AC2:Announcements - 2004/08 - Lost Artifacts

Teaser

Original Link (now dead) - http://ac2.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=257

August Teaser: Lost Artifacts

---

Isin Dule halted before the enormous stone door. His bright eyes scanned its surface, searching for the softly-glowing Dericostian runes that proclaimed instant destruction for anyone foolish enough to violate this final sanctuary. All the deadly runes seemed intact and sound. Good; the passing of several hundred years had not weakened or damaged the protective wards. It was too bad, Dule thought, that the same could not be said of himself.

He remembered when he had first sealed this door, inscribing the runes with his own dark sorcery. He had barely finished the job when the Shadows loyal to Bael'Zharon caught up with him. Rested and prepared, Isin Dule would have easily destroyed them; after the effort of sealing the door, he had no chance. His enemies bound him with ropes and incantations, then dragged him back through the labyrinth and before the throne of his former lord. A magical force like the blow of a sledgehammer drove him to his knees. Anger burned within him at this humiliation.

But Bael'Zharon seemed riot to notice his presence. Gripping the arms of his bleached-bone throne, staring fixedly into space, he snarled and mumbled about the revenge he'd take on his countless enemies. Then, suddenly, he would laugh out loud or throw his head back and wail. Isin Dule's anger was replaced with pity as he realized that his friend's mind had surrendered wholly to the fractured torments of chaos. Isin Dule was no stranger to such suffering.

Finally, though, Bael'Zharon's eyes focused on the prisoner at his feet. Still, there was no flicker of recognition. Instead, Bael'Zharon howled in rage at the interruption. Who dared disturb his presence with this cringing wretch? He pointed a finger at one of the Shadows who had captured Isin Dule, and that Shadow dissolved instantly into nothingness, without even the time to shriek. The others shrank back in terror. One, braver than the rest, stammered out that this was Isin Dule. Isin Dule, the reviled traitor whom Bael'Zharon had dispatched hundreds of his greatest champions to capture. Confusion played across the overlord's grotesque features for a moment, but finally, there was a look of understanding.

"Ah! Isin Dule!" Bael'Zharon said in his rasping voice. "Thy disloyalty knows no bounds, it seems. Betraying me to my enendes was not enough? Now thou must steal from me as well? Did the Yalaini elders teach thee nothing of loyalty at the seminary?" Bael'Zharon bellowed with false, dangerous laughter.

"It matters not," he continued, after it became clear that Isin Dule would not reply. "Thy treachery has been useless. In moments, I shall rip the beating heart from the boy-mage Asheron's chest and savor its taste. Then thou wilt receive thy punishment." He gestured to the greatest of the Shadows who attended his throne. "Ferah! Remove this traitor from my sight. See to it that he does not escape his bonds."

Black Ferah nodded grimly, and bands of invisible force encircled the captive's body. Against his will, Isin Dule found himself staggering upright and stumbling after his keeper as she swept soundlessly from the room. Isin Dule was surprised by Black Ferah's strength. She had grown more powerful since they had fought together as allies against the Light.

Thus in helpless bondage, Isin Dule was led to the final battlefield. There he watched the loyal minions of both Light and Shadow slaughter each other until the field became a swamp of blood and ichor. Ultimately, of course, Asheron was forced to take the field himself. Shadows and monsters fell back in fear, but this was the moment that Bael'Zharon had waited for. Spreading his vast leathery wings, Isin Dule's former master strode forward, blotting out all other sights. Before the awesome might of Bael'Zharon, Asheron seemed to be nothing at all.

But then Asheron worked his last, greatest spell, and Bael'Zharon's invincible confidence faltered. Isin Dule sensed a wave of surprise from Asheron as well. Something had gone wrong, the magic was too potent to control. Isin Dule watched as the searing mystical flames overwhelmed and consumed Asheron, then leapt forth to engulf Bael'Zharon as well. And then the masters of Light and Dark were no more. In his heart, Isin Dule sensed that his old friend was truly gone. He sank to the ground in misery.

Black Ferah, too, collapsed. She screamed in pain and anguish, a sound unlike any Isin Dule had ever heard. He felt a moment's pity for her lost soul. But that pity turned to shock when she leapt to her feet and seized him. Still far stronger than the exhausted Isin Dule, she easily flung him to the ground. His mind swam with agony as she screamed vengeance at him. He was Bael'Zharon's murderer, she wailed. She would make him pay for his treachery until the stars themselves died.

And she had kept her word. In the centuries that followed, Black Ferah invented any number of exquisite tortures for her helpless captive. Yet somehow, shenever pressed him so far that his mind shattered completely. He was always able to gather the shreds of his sanity before her next assault. After many years of this, Isin Dule realized that she could not bear to destroy her last remaining link to her beloved overlord. And he learned sympathy for her, in a way, even as Ferah's wicked punishments gouged his body and battered his mind. After all, she had remained loyal to Bael'Zharon; Isin Dule had betrayed him twice, first costing him his physical form, next his life. Isin Dule's suffering was not without justice. His only solace, eventually, was that his friend Ilservian might finally be at peace....

The ancient memories faded once more from Isin Dule's mind, and he found himself standing once again before the great stone door and its glowing runes.

As he prepared to dispel the wards, Isin Dule noticed something that gave him pause: the gnawed bones of a longdead Tumerok scattered beside the door. It was curious and alarming that a mortal had penetrated so far into the labyrinth. Equally disturbing were the deep tooth?marks on the faded skeleton. Clearly, some animal had fed on the Tumerok's body after it died. But how could a beast, a mere scavenger, draw so near to Isin Dule's sanctuary? It should be impossible for a lesser animal to find this place. The simplest of the outer wards should have kept it wandering the outskirts of the maze for the rest of its life. Unless the outer wards had been compromised....

Now Isin Dule's confidence turned to near-panic. He hurriedly cast the counterspells that would allow passage, and watched as the glowing runes winked out, one by one. Once the runes were dispelled, the stone doors began to grind open on their own. Isin Dule stepped through as soon as the gap was wide enough, but already, he sensed the missing powers that should have lain in wait for him. He scanned each of the five daises lining the vault's walls. All empty. The five artifacts he had hidden here, walled in behind magic strong enough to repel Bael'Zharon himself, were gone.

Isin Dule had paid for their safe?keeping with centuries of agony. Nevertheless, they had been stolen. Isin Dule bowed his head in suppressed rage for a moment, then let the rage flow out of him and vanish. Anger would not help him now. Letting his senses roam freely through the room, he tried to reconstruct what had happened here.

There--the stink of chaos. As soon as he searched for it, it was all around him. All creatures embraced by the Shadow became tainted with it, even Isin Dule himself, and this chaos could be felt even after the creature departed. But this chaotic residue was vastly stronger, and somehow more corrupt, than Isin Dule had ever sensed before. Save only from one entity?Bael'Zharon himself. Isin Dule shuddered. Could his old friend have returned somehow from annihilation? No, that was impossible.

As Isin Dule's senses continued to expand, he pieced together the intruder's means of entry. It had obviously possessed the dead Tumerok's body, using him to pass the many wards that repelled creatures of Shadow. Then it had solved the labyrinth, a difficult feat, but not impossible for a creature of vast intelligence. And finally, it had flung the Tumerok's body against the final door. Of course, the deadly runes had annihilated the poor creature. But at that moment, with the runes' curse focused on the sacrificed mortal, the entity itself had slipped through the weaves of the magic and entered the sanctuary itself.

