Patch Notes 22/08/2024

[Rydiak]

IMO Disrupt should be removed from Willpower and added to Toughness.

Willpower removal:
○ Willpower is not an outright damage stat but I would consider it an assist damage stat. The longer you keep your team alive the more damage is outputted.
○ If you are not a healer/hybrid there is no point in increasing this stat, limited number of classes utilizing the stat.
○ If we go by the same logic of Weapon Skill then you can't have a damage (assist damage) stat that also increases a defensive stat.

Toughness Addition:
○ This would make all defensive (disrupt, dodge, parry, block) belong to the two defensive stats in the game.
○ This would open Disrupt to more classes and add more variety to defensive builds.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's what they have planned and they will then make willpower the weapon skill equivalent of magic damage. Magic users then have to spec into multiple stats just as phys dps do, with magic resist being increased to act more like armour and needing a stat to penetrate it.

If something like this is in the works it really needs to be communicated now so we know what's coming rather than when the patch notes come out. As always, so much of the drama that has happened since last week could have been avoided if the team didn't have a total silence policy with regards to future plans. If there was ever a time to drop another dev update video to give us some insight to what's going on and inject a bit of optimism back into the community, it's now.

Heh, I unironically like these ideas. It would definitely quiet the "magic only has one stat while physical has two" complaints. However, magic DPS don't have an auto-attack like physical DPS do, so in function this would never actually work.

The one benefit to moving Parry to Initiative is it actually makes melee DPS stronger against each other since Weapon Skill-stacked characters have a lower chance to parry. And then if people move their Weapon Skill to Initiative to regain parry, they then have less armor penetration which means the melee DPS retain more of their armor and thus have higher physical mitigation.

People may not like it and it may not be a popular opinion to have, but I feel moving parry to Initiative was the best choice the devs could have made given their intent to reduce the power the stat held.

[Sulorie]

not an exaggeration,i lost half parry too on my ib with 462 ws before selfbuff or pots.

Last year your WS didn't even gave 5% parry. Nowadays with group buffs you are supposed to be at least at 300 init. Your total parry will take a negligible dip.

well i like to roam alone so no group buff but not a big deal ,luckily ib can self buff parry if needed,was just saying that half parry gone was not an exaggeration.can play sw ,squig or shaman dps and have fun farming people anyway.

It is exaggerated since your total parry matters, not the WS portion alone. 10->5 is a bigger drop relatively than 50->45.

[Keula]

From 47 to 32%? It´s almost half, yes. And i´m not talking about buffs and linis and sent tali.

You had 700+ weapon skill on your ironbreaker? Sure probably possible to do that, but interesting stat distribution to say the least and wonder what the sacrifice is for that and i'm guessing possible to regain some of it, sure you lose some armor pen, but hey get some -crit at least.

not an exaggeration,i lost half parry too on my ib with 462 ws before selfbuff or pots.

Your Ib had only 13.5% parry TOTAL??? Or do you mean you lost half of your bonus parry from stats aka 6-7%, which is not the same as losing half the total parry. You still get parry from ini and now there is a reason to not run as little ini as possible as the stat change earlier this year made it near usless compared to before where you had to run at least set amount to not get wrecked by debuffs due to non-linear scaling.

[Tetzou]

Moving parry from ws to ini is a good change and a needed one. 2h tanks were way to oppressive with good dmg and over the top defenses.
I can relate to mdps being concerned , i play em on both sides, but its a step in the right direction. Tanks will adjust stat focus and get decent parry again but it will cost dps, which is good. Trade 1 for the other. (However both Bo and Kotbs should get a speccable 15%-20% parry buff skill in their mastery).As its supposed to be. Wh/We will be slightly ahead in parry as a melee ,and for group play they need it to be fair. They have been lurking in the shadows for quite some time now ( group/wb play).
Sh/sw also shouldnt get 20%*parry for free, if you wanna be tanky, you need to invest in tanky stats and not offensive stats.

Combining crit is a great fix. Hybrids like Sw/sh makes interesting gameplay.

Last thing thats needed tho is event rings need to be able to be changed at a vendor. Plat for other plat, copper for copper etc. People invested alot of rl hours farming this. Let it not go to waste, it will infuriate the community.

[Farrul]

well i like to roam alone so no group buff but not a big deal ,luckily ib can self buff parry if needed,was just saying that half parry gone was not an exaggeration.can play sw ,squig or shaman dps and have fun farming people anyway.

