Month: March 2011

I’ve been teetering back and forth on whether or not I should write this post for awhile now.  I honestly thought I had posted my last “WoW” weeks ago.  Over the last few weeks playing another game has helped to lift the rose colored lenses I had so long for the World of Warcraft.  In the past I would go off, play another game for awhile, and it would remind me of all the things I missed.  This time however, all it has done is made me realize all the things I hated.

Death Of PVP Rivalry

Blizzard has made plenty of bad calls over the years, but it seems that recently the frequency of them keeps happening more and more often.  Of all the poor choices, the one that still sticks in my craw the most is what seems like the systematic dismantling of the server community.  In every MMO I have played, the server you play on is as much apart of the experience as the game itself.  Those that have had thriving vibrant player communities have lead to a much more enjoyable experience across the board.

The first of this decisions that has chipped away at the player community, is the cross-server battleground.  From the perspective not playing has given me, it is easy to see that this was the “beginning of the end” per se.  In the days before battlegroups, the server I played on had a fairly thriving pvp community.  The forums were filled with constant reminders of this rivalry and a begrudging respect for the players on the other side and how badly they could decimate you.

This spilled over into a nightly war that was waged starting at Southshore and ending at Hammerfall.  Almost the entirety of Hillsbrad and Arathi Highlands was taken up in a series of skirmishes to hold imaginary territory.  With the release of the Battlegrounds, this conflict was supported by seeing the guild or player you dreaded on the other side of the field.  The population imbalances however made life frustrating to players on the larger side of the divide, giving as long as 2 1/2 hour long Alterac Valley queues.

Instead of choosing to bolster the underdog by giving the player base a reason to re-roll there, like Dark Age of Camelot did.  They chose to institute cross-realm battlegroups, which instead pitted you against a series of players from other servers as well as your own.  Quickly those old rivalries began to fade, and with it a lot of the community that centered around PVP.  No longer did you know you were fighting players from your server, that you might see out in the world, instead you were just rallied against nameless faceless numbers.

Death of Communication

Prior to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, my server had a very vibrant pug community.  If you ran heroics on a regular basis, you quickly began filling your friends list with suitable fillings.  You learned which guilds harbored good players, and which had lousy reputations.  Through this constant interaction with other players, the server community was thriving.  The leaders of each of the guilds, for the most part knew and communicated with the leaders of the other guilds on a weekly basis, each of us knowing that if a problem arose we would deal with our membership to rectify it.

The looking for group tool was never used that much, and instead groups relied on trade chat and social channels that each of the larger guilds had to fill groups.  It was a system that supported communication between players, and taught them the basics of building good groups.  All of this changed when the 3.3 patch was released in August of 2009.  The “idiot button” as I have taken to calling it, allowed players to click a button, choose a role, and get pulled into a dungeon with a cross-realm group when one was available.

At face value this sounded like a really cool change, it would allow players to fill groups without having to bother their guild members to run lower level content.  What it did almost immediately is destroy all communication and civility in dungeons.  Previously when you had to build groups from scratch, you knew that the players you were grouping with, were players that you were likely to see again on your server.  If you behaved bad enough, then more than likely your exploits would make their way to the realm forums.  On a day one server like I played on, with a long memory, getting a bad reputation meant you ended up blacklisted from pretty much all content.

Gabriel’s Theory

Since these players however you were now grouping with, were from other servers, and it was unlikely that you would ever see them again, what did it matter if you were a complete and total ass to them.  Within weeks the G.I.F.T. was in full effect, as players rolled need on everything they could, chewed other players out for minor mistakes, and generally threw all tact out the window. 

What was almost worse however, were the silent groups.  In the vast majority of these runs I go into, especially with well geared players, no one said a single thing.  We just charged forward like some out of control locomotive towards the goal line to get your “badges” for the day.  No one was willing to help anyone out that needed a quest in the zone, it was all about speed and skipping as much content as you could to get in and out with minimal interaction.

While this decimated the pug culture on my server, and eroded at the community we had built up, it did worse things to guilds.  No longer did you need anyone from your guild to do anything but raid, and as a result the vast majority of players simply ran things in this solo mode to save time.  You would have a guild full of players, none of them actually doing anything together but all running heroics.

The major unintended consequence, of this however is what pugging used to be the way you got to know potential players for your raid.  With the death of pug-culture, so died the ability for raid leaders to recruit from a pool of known good players.  So many of the players that we raided with, and ultimately later on ended up in our guild started out as players we one of us had met while pugging.

Death of the Forums

On my server particularly, we had such a strong community in the early days, that even after all of this assault we still managed to remain in contact through the server forums.  We were highly protective of our server, and Argent Dawn became adept at repelling trolls, by trolling them in return until they finally surrendered and left.  You have to understand that our server has been attacked from all sides since day one.  The first roleplaying server in the list, earns you the job of being a magnet of every griefer and whack-job with a cause.  So in return, those of us forum regulars became bandits with white hats, defending our server from invasion.

However beginning in mid 2010 the server admins began supplying crooked justice with an itchy ban hammer.  One by one, valued community members, that had supported the server since day one were given temp and permanent bans from the server forums.  If you mentioned someone that had gotten banned, you earned yourself a ban as well.  So as a result, we began referring to banning by the code word “Cream Cheese”.  This continued for months, and over time the population of the forum dwindled.

With the realid debacle, another group left the forums as well.  Some of us took up refuge, and tried to salvage what we could of the community on another forum, but in the end the real wages of war were already spent.  The general civility of the community, and willingness of player groups to work together was just gone.  We had been holding onto the skeleton, holding onto our pride, and the exodus off the forums just allowed us to salvage a bit of our dignity. 

Blizzard had fairly thoroughly broken our server community.  There were little shoals of players, scattered here and there through social channels, and trade chat still lent it’s way to the occasional successful pick up raid.  But for the most part, the general sense that we were all pulling towards some goal was gone for good.  All the elders of the community, the day one folks, found themselves backing away and becoming less active, only to be replace by the loud brash trolls that took our place.