It was a cunning plan. Cunning and cruel. Isin Dule stretched his senses yet further, grasping at tendrils of chaos and shadow. Somewhere out there, the thief waited, and if he could only pinpoint its location....

Something touched him back. Touched, and then gripped him, with the hunger of a thousand raving spirits. The grip pulled him forwards, but Isin Dule was prepared. Speaking a single word of power, he broke free. And he fled for his life, back through the corridors of enchantment, back through the pathways of his mind, and finally into his old, familiar body.

He had nearly been trapped. He had nearly been destroyed.

Somewhere out there, the thief was waiting for him. It was watching him, testing him, and it had almost claimed him as prey before he even learned its name. Isin Dule suddenly understood, with terrible certainty, that he could never contend with this being. Its Shadow stretched further than his own. If Isin Dule dared to challenge it, its vaster darkness would easily overwhelm him. Probably he would end up as its slave, or worse.

And it had taken the artifacts! Only artifacts of such power might have harmed this terrible being. They might still be able to deal some damage if they could be retrieved. Yes, Isin Dule realized, the artifacts must be retrieved--but not by Isin Dule himself. Only Light would be able to strive against this new adversary. Any creature of Shadow would drown in its presence.

Despite his unhappiness, Isin Dule smiled wearily. As always, it seemed, his power was inadequate to achieve redemption for his many, many crimes. Only the mortals would be able to save themselves.

Read more at http://www.warcry.com/news/view/27972#S4Ksp2UpeGWrOELp.99

Letter to the Players

Original Link (now dead) - http://ac2.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=257

Letter to the Players: August Skill Balance!

---

Introduction

August will see a new batch of skill rebalancing. This will be the only skill rebalancing done this year (aside from hero-level tweaks, which will happen in September). Skill rebalancing is sort of like a type of surgery – we do it for the long-term health of the game, even though it shakes up the game, which causes a short-term stress.

We're past the stage where we want to make dramatic changes to classes. The only really dramatic changes are to the Invoker, which is getting the rewrite in August. Otherwise, we've tried to make surgically precise changes to classes; every change has a specific reason, and a specific goal in mind. There are no changes being made just because it seems like a good idea. For over half a year we've made absolutely no class changes – but that doesn't mean we've been ignoring class balance. We've been collecting data and improving our analyses to figure out where we made mistakes earlier, and why.

There are some nerfs here. But they aren't an attempt to balance classes between each other. If one class is stronger than another, we're fine with buffing the weaker classes. The only acceptable reason to nerf players is when the class is significantly overpowering the content. Balance between classes is a lesser problem – it's something we can fix through buffing other classes, as long as we're careful not to overdo it. But when a class is so powerful that they can outkill content, we have other problems. When a class can solo group monsters efficiently, that's a clear indication of trouble. When a class can kill 8 or more solo monsters a minute, that's also an indication of trouble. There are also a few more subtle tests we use to make sure things are going well.

And for the most part, things are going well. A few of the nerfs here may seem dramatic on paper, but in actuality, they are all fairly minor modifications. None of them will change the way you play the game significantly.

Of course, the total number of nerfs is small. Nearly all of the changes are buffs. But even when buffing, we are also trying to be surgically precise. We've had trouble in the past where classes swing back and forth between too being too powerful and being too weak – that has to stop. So our buffs are very conservative.

Shaking up the game like this isn't something that should be done often. It's necessary to occasionally correct our course, but it's not something we want to make a habit of. In fact, August/September is the only set of changes we will be making during the 2004 calendar year. We won't be tweaking base trees or class trees again until some time in 2005.

All of the changes listed below are going to appear in August. September will have the accuracy improvements for Ranger and Raider, and Hero 2.0 (which includes Hero skill rebalancing).

Eater of Souls Tokens

If you receive nerfs this month, you will receive one or more Eater of Souls tokens. These are tokens that can be given to an Eater of Souls for a free single skill sellback. We are using Eater of Souls Tokens as a compensation for nerfed classes, to help them change their template if they want to. We don't actually believe any of the nerfs are so damaging that they would cause you to change templates, but the option is at least there. And you can sell them to other people – you could think of them as small candies to help offset the pain, if you like. Nerfed classes will receive Eater of Souls Tokens to match the severity of their nerfs. You can use an Eater of Souls Token even if you've already visited the Eater of Souls five times that week – it doesn't count towards the limit on skill sellbacks.

This system is the replacement for skill resets. Skill resets cause all sorts of problems: people mess up their templates by overclicking, they experiment too quickly and buy up skills they later regret, or they exploit loopholes to become extremely powerful for a short time. Skill resets are never going to be given out again, except when we have to give them out for technical reasons. Such is the case with the Invoker – in that case, since we removed skills and replaced them with new ones, we can't avoid giving a skill reset. Invokers will get a forced reset when they log in, and will have unlimited uses of the /skills reset command for one game hour afterwards.

Overall Change

Before we get into the individual classes, there's first one overarching change to be discussed. We're giving group monsters some immunity to poison and water attacks – that is, attacks that slow down combat speed. Different types of group monsters will have different amounts of resistance – some will have no resistance, a few will be nearly completely immune, and most will be somewhere in the middle, with 30% immunity being typical.

Slowness attacks are one of the main reasons that high level group battles can become a chore instead of an exciting event. Stacked slowness attacks can permanently stun the monster, leaving them unable to really fight back. This is one of the main reasons that players are starting to feel that tanks aren't necessary at high level. Who needs a tank when the monster can't fight back? So this change is to improve the overall feel of combat in groups.

Class Breakdowns

In the sections below, I'll mention the percentage breakdowns of the different specialization classes. These are based on active characters in all level ranges, and disregarded characters who did not have a specialization tree.

But before you read too much into these numbers, remember that racial breakdown has a dramatic effect on these numbers. Humans make up 47% of all players, while Tumeroks make up 27.4%, and Lugians make up 25.6%.

The choice of race is largely an aesthetic one. Polls conducted at the time the game shipped tell us that people prefer to play Humans by a large margin, so we can expect to always have more Human characters regardless of class balance.

Bounty Hunter

Bounty Hunters have never quite shaken the early image that they were gimpy. 4.1% of all characters are Bounty Hunters, which is the second-smallest class population among Humans. They aren't gimpy at all, but they suffer from an age-old image problem, and they also suffer because they're not a pure damage-dealer class. They are a damage-dealer/tank/utility class, and many people prefer to just play a nice pure tank class, the Defender.

The Bounty Hunter's damage-dealing ability could stand some improvement. Ever since we gave the Bounty Hunter dual-wielding auto-attacks, people have been asking for dual-wielding specialty skills. We provided one regular skill and one hero skill that can only be used by dual-wielders, but that doesn't give them quite the kick they need to be a true damage-dealer class. On the other hand, they have some very handy utility skills, including a slow, a mez, and a stun, plus multiple 40m ranged melee attacks. And of course, they can use a shield. So they aren't supposed to be able to out-damage a Berserker or a Zealot, but they should still have pretty good damage.

There are two main reasons why their dual-wielding ability doesn't really stand up to a Zealot's or Berserker's. One reason is that, although Bounty Hunters can use any of their skills while dual-wielding, most of their skills only do one hit. At first this was what we wanted, as we didn't want to accidentally overpower them. But later, when we wanted to give them a bit more power while dual-wielding, we were unable to do much due to the technology. A skill had to have a fixed number of hits. That meant that if we made Bounty Hunter skills do two hits, they would also do two hits while single-wielding! So we were stuck with most of the skills having only one hit. We partially addressed this through tree changes (in the form of Favored Blades and Treacherous Blades) – this made a noticeable improvement. But we'd like to do a bit more, and now that we have improved our skill technology, we can! We're not going to go overboard with this, though… these extra attacks won't get bonus damage.

