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AC2 is one of my favourite hobbies and you can find me on CE server. Here are some news:

Aug 14, 2004

AUGUST GUIDE

SKILL CHANGES

Please see Citan's Letter to the Players regarding the August skill balancing changes.

ITEM CHANGES

Behemorn Gigurath are oily once again and will provide plenty of it for the Ice Fire quest.

Tumerok bone armor can now be dyed.

Ebon Pyreals were dropping too frequently; the drop rate has been reduced.

The Adept Insight Jewel found in Theoter's Chest now posesses more detailed information about the effect it adds to the Guardian of Dereth robe.

The seals for the Cacophos Quest now last in the player's inventory for 4 hours instead of 1 hour.

Golden Age swords are no longer restricted to Humans only.

Shield vigor costs have been reduced (This includes crafted shields).

Incomparable items will appear less often in troves and sigil chests.

The Sanguine Fang Unguent has been given a new icon.

CONTENT CHANGES

The time limit on Ludward's Nightmare has been increased from 12 in-game hours to 36.

Fellowship propagation of the Kingdom Raid Quests and Fate of the Scholars Quest are no longer level-restricted (They are still distance restricted - fellowship members must stay with the group!)

The Omishan Portal Blowout Quest XP awards have been increased from 35,000 to 95,000 (lvl 30) and 45,000 to 135,000 (lvl 35).

The Dereth Rally may now be located on the in-game map.

Reinforced boots no longer provide an unfair speed boost in the Dereth Rally.

CRAFTING CHANGES

Refining skills will now give 1% of earned CXP to the "General" pool, and the rest will go directly towards the skill.

Each Refining category now has an additional spinner-driven recipe that allows players to set recipe quantity.

Surveyors will now receive separate messages depending on if they 1) have not moved far enough since the last check, or 2) are not any closer to the target since the last check.

Lugians were butchering too quietly.

Butchery effects added for all Gore modes including "Fun" mode.

Certain high-level Gurog could not be butchered. They can be now.

Voltaic Energy, the Alchemist Adept skill bonus effect, is now extractable.

Shreth Bane is no longer extractable.

MISCELLANEOUS CHANGES & FIXES

We've removed the physics from some items that players were perching on to kill monsters.

Some Aura buffs were not dispelling when players logged out or were dismissed from a fellowship. Fixed.

Spellcraft is now displayed for Aura buffs.

The Slithis Energy Beam will no longer enrage the Dark Emissary in the Heart of Darkness.

Aug 04,2004

REBALANCING ANNOUNCEMENT

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.)

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 *****ed 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, *****ed up. So let's make that implicit understanding very explicit. We *****ed 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.

July 27, 2004

REBALANCING VANGUARD FORUM - HEHE ;P

Hi folks. As the Skills Team knows, we're doing our one and only round of general-class rebalancing in August. As usual, I'm so sick of looking at this document that I haven't even re-read it yet. I'm sure there's stuff in here that isn't worded very well...

So please give feedback on this! I'm looking for poor wording, sure. But I also want you to ask any questions you think regular players will ask. I'll attempt to answer those questions in the revision.

Note that the nerfs are different from what we'd talked about earlier in the Skills Forum. This is largely due to your feedback.

Introduction

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 subtle modifications. None of them will change the way you play the game.

Of course, nearly all of the changes are buffs. But even when buffing, we are also trying to be surgically precise. We've had trouble where classes swing back and forth between too being too powerful and being too weak - that has to stop. So, both our buffs and our nerfs are conservative. Just enough to get the job done, hopefully.

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, this 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.

(September is sort of like an extension of August in this regard, actually - the accuracy improvements we wanted to do in August will end up happening in September instead, and September will also see the introduction of the Hero 2.0 system.)

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.

Eater Tokens (actual name TBD)

Now let's talk about individual classes. But before we do, let me explain Eater Tokens. These are tokens that can be given to an Eater of Souls, for a free single skill sellback. We are using Eater 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 classes, but the option is at least there. And if not, hey, 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 Tokens to match the severity of their nerfs. You can use an Eater 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 manner of problems: people mess up their templates by overclicking, they experiment too quickly and buy up skills they hate, 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 for technical reasons. Such is the case with the Invoker - because 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.

Okay, NOW let's talk about individual classes.

Bounty Hunter

Ever since we gave the Bounty Hunter the dual-wielding ability of the Ranger, people have been asking for dual-wielding attacks. 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. They are hardly chumps in their current format; in fact, they do reasonably well at killing things when compared to other shield-wielding classes. But that's the thing - shield-wielding is their best mode. It's not all that practical to be a dual-wielding Bounty Hunter, because the Sword and Shield mode is better for most all occasions.