Last, Best Hope… Dashed

With the Cataclysm expansion, death watch for the server community began.  The change to unified raid lockouts had many consequences on our environment.  In the past, we had been able to go to 25 mans with our raid, and attend 10 mans with various groups of friends.  At this time, our guild lead a thriving non-guild based raid as well.  With the changes to the guild system, and the introduction of guild only achievements, it pretty much signaled the end of that era for us.

For the most part, one by one, the smaller satellite guilds that made up our raid merged into House Stalwart.  With it introduced a slew of new personalities, and issues.  More than anything however it caused us to draw inwards.  While it revived the guild groups, it completely destroyed the concept of grouping with the community at large.  Everyone was pushing to get that guild experience, guild levels, and more importantly guild achievements.  I freely admit, I had a lot of hope that this would be the era that changed things and re-established the community of guilds.

What happened however is the last of the server community has all but dried up.  There is little communication between guild leaders anymore, let alone players from other guilds that they do not already have on realid.  The focus on the importance of the guild, has caused a great internalization, shrinking the size of the server to the constraints of the members of your group.  Our server forums are all but dead, and the faces that are there included none of the players that had been there for literally years.

The Final Nail – The Point

I am sure by now, if you made it this far you are wondering when I will get to a relevant point.  Well here it comes. This week a few things were announced that caught my attention, even though I have not been terribly active on the wow websites anymore.  The biggest of these is the announcement of a guild transfer and rename systems.  This will be the final destruction of what is left of what it is to be on a server.  No longer will guilds need to worry about their reputation, or attempt to help the general server community.  If you get a bad reputation, change your name.  If you end up on a low population server, uproot your guild and make the situation worse.

On top of this being bad for the servers, this is a flat out money grab on the part of Blizzard.  Think of in these terms.  You are in a guild that you love, and have worked to help level it to 20.  Your guild leader decides it is best for the group to move to another server.  Now you have to make the decision, do I leave the guild and lose all the work I have put towards getting exalted and getting all these cool perks, or do I have to pay $25 per character to follow.  If larger guild decides to move, blizzard gains several thousand dollars for performing what I am sure is a scripted process.  I’m a developer, you don’t offer something like this if you don’t have an automated tool. The price of these services has long been nothing more than a convenience tax.

Also this past week, it was announced that a brand new mount would be sold on the Blizzard Store.  So you mean to tell me, that all they can release is recycled dungeons…  but they have plenty of time to code up a new money generating mount?  I don’t begrudge them selling items, because that is pretty much something we will have to deal with, but what I do begrudge them is the fact that since the merger with activation it has been one money grab or another.

Time for a Change?

At this point I am just sick of the game, and sick of the company behind it.  I had been a loyal supporter of Blizzard and WoW for years, but what I keep seeing I don’t like, and haven’t liked for a long time.  Being removed from the game just let me realize how badly I disliked it.  I have given over the guild I spent six and half years, and little bits of my soul building to a friend and fellow officer.  As well as that major step, I’ve given away all my money and anything of value on my characters.  I have reached the point where I will never play WoW again.  I would quite honestly rather play nothing, just hang out, read books, than play World of Warcraft again.

I hear a lot of rumblings of the same from friends that they are just tired of the game.  After 6 years of playing, it is feeling really old, and with the lack of positive direction from blizzard it seems hopeless.  Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn, who has often been a cheerleader of the blizzard cause (or at least more positive than me), is starting to show doubt that the community might be off the rails.  I think things are changing for Blizzard, and hopefully for the sake of those who are left… they will realize that we are not just numbers.  We are not this inexhaustible supply of willing fan boys, that will gobble up everything they offer.

There has been a lot of talk about Rift, and its impact on the community.  And while I won’t belay the fact that it is a freaking amazing game… I think what you are seeing is more than that.  Rift won’t be the WoW-Killer, in fact there will NEVER be a WoW-Killer.  When WoW came out, it was touted as the Everquest-Killer.  Everquest has kept chugging with a smaller but equally devoted fanbase, and has released 9 additional expansions since 2004 when WoW came out, the last of the expansions in October of 2010.  Once an MMO reaches the point of sustainability, you simply cannot kill it, it will keep going so long as it has a loyal following.

What I feel will ultimately be the end of the game, for the most of us are the poor decisions Blizzard continues to make.  It has trained a player base, willing to put next to no effort into the actual gameplay itself, and is resigned to setting up a bunch of cups for us to knock down in the form of raid content.  They spent so much effort, redoing the old-world, but have made the content so easy that you can get from 1-85 in 2 days played.  The entire focus of the game has been on the fictional virtues of the end game, with no focus from the player community on the journey itself.  I guess at the end of the day, I miss the journey.

So as promised, here is my commentary to the patch notes.  Like I said earlier, I can only comment on what I play.  I play a Bahmi 33 Paladin/ 18 Reaver / 15 Warlord tank build.  It is pretty much the tank build I always wanted from other games.  Combination of survival, self healing, and movement, the only big thing it is missing is a bunch of “oh crap” buttons.  However it feels the way I have always wanted my tank characters to feel, so I am extremely happy.  I will more than likely have 3 total tank builds, but this one will always be the showcase.

* Balance of Power: Now deals 25-75% of weapon damage.

Honestly that one little line, that looks so innocuous in the notes, adds up to a massive nerf in paladin survival.  Let me explain why this matters, since it doesn’t seem that big of a deal.  Balance of Power currently in game, deals 120-160% weapon damage to a target anytime you successfully block.  This itself does generate a ton of threat of the Paladin which is nice, and does a good job at holding aggro on casters that have yet to be pulled into the group.

Were a loss of damage the only thing, it would not be that big of a deal.  Balance of Power however feeds the talent above it, Tip the Balance which when maxed gives back the paladin 100% of this damage as healing.  So for 5 talent points, the paladin effectively received 160% weapon damage in healing each time they block.  This currently represents the bulk of our self healing and at least in part feels like a good chunk of our survivability.