Dishearten, Puncture, False Pretenses, Ruse, Betrayal: These skills will do a second attack when the Bounty Hunter is dual-wielding. These second attacks don't have bonus damage – they are just weapon damage attacks.

The other reason that their dual-wielding ability doesn't shine as brightly is that the Bounty Hunters lacks a combat speed buff. A combat speed buff would let them amplify the advantage of their multiple attacks much more noticeably. Under normal circumstances, a single-weapon wielder might get about 45 auto-attacks per minute, while a dual-wielder gets 65-70 per minute. This is a pretty nice bonus, but when you speed up their attack rate, that difference gets multiplied. Dual-wielders get much more out of combat-speed increase skills than single-wielders do. So we'll be giving Bounty Hunters a combat speed increase. They lose their run-speed boost in the process, which will make a few people unhappy, but the replacement is much more powerful for any Bounty Hunter. (And there's an equivalent run-speed buff in the base trees.)

Sprint: becomes Breakneck: this skill is no longer a run-speed buff. This is a combat speed buff. It provides 10% (L1) – 70%(L50) combat speed increase for two minutes, with a five minute reset time. The skill can be raised above level 50, but above skill level 50, only duration is increased. At skill 100, Breakneck lasts 5 minutes.

Finally, a minor change to Fate's Forgiveness.

Fate's Forgiveness: previously, this skill cancelled attacks that would have killed you. Now, it will cancel attacks that would leave you below 25% of your max health.

Defender

What's wrong with the Defender? Not a lot, really, despite board pundits who would claim otherwise. There are a strong number of Defenders – 9.5% of characters choose this class – and for good reason. They solo well, play a strong role in groups, and are really, really hard to kill. The very-high-end levels cause tank classes to be somewhat less important. We've been working on that with our new monsters, and we'll continue to do so. (The change to Slow effects will also play a part in this.)

So what should we change about the Defender? Their tree is a little bit awkward, having two non-stacking stuns in it. But we're not going to address that issue this time around. First, we'll take care of a more important issue – their taunting ability. They start to lose taunting power late in the 50s due to their reliance on base-tree taunts. Easy enough fix… we'll make the base tree taunts take Defender Adept into account!

Insult, Begrudge: these base-melee-tree taunt skills are now fully affected by Defender Adept. Their accuracy improves with higher Defender Adept skill.

Many Defenders have asked for a spec-tree taunt so that they can drop the base tree and rely solely on their specialty skills – that would free up a few more credits. But that just isn't how the Defender is set up. Unfortunately for those who hate using the base tree, the Defender tree is designed with the base-tree taunts in mind, and credit costs are calculated with this assumption. So we're not going to stick a major taunt in the Defender spec tree. But we did make the base-tree taunts work better.

While we're in the base tree, let's hit a couple of others:

Twin Blades: Skill damage now scales to 150. This skill is now fully affected by Defender Adept; its accuracy improves with higher Defender Adept skill.

Hail of Blows: Skill damage already scales to 150, so no change there. This skill is now fully affected by Defender Adept; its accuracy improves with higher Defender Adept skill.

The point here is not to revolutionize Defender templates… the Twin Blades/Hail of Blows combo is decent damage, but it's not as good as Bash/Righteous Fury/Righteous Fury/Righteous Fury. So we're not expecting people to retrain in droves. However, if you're already halfway up the base melee tree to get the taunt, you might find that you prefer to go up that tree, pick up Featherweight, Defensive Stance, and Adrenalize, and these two attacks. It becomes a viable choice of templates for those who want more buffs and a little less offensive power.

There are a few other Defender changes for skills that weren't working out the way we wanted. Bulwark is first. Actually, Bulwark is balanced fine right now. However, it's too extreme; players don't seem to like it. The problem is that yeah, sure, it makes you effectively immune to attacks for 30 seconds, but it also stuns you, making you fairly useless for that amount of time. We're re-statting the skill:

Bulwark: This skill no longer applies a combat-speed debuff. (It still applies the run-speed debuff.) Defensive scores now increase by 50 (L1) to 500 (L50). Previously, the defensive scores scaled to 1000.

500 points of accuracy is still an amazing amount… it's 5 times more than any other buff gives, and Defenders will still be extremely hard to hit. They won't be quite as immune as they were before, but still – at least now they can fight back.

Next, a small improvement to Mighty Blow:

Mighty Blow: The vigor cost of this skill becomes 350 instead of 450.

We should also note that Benevolent Leader was intentionally improved last month by turning it into an Aura Buff. This didn't increase its top level of usefulness, but it did dramatically improve its power below skill 50.

The taunting power of Swipe and Scourge aren't quite where we want it.

Swipe: This skill now taunts the target for 1% (L1) to 5% (L50+) of the opponent's max health. (It no longer taunts for double the damage it does.)

Scourge: This skill now taunts the target for 1% (L1) to 5% (L50+) of the opponent's max health. (It no longer taunts for double the damage it does.)

These still aren't a real replacement for the base-tree taunts – they're too small to hold aggro by themselves. They are now just nice complements to taunts from the base tree.

Finally, we end with a seeming nerf, that isn't really a nerf. We're changing Emblem of Might:

Emblem of Might: this skill now adds 1 (L1) – 25 (L25) – 100 (L50) – 300 (L100) armor to the targeted shield. Previously it added 5 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 150 (L100).

What this change means is that the skill now has less effect in the middle levels between L1 and L30 or so. The high level remains unchanged. Why are we doing this? Well, the skill has always relied on the Max Shielding Per Level cap in order to not be insanely overpowered. For instance, say you're a level 20 Defender, and you buy Emblem of Might up to skill level 30. This should give you 62 points of shield! However, it doesn't really. Since you're level 20, you're always capped at a maximum of 22 shield points anyway. So you just wasted a lot of XP by raising Emblem of Might higher than it could help you. (Well, you still get the extra shield damage out of it… which is pretty amazing at low levels.)

We've always relied on the Max Shield Level cap to restrict Emblem of Might and keep its power in check. But this is really frustrating and surprising to new players. And we also want to increase the max-shield cap because it's a bit too low for high hero-level Defenders. But we don't want to increase the power of low level Defenders!

So what we're doing is changing the Max Shield Level cap, and at the same time, we're redoing Emblem of Might so that it is no longer artificially restricted by the Max Shield Level cap. It amounts to about the same power level, but this way you are clearly getting something for each point you buy. To give you an example of how it will work, here's a chart. It assumes that you keep your Emblem of Might skill at the same level you are, which isn't quite realistic, but is close enough for the chart:

(new armor boost levels not yet accurate – random numbers!)

Level and Skill Level: Old Shield Boost: New Shield Boost:

• L20 43 (capped to 22) 20 (not capped – cap is 27)
• L25 52 (capped to 34) 25 (not capped – cap is 39)
• L30 62 (capped to 53) 40 (not capped – cap is 61)
• L35 71 (not capped – cap is 78) 55 (not capped – cap is 86)
• L40 81 (not capped – cap is 112) 70 (not capped – cap is 120)
• L50 100 (not capped – cap is 220) 100 (not capped – cap is 228)

It's not perfect – even the nerfed version is still so powerful that any decent-quality shield will cause you to hit the armor cap most of the time! But it's at least much better. The resulting power level, as I mentioned, is basically unchanged, except there's slightly more incentive to raise the skill in the lower levels.

