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|  | Posted By: Matt Firor | 2003-06-03 08:25:40 |  |
| |  |  Here are the notes for Dark Age of Camelot version 1.62. As you can see, there are a lot of notes to read through that touch almost all aspects of the game: melee, pet classes, archers, newbie guilds, respecs, etc. As always, 1.62 is not the end of bug fixes and tweaks - we'll keep working on outstanding issues for 1.63 and beyond.
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Dark Age of Camelot
Version 1.62 Release Notes
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After a long development and testing cycle, here is Dark Age of Camelot version 1.62. It started out development as a "Hibernia tweak and bug fix patch", but quickly mushroomed into a general class balance and bug fixing patch. We've substantially updated/tweaked/adjusted light tanks, pet classes, archers, and made many more changes to other classes.
We know that there are more items to tweak and fix in the game, but we strongly feel that with 1.62, we've come a lot closer to bringing more balance to the game, as well as some needed new features. As always, there are more things to do, and we'll keep working on any outstanding bug fixes and balance issues as we do future patches.
A big Thank You must go out to the Team Leads who have been so helpful in providing feedback and testing for 1.62 as it has gone through the testing process. You should all be proud of yourselves.
Here's a list of just the major items we've addressed in 1.62:
- Many many tweaks and fixes to Hibernian classes. Yes, we know there are more to make in the future, but the list of items done for Hibernian classes in 1.62 is extensive.
- Addressed Realm Balance via the new /level command. Now, if you have a level 50 character on any server, you can create level 20 characters on any other server, and level 30 characters on specific Realms on different servers that we have determined to be underpopulated. We'll see how this affects Realm balance and make more changes as appropriate.
- Archers. Archers been given some extra tools to work with - Penetrating Arrow and Quick Shot.
- Addressed Left Axe combat style being very overpowered. Not a popular decision with Berserkers and Shadowzerks, but a good one for game balance.
- Addressed light tank issues. Mercenaries and Blademasters have had combat style damage increased on one chain each on their Dual Wield/Celtic Dual styles, as well as bleed damage from those styles that cause bleeding was increased across the board. Additionally their special abilities (Dirty Tricks and Triple Wield) have been made more attractive and useful.
- Implemented the "newbie guild" system on all live servers.
- Pet Classes. We made many enhancements and refinements to various pet classes from each Realm.
- Re-tuned several high-level encounters. Dragons in each Realm are now easier to kill, as is the final encounter in Galladoria (Hibernia, Shrouded Isles).
- Found the infamous "Block/Parry" bug and fixed it.
- Re-tuned the way Bolt spell damage is assessed. You should now see Bolt damages raised, especially when hitting lightly armored targets.
CLASS CHANGES AND 1.62
Because 1.62 has so many sweeping changes to so many classes, we are designating this a "class balance patch" and will be granting single line respecs to everyone in the game (level 5 and above) regardless of class or Realm.
Things to remember when using this type of "gift" single line respecs:
- YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN THE RESPEC IF if you already have 2 unused single respecs, or if your character has a full respec that you haven't used.
- THE RESPEC WILL BE STRIPPED FROM YOUR CHARACTER if you do not use it before the next time you level. If you want to use the respec, use it immediately after logging in; otherwise you risk leveling and losing the respec.
All Assassin classes in 1.62 who had the See Hidden Realm Ability will have that ability stripped from their character and have the points invested in it returned to them, for use in specializing in any other Realm Abilities they wish (including re-investing in See Hidden if they so choose).
NEW THINGS AND BUG FIXES
- We found and fixed the infamous "Block/Parry bug" - the one that caused players to block and parry less often when attacked by a grouped opponent. This change will have the most effect in RvR situations where you are fighting an opponent who is in a group. This fix will also fix an issue with opponents appearing to be "in melee" and having bolt spells fired at them blocked more often than intended.
- Bolt Spells in general have had their damage calculation modified so that now you should see damages slightly increased across the board, with much more damage inflicted against lightly armored (leather, cloth) opponents. Please note that this change is for RvR only - it does not affect bolt damage against monsters.
- Side Positional combat styles now will work an extra 15 degrees towards the rear of an opponent, and rear position styles work in a 60 degree arc rather than the original 90 degree standard. This change should even out the difficulty between side and rear positional combat styles, which have the same damage bonus. Please note that front positional styles are not affected by this change.
- We slightly adjusted combat style (and combat style only) bleed effects so that higher versions go above 7 damage on the initial "tick".
- /mbuy is now added to the command history (accessible by pressing Shift-Up Arrow)
- /clock now toggles display of a new window that shows the current time of day (real time, not game time)
- Renamed several keys in the keyboard config to make their use more clear.