Any toon with +600-700 WS took a huge blow to their defences, claiming something else is ridiculous and shows signs of the stockholm syndrome.

However sadly this mentality will plague the server, either players quit or they change into what works, as you so clearly put it , Ranged DPS.

[Garamore]

If the whole server goes ranged dps then the game doesn’t work. Yesterday in ostland had two sides standing at 100ft and any mdps that moved forward got evaporated.

[Florian90210]

rDPS meta will kill game fast. And it was getting ridiculous all this year, but balance team make it even worse nerfing mdps and buffing ranged. SW got huge buff with crit for both ranged and melee.
Balance team proved that they are not suitable for this work.

[Omegus]

SW got huge buff with crit for both ranged and melee.

Those in a single spec were already maxing out their stats. This change helps the few who might want to go hybrid and play into the stance swap a bit which doesn't change how well a fully specced rDPS could hit stuff from range. If anything, if you're going to try a hybrid spec then you might be giving up other important tactics.

[Lion1986]

Moving parry from ws to ini is a good change and a needed one. 2h tanks were way to oppressive with good dmg and over the top defenses.
I can relate to mdps being concerned , i play em on both sides, but its a step in the right direction. Tanks will adjust stat focus and get decent parry again but it will cost dps, which is good. Trade 1 for the other. (However both Bo and Kotbs should get a speccable 15%-20% party buff skill in their mastery).As its supposed to be. Wh/We will be slightly ahead in parry as a melee ,and for group play they need it to be fair. They have been lurking in the shadows for quite some time now ( group/wb play).
Sh/sw also shouldnt get 20%*parry for free, if you wanna be tanky, you need to invest in tanky stats and not offensive stats.

Combining crit is a great fix. Hybrids like Sw/sh makes interesting gameplay.

Last thing thats needed tho is event rings need to be able to be changed at a vendor. Plat for other plat, copper for copper etc. People invested alot of rl hours farming this. Let it not go to waste, it will infuriate the community.

totally approve this post.

[Omegus]

IMO Disrupt should be removed from Willpower and added to Toughness.

Willpower removal:
○ Willpower is not an outright damage stat but I would consider it an assist damage stat. The longer you keep your team alive the more damage is outputted.
○ If you are not a healer/hybrid there is no point in increasing this stat, limited number of classes utilizing the stat.
○ If we go by the same logic of Weapon Skill then you can't have a damage (assist damage) stat that also increases a defensive stat.

Toughness Addition:
○ This would make all defensive (disrupt, dodge, parry, block) belong to the two defensive stats in the game.
○ This would open Disrupt to more classes and add more variety to defensive builds.

So then what will be the difference between willpower and healing power? Currently 5 stats have a "main" and an "off" version, for lack of better terms:

1) Strength (main) and Melee Power (off). Both increase damage by the same amount but only Strength provides secondary bonuses on top.
2) Ballistic Skill (main) and Ranged Power (off). Both increase damage by the same amount but only Ballistic Skill provides secondary bonuses on top.
3) Intelligence (main) and Magic Power (off). Both increase damage by the same amount but only Intelligence provides secondary bonuses on top.
4) Toughness (main) and Fortitude (off). For the vast majority of the game both just reduced incoming damage and did nothing else, but recently Toughness now has a secondary bonus to differentiate it from Fortitude. Note that the Fortitude name is used twice - once for a stat and again for a renown buff.
5) Willpower (main) and Healing Power (off). Both increase healing by the same amount but only Willpower provides a secondary bonus on top.

What would you add to Willpower to make it different from Healing Power?


Additionally, by moving the Disrupt bonus from Willpower to Toughness then you still have non-melee avoidance split across two stats - bows/guns etc (ranged) on initiative, and then casters (magic) on toughness. The ranged/magic careers are not divided equally between order and destro due to the Magus/Engi so if this change went through then Order would IMO be under more stat pressure than destro, comparatively speaking:

Order: Toughness for Magus/Sorc (and Shaman/Zealot), Initiative for parry, reduced crit chance and dodge for Squig Herder.
Destro: Toughness for BW (and Archmage/Rune Priest), Initiative for parry, reduced crit chance and dodge for both Engineers and Shadow Warriors

Destro would get better overall defences from just dumping points in Initiative (which classes will now likely be doing a bit more anyway) which would give them avoidance against 7/8 primary DPS classes as well as reduced crit chance, while if Order did the same then they only get avoidance from 6/8 primary DPS classes.