The shield cap after level 50 will now grow very rapidly, basically making it a non-issue at higher levels, much like the armor cap is.

Alchemist

The Alchemist is really played as two classes, despite our desire to encourage hybrid left/darkside Alchemists. 3.27% of the player base is an Alchemist; unfortunately, this number is split into two totally separate play styles, which makes analysis harder. There are certainly some great Alchemists out there, though, who do quite well for themselves, so we've gotten some quantitative feedback by analyzing them. For now, though, we're only making a few changes.

Blight: This skill has been using the wrong experience-cost table, causing it to cost twice as much as it ought to after level 50. This will be fixed. Any Alchemist who had this skill raised above 50 will find that the skill has been lowered back down to 50 and their XP refunded. (This is so that we can make the adjustment to the post-50 XP costs.)

Extinguish Blaze: This skill is now fellowship-propagated to everyone within 20m of the caster.

Furor: This skill now does two 12 (L1) – 260 (L50) – 780 (L150) attacks (instead of 7-200-600 attacks). The reset time becomes 2 seconds instead of 1. Vigor cost becomes 170 instead of 140.

The change to Furor is a modest damage-increase at low levels, and a bigger one at hero levels.

Dark Side Alchemists are also the benefactor of some new technology that we originally added for aura buffs. This is the tech for “toggle buffs” – buffs which stay on until you explicitly use the skill again and turn them off. Toggle buffs are sort of like self-only aura buffs.

Dark Side: This skill becomes a toggle buff. It remains on until the skill is explicitly turned off. The skill still has a reset time of 30 seconds, however, so you can't switch any faster than that.

This has the interesting effect of making Tranquility less useful. We will examine this and consider possible improvements to Tranquility in the future.

Next are two small buffs for left-side Alchemists:

Everlasting Fire: This skill is now grenade-like; it detonates even on a Miss. Vigor cost becomes 250 (instead of 230).

Oxidize: This skill now has 60m range instead of 40m.

Note that Oxidize is the only ranged attack in the tree that is NOT an area-of-effect attack! This is why it gets range when no other skills do. Alchemists already have the King of the AoE's title; giving them very long-ranged AoE's has dramatic impacts on their power level – more than one would guess at first glance. So that's why we're not increasing the range of any other skills. This change makes Oxidize a nice “puller” skill... and it makes sense as a puller anyway, since it's a debuff for their other fire-based attacks.

One other touch:

Bluff: This base-tree skill is now affected by Alchemist Adept. Its accuracy increases with each point of Alchemist Adept skill.

This change is mainly for Dark Side Alchemists (though left-siders can use it too, obviously.) We like the idea of all melee-range damage-dealers having easy access to a detaunt.

Ranger

Rangers are a bit underpowered compared to the top tier classes, but they really aren't that bad off. They are also reasonably popular (7.2%). They are largely on target for where we imagine they should be, with the notable exception that they Miss their targets a bit more than we want them to. This is something that we are now going to fix through code improvements – in other words, arrows will simply hit their target more easily; it will be harder to Miss the target. However, this improvement will occur in September – it didn't make it in time for August.

This will change their play style considerably, especially while soloing and PKing, so we aren't going to increase the Ranger's offensive abilities at this time because we won't know how much to improve them until after analyzing the accuracy improvements. There are some other changes to the Ranger, though:

Sinew Snap: The animation for Sinew Snap is sped up slightly.

Nature's Aid: Lashers will gain roughly twice as much health and armor per level after 50.

Symbiosis, Rabies, Toughen Hide: these skills now last five minutes.

Forage: Forage now creates a single potion that can be used five times before it disappears. The reset time on the skill is now five minutes instead of one minute.

The improvement to Forage is possible thanks to the Durability Point system we added for Crafting 2.0. In essence, we're creating a single potion that has 5 durability points! Every time you drink the potion, it loses a point of durability. The DP system has many other interesting applications, as you'll see in coming months…

Enchanter

This class is working great, and is very popular (9.3%). There are only some touch-ups here, most importantly improvements to post-50 pets.

Balance: the vigor-cost-reducing aspect of this skill now reduces vigor cost by 8% (L1) to 30% (L50). It previously maxed out at 20%.

Axe Orb: for each level above 50, the Axe Orb has twice as much health (for 40 pts/level) and one extra point of armor (for 2/level).

Dagger Orb: for each level above 50, the Dagger Orb has twice as much health (for 30 pts/level) and one extra point of armor (for 4/level).

Taunt Orb: for each level above 50, the Taunt Orb has 10 extra health per level (for 25 pts/level).

Bladeskin: this becomes an aura buff and no longer has a limitation on how long it lasts.

Sorcerer

The Sorcerer is a popular class, with 8.6% of the character base. This class's total power is greater than many of the other classes. In that regard, they're a bit overpowered. However, as mentioned above, we aren't nerfing classes in order to balance them amongst each other. The only reason we're nerfing classes is when the classes are too powerful for the content. In this regard, we don't think Sorcerers are over the bar. So other classes are gaining a bit of power so that they can better compete with Sorcerers.

In a nutshell, there are absolutely no changes to this tree! I think that's the only class that's totally unchanged.

Feral Intendant

This is the most popular Tumerok specialization class, with 8% of the player base. The Feral Intendant is surely the tree we've had the most trouble with. And the trouble isn't over. Our last batch of changes was not sufficiently tested, and resulted in more power than intended. Feral Intendants are tiny gods at low levels – I don't think there are very many players who would contend otherwise – and still somewhat overpowered at high levels. The combination of huge armor boost, huge health boost, major health recovery powers, pets, and damage dealing potential, mean that they can take on anything we can throw at them. We cannot make solo content that is challenging to Feral Intendants, without that same content being impossible for other classes. In a nutshell, they are too powerful for the content.

We're not interested in balancing the Feral Intendant so that other classes can be comparable. For instance, we're not nerfing Feral Intendants so that Defenders are better tanks by comparison. We're fine with just buffing other classes instead. However, Ferals are too powerful in content as well, particularly solo content, which we're trying to focus a bit more on. So this is what we are aiming to correct in August. We'll also improve a few aspects of their tree so that their role is more honed.

First, let's talk about Lumbering Might. This is easily the most broken skill in the game at low levels. So what's wrong here? First, we did a really stupid thing by basing this skill around the power level of Emblem of Might. EoM grants 10-100 shield armor, so we made Lumbering Might do the same. But actually, EoM doesn't really give you that much shield armor. Throughout all the early and middle levels, EoM is artificially capped by the Max Shield Cap! Sure, it SAYS it gives you 52 armor at level 25, but really your shield is capped at 34 anyway. Lumbering Might, on the other hand, really DOES give you 52 extra armor at level 25. Plus it gives you 315 extra health! At level 30 you only have 800 health anyway… 315 extra health is an insane amount. These are rookie mistakes that we should have caught. We were just too rushed, and we didn't catch them in time. (We caught them before the update shipped, but it was too late to change the update.)

So clearly, we have to fix the middle power levels of this skill. Our data shows that most Tumeroks actually play Feral Intendant til at least level 30, regardless of what class they intend to eventually be. It often just doesn't make sense to switch before then, because the buff from Lumbering Might is so great that it overrides everything else out there.

But looking to the future, we see that Feral Intendants actually start to lose their competitive edge at very high level. Even if you raise Lumbering Might up to max, it will only give you 50 more armor and 300 more health than it does at level 50!