Currently in my gear, even though a good chunk of it is sub-tier1 my survival is good enough that while doing non-dungeon content I will be just fine.  However this will probably make leveling a paladin considerably harder, or at least more touch and go in those heavy spawn areas.  I am hoping that this gets dialed back a wee bit before going live, because cutting our self healing in half seems a bit extreme.

* Soul Sickness, Flesh Rot, Necrotic Wounds, Blood Fever: The damage on additional targets when using Plague Bringer has been lowered. The Threat generation has been increased to keep overall threat gain of the abilities the same.
* Grisly Works: Moves up two tiers, now unlocked at 26 points. Now increases the healing of Soul Feast by 30-90% for 15 seconds after killing a target the Reaver has engaged.

Adding insult to injury, my survival will be going down even more since my two means of getting healing from the Reaver tree are both getting nerfed as well.  Soul Sickness has always felt like the only time I made a significant difference in my survival was when Plague Bringer was active.  With the damage to additional targets being lowered it also means the healing you receive from the talents that use it, will even be less than it was.

The big nerf here however is to Grisly Works.  The entire reason why I went 18 deep into reaver tree was to get 3 points here.  How it works currently, is that anytime a mob that you have damaged dies you receive 9% of your health in healing.  I cannot count the number of times while leveling this saved my bacon, and when doing large packs of mobs it really helps increase your survival.  However with the change, it feels like Grisly works is completely useless. 

Currently I pop Soul Feast almost anytime it is available to try and keep a ticking hot on me at all times, but with this change it feels like you would need to save Soul Feast until a mob dies to gain the maximum benefit, leaving you without any added healing the majority of the fight.  Like with the paladin changes, for day to day non-dungeon interactions this probably wont effect me personally much, but it feels like this is another general purpose nerf to survival for another of the 4 warrior tanking trees.

* Pure-Endurance ‘Of the Fortress’ items will no longer drop above level 13.
* Going forward, randomly generated two-handed weapons will come with DPS stats rather than tanking stats.

Those are without a doubt my two favorite patch notes.  Even as a tank… Of The Fortress gear is horrible.  Every single cairn and puzzle I have looted, has produced… you guessed it…  Of The Fortress gear.  I kinda regret going ahead and doing the level 50 puzzles, but can’t take things back.  I just know that I will be waiting until Wednesday before I do anymore on my alts.

* Rift events no longer track player contribution against other players. You are checked for participation in the event and given rewards appropriately. It’s still important to participate in as many stages of a Rift or event as possible to receive the best rewards.

I really hope this will also address the way that epic shards are handed out as well.  Currently, as my friend has figured out, the only way to receive an epic shard reliably is to participate in a major invasion, aka the ones that have objectives that are different from closing rifts and defeating invasions.  Problem is that those of us who are level 50 have likely not seen a major invasion since leaving Stonefield/Gloamwood. 

This means for 25 levels at least we have not had access to some of the better items available in our level ranges.  This same issue will start effecting Freemarch and Silverwood sooner or later as the crop of players rolling alts slows down.  So while the contribution system was greatly skewed towards a scant few classes, I do hope they address the way the harder to get shards are awarded.

Big Take Away

* Increased the amount of Plaques of Achievement needed to purchase first and second-tier Expert Dungeon items.

No idea what the increase will be, but this means at the least it will be harder to get those items you have been wanting.  I know personally I just started running experts so I only have about 20 plauqes, but with these changes impending it means two things.  Firstly run as many experts as you possibly can to get those last few pieces of gear, and secondly make sure you buy the items you want as soon as possible.  I know in my guild we have already talked about a weekend of back to back expert dungeon runs to try and gear out as many folks as possible before the change goes in place.

Previously I did a bit of commentary on the patch notes, this time I am breaking them into two separate posts since patch 1.1 is so phenomenally large.  All indications are leading us to believe that this patch will be released on or near Wednesday March 30th.  They include some pretty massive changes, and a good number of tweaks and prods here and there.  I will comment on the ones that matter specifically to me in a follow-up post, but for now…  here is the reason why I personally believe the release of this patch will be very shortly.

Forum Message With Timeframe

30-Day Update Heralds Massive Invasions, Unique Loot, and New Epic Raid Zone
Trion Worlds today announced the first worldwide, fully dynamic conflict event for the immensely successful MMORPG, RIFT™. The battle for Telara intensifies as world-changing invasions from the Plane of Death engulf the planet, giving Ascended heroes a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of a key moment in the game’s history. Beginning March 30th, players will witness the true power of Regulos the Destroyer, and the world of RIFT will never be the same.
This robust update comes less than a month after the game’s March 1st launch, making it one of the most aggressive post-launch content releases ever for a new MMORPG.

Unprecedented Invasions & Exclusive Rewards
Starting next Wednesday, Alsbeth the Discordant will lead massive invasions across every zone in Telara, raising legions of liches, ettins, and gravemakers to battle Ascended. Over the course of about a week, participating players of any level fighting these invaders can earn hundreds of new items including exclusive rewards, such as a Spectral Horse and a transmogrifying disguise that turns Ascended into the rotting undead. But be warned: once the rifts are sealed, these items are gone forever.

Raid Zone: River of Souls
If Ascended are successful in their efforts to drive back the invasions, they can journey to the “River of Souls” 20-man raid zone at the edge of the Plane of Death where Alsbeth the Discordant is reanimating the recently departed and recruiting them into Regulos’ army. Guardian and Defiant heroes will have to wade through these decaying hordes to reach Alsbeth and make her account for her abhorrent crimes.
The Founder’s Pricing plan for RIFT has been extended until March 31st. Details for all plans are available at www.riftgame.com/subscriptions.

For the original thread and commentary from the peanut gallery look here.