Let's look at why. There are two main causes. The first issue 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 some more power while dual-wielding, we were unable to do much due to the technology. There was a restriction that a skill had a fixed number of hits. That meant that if we made their skills do two hits, they would also get 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 and overdo it, though... these extra attacks won't get bonus damage.

The other thing that makes dual-wielding Bounty Hunters less impressive than they could be is that Bounty Hunters lack a combat speed buff. A combat speed buff lets them amplify the advantage of their multiple attacks much more noticeably. Under normal circumstances, given typical internet latency, a single-wielder might get about 45 auto-attacks per minute, while a dual-wielder gets 65-70 per minute. This is a reasonable improvement, but when you speed up their attack rate, look out! Dual-wielders get much more out of combat-speed increases than single-wielders do. So we'll be giving Bounty Hunters a moderate combat speed increase.

Sprint: becomes Nimble: this skill still provides a run-speed buff. It now also provides a combat speed increase of 5% (L1) - 30% (L50). It still cannot be raised above 50. This is a 2/5 skill.

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 still a strong number of Defenders, and for good reason. They solo well, play a decent role in groups, and are really, really hard to kill. The very-high-end game causes 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 aren't really that bad at taunting... in a perfect world, where damage-dealers aren't overpowered, they can keep up most of the time, at least until the later hero levels. But eventually, late in the 50s, their reliance on base-tree taunts causes them to become less capable of taunting. Easy enough fix... we'll make the base tree taunts take their Adept into effect!

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

While we're there, 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/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.

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:

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. Not practically immune like they were before, but still - at least now they can fight back.

Next, a very tiny improvement to Mighty Blow:

Mighty Blow: The vigor cost of this skill becomes 400 instead of 450.

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) - 150 (L150) armor to the targeted shield. Previously it added 5 (L1) - 100 (L50) - 150 (L150).

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

Level and Skill Level: Old Armor Boost: New Armor Boost:

L20 43 (capped to 22) 20 (not capped - cap is 25)

L25 52 (capped to 34) 25 (not capped - cap is 39)

L30 62 (capped to 53) 40 (not capped - cap is 60)

L35 71 (not capped - cap is 7 55 (not capped - cap is 83)

L40 81 (not capped - cap is 112) 70 (not capped - cap is 118)

L50 100 (not capped - cap is 220) 100 (not capped - cap is 224)

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 much 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.

Alchemist

The ironic trouble with improving Alchemists is that so few people play them. We can't really observe them in the wild very well, because they're nearly extinct. There are still some Alchemists out there (who do quite well for themselves I might add), so we are able to get some qualitative feedback - but it's slower going than many other classes.

So we're still watching this class, and will be able to make more knowledgeable changes next time around. For now, we're only comfortable with a few changes.

Blight: This skill has been using the wrong experience-cost table, causing it to cost far more than 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.)

Furor: This skill now does two 12 (L1) - 260 (L50) - 780 (L150) attacks (instead of 7-200-600 attacks). The reset time becomes 4 seconds instead of 1. Vigor cost becomes 170 instead of 140.

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

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.

And 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 at least 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.

We like the idea of all melee-range damage-dealers having easy access to a detaunt. The Alchemist already had rather easy access to this skill, but this change makes it a bit more appealing for the high level Alchemist, since high levels are when it's really needed.

Ranger

Rangers are a bit underpowered compared to the top tier classes, but they really aren't that bad off. The biggest trouble with them is that, as a ranged class, they have trouble hitting their targets. 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.

That is the only change to the Ranger's damage-dealing potential at this time. However, there are some other improvements:

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

Symbiosis, Rabies, Toughen Hide: these skills are now Area-of-effect 20m skills. This means that you don't have to target the Lasher in order to affect him with this skill. However, the range has been reduced to 20m for technical reasons.

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.

Enchanter

This class is working great. 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). This improves its usefulness.

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

This class's total power is greater than most 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 too much over the bar. So you'll see other classes gaining power so that they can compete with Sorcerers.

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

Feral Intendant

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 very buggy, and resulted in much 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 only slightly less godlike 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. After five separate nerf passes they are still the most powerful class in the game, and are too powerful for the content.