So Lumbering Might is far overpowered at low levels, rather overpowered at level 50, and is actually underpowered at very high hero levels. So here's the corrections:

Lumbering Might: This skill bestows 1 (L1) – 25 (L25) – 100 (L50) – 300 (L150) armor to the Feral Intendant. Previously it added 5 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 150 (L100). It also grants 20 (L1) – 200 (L25) – 600 (L50) – 1200 (L100) extra health. Previously it granted 30 (L1) – 600 (L50) – 900 (L100) health. This skill is now a toggle buff; it stays on until explicitly turned off.

So now it's much better balanced at lower levels.

The other major concern with Feral Intendants is their damage dealing ability. This is partly due to their specialization tree, and partly due to their first hero skill. We'll increase the Focus cost of their hero skill in September; right now we're only looking at the spec-tree changes.

The major cause of their solo overpoweredness is Soft Underbelly. This skill causes all their attacks to be much better, and their pets' attacks, too. We had hoped that we could make this work in a tanking tree, but it just doesn't. Soft Underbelly no longer debuffs armor. The vigor cost is normalized; it was much too low before.

Soft Underbelly: this skill is now only a taunt of 5% (L1) – 20% (L50). It does 3 (L1) – 75 (L50) bonus damage. Vigor cost becomes 110 (instead of 80). This skill no longer debuffs the target's armor. Note that this skill now only goes to level 50. If the skill has been raised higher than 50, the skill will be lowered back down to 50 and the XP refunded.

Rampage has a slight increase in vigor cost:

Rampage: vigor cost becomes 250 (instead of 220).

Also note that Moon's Madness no longer claims to raise in-combat health regeneration by 50% at level 50. This was never happening--there are built-in limiters that keep in-combat health regeneration from raising above 40%, so the skill was not getting above that level anyway. It now reports reality accurately. (In other words, this isn't a “real” nerf to Moon's Madness' in-game effectiveness.)

So that's the bad news. But there is always a bright side – we also have a couple of happier changes. First up is Leader of the Pack. Our vision for this skill didn't work out – it's hard to make this compete with Lumbering Might. We're tossing the whole skill and redoing it:

Leader of the Pack: this skill is now an aura buff; it stays on until explicitly turned off. The skill does NOT override Lumbering Might. You can use both skills at the same time. It increases run speed by 1% (L1) to 20% (L50), and increases combat speed by 1% (L1) to 10% (L50). These increases do not stack with other skill buffs.

This should make the skill worth buying, but not overpowered. And we made it an aura buff so that Ferals can provide a modest buff to fellowships. LotP is no a better version of Winged Feet – it has the same runspeed buff, plus a small combat speed buff as well.

We also have a base-tree boost:

Growl: this skill now takes advantage of Feral Intendant Adept. It increases in accuracy with each point of Adept skill.

In addition, the Feral Intendant will receive Eater Tokens when they first log in. These tokens can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free. The number of tokens they receive will depend on their level:

• Level 20 or below: 1 token
• Level 21-30: 2 tokens
• Level 31-40: 3 tokens
• Level 41+: 4 tokens

Zealot

The Zealot is an interesting class, but a bit underwhelming, especially at lower levels. Only 2.78% of characters are Zealots… the second lowest percentage of the Tumerok classes. The Zealot tree has lots of minor issues; we'll make some improvements here. First, we're giving the Zealot's non-bleed attacks a bit more kick.

Bruise: the second attack of this skill was a no-bonus attack (weapon damage only). It will now do 7-200-600 bonus damage like the first attack does.

Onslaught: the damage for both hits of Onslaught are now 7-200-600. In addition, there is a 10% chance per use that the skill will have a third full damage hit. Vigor cost becomes 140 (from 110).

Shred Hope: this skill gains a second attack. Both attacks will do 3-75-300 bonus damage.

Blur: the damage for all three hits of Blur are now 7-200-600. In addition, there is a 10% chance per use that the skill will have a fourth full damage hit. Vigor cost becomes 220 (from 110).

These changes will help push Zealots up into the upper ranks of damage-dealerdom. In addition, Rapid Healing is being redone.

Rapid Healing: this skill is now a toggle buff. It remains on until used again to turn it off. The reset time is 1 second. Since this is no longer a 2/5 skill, the effectiveness of Rapid Healing is reduced somewhat – it now provides 1% to 30% of your regular out-of-combat healing while in combat. It also provides 110% to 200% of regular healing while out of combat. (These numbers are down from 50% and 400%, respectively.)

The last change we made to Rapid Healing turned it into a very potent survival tool, but the 2/5 nature still turned folks off from it. In addition, the skill was never as effective as advertised – an age-old safety check keeps in-combat health regeneration from going above 40%. So the old skill was only able to provide 40% regeneration anyway, despite claiming to provide 50%.

The new stats mean that a Zealot who has 2000 health and who has this skill maxed out at level 50 will regenerate 600 health for every minute that they are in combat. (And they will regenerate 4000 health for every minute they are not in combat.)

Incidentally, we decided to leave the 40% cap in place, so you can add jewelry to increase your in-combat health regen, but you can only add another 10% to the amount. (Just for the record, in-combat vigor regeneration is also capped at 40%.)

The change to Rapid Healing doesn't make Zealots gods by any means. But it does mean that their maintenance costs are lower than for other damage dealers – they need less healing, especially when they manage aggro effectively and can take a few seconds off to get an out-of-combat health tick while their percentage bleeds do their trick.

To help them manage aggro, Avert Eyes is improved:

Avert Eyes: this skill now takes advantage of Zealot Adept. The skill becomes more accurate with each point of Zealot Adept skill.

We've often been asked to increase the cap on the percentage bleeds of Zealots. But that really isn't what's wrong with Zealots. They are nowhere near needing their bleed damage cap increased. Those four skills do a tremendous amount of damage… in fact, they do so much damage that they take away from what the rest of the tree can do. One option we were contemplating was to actually reduce the effectiveness of the percentage bleeds so that we could further improve the multi-hit attacks. But we opted not to do so at this time, as it would alter Zealot play styles too much.

Another issue with the bleeds is that they don't stack with other Zealots' bleeds. So having two Zealots in the group is something like having two Sorcerers… the second guy isn't nearly as effective as the first. We can't correct this issue – that is, we can't make the bleeds from different Zealots stack. And we're not sure we'd want to do that even if we could. But regardless, this doesn't seem to be an actual limiting factor on the number of Zealots. Nobody is saying, “Well, I don't want to be a Zealot, because there are already so many of those, and you only need one per group!” That just isn't the reason people aren't playing this class right now.

So why don't people play this class? One reason is that the Feral Intendant is so overpowered that the Zealot is overshadowed. Another reason is that Zealots have relatively weak soloing ability, and they're kind of dull to play – after they administer their bleeds, they stand around and try not to die. So the changes above are intended to improve their soloing ability and give them some more significant ways to do damage during combat.

Claw Bearer

Claw Bearers are relatively rare, with 3.3% of the population choosing this class. Nevertheless, Claw Bearers are overpowered compared to other missile classes. But we'll take care of that by buffing other classes. They're also overpowered compared to content… so there are some minor nerfs in store here.

The Claw Bearer wasn't always overpowered. In fact, they were the poster child for incremental improvements… every few months, we improved Claw Bearers in one way or another. Trouble is, we stopped too late. By the time people started flocking to the Claw Bearer, it wasn't because they were an interesting and viable class – it was because they had become overpowered.