Full Patch Notes – Discombobulated from the forums

Forum Thread Link

Alpha 1.1 3/23/11
== FEATURED ==
* The Endless Court Event? Yeah, they’re all up in your Telara, killing your mans. Not cool.
* You can now report AFK teammates in a Warfront. Check out PVP/WARFONTS for more.
* The ‘I’m Stuck’ button or falling through the world in a Warfront no longer results in a Deserter debuff!
* Rift events no longer track player contribution against other players. See below under RIFTS AND INVASIONS for more details.
* Many quest fixes below under individual ZONES.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY
* All artifact nodes now have a consistent 1.5 second gathering time.
* You can now accept a quest on behalf of your guild even if your personal quest log is full.
* Angelic Flight and Mighty Leap will not interrupt movement when used (auto-run or holding down a movement key).
* Server Announcements now stay on-screen for twice as long.
* Exposed now reduces movement speed by 6% per stack, rather than increasing damage taken.
* New fancy appearances are in progress for the Epic Namjok, Yarnosaur, and Vaiyuu mounts.
* Fix for quickly opening a series of clickable loot (such as geodes for gems) with auto-loot that would occasionally result in lost items.

RIFTS AND INVASIONS
* Rift events no longer track player contribution against other players. You are checked for participation in the event and given rewards appropriately. It’s still important to participate in as many stages of a Rift or event as possible to receive the best rewards.
* Tweaked cooldown times between zone events.

ASCENDED POWERS
* Planar Charges are no longer consumed immediately when starting to cast an ability. They are consumed when the effect actually takes place — no more wasted charges on an interrupted cast.

CULT SAGA
* Epic quests now award Achievements and titles at key advancement points. These are granted retroactively so if you already completed portions (or all!) of the epic questline, you will receive these on login.

GUILD PERKS
* Killing Spree and Blood Thirsty use the proper perk tokens now.
* The following perks will now properly show the description/tooltip values associated with them: Lucky Penny, Call of the Ascended, Journeyman, Foe Hunter, Cache Finder, and Rift Extraction.
* Journeyman no longer always shows in the buff bar.

COMBAT
* Updated the tooltip description text for Attack Power and Spell Power in the character sheet.
* Effects subject to diminishing returns will now also use diminished durations on player pets.
* ‘Immune’ scrolling combat text no longer appears on characters in stealth.
* Player tracking abilities no longer proc trinket effects.

SOULS
* Warriors: The following abilities have been changed to fix an issue where the character could use them and die before they actually triggered, making it seem like they missed: Touch of Life, Master of the Abyss, No Permission to Die, Rift Shield, and Predictable Movements.
* Warriors: Taunts now continue cooldown timers while logged out.
* Mages: Reduced pushback on all non-healing Mage spells.
* Mages: Increased the base damage on all damaging Mage abilities.
* Clerics: All cleric Cleanses should now properly remove associated effects.
* PvP Souls: The cooldown for Break Free has been reduced to 2 minutes. Improved Break Free now reduces the cooldown by 10 seconds per point spent.

ARCHON
* Exhilaration: Now only triggers on damaging or healing Critical Hits. Mana procs will appear correctly in the combat log.
* Burning Purpose: The damage proc can now only occur a maximum of once every 1.5 seconds. Fixed an issue so that the damage proc is only affected by buffs active on the caster at the time it is triggered. Updated description on this ability to reflect current functionality.
* Ashen Defense: No longer counts as a mage armor buff and will stack with other mage armors.
* Procs from Surging Flare, Volcanic Bomb, and Earthen Barrage now affect allies within 35 meters of the caster.
* Consuming Flames: Now a 6-point root ability. No longer deals damage to the caster and can be cast on yourself as well as other friendly targets. Now absorbs a set amount of damage and has multiple ranks.
* Power In Numbers: Corrected the second rank so it will affect aura buffs.

BARD
* Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Bard have received a free soul point respec.
* Invigorated Soul, Coda of Restoration: Now affects up to 5 targets.
* Using Verse of Fascination or Verse of Captivation now turns off auto-attack, since these effects break on damage.
* Motif of Tenacity: Now unlocked at 12 points.
* Anthem of Defiance: Now unlocked at 18 points.
* Motif of Regeneration: Now unlocked at 24 points. Now casts on the Bard and heals up to 10 raid or group members nearby with each tick.
* Anthem of Fervor: Fixed tooltip so the cost reduction is shown correctly when points are spent in Street Performer. Also fixed the cost reduction not being applied correctly to raid members when points are spent in Street Performer.

BEASTMASTER
* Flesh Rip: Will now properly show up in the reactive ability UI when your pet critically hits. Fixed an issue where this was gaining weapon damage to each tick of the bleed effect. Base damage reduced.
* Backhanded Blow: Now correctly triggers global cooldown. Fixed a bug causing Rank 3 to do 20% more damage than intended. Base damage reduced. Corrected Power cost on ranks 2 through 8 to cost the proper 25 Power.
* Slashing Strike: Fixed a bug where this ability was doing the damage of a single target ability. The damage has been reduced to match other cleave-style abilities.
* Fight as One: The benefits gained from Fight as One have been reduced to 5-15% for Hit, Critical Hit, and Damage. This ability has been taken off of global cooldown.
* Diversion Strike: Increases Critical Hit chance of the Beastmaster and their pet by 5% instead of 10%. Damage lowered.
* Tenacious Wounds: Now increases bleed damage by 2-4% instead of 3-6%.
* Feral Sweep: Resolved a bug where this was dealing extra damage on each tick of the Bleed effect. Base damage lowered.
* Tearing Slash, Fierce Strike: Damage lowered.

BLADEDANCER
* Combat Culmination: Ability will not break stealth when it triggers.

CABALIST
* Nebulous Haze: Now increases cast time by the 20% advertised on the tooltip.
* Decay: Lurking Decay will now always trigger, even if Obliterate or Tyranny kills the enemy outright.

CHAMPION
* Debilitating Strike: Made the tooltip for the debuff from this ability more clear.
* Titan’s Strike: Damage has been lowered and the stun has been reduced to 1-3 seconds, down from 1-5 seconds.
* Mark of Extermination and Mark of Inevitability: Will now cause the target to attack.

CHLOROMANCER
* Withering Vines: Increased the amount healed.
* Livegiving Veil: Now affects up to 5 targets.
* Radiant Spores: Now has a base chance to proc of 10%.
* Phytogenesis: Now increases the chance for Radiant Spores to proc by 2-6%.