So we got it very wrong. I wish we had delayed the previous update, because I knew it was bad two days before the update shipped, but it was impossible to stop the update from happening. Well, that's not going to happen again. I may not have been able to stop an update from happening back then, but I can now! And more importantly, so can any member of this team, at any time. Last year it would have taken an act of God to stop a monthly update, or even to pull major features out of an update. We had a contract with Microsoft wherein we had to deliver an update every month, and had to deliver certain amounts of things. So we did, come hell or high water. But that isn't the case any more - and we have to be more dedicated to quality, not just quantity. Who was it that said, "A late update is only late until it ships, but a bad update is bad forever?" I guess I'm paraphrasing... Anyway, we've learned now how to make sure quality comes first. We no longer even guarantee that there'll be an update every month! Our new ads copy says "an update nearly every month," well, that's just hedging our bets. If an update really stinks, we won't ship it just for the hell of it. We'll fix it, and if it gets delayed into the next month, then so be it.

Got side tracked there. So back on track: What it boils down to is, we screwed up big time. A lot of you knew it a week before we even shipped the update, based on the plans we'd proposed; we took to long to realize, and knew it only a few days before we shipped; and everybody knows it by now. I think this has been the biggest blunder we've made in regard to skills, and I'm truly sorry, on behalf of the skills team.

We're no longer interested in balancing the Feral Intendant so that other classes can keep up. As you've seen elsewhere in this letter, we're happy to buff other classes instead. However, Ferals are too powerful in content as well, and this is what we are aiming to correct in August. We'll also improve a few aspects so that their role is more honed.

First, let's talk about Lumbering Might. Easily the most broken skill in the game. I remember, right before the update shipped, I read several player posts that said, "We get 600 extra health on top of the armor? Are they crazy?!" And just nodding sadly and drinking. It was a heavy drinking sort of night. 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, right? So why doesn't Lumbering Might do the same? Because EoM doesn't really give you that much shield armor. All through 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, well, it 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.

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 just doesn't make sense to switch before then, because the buff from Lumbering Might is so great that it overrides anything else out there.

We also need to tone down its power level at L50. 600 health at level 50? What were we thinking? Well, we were thinking that on paper this balances out with +100 damage. That's what Emblem of Might gives you: +100 damage at level 50. But that's Shield Damage. Shields do less damage inherently, and there are no shield auto-attacks; this is why Emblem of Might can raise it so high without being too overpowered.

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 10 (L1) - 50 (L25) - 200 (L50) - 600 (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.

^ Note, mid-point scales are still being worked on; those are not necessarily final.

So now it's much better balanced at lower levels, and it gives only 200 health at level 50 instead of 600. This is much closer to how reality should look! But a more serious concern is their damage dealing ability. There's no denying the power of a Feral Intendant; through a potent damage-dealing pet and big-damage attack skills, they are just too powerful at killing things.

Reave: vigor cost becomes 170 (instead of 140).

Rampage: vigor cost becomes 280 (instead of 220).

Reap: vigor cost becomes 240 (instead of 200).

Another stupid mistake was giving Soft Underbelly a tiny vigor cost. Its cost is based on the idea that it taunts 20% and does a small armor debuff - 80 vigor cost is appropriate for that. However, Soft Underbelly is also an attack! This is unlike all other major taunts in the game. Rather than raise the vigor cost to 220, we're removing the attack from Soft Underbelly:

Soft Underbelly: this skill no longer does damage. It only taunts the opponent and reduces their armor.

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 - there are almost no LotP Ferals now. And really, trying to make this skill compete with Lumbering Might is a losing proposition. We're tossing the whole skill and redoing it:

Leader of the Pack: this skill is now a toggle 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 10% (L1) to 30% (L50), and increases combat speed by 1% (L1) to 10% (L50). These increases do not stack with other buffs.

This skill should now be worth buying, without being overpowered. We also have a couple of base-tree boosts:

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

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

Improving Growl increases their taunting power. And improving Hunger increases their staying power, but in a more acceptable way than just giving them too many hit points. These are skills that nearly all Ferals have anyway, so it's nothing but helpful, and should help to take some of the sting out of the nerfs.

Level 20 or below: 1 token

Level 21-30: 2 tokens

Level 31-35: 3 tokens

Level 36-44: 4 tokens

Level 45+: 5 tokens

Zealot

The Zealot is an interesting class, but a bit underwhelming, especially at lower levels. The Zealot tree has lots of minor issues; we'll make some tweaks to improve things. 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.

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.

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 it's dumb to choose any other Tumerok melee class. 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. 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 rather overpowered compared to other missile classes. But we'll take care of that by buffing other classes. They're also overpowered compared to monsters... so there are some minor nerfs in store here.

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 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, a regrettable mutation of the skill. 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 - all of their debuffs are melee range. So 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 has a two minute duration for this reason. If you manage 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 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 changes the play entirely.

We've decided that this skill is now easy enough to use that it doesn't merit having an ultra-long debuff timer. It really gives them too much advantage over monsters now.

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

The Claw Bearer is still a bit above other classes. However, we'll be buffing the Raider and Ranger soon by giving them better projectile accuracy. This should even the gap pretty nicely.