The last step of that process was giving Rend Armor a range of 20m, and giving Hailstorm and Mortar the “grenade-like” attribute so that they explode on miss.

One thing we forgot when we improved Hailstorm and Mortar is that their vigor cost had already been artificially lowered in an earlier update – and then we improved the skills even further, thus making them much too cheap. We're restoring their vigor costs a bit:

Hailstorm: vigor cost becomes 270 instead of 210.

Mortar: vigor cost becomes 350 instead of 300.

The change to Rend Armor was also inadvisable in retrospect. You see, it was a melee-range skill before, which is very difficult for a ranged class to use – they have to run in and then run out. This whole run-in-and-out concept was what the Claw Bearer was built on back during AC2's development – all of their debuffs were melee range. So the thought was that a Claw Bearer might use Thunderous Motion in order to sneak in, debuff the target, and then get back out, possibly using Misdirection to get the monster back off of them. A risky and exciting business, at least on paper. Rend Armor was given a two minute duration for this reason. So if you managed to get in and use it once, then you wouldn't have to use it again for a long, long time.

Thing is, this gameplay didn't appeal to players in real life. So after the game shipped, we started to make it easier. We gave Rend Armor a 20m range… that's what we consider “short range”, but it's still long enough that it makes it vastly easier to use. However, this makes it easy enough to use that it really doesn't deserve the 2 minute duration anymore.

Rend Armor: the duration of the armor debuff is now 30 seconds.

The Claw Bearer is still a bit above other missile classes. However, we'll be buffing the Raider and Ranger soon by giving them better projectile accuracy. After that, we'll look again to see what should be done with these classes in the future.

The Claw Bearer will receive Eater Tokens when they first log in. These tokens can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free. The number of tokens they receive will depend on their level:

• Level 30 or below: 1 token
• Level 31+: 2 tokens

Hive Keeper

The Hive Keeper is the rarest Tumerok class, representing only 2.77% of the player base. However, it is a quality class that is about right in power level. They can be difficult to play at low levels, but this is an aspect they share with the other unique-weapon classes. We aren't attempting to correct that problem this time around.

At mid levels and higher, they are able to solo reasonably well, while providing intense damage and good crowd control in groups. The changes here are minor. First, there are changes to post-50 play:

Honey Drop: this skill now scales to 150. It heals 25 (L1) – 250 (L50) – 500 (L150).

Vampiric Swarm: the swarm now gets more health (20 health/lvl instead of 10) and armor (3 armor/lvl instead of 2) per level after 50.

Wax Statue: the statue now gets more health (40/lvl instead of 30) and armor (4/lvl instead of 3) per level after 50.

Agitate Nest: the wasp now gets more health (10/lvl instead of 5), more armor (2/lvl instead of 1), and more damage (4/lvl instead of 3) per level after 50.

Impregnate: the wasp now gets more health (15/lvl instead of 10) and armor (3/lvl instead of 2) per level after 50.

Finally, a couple skills increase in range slightly.

Agitate Nest: range increases to 70m (from 60m)

Drone: range increases to 70m (from 60m)

This gives these skills the same range as Hive Keeper auto-attacks.

Invoker

These are covered in a separate document. Invokers are being dramatically redone from bottom up. They are also the only class who will receive a skill reset in August. It will be a forced reset immediately upon login. Invokers make up 5.2% of the population.

Note that their Adept skill will provide an accuracy benefit to the Ionize skill from the base tree, giving a slight incentive to climb to the top of the base mage tree.

Healer

The Healer is a potent class, and owns a respectable 4.56% of the populace. They bring much to a group, and the aura buff technology aided them considerably, allowing them to focus more on healing. However, the mage-based Healer has some trouble soloing, and a couple of their skills need tweaking.

First, let's address the soloing issues. In order to be able to solo, a Healer will need to buy mastery, grandmastery, and paragon. Healers who want to hit reliably in later levels will also need to buy Healer Adept. Many people send us pleas to improve their soloability, but they're ultra-pure healers who don't have any offensive capability at all. There's no way such a template is going to be able to kill anything… we can't help you there. But assuming you've set aside enough credits to be able to solo, we have some small improvements.

First, Rotten Core is improved:

Rotten Core: vigor cost becomes 230 instead of 400.

Second, since any other firepower will have to come from the magic base tree, we improve the base tree for Healers:

Charged Air: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill.

Thunderclap: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill. Damage increases to 7 (L1) – 200 (L50) – 600 (L150).

Splinter Bone: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill.

Embolism: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill.

This gives Healers a better reason to buy their Adept skill. It also provides a bit of assistance in high-level soloing.

Finally, we're improving Remedy and Disperse Heat.

Remedy, Disperse Heat: these skills now scale to 150; only the group-healing aspect increases past level 50. The group heal is now 25 (L1) – 250 (L50) – 500 (L150). Previously, the heal was 20-200.

They weren't quite worth raising in skill level past about 25, due to low return on XP investment. This change also increases Healer's overall healing capacity, though it can be hard for Healers to be able to afford these skills if they also want Calm Vitae and offensive skills… decisions, decisions.

Juggernaut

This class came out very nicely after the most recent changes, and now commands 2.92% of the populace, and slowly rising. They have their own style, and great damage-dealing capacity. They're fairly fun to play.

Only one tiny change here, to Challenge. Funny story there – during testing it worked very nicely. It taunted an individual monster, and detaunted all the other monsters around it. Perfect! However, in the same month the new Juggernaut was introduced, we also cleaned up and improved the taunting system… and the new behavior caused detaunts to still be entered as attacks. So Challenge is actually working as advertised. However, detaunting a monster still gets its attention! So instead of pulling a single monster out of a group, Challenge tends to pull a whole cluster of monsters. We'll remove the detaunt aspect.

Challenge: This skill no longer detaunts nearby monsters. It only taunts a single enemy.

Berserker

Berserkers are verypowerful, and are very popular as well; 5.5% of the populace is a Berserker. The Berserker is in for some big shake-ups, but also (perhaps surprisingly) some minor improvements as well. They are an amazing damage dealer – too amazing, both in groups and in solo situations.

The combo chains can deal out too much damage too quickly. We considered a lot of ways to adjust this, but in the end we've decided to limit the skills so that they can't be fired as often.

Circle of Pain, Wheel of Pain, Storm of Pain, Vortex of Pain, Flurry, Cascade, Deluge, Avalanche: the reset time on these skills becomes 10 secs. The linker for the next skill in the chain is also a static 10 seconds. So you can only use the skills one after another.

This change means that you can only go Flurry-Cascade-Deluge-Avalanche. You can't go Flurry-Cascade-Deluge-Avalanche-Cascade-Avalanche-Deluge. This reduces the sheer number of attacks by a little bit.

The skill “Berserk”, like all percentage-based damage buff skills, also becomes a problem at high levels, but we don't have a very good solution for that problem at the moment … we'll consider addressing the issue next time around. (We thought about changing Berserk to be a fixed additive bonus instead of a percentage bonus, but that makes it imbalanced at low levels.) Another big cause of trouble is the Berserker's hero skills; these will be toned down in September.

So that's the bad news. On the good front, though, we've decided Expel just doesn't fit well. It's not useful enough, especially at low levels when it's supposed to be a mainstay. When Berserkers do use this skill, they inevitably get yelled at by the group. Expel is changed into Phantom Blow.