- When you level, if your strength increases, your encumbrance will properly increase.
- For casters with concentration points, when you level, your concentration pool is now properly updated.
- You may now delve items in your vault to see additional information about them.
- All of the craft recipe windows now display your current skill level in the window title, for example: Armorcrafting (705).
- Deaths from DOTs cast by players (including assassin poisons) after the casting player has died and released or quit will no longer result in an experience loss death.
- All Nearsight spells now have a 1 minute immunity timer.
- There was a bug where Savage combat styles that hit more than one target were hitting multiple targets even when the opening for that particular style was not performed correctly. Now, you'll have to get the style off successfully (i.e. meet the opening criteria) in order to hit multiple targets.
- When salvaging cloth items, Clothworking will be checked now instead of Tailoring.
- If you had any items from your backpack on your quickbar (poisons, potions, etc) the quickbar icons would be deleted whenever you traded with another player. This is now fixed and the icons should remain on the quickbar and still point to the correct items in your backpack.
- You can now /face your pets.
- If you were far enough away from your pet for a long enough duration, sometimes your pet window would pick up another creature in the zone and start displaying its health. This will no longer happen -- if you are too far away from your pet for too long, the pet's health meter will now disappear completely. When you move back in range of your pet, the health meter will reappear with the correct information.
- (SI Only) Fixed a bug that was causing player hair/head textures to be drawn incorrectly on ATI Radeon 9000+ cards.
- (SI Only) The new Battlegrounds, Abermenai (BG0), should now have a splash screen picture when you are entering the zone.
- All monsters names whose names begin with a vowel should now use the article 'an' instead of 'a'.
- Many spell icons were set incorrectly - we've scrubbed through all of them and made many fixes and adjustments.
- Monsters should no longer target a necromancer in shade mode after the pet has been rooted.
- There was a bug when repairing an object directly from the trade window would display a timer bar with a "flashing" indicator bar. Now, repairing in the trade window should no longer give any repair timer bar - repair is instant, so no bar is needed.
- Specialization will now adjust the amount healed in heal over time spells.
- There was a bug on the PvP servers where some Bard pulsing songs would not take effect because of the immunity timer. This has been fixed.
- Alliances on the Co-Op server (Gaheris) will no longer be reset every time a new patch is launched.
Chat Tab Changes
You can now modify your chat tabs to change chat channels to talk in Alliance or Officer chat by default. When you change the outgoing chat type for a tab, the tab will now change names to reflect your choice.
Right click on the name of the tab group, and right click on the name of the message type that you would like to talk to. Your chat tab will change names to reflect this. You can set it to: Say, Broadcast, Group, Guild, Alliance Chat, Officer Chat, or Chat Group.
To control what messages are visible in this channel, check or uncheck the boxes to the left of the message type.
To change colors for a specific message type, click on the name of the message type and use the arrow buttons.
THE LIGHT TANK EXPLAINED
There's been a lot of discussion, controversy, and misunderstanding about light tanks in Dark Age of Camelot. One of the main requests we get is an explanation for what purpose a light tank serves in a group (both in PvE and RvR). In our definition, light tanks are Blademasters, Mercenaries, and Berserkers. There is a fuzzy line in some places (the Savage can also be considered a light tank) but for the purposes of this discussion, we're only talking about Blademasters, Mercenaries, and Berserkers.
The purpose the light tank was designed for was to be a damage dealer, but not have much defense. Because of this, they should not be a good one-on-one class, but they should be able to do a great amount of damage when not holding aggression from an enemy player or monster.
A way of illustrating this is that a Blademaster should not be able to go head to head (one on one) with an Armsman or Warrior (primary tank) and reliably win. However, a Blademaster and a Hero working together should be much more effective in dealing damage than two Heroes working together. The same holds true for the other Realms - A Mercenary should not be able to take on a Warrior head to head and win reliably, but a Mercenary/Armsman team should be quite effective. This is why the primary combat style chains for these light tanks are positional in nature - they assume that someone else is holding a monster or enemy player's aggression.
From reading this description, everyone familiar with these three classes will know that they deviate from the design goal in several different points. Berserkers do more damage, as they can (usually) go head to head with a same-level primary tank from an enemy realm and win. Those who play Blademasters and Mercenaries know that in RvR they can not only not go head-to-head with an enemy tank, but they are not even as effective as intended in tandem with another primary tank - two Armsmen or two Heroes are more effective than working with their Realm's light tank.