DOMINATOR
* Priest’s Lament: The primary debuff on this ability is no longer affected by diminishing returns. The silence proc debuff is still affected.
* Haunting Pain: Will only trigger on the first tick of damage from a damage shield.

DRUID
* Trickster Spirit, Slothful Spirit, Spiteful Spirit: Reduced the damage to better account for the attached debuffs.
* Fury of the Fae: Now a pet-cast buff that increases the group/raid’s Attack Power and Spell Power for 30 seconds with a 10 second cooldown. Shares stacking with Bard’s Motif of Bravery.
* Satyr: Increased the ratio of the owner’s Spell Power converted into the Satyr’s Attack Power.

ELEMENTALIST
* Intensify Elements: No longer on the global cooldown.
INFILTRATOR [PvP]
* Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Infiltrator will receive a free soul point respec.
* Cloudy Poison: Ability should not break stealth when used. The debuff from this is now cleansable.
* Murderous Thoughts: Now requires Prestige Rank 3. Now increases all damage against players by 3-6%.
* Knock Knock: Now requires Prestige Rank 2. Increases critical damage against players by 2-10%.

INQUISITOR
* Fanaticism: No longer consumed by Shroud of Agony.
* Purge: No longer unintentionally removes debuffs that are caused by buffs (ex: the debuff from Battlefield Distraction).
* Shroud of Agony: No longer triggers on falling damage.

JUSTICAR
* Reparation: Now affects up to 5 targets.

NECROMANCER
* Empty the Crypts: Charge can now be gained while this is active. The pets summoned by Empty the Crypts can be active for a maximum of 20 seconds.
* Lich Form: Will no longer consume buffs that reduce the casting time of your next spell.

NIGHTBLADE
* Scourge of Darkness: Can no longer miss, be parried, dodged, or blocked.

PALADIN
* Touch of Life: Now continues cooldown timer on logout.
* Balance of Power: Now deals 25-75% of weapon damage.
* Aegis of Salvation: Ranks 1 and 2 have their cooldowns changed to 1.5 seconds to match with other buffs.
* Reverent Protection: Now only affects up to 5 targets, and range increased from 10 meters to 35 meters.

PARAGON
* Strike Like Iron: Ability is no longer on the global cooldown. Increased from a 10-30% damage buff up to a 16-48% damage buff, with the value doubled for follow-up attacks.
* Death Touch: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage of Death Touch has been lowered.
* Force of Will: Due to the Strike Like Iron changes, damage bonus to follow-up attacks from Force of Will has been reduced from 20 per point to 10 per point.
* Path of the Wind, Path of the Raptor: Now have cooldowns of 6 seconds and a slight increase in damage due to the longer reuse time.
* Dual Strike: Fixed a bug causing this to do less damage than intended – as a result, damage from this ability has increased.
* Deadly Grace: Increased from 7% of Dual Strike damage per point to 9% Dual Strike damage per point.
* Weapon Master: Increased from a 4-20% chance to gain a second attack point up to a 10-50% chance.
* Rising Waterfall: Damage increased.
* Turn the Blade: Damage increased.
* Flurry: Damage lowered.

PURIFIER
* Shield of the Ancestors and related buffs now appear in the combat log.
* Caregiver’s Blessing: No longer procs off of procced heals.
* Surging Flames: Now converts 50% of overhealing.
* Divine Cascade: Reduced Spell Power contribution. Now has a stack size of 1 per caster instead of 1 total, but only triggers when target is healed by the caster rather than anyone.
* Spirit Rupture: Fixed the contribution from Spell Power.

PYROMANCER
* Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Pyromancer have received a free soul point respec.
* Heat Wave: Reduced cooldown to 2 minutes.
* Inferno: Removed from global cooldown.
* Improved Grounding: Now a tier 2 branch ability.
* Improved Smoldering Power: Now a tier 3 branch ability.
* Ground of Power: Now obtained at 6 points.
* Smoldering Power: Now obtained at 8 points.
* Burning Shield – New Ability: Consumes the mage’s Ground spell to shield them in flames, absorbing damage. Lasts up to 30 seconds. While Burning Shield is active, the next Ground spell is instant-cast. Obtained at 6 points.

RANGER
* Escape Artist: Fixed a bug where the improved version was not causing the pet to be immune to Root, Snare, and Stun.

REAVER
* Due to the below changes, characters with soul points spent in Reaver will receive a free soul point respec.
* Soul Sickness, Flesh Rot, Necrotic Wounds, Blood Fever: The damage on additional targets when using Plague Bringer has been lowered. The Threat generation has been increased to keep overall threat gain of the abilities the same.
* Crippling Infestation: Moves down one tier to unlock at 21 points.
* Wasting Away: Moves down one tier to unlock at 16 points.
* Grisly Works: Moves up two tiers, now unlocked at 26 points. Now increases the healing of Soul Feast by 30-90% for 15 seconds after killing a target the Reaver has engaged.
* Soul Devour: Now increases the damage of Soul Feast by 50%, instead of 150%.
* Power from the Masses: Changed to give a stack per nearby party/raid member rather than per nearby enemy.
* Infestation: Cooldown increased to 1 minute, and damage increased based on the new cooldown.

RIFTBLADE
* Earth Burst: Now properly interrupts elites and other high level mobs.
* Avatar of Wind: Fixed a bug causing the tooltip of this ability to report improper values.
* Rift Surge: Can now be removed with abilities that remove Curses. Now has a 30 second cooldown instead of 10 seconds and is no longer adjusted by Attack Power.
* Flamespear: Now has a cooldown of 6 seconds and has its damage slightly increased to reflect the longer cooldown.
* Burning Blood: Now deals damage based on 10-30% of the character’s Strength.

RIFTSTALKER
* Memory Capture: Ability should no longer get you stuck in collision or falling through the world.
* Rift Scavenger: Ability will not break stealth when it triggers.
* Removed internal cooldown from Defer Death and Scatter the Shadows. Both abilities should be more responsive now.
* Hasted Time: Fixed a bug with the second point spent in this ability gave an incorrect movement speed buff.