Expel: becomes Phantom Blow. This skill does 7 (L1) – 200 (L50) – 600 (L150) bonus damage. It does not cause any agro – the monster doesn't calculate this damage into its hate levels. Vigor cost becomes 140 (instead of 110).

Berserkers are supposed to be able to assist in agro management – to help them do so, we are improving the base tree skill Ignore.

Ignore: This skill now takes advantage of Berserker Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Berserker Adept skill.

We're also monitoring the Berserker's ability to swap out weapons and use a stun attack. This is very frustrating in PvP. However, it's not an ability unique to Berserkers – Berserkers are just far more deadly than other classes, so it's a bigger deal when they do it. We're not ready to do some hacky thing to disable stuns for Berserkers… the stun issue seems to be more a symptom of overpoweredness, rather than an actual cause.

The Berserker will receive Eater of Souls Tokens when they first log in. These tokens can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free. The number of tokens they receive will depend on their level:

• Level 29 or below: 1 token
• Level 30-35: 2 tokens
• Level 36-45: 3 tokens
• Level 46+: 4 tokens

Raider

The rarest class of all is the Raider. They are played by 2.1% of the populace. Part of this is due to how late they get their power – it's not much fun to be a Raider before, say, level 30. But Raiders are a solid soloing and PK class, and bring reasonable damage-dealing ability to a group. They have slightly better damage output than a Ranger, but the Ranger has a pet.

For now, we're not directly improving the damage-dealing abilities of the Raider. In September we're going to improve the accuracy of the Raider's attacks so that they Miss less often; after that, we'll take a some time to look at them again to see if we should go further, and if so, how.

There are a couple of small changes now, though. One gives them better AoE abilities, and the other gives them an aura buff that they can bring to groups.

Fulminating Throw: this skill becomes grenade-like; it now does damage even if it Misses.

Chorizite Dust: this skill is reworked to be an Aura Buff. It affects everyone in the fellowship, including the Raider. The skill now raises Missile and Magic defensive points by 10 (L1) – 100 (L50).

Tactician

The most popular Lugian class by far, Tacticians make up 9.44% of the player base. This is the hardest class to balance, as it's a totally different play dynamic. In our last Tactician update, we tried to move the Tactician play style more towards the mainstream (so that they have to hit things with regular attacks) while still keeping their turret powers intact. The new Tactician came out well, but part of the plan failed – Tacticians are supposed to have to maintain their turrets a bit more than they do. One trouble is that most people just use Twin Barrels and don't buy the more vigor-intensive ammunition. The twin barrel ammo is the most generally powerful ammo, and is also dirt cheap! We're increasing the vigor cost here, and reducing the cost of Armor-Piercing ammo.

Twin Barrels: The turret's vigor cost for using this skill has been raised to 40 vigor per two-burst shot (instead of 10 vigor).

Armor Piercing Ammo: The turret's vigor cost for using this skill has been lowered to 20 vigor per shot (instead of 30).

The Tactician gets a bit of base tree love:

Triangle Wound: This skill receives the benefit of Tactician Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Tactician Adept skill.

All tacticians will receive one Eater of Souls Token when they first log in. This token can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free.

Elementalist

The Elementalist is now a great, reliable damage dealer, and very popular, with 5.52% of the population. Their biggest issue is pet pathing, which makes it difficult for them to achieve great success in dungeons. We're still working on pet pathing; it is being incrementally improved each month.

When pathing issues aren't bothering them, though, the Elementalist is extremely potent... a bit too potent, unfortunately. Elementalists are able to solo several different group monsters… a sure litmus test that they are more powerful than intended.

The last thing we want to do is swing the pendulum back the other way, though. So we've been trying to isolate a correction. We've decided that the crux of the problem is that the pets, while fragile at higher levels, can deal too much damage in a tiny period of time. So we're attempting to fix the damage output, while at the same time making the pets a bit more sturdy.

The cause of excessive damage-dealing power is Enrage Elemental, so it gets nerfed:

Enrage Elemental: the damage boost from this skill becomes 13 (L1) – 130 (L50) – 390 (L150), instead of 20-200-600.

However, all of the pets are improved post-50. The weather pets are also improved pre-50… they get more armor.

• Sand Fury: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 15 health/level)
• Sand Warrior: Gains 25 health/level after 50 (instead of 20 health/level)
• Sand Fiend: Gains 30 health/level after 50 (instead of 25 health/level)
• Guardian Spirit: Gains 25 health/level after 50 (instead of 20 health/level), and 2 armor/level after 50 (instead of 1 armor/level)
• Thunderstorm: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 3 armor/level (instead of 1 armor/level).
• Volcanic Rift: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 3 armor/level (instead of 1 armor/level).
• Hurricane: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 3 armor/level (instead of 1 armor/level).
• Incendiary Cloud: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 3 armor/level (instead of 1 armor/level).

The mage Elementalist also receives some benefits:

Earthquake: This skill receives the benefit of Elementalist Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Elementalist Adept skill.

Detonate: This skill receives the benefit of Elementalist Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Elementalist Adept skill.

The Elementalist will receive Eater Tokens when they first log in. These tokens can be given to the Eater of Souls to sell back a skill for free. The number of tokens they receive will depend on their level:

• Level 30 or below: 1 token
• Level 31-40: 2 tokens
• Level 41+: 3 tokens

Sage

The Sage is very effective, and very potent. They represent 5.8% of the populace. Not too many complaints about this guy. In fact, there are almost no changes here. We're fixing a bug:

Cure Disease: Currently this skill works fine, but it can override fire protection buffs. This has been fixed.

And we're giving a bit of a buff to the mage Sage, which has it a bit harder than the other varieties.

Energy Vortex: This skill receives the benefit of Sage Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Sage Adept skill.

Forked Bolt: This skill receives the benefit of Sage Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Sage Adept skill.

More Nerfs!?

Yeah. This is where I give my regular speech about a dynamic game. This game will keep changing forever, and as a result, there will always be nerfs and buffs on occasion. This will never, ever stop. Trust me, you don't really want a static game where nerfs and buffs don't happen, because that means there's nothing new being added. EVERYTHING we do will be a nerf or buff to somebody! (And you can't just have buffs, because a buff to one guy is a reverse nerf to other people!)

But that's being a bit too theoretical for this discussion. Yes, there are more direct nerfs to classes we already rebalanced. It's our fault – we didn't get all the numbers right. Sometimes the problems were pretty subtle things that we couldn't have foreseen, and sometimes we just really screwed up. We've tried to make the nerfs as painless as possible – hopefully they're not so painless that they don't correct the problem and cause us to have to do this again, but we've erred on the side of caution. We've made sure that the nerfs don't go overboard and over-fix the problem. We'll take it one step at a time, taking our time between changes, doing our best to calculate the most precise changes needed to achieve balance. And we'll keep doing it forever, since the game keeps changing constantly.

That doesn't make people feel better about these nerfs, I'm sure. It boils down to this: we can't just let these problems slide, because they are affecting monster balance and our ability to create quality content, especially solo-friendly content. When we are able to avoid nerfs (by buffing others instead of nerfing), we're embracing that wholeheartedly.

What's All This Stuff About Adept Working In The Base Tree?

...and why didn't it get added to (insert your favorite skill here)? Well, this is just one of the tools we're using to bring the base trees back into the high-level game a bit more. For now, most of the recipients are classes who have little use for their Adept skill otherwise. (The exceptions are the taunts/detaunts, and the Defender.) In time, we'll probably use this technique a bit more, along with some other new ideas that allow for more template variability. But for now, we're not over-using it.