Level 30 or below: 1 token

Level 31-40: 2 tokens

Level 41+: 3 tokens

Hive Keeper

The Hive Keeper is a quality class that is about right in power level. They have their own play style, and those who are good at it are able to solo with surprising ability, yet provide strong damage 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 (2/lvl instead of 3) 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

Healer

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

First, let's address the soloing issues. In order to be able to solo, of course 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 slightly 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:

Eye of the Storm: 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. Damage increases to 7 (L1) - 200 (L50) - 600 (L150).

Compound Fracture: this skill now takes full advantage of Healer Adept. It becomes more accurate with each point of Healer Adept skill. (Insert new vigor cost here)

This at least gives Healers a reason to buy their Adept skill. It also provides a bit of assistance in 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.

Juggernaut

This class came out very nicely after the most recent changes. They have their own style, and great damage-dealing capacity. They're fairly fun to play.

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

Berserker

The Berserker is also in for some shake-ups, but also (perhaps surprisingly) some improvements. They are an amazing damage dealer; this is fine, we can bring other damage dealers up to around this level. What causes us more trouble is their soloing ability - their area-of-effect combo change is just too good for soloing. There's no solo monster anywhere that can stand up against 120 attacks per minute. Now, it would be one thing if they could only insta-kill one solo monster at a time; this is impressive, but what causes the trouble is that they can actually insta-kill a whole bunch of monsters at once.

So the area-of-effect line is being toned down. The reset times are being doubled. Not really the end of the world. This still allows an average of 60 AoE attacks per minute, which is far, far more than any other class. (The next best class gets 24 AoE's per minute.) To reiterate, this nerf isn't an attempt to make the Berserker balanced with other classes - this is to help us make solo content that is at least vaguely challenging to the Berserker.

Circle of Pain: the reset time on this skill becomes 20 secs (instead of 10 secs)

Wheel of Pain: the reset time on this skill becomes 10 secs (instead of 5 secs)

Storm of Pain: the reset time on this skill becomes 10 secs (instead of 5 secs)

Vortex of Pain: the reset time on this skill becomes 10 secs (instead of 5 secs)

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 ___ (TBD)

Expel: becomes ___ (TBD). This skill does 12 (L1) - 260 (L50) - 780 (L150) bonus damage. It does not cause any agro - the monster doesn't calculate this damage into its hate levels. Vigor cost becomes 170 (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.

Raider

A solid class. When the accuracy-improving technology is available, Raiders will get it, also. This will mean that it's harder to Miss your targets due to dodging and weaving. That improvement will be in September, tentatively - it doesn't look like it will make it in for August. Aside from that change, there are a couple other minor improvements:

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).

In addition, the Berserker 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 29 or below: 1 token

Level 30-35: 2 tokens

Level 36-40: 3 tokens

Level 41-50: 4 tokens

Tactician

This is the hardest class to balance, as it's a totally different play dynamic. In our last Tactician update, we tried to move Tacticians 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 these days 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 cost here, and reducing the cost of Armor-Piercing ammo. That's the only significant change at this time.

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).

Also, the hammer-oriented Tactician gets a little bit of love:

Dust Devil: this skill now takes advantage of Tactician Adept; its accuracy increases with each attack.

All tacticians will receive one Eater 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. 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.

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. The main cause of trouble is Enrage Elemental - it gives even the puniest of Sand pets

We've decided that the crux of the problem is that the pets, though fragile at higher levels, can always deal an incredible amount of 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 2 armor/level before 50 (instead of 1 armor/level), and 3 armor/level after 50 (instead of 1 armor/level).

Volcanic Rift: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 2 armor/level before 50 (instead of 1 armor/level), and 3 armor/level after 50 (instead of 1 armor/level).

Hurricane: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 2 armor/level before 50 (instead of 1 armor/level), and 3 armor/level after 50 (instead of 1 armor/level).

Incendiary Cloud: Gains 20 health/level after 50 (instead of 10 health/level). Gains 2 armor/level before 50 (instead of 1 armor/level), and 3 armor/level after 50 (instead of 1 armor/level).

Damage-centric Elementalists are also improved in ability:

Earthquake: this skill now takes advantage of Elementalist Adept; its accuracy increases with each attack.

Detonate: this skill now takes advantage of Elementalist Adept; its accuracy increases with each attack.

Level 30 or below: 1 token

Level 31-40: 2 tokens

Level 41+: 3 tokens

Sage

The Sage is very effective, and very potent. Not too many complaints about this guy. In fact, we're leaving the class completely alone, except for a bug fix:

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

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. I'm sorry.