SABOTEUR
* Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Saboteur will receive a free soul point respec.
* Undetonated Spike Charge and Blast Charge will not cause stealth to break when the charges expire.
* Shrapnel Charge: Will now fire off its AoE effects on surrounding enemies when the main target is killed by Detonate damage.
* Reduced the range of all Bombs and Charges to 15 meters, down from 20 meters.
* Reduced the range of Detonate to 15 meters, down from 20 meters.
* Long Range Bombing: Now increases the range you can hurl Bombs by 1-5 meters, down from 2-10 meters.
* Remote Clipping: Now increases the range of your Charges and Detonates by 1-5 meters, down from 2-10 meters.
* The outcome and damage of each charge is now calculated individually. When you detonate 5 Blast Charges, you will see 5 damage numbers, each with its own chance to critically hit, rather than one large number.
* Improved Blast Charge: Fixed a bug where the armor penetration provided was higher than 25-50%.
* Charge Booster: Redesigned to an active ability rather than a passive. When activated, the damage of your Charges is increased by 50% when detonated. This ability does not trigger global cooldown and is on a 1.5 minute cooldown.

SENTINEL
* Vigilance: Now triggers more consistently.
* Serendipity: Now properly affects heals that are queued immediately after being triggered.

SHAMAN
* Strike of the Maelstrom: Rank 1 is no longer unintentionally affected by Stormborn.
* Glacial Shield: Ranks 2 and up now work properly with overwrites of similar abilities – Shield of Oak can overwrite Glacial Shield, and vice versa.
* Lust for Blood: Fixed tooltip to more accurately describe functionality.
* Ageless Ice: Description now properly mentions that it does not trigger a global cooldown.

STORMCALLER
* Static Discharge: No longer on global cooldown.
* Static Flux: Will no longer be overwritten by weaker buffs.
* Cloudburst: Increased damage.
* Icy Vortex – New Ability: Reduces damage done to the Mage by 25% for 10 seconds and applies Hypothermia to attacking enemies, reducing their movement speed by 50% for 10 seconds. Obtained at 6 points.

VINDICATOR [PvP]
* Due to the below changes, characters with points spent in Vindicator will receive a free soul point respec.
* Dangerous Game: Now requires Prestige Rank 3. Fixed a bug that only increased damage on critical hits. Now increases all damage (not just physical) against players by 3-6%.
* Resilient: No longer has a Prestige Rank requirement. Fixed a bug that only reduced critical chance received by 6%. Now reduces chance to be critically hit by players by 3-15%.

VOID KNIGHT
* Rift Shield: Corrected a bug causing Rift Shield to absorb too much damage. It will now absorb an amount more in line with other absorption shields in the game.

WARDEN
* Tidal Resonance: No longer consumed by actions that are not Heal Over Time spells.
* Track Water Creatures: Wardens can now use this ability to track creatures from Water Rifts.
* Well of Life: Now has a 35 meter range.

WARLOCK
* Neddra’s Might: No longer requires a target to cast.
* Neddra’s Torture: Reduced cooldown to 20 seconds.

WARLORD
* Call to Battle: Fixed buff tooltip to report a straight value rather than a percentage.

ZONES
* The artifact set, ‘Ancient Eth Tablets’, included two different items with the same name. One has now been corrected to Scuffed Tablet Fragment.
* Fixed many minor typos in quest and NPC text.

DROUGHTLANDS
* Ancient Wardstones have been uncovered in Droughtlands! A dangerous land just got more dangerous-er. Beware the beast that lies within the ruins of Eth – Skirathos, the Eye of Fate!
* Nowhere to Run: Fixed an issue that could cause the kobolds to not show up and attack.
* Sothul’s Demise: Sothul now respawns faster.
* A Fall Tale: Anontok’s Notes’ description now shows the level requirement to use the item.
* Lecu the Claw: This cat is now almost as vicious as my cat.
* The Biggest Void: Netharius is now more nefarious.
* Additional variety and difficulty pass was made on Droughtlands named mobs.

FREEMARCH
* The Tech is Mightier than the Sword: Jakub will no longer sucker-punch players or their pets during this quest.
* Zone event Shadestones can now be used for pickup by multiple people at once.
* Tete-a-Tete: The faction-change effect during this quest now makes you friendly to Life Rifts as well as the surrounding Aelfwar.
* I Heard a Storm Was Coming: Doubled the duration of the swim speed buff.
* Man v Mandible: Increased the drop rate of mandibles.
* Durgin the Keeper: Durgin now respawns much more quickly.

GLOAMWOOD
* A Burgher with Lies is now less disruptive to players not also on the quest.
* The Toxic Source: Re-ordered the quest rewards so they are displayed more consistently with other quests.

IRON PINE PEAKS
* A Hymn of Frost and Flame: All party members can now loot the Redsnow Communique.
* Dabbling in the Forbidden: Tweaked quest so it should update consistently.
* Conquered Minds, Imprisoned Minds: Fixed an issue causing these quests to reset too often.
* Deepmoss Lurkers are no longer skinnable and do not give experience.
* Dagda Skullthumper, the Redsnow Bandit, should no longer return to life instantly when slain!
* Cloudbourne Ice Necklace: Dominance of the Soul debuff correctly affects Armor instead of Attack Power.
* Corrected duplicate loot drops from rare mobs Emissary Kavenik and Frosthide.
* Thunder Snow has been fixed so that Sentinel Nightbane is always where expected.

MATHOSIA
* Shyla will cast heals more often to assist players during the Rift event.
MOONSHADE HIGHLANDS
* Rainy weather is a bit less frequent in Moonshade.
* Question and Answers: Centurion will stop beating on the Imprisoned Legionnaire before you get a chance to interrogate him.
* The hounds of Conchobhar will stop trying to defy their master.
* Rational Ward: Fixed issues with the quest not updating thanks to lazy Defense Turrets.
* To Know Evil: The Infernal Transmitter will be more reliably provided.
* Fall of Moonshade: Updated quest locators on the map.
* In Plain Sight: The first objective now shares progress for the whole party.
* A Gathering Force: The Demiurge of Earth now has a more accurate quest locator.
* Death’s Embrace: Reduced Gorvaht’s damage.
* A Holy Remedy: The sickly dwarves now stop to offer thanks before running back to Three Springs.
* Scanning for Clues: The Defiant Scanner should be more reliable.
* A Demon Among Satyrs: This quest now grants credit to all group members on the same step.
* Guardians on the Edge: This quest will now display map locators.
* The Elite Greater Golems in Grey Gardens now look visually different from the Lesser Golems.

