll. As an off/aux tank they focus on avoidance and are not about building threat. The follow changes convert old ranger stances into disciplines, while also building upon the themes and roles of a Ranger.
PET MELEE BUG FIX
Pet melee procs with spell ranges less than 50 were failing to complete where the pet's melee attack range was greater than the range of the spell.
Example: A Rangefinder is meleeing a large dragon. The server calculates the melee range at 30 units. Spot will proc, and then fail because the bird is beyond 25 units of range.
We believe this was exasperating player experiences of "Ranger Inconsistency". How many bosses was this effecting? When checked, only one boss in Upper Thaz was small enough to allow spot to land. Seven out of the eleven bosses in Silent Halls were small enough.
Arrow consumption is now uniform at all bow delays. eg. Swiftshot, Bow of the Avenger and Ravenclaw will use the same amount of arrows over an equal unit of time.
In conjunction with the above Ranger patch notes, the arrow damage multiplier has been lowered to 3x (previously 5x). The below two examples will explain this difference:
Pre-Patch:
We have implemented the client-side support for flying, floating, and levitate. So flying monsters should...fly better. This is more a developer feature, but some might notice the behavioral change. All existing mobs that should fly have been converted to be flying.
ENEMY AI BEHAVIOR
We are going to describe an existing enemy behavior:
An additional spell behavior available to us is bind sight. The following spell/item grant players access to this:
Last rank Rogue disciplines provided a significant spike of power during progression play. We have shifted this power away from these disciplines and into AAs to create a smoother growth in power.
RIVER OF RECESS
A new raid encounter can now be accessed within this zone.
LAIR OF MIELECH (MIELECH C)
We are pleased to announce the respawn from hover window feature! Upon dying players will now be able to chose their home or bind as respawn options. Accepting a resurrect request will unlock the Resurrect option; be resurrected without zoning!
DEVELOPER NOTE: Previously, when you died, all the data for your character was removed as you were transported to your bind location. With this change, the server now needs to be aware of your character data, but in a dead state.
- Please report any behaviors that might seem unintended while dead.
- This feature can be turned on and off without a patch. If something goes awry, we may have to disable the feature temporarily.
Two weeks after this patch, we will be allowing players to leave the season early via a dialogue option. This option will not be allowed to guest locked characters. The reason for this notification is give players time to properly protect themselves from griefing. Please note that once you have left the season, under no circumstances will you be readded.
RANGER
We primarily see a Ranger as the masters of ranged bow combat. They are a master of all forms of weapons, being closer to the warrior side of a warrior/druid hybrid. Melee weapons are not the preferred choice, only chosen in situations when bowing is not possible or to fill an auxiliary tank roll. As an off/aux tank they focus on avoidance and are not about building threat. The follow changes convert old ranger stances into disciplines, while also building upon the themes and roles of a Ranger.
DISCIPLINE ABILITIES
Rangers may purchase the following disciplines from the Ranger Guild. Be sure to explore for additional ranks!
- Pinion Shot
- Loose an arrow at a flying target.
- This ability uses the new 'Flying' target type, being usable only on enemies with a flying gravity behavior.
- Requires a bow and consumes an arrow.
- 30s cooldown.
- Foresight will now indicate whether a target is a valid flying target in addition to it's normal behavior.
- Gift of the Fields
- Search the area for materials to craft arrows.
- Only usable outside and out of combat.
- Fletching skill increases the amount of arrows foraged.
- Forage skill increases the success chance.
- 5 minute cooldown.
- Hunter's Lash
- Strike an animal target with hunter's precision.
- Restricted to animal target types.
- Requires a melee weapon.
- 12s cooldown. (Shared with Jagged Arrow)
- Jagged Arrow
- Notch a jagged arrow, dealing damage and inflicting bleed on your target.
- This bleed will deal reverse splurt physical damage over time.
- Requires a bow and consumes an arrow.
- 1 minute duration, 30s cooldown. (Shared with Hunter's Lash)
- Feral Assault
- Unleash a focused arrow against your target.
- This ability's critical strike chance is greatly increased against snared, bleeding, or low life targets. These bonuses are additive.
- Critical strikes with Feral Assault lower it's cooldown.
- Requires a bow and consumes an arrow.
- 45s cooldown (can be reduced to 30s cooldown) (Shared with Force of Vines and Strike of Seasons)
- Force of Vines
- You draw strength from the ground below you, empowering your strike and healing your body.
- Requires a two handed weapon.
- 30s cooldown. (Shared with Strike of Seasons and Feral Assault)
- Strike of Seasons
- An empowered attack infusing your weapon with the power of the seasons.
- Deals elemental damage based on the season.
- Spring - Poison
- Summer - Fire
- Fall - Disease
- Winter - Cold
- Provides a 2 tick beneficial recourse buff based on the season.
- Spring - Health/mana regen and poison resist.