Is This A Done Deal?

These changes are already implemented for August, so they're likely to go in as listed. However, the Vanguard team has a few more days to play with the changes, so we might see some small adjustments.

Conclusion

As you've seen, this is largely a happy occasion. Even classes who are nerfed in one way are usually improved in other ways. I know that not everyone will be happy with these changes – to those folks, I want to apologize to you. Game balance is something that every MMORPG does throughout its entire lifetime – it's not something that's unique to AC2 in any way. But that doesn't mean that it's okay. In an ideal game, there would be no need for nerfs. Having to nerf something is an implicit indication that we, the devs, screwed up. So let's make that implicit understanding very explicit. We screwed up. On behalf of the team, and on my own behalf, I'm sorry.

Sometimes people accuse us of having it out for certain classes – that couldn't be further from the truth. I promise that that we have no malice intended, and that this will be the only such change for a long time to come.

Balancing an MMORPG is a necessary part of maintaining it. Sometimes it can be a bit upsetting in the short term, but it's an important part of keeping the game healthy. Thankfully, we're getting to the stage where balance issues aren't as glaring as they used to be – so we can get away with only an occasional minor rebalancing.

---

Most of the skill changes have come out nicely. But as we continue to play-test the changes, we've made a few adjustments to our skill plans. These changes are in keeping with our goal of having “surgically precise” alterations.

We want to avoid changing people's play style whenever that's an option, and of course we have to avoid accidentally overpowering classes with our buffs. So this is the reasoning behind the changes below. We're still debating a couple of changes to the plans, so there's a small chance there will be a couple of other adjustments. But here's where we are today:

Berserker:

The original nerf here was rather small in terms of reduced damage potential. It was simply not a big change. But it did affect play style a bit, because you had to use other attacks between combos (at least when you were accelerated). We have decided to switch to an alternate scheme for the left side of the Berserker tree.

Flurry, Cascade, Deluge, Avalanche: The reset times on these skill do not change from their July numbers (so 10sec for Flurry, 5sec for the others). However, the through-armor bypassing aspect of these attacks is reduced from 50% to 30% for all PvM combat. PvP combat remains unchanged (so it will remain at 25% bypassing for PvP).

This is still a fairly minor change in damage potential. The benefits are that it avoids changing gameplay style, and it more directly targets very high level Berserkers, which is where a modest damage reduction is most needed. So this better addresses the issues at hand.

The right-side AoE combo chain will still have its timers increased. There are two issues with the AoE line, and to some extent this change addresses both. The AoE chain can just generate too many AoEs… so reducing the number of times you can use the skills is a clear improvement there. But the other problem with the AoE chain is that these skills can be used to spam monsters while running around them in circles. We don't have a very good way to fix this, aside from just forcing the Berserker to stand perfectly still to use their AoEs. When we tested this, it was not a very fun change. The timer change is a partial fix for this problem – although you can still spam AoEs while running, at least you can't spam as many of them. We are still exploring technical solutions that would help us correct the problem more completely.

Zealot:

We have decided that our original plan was a bit too much. At low levels, the proposed changes were just a little bit overpowered… nothing to get worried about, really; they overshot by only a few percent. But at very high levels, the problem became amplified by the large skill bonuses and Major Damage Boost until the Zealot was very overpowered by level 65. So we've changed how we're buffing these skills to alleviate this issue while still improving their damage potential.

Bruise: This first hit of this attack does 7 (L1) – 200 (L50) – 600 (L150) bonus damage. The second hit does 3 (L1) – 75 (L50) – 300 (L150) bonus damage. (Prior to the August changes, the second attack did no bonus damage.)

Onslaught: The two hits of this attack once again do 10 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 300 (L150) bonus damage. In addition, there is a 50% chance that the skill will do a third hit for 10 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 300 (L150) bonus damage.

Blur: The three hits of this attack once again do 10 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 300 (L150) bonus damage. In addition, there is a 50% chance that the skill will do a fourth hit for 10 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 300 (L150) bonus damage.

The Zealot is a very difficult class to balance for both solo and group play. Their tree setup is such that a very slight change can make the difference between an underpowered class and an overpowered one. Here we've tried to hit the perfect middle mark, but if we've erred, it is on the side of caution.

If this change doesn't prove to be successful enough, future Zealot changes may require a re-org of the Zealot skill tree, and a reduction in the bleed aspect of the class so that other skills have more room to shine.

Defender and Feral Intendant:

We've been working on the Hero 2.0 changes, and one of the things we're debating is making it cheaper to raise skills past level 50. However, the changes we announced for Emblem of Might and Lumbering Might are based on the idea that raising a skill from 50 to 60 is a very costly endeavor. We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot here, so for August these skills will not be as buffed after 50 as we had previously announced. Both skills will scale from 10 (L1) – 100 (L50) – 200 (L100), instead of the previously-announced 300 at L100. After we complete the Hero 2.0 changes in a month or two, we'll adjust these to make sure the numbers come out right for each level range. Sorry about that, but it's just a delay – we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

Invoker:

Intervention, Seal of Hazetu: these skills now have a 120 second duration and a 180 second reset time. (They are 2/3 skills instead of 2/5 skills.)

Hero 2.0 Update:

The Hero 2.0 changes will probably not be in September as planned; October or maybe even November seems more likely now. This slip was unexpected, because the new hero skills are all entirely coded! The problem is that although they meet specifications, they aren't the big Fun Boost we were hoping for. This isn't uncommon for game development – things that look good on paper may fall short in reality. The goal of Hero 2.0 is to invigorate post-50 game play, and while these changes do that, they don't go far enough. We're looking at some radical adjustments, which may involve replacing existing systems (such as changing how Focus works, and possibly adding/removing passive skills!). In addition, we are thinking about ways to make power levels and costs scale more linearly, so that players get to raise skills and abilities more often.

Few companies are as public about their monthly schedule as we are, and there's a reason – it's embarrassing to miss deadlines. But we also can't let deadlines control our quality level. This is a hard lesson that we finally understand – it's the reason we delayed the Craft 2.0 update several times. The lesson is, “a late update is only late until it ships, but a bad update is bad forever.”

So we have to go back and make some more changes to our plan. I'll give you more details and time estimates as we go along.

Monster Balancing:

While completely new game systems such as Hero 2.0 should be delayed as long as necessary to make them fun, monster balance tweaks go the other way – it makes more sense to tweak balance incrementally over a long period, rather than to try to balance everything and then release it all at once. So in September you'll see the first monster rebalancing changes in quite a while.

Surprise, though: these changes aren't aimed at making the hard monsters easier to kill! Instead, the first step is making the “junk” monsters more worth killing. We're raising the XP rewards for a great many of the monsters in the game (as well as making some of those monsters a bit more challenging, so that the challenge is worth the reward).

We're also taking the first step in giving monsters specific strengths and weaknesses vs. melee, missile, or magic attacks. So some monsters will be harder to hit for meleers and easier to hit for missile classes, and so on. This change won't be too dramatic, but it will be noticeable.

The goal of these changes is to make every monster “worth killing” by one or more templates. I think this will greatly improve the variety of hunting options at all play levels, so I'm looking forward to seeing what these changes do for the game.

Let me reiterate to avoid confusion: the monster changes will happen in the September event, not the upcoming August event (which happens in one week, on the 25th).

If you have feedback on the skills changes for August, keep using the existing feedback thread; I'll make a new feedback thread for those who want to offer feedback on the monster changes or Hero 2.0 plans.