SCARLET GORGE
* Taking Shards: Fixed an issue causing the visual effects to not appear as intended. Group members now also receive credit for placing the Problem Solvers.
* Bits and Pieces: Construct components now drop as group loot for everyone on this quest.

SCARWOOD REACH
* Honest When Dead: Fixed step four of this quest so it properly progresses.
* Sealing the Portal: The portal at the back of Sagespire should be much more active now.
* Salve No Longer: Quest can once again be completed.
* Seek and Destroy: Added a map marker for Kelynn Eregor.
* A Troll’s Lunch: Rakthug should respawn much more quickly now.
* Let them Come: Fixed to allow party members to join in on the mission.

SHIMMERSAND
* Final Preparations: Anthon Eskar, the Dragonslayer Covenant guard who provides the disguise for Flatyard quests, no longer tries to offer a second disguise if you already have one.
* Buried Beneath: You will now be required to kill 16 Immature Whelplings for this quest.
* A Crafter’s Lament: Now grants loot to all group members on the quest.
* Fire and Sand: Improved spawn rates of Wanton Bone Rituals.
* Tweaked scripting for the levers to summon Warden Nevin for Dragonslayer Covenant daily quests.
* Slither the Voice: You get to keep the Inmate Disguise item after completing this quest!
* Binding the Lightning, To Turn Aside the Storm: Golden Maw Enforcers will now correctly display quest tooltips.
* Dragonslayer: Forging the Haft: This was a sneaky leftover quest from testing that was horribly broken and not intended for the live game — it’s been removed!
* The mobs inside The Flatyard should respawn more slowly when fewer players are in the area.
* Lester Ironbole at Gildstone Sanctum will no longer be attacked by the Storm Legion in the area.
* Added more guards to Fortune’s Shore.

SILVERWOOD
* Azure Blade on the shores of Suncrest Rise now properly share faction with the Defiant.
* Rift: Forging Heat: The Gedlo Heater should quit getting stuck inside the bonfire during stage three.
* Beast of Burden: This quest is now offered to mount-less players at level 13 instead of 20.
* Aelfwar Monstrosities: Quest now has more accurate locators for Aelfwar Defenders.
* Clouded Contemplation: Quest now requires you to kill 8 Greenscale Zealots, rather than 12.
* The Power of Life: Increased the drop rate of items required for this quest.
* Thanks to the recent efforts of the Ascended, the road leading to and from Silver Landing is now much safer for travel.

STILLMOOR
* The Spirit Walk: Quest now gives proper credit for the second objective.
* Spirit Animus: Quest gives credit when entering Hillsborough.
* The Spirit Walk and Spirit Animus shadow forms match up with player Calling!
* Galenir’s Last Answer: Fixed respawn of Galenir.
* Digging in the Dirt: The JKG-77 has learned to better recognize the character it should be following.
* New Blood: Added a missing pre-requisite to this quest, so that you must first complete An End to the Horror.
* Guardian NPCs at Thalin Tor should no longer respawn instantly.

STONEFIELD
* The Graniteborn Champion and Corrupted Graniteborn Champion ability, Earthen Shock, will no longer react to passive or DoT damage.
* Dead Drop: The respawn rate of the Earthmaul Ward is now faster.
* Breaking the Breaker: Bonebreaker will always be tagged to the player who spawned him. Also cleaned up a case where players who attempted to summon Bonebreaker immediately after someone else killed him could have their quest items removed but not spawn the NPC.

DUNGEONS AND RAIDS
* Only the final boss of Expert dungeons drop the Corrupted and Grotesque Souls needed for Expert and Raid Rifts.
* Reduced the drop rate of Bind on Equip items in Expert Dungeons.
* Adjusted harvest nodes in Abyssal Precipice and Charmer’s Caldera – nodes before the first bosses can no longer be stealthed to.

ABYSSAL PRECIPICE
* Expert: Icetalon’s Ripping Talons can no longer critically hit.
Akala [Outdoor Raid]
* Reduced health of Stone Wardens to make the first fight phase possible with 10 players.
* Akala’s Aegis of Stone and Gift of Laethys buffs can no longer be purged.

CHARMER’S CALDERA
* Expert: Gronik will now reset if he leaves his encounter area.
* Expert: Gronik’s minions, Xaeiel and Sanwusu now ignore line of sight with their spells.
* Expert: Added borders around Ryka Dharvos’ area to ensure more laser goodness.

THE FALL OF LANTERN HOOK
* Expert: Oludare the Firehoof can now Charge and throw harpoons at players from a greater distance.

FOUL CASCADE
* Corruptive Ritual: Fixed so that the mobs that drop the required items now always spawn in certain groups.

GREENSCALE’S BLIGHT [Raid]
* Blightleaf Hexmaster’s Noxious Cloud can no longer critically hit.
* Blightleaf Guard’s Wicked Vine can no longer critically hit.
* All general population mobs’ standard attacks can now critically hit.
* Made small adjustments to boss enrage timers.
* Greenscale: Fixed the protective Life Aura occasionally not spawning.

IRON TOMBS
* Added new ranged weapon rewards to the zone quest, You Are Who They Call.

KING’S BREACH
* Expert: Konstantin’s Mathosian Fury is now more lethal (and furious).

RUNIC DESCENT
* Changed the quest mobs, Guardian Purelights, so the ambush should be easier to manage.
* Expert: Eliam’s Death’s Fury can no longer be removed by player abilities.
* Expert: Rictus: Changed Rotting Flesh from a targeted AoE DoT to a ground target effect with a longer duration.