- Summer - Damage shield and fire resist.
- Fall - Armor class and disease resist.
- Winter - Spell defense and cold resist.
- Requires dual wielded weapons.
- 18s cooldown. (Shared with Force of Vines and Feral Assault)
- Eye of the Raven
- Scout the landscape through the eye of your target. (Bind Sight)
- 1 minute duration.
DISCIPLINE BUFFS
- Flurry of Shots
- Unleash a flurry of shots, causing each arrow to split into two shots.
- 10s duration, 2 minute cooldown. (Shared with Relentless Parry)
- Relentless Parry
- Enter a survival state, auto-parrying all attacks for 10 seconds.
- 10s duration, 15 minute cooldown. (Shared with Flurry of Shots)
- Blade Guard
- Switch your offhand weapon into a defensive position, increasing parry and riposte at the cost of offhand attacks.
- This discipline has no stamina upkeep.
- Requires dual wielded weapons
- Savage Strikes
- Unleashes a hail of melee strikes, granting no fail double and offhand attacks.
- Moderate stamina drain.
- Requires dual wielded weapons.
SPELLS
Coat of Arms has been converted to the following spells:
- Silent Scroll: Solstice Flare
- Silent Scroll: Solstice Flare II
- Channel the heat of the sun to burn your enemies, causing X damage every six seconds for 4 ticks. 1s cast time.
The following quiver spells has been added to lower levels:
- Quiver of Fire- Level 29
- Gives your arrows the chance to burst into flames upon hitting your target, burning nearby creatures for 40 hit points damage.
- Quiver of Frost- Level 40
- An arrow coated with frost, which will damage your target for 75 hit points damage.
- Quiver of Lightning- Level 51
- Gives your arrows the chance to shock enemies upon hitting them, dealing 100 points of magic damage.
Pet melee procs with spell ranges less than 50 were failing to complete where the pet's melee attack range was greater than the range of the spell.
Example: A Rangefinder is meleeing a large dragon. The server calculates the melee range at 30 units. Spot will proc, and then fail because the bird is beyond 25 units of range.
We believe this was exasperating player experiences of "Ranger Inconsistency". How many bosses was this effecting? When checked, only one boss in Upper Thaz was small enough to allow spot to land. Seven out of the eleven bosses in Silent Halls were small enough.
- As such, Pet melee procs with spell ranges less than 51 have been converted to melee range checks.
- Mage pet procs were generally 50 units. A failed proc would be possible, but only on the largest raid targets. Small improvement here.
- Ranger pet procs were 25 units. This range was small enough to fail often. Large improvement here.
Arrow consumption is now uniform at all bow delays. eg. Swiftshot, Bow of the Avenger and Ravenclaw will use the same amount of arrows over an equal unit of time.
- This allows developers the template to create fast bows for future content.
- Faster bows will provide Rangers an option for more consistent hits.
- Rangers will continue to consume less arrows than other classes at all levels.
- The Ranger AA, Returning Shot, will continue to provide a reduction in arrow consumption.
- The chance to not consume an arrow is clamped between 5% and 95%, so extreme limits of slow or fast bows will suffer a loss.
- Intermediate Bow
- Post Intermediate Bow
- Soul Rake
- Ravenclaw
- Starter Bow
- Learning Bow
- Yclistinite-reinforced Short Bow
In conjunction with the above Ranger patch notes, the arrow damage multiplier has been lowered to 3x (previously 5x). The below two examples will explain this difference:
Pre-Patch:
- Using a 1 Damage Arrow = 0 added damage
- Using a 2 Damage Arrow = 5 added damage
- Using a 3 Damage Arrow = 10 added damage
- Using a 1 Damage Arrow = 0 added damage
- Using a 2 Damage Arrow = 3 added damage
- Using a 3 Damage Arrow = 6 added damage
- Having the best arrows will still be important.
- It will be easier to add new arrows in the future without shifting Ranger DPS by a large amount.
- Converting bow damage to discipline damage reduces erratic swings in ranger damage.
- Moving this damage to disciplines will also reduce the swing between having your bird pet versus not.
We have implemented the client-side support for flying, floating, and levitate. So flying monsters should...fly better. This is more a developer feature, but some might notice the behavioral change. All existing mobs that should fly have been converted to be flying.
ENEMY AI BEHAVIOR
We are going to describe an existing enemy behavior:
- A tank pulls a mob without damaging it.
- While the mob is running towards the tank, a client begins to cast.
- The mob will then redirect it's attention to the caster.
- This is not communicated to a player when it happens. We feel that failing and not knowing why or how to prevent this is bad design.
- The mechanic can be completely negated by wearing certain end game gear.
- The AI mechanic now checks melee range and melee damage taken with target rather than any damage taken for its primary pass / fail.
- The mechanic will feel uniform at all levels.