ITEMS
* Increased the amount of Armor on Cloth items.
* Increased the amount of Plaques of Achievement needed to purchase first and second-tier Expert Dungeon items.
* Pure-Endurance ‘Of the Fortress’ items will no longer drop above level 13.
* A large number of new Essences have been added to merchants in Meridian and Sanctum for purchase with Inscribed Sourcestones.
* Earthbreak Pauldrons from the quest Hero of the Defiants had defensive stats on them when offensive stats were intended. This has been updated for future Earthbreak Pauldrons, but existing items will remain as-is.
* Fixed a number of items, including high-end Weaponsmith recipes, that had incorrect auction house categories. They now appear in the expected search results. We would list them all, but it’s a long list.
* Going forward, randomly generated two-handed weapons will come with DPS stats rather than tanking stats.
* The Waxing Shadesource had stats applied for a higher level item, and has been reduced in effectiveness to match its level.
* Spellbinder’s Sash now has Spell Power instead of Attack Power.
* Crystal of Brilliance and Crystal of Foresight had melee stats but are caster items. This has been corrected.
* Rare Essences dropped from Major and Minor Rifts should no longer be bound on pickup.
* Chan’s Thundering Fist was set up as a Warrior weapon rather than a Cleric weapon. This has been corrected so it now properly has spell power and lower base weapon damage.
* Petrifying Rune: The root proc will now break on damage.
* Fixed Ritualist’s Buckler to be a Cleric-equippable shield.
* A number of offhand book items had the wrong visual attached and have been fixed.
* Powdery Ash now has a proper sell price.
* Fixed many minor typos in item names.

CRAFTING
* Fixed an issue where all potions were on the same cooldown. They are now divided into three major groups based on their effects: Healing/Positive, Damage/Negative, and Buffs.
* A large number of items have been updated to be Runebreakable/Salvagable. In general, all items not purchased from a vendor should fall into these categories.
* Fixed Rootcatch Brew items, which were using a healing effect rather than functioning as a snare.
* Recipe: Blazing Wisdom Rune now teaches the correct recipe.
* Artificers may now open their crafting window by right-clicking Looms.
* New zone-specific drops come from monsters in the following zones, and are used in recipes from each zone:
  – Gnarled Core – Scarwood reach
  – Evergreen Core – Freemarch
  – Enchanted Core – Silverwood
  – Stone Core – Stonefield
  – Shadow Core – Gloamwood
  – Rusty Core – Scarlet Gorge
  – Cracked Core – Droughtlands
  – Glowing Core – Moonshade Highlands.
* A large number of recipes from notoriety vendors have been adjusted. Recipes that were previously Uncommon are now Rare and have their stats adjusted accordingly. Ingredients used in these recipes require the Cores mentioned above or have had their other ingredients and quantities updated.
* Iron Buckler recipes from faction vendors have been renamed to Steel Buckler.
* Blackwood Chopper crafted item has been renamed to Blackwood Cleaver.

PVP/WARFRONTS
* You can now report AFK teammates in a Warfront. When enough of the team has reported someone as AFK, they will have a short period to prove themselves by engaging the enemy or supporting the team. If they fail to prove themselves, they will be banished!
* Falling through the world, or using the Customer Service ‘I’m Stuck’ button, will now result in a respawn inside the Warfront instead of teleporting you out and applying the Deserter debuff!
* PvP combat: Abilities now only check for caster facing their target at the start of a cast – they will still land if a target moves behind you while the casting is in progress.
* Killing lower level players in your Warfront bracket will now grant some favor and some experience.
* The Black Garden: The damage dealt from the Fang of Regulos now increases higher than 100% of the carrier’s max health.
* The Codex, Whitefall Steppes: Fixed a bug where stunning/mesmerizing/incapacitating an enemy player did not interrupt flag captures in progress.
* The Battle for Port Scion: Repeatable quests now grant 50 Notoriety, up from 25.
* The Battle for Port Scion: 50 Notoriety is awarded with the Noble Guard or Eldritch Vanguard for every 100 points earned.
* The Battle for Port Scion: Resident NPCs in Port Scion no longer apply the Exposed debuff.
* The Battle for Port Scion: Defiant Centurions and Guardian Lieutenants have had their difficulty slightly reduced.
* The Battle for Port Scion: Capturing Sourcestone with two Idols up is now worth 30 points. Each Idol lost will reduce the score for capturing Sourcestone by 10 points.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO
* The low health and death effects have been improved in the Low Quality Renderer.
* Shield spell effects now appear on players even when mounted.
* Wardstones in player hubs have new and improved visuals!
* Extraplanar Leather Gloves and Ellisar’s Gloves now have actual glove graphics when equipped instead of INVISIBLE HANDS.

COMMANDS AND MACROS
* The /focus command now understands the @targeting arguments like the /target, /cast, and /use commands.
* @pet targets your primary pet, and @targettarget picks up your target’s target.

UI/SETTINGS
* Character stats will turn green on the character sheet if they are under any sort of bonus.
* The total number of discoveries for a character is now displayed in the Achievements window.
* Additional improvements to the Soul Tree window – role-changing and resetting visuals, confirmation to save points on exit,  etc.
* Equipped Planar Essences should now show colored borders based on the rarity of the Essence.
* The guild roster will stop showing you as AFK when you log back in after having logged out with the AFK flag on.
* UI pieces docked to the Target and Target of Target windows now stay where you told them to be.
* Guild names are now included in player tooltips.
* Fixed a brief artifacting flicker on the screen when discarding changed video settings instead of applying and saving them.
* Fixed a bug that would cause the Reactive Abilities UI to stop working after performing a /reloadui.
* Edit Layout Mode: Elements can now be set to fade in and out when moused over or when entering and leaving combat.
* The Rift meter contribution bar and leaderboard button have been removed.
* The Tutorial Alert icon will now always appear in the same place instead of being attached to the casting bar (which can be moved by editing the UI layout).

CLIENT
* The green dot next to recommended shards at Shard Select now says Recommended instead, which is what it meant.
* High population shards show in orange text, and medium in yellow. Full is still red!
* We now also display queue sizes at shard selection.