- It can no longer be mitigated with exclusively high tier gear.
- A message will be sent to clients on failure.
- Rampage filter
- a large bat redirects their attention to Feron's casting.
- Shadowstep spells will now properly move a player.
- Blind spells will now properly blind clients.
- Poison/disease counters will now display correctly on buff icons.
An additional spell behavior available to us is bind sight. The following spell/item grant players access to this:
- Bind Sight - Level 8 (Enchanter), Level 10 (Wizard)
- Ruxim's Class II Machine of Amplification renamed to Ruxim's Class II Machine of Surveillance.
- Click effect has been changed to Bind Sight (previously Expansion III)
- Eye of the Raven - Level 19 (Ranger) Described above
- Charm pet damage has been toned down in raid zones.
- Charm buff duration will no longer be displayed in pet and target windows.
- Jinx, Vex, and Hex will now give a unique message indicating when the target misses their attack due to being jinxed.
- "Skill: Disarm Trap" will now be learnable for Bards at level 20. For the time being, it will need to be purchased from a Rogue vendor. Just a reminder that this Discipline skill replaces the clients native "Disarm/Set Traps" as a workaround.
Last rank Rogue disciplines provided a significant spike of power during progression play. We have shifted this power away from these disciplines and into AAs to create a smoother growth in power.
- Poison Trap V - Base damage over time lowered to 418. (Previously 500)
- Incisive Blade VII - Base damage lowered to 385. (Previously 510)
- Steel Trap V - Base damage lowered to 2530. (Previously 3570)
- Blast Trap V - Base damage lowered to 1318. (Previously 1515)
- Insidious Stab - Increases backstab damage by 4% per rank (in addition to previous behavior)
- Ambuscade Expertise - Increases trap damage by 4% per rank (in addition to previous behavior)
RIVER OF RECESS
A new raid encounter can now be accessed within this zone.
LAIR OF MIELECH (MIELECH C)
- Observant adventurers may find a new way to get into the zone. It is by no means a free ride. Bring a group, or a very strong group depending.
- Some random encounters for higher level players have been added, as a bonus. You will find them by killing trash mobs in the zone, assuming your group is strong enough.
- Windworn Boka's ratio has been adjusted.
- Windworn Boka can now be transformed in a blacksmith's forge.
- The hate portion of Jyre's Consuming Flame has been increased to 100 (previously 60)
- Fixed instances of "Crossed-Swords" / stuck in combat bug. This was caused by any source adding aggro to a client who was feigned (Script/ DoT). Example: Imp's Fury barrels adds hate to the entire group when it spawns. If one of your members were feigned, they would be instantly bugged. Special thanks to detailed player feedback for finding this bug. Please let us know if other issues of this crop up. Thanks.
- Wizard PBAoEs will no longer be blocked when you have no target.
- Ambuscade Expertise will no longer increase the critical strike of all spell damage.
- Reckless Strike will no longer be usable outside of Reckless Fury.
- Cagey Footwork is now properly flagged as a beneficial spell and can be manually clicked off.
- Forbidden Harvest and Strands of Life will no longer grant mana on kills where the corpse is destroyed. (A destroyed corpse is a scripting mechanic that removes the corpse to not provide loot and experience)
- Fixed haunted zone global messages.
- Dwarfs now properly get a mining racial bonus.
- Wood Elves no longer get a mining racial bonus.
- Flamecannon's range reduced to 250 (uint8 limits).
- Gold Onyx Necklace changed to properly boost Dex.
- Fixed a crash caused by traps.
- Fixed a crash caused by scripted pets and zoning.
- Summoned: Shadow Stalker range check should be more consistent.
- Starla of the Blue Hurricane bugfixes & adjustments (huddling up during a certain phase should be noticeably beneficial now).
- Starla has had an additional mechanic added for all versions.
- Mining nodes have been added to River of Recess, Dreadlands, and Bloody Quarry.
- An illusionary wards are more illusionary.
- Emir Sharikahn Vahl should be less buggy.
- Acumen now classified as a permanent buff.
- Ranger spell vendors sell the correct level spells now.
- Spirit Anchor duration increased to 2 minutes (previously 30s).
- Notab's Nug Special renamed to Rumplesnort's Beetle Bug Special.
- Notab's Payment renamed to Rumplesnort's Payment.
- Skrula's Payment renamed to Daerith's Payment.
- Skrula's Troll Swampbrew renamed to Daerith's Troll Swampbrew.
- Ysanth's Payment renamed to Yssanth's Payment.
- Ysanth's Apple Wine renamed to Yssanth's Apple Wine.
- Prismatic Flurry weapon proc will no longer conflict with Gruplok Attuning Rod.
- Recently-added damage on charm pets was slightly lowered
- Main Quest item drop rates from goblin scouts and shadewebs in Heartland Plateau increased by 60% and 40% respectively.
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