In light of this, we are making some changes in 1.62 to even the playing field. Mercenaries and Blademasters do less damage than they should, so in this update, we are increasing substantially the bleed damage on their high-spec level styles that have a bleed component, as well increasing the damage on some other styles. In addition, we're making some changes to Blademaster and Mercenary special abilities in this version - check out the "Class Updates" section below, for more details.
The Berserker being overpowered comes from the fact that Left Axe combat styles do too much damage overall, which makes them - as well as "Shadowzerks" - do more damage than they should. So, Left Axe style damage is being reduced to return Berserkers to be consistent with the light tank philosophy.
Blademaster Changes
- The Blademaster Triple Wield special ability has been updated. It is now on a 7 minute re-use timer (it was previously set to 30 minutes). It now will stack properly with other damage adds - it will always increase damage no matter what other buffs or damage adds are currently affecting the Blademaster. Triple Wield also now makes Blademasters immune to critical melee damage.
- The Ice Storm -> Tempest -> Supernova chain has been modified for Blademasters only (i.e. Rangers and Nightshades are not affected by this). The damage for each has been increased, and Ice Storm now has a short stun component.
- Increased bleed damage for Celtic Dual combat styles Tempest and Twin Star. This is a Blademaster ONLY change - other classes that receive Celtic Dual will not see increased bleed effects on these styles.
Mercenary Changes
- The Mercenary Dirty Tricks special ability is now on a 7 minute re-use timer (it was previously set to 30 minutes), and has changed in effect. It now activates a 30 second offensive proc effect on the Mercenary that applies a 10 second debuff on the Mercenary's target every time it is hit. This debuff gives the target a 50% chance to fumble all their melee attacks while under the debuff's effect.
- The damage for both styles in the Flank -> Shadow's Rain combat style chain has been increased for Mercenaries only (Infiltrators are not affected).
- Increased bleed damage for Dual Wield combat styles Dark Tendrils and Dual Shadows. This is a Mercenary ONLY change - other classes that receive Dual Wield will not see increased bleed effects on these styles.
- The Dual Wield combat style Dark Tendrils is now based off Parry for Mercenaries. Formerly it was based off Evade. Please note that Infiltrators will still have Evade as the opening for this style.
Left Axe Changes
- Reduced the damage done by Left Axe Combat Styles. This will affect both classes that can specialize in Left Axe (Berserkers and Shadowblades).
- Berserker Left Axe Snowsquall, Icy Brilliance, and Aurora Borealis have had their damage slightly increased (based on the new damage, see previous note) for the Berserker (only, this change will not affect the Shadowblade). Additionally, Aurora Borealis now chains off of Icy Brilliance and has a cold-based DD proc.
THE /LEVEL COMMAND
Dark Age of Camelot now supports creating new mid-level (20th level) characters for those players who have attained 50th level on any character on any server. In addition, we've flagged certain Realms on some servers as "underpopulated" - on those Realms, if you are eligible to use the /level command, you'll be able to create a new 30th level character.
Check the Camelot Herald at www.camelotherald.com for a list of Realms (by Server) where /level will grant you a level 30.
Once the flag is set, you can enter the game as a brand-new first level character with zero experience points. You must target your trainer and use the /LEVEL command to grant your player experience. You'll start with at least enough experience to raise to 20th level (30 on some Realms on some servers). You must go to your trainer and right click on him to gain levels.
Note that any existing character who is below the experience being granted can use the /level command. Use of this command will grant experience to reach level 20.5 or level 30.5
Please note that we can dynamically change what level (20 or 30) the /level command will grant you. When we decide to change a Realm's /level status, we'll make a post on the Herald to announce the change.
NEWBIE GUILDS
We've implemented the newbie guild system, so now all new characters will be pre-set in a guild. This is the same system that has been featured on the PvP servers for the last few months. Now, when you create a new character, you'll be placed in a guild that is based on your new character's starting location. This will give legitimately new players some community in their general starting area via guild chat and an easy way to meet up with like-level new players.
There are four guilds per Realm, each named based on the geographical location. You can remove yourself from the newbie guild by doing a "/gc quit" any time. Please note that you can technically remain in these guilds for the life of your character, should you choose to do so. Being automatically put in a guild at creation gives you an instant chat group and a sense of community with the other players around you. You can discard this guild at any time, and join a player-run guild when they you meet and are invited to the right guild.
HIBERNIA CLASS UPDATES
Valewalker Changes
- The Valewalker base melee ability has been increased. Valewalkers will now do more damage every time they hit a target with a melee weapon.
- Changed combat style Damaging Grasp to be a rear positional style to make it easier to use. Previously it was in a chain.
- Changed combat style Stunning Blade to have a to-hit bonus.
- Changed Valewalker Close Path line to a shout with a 20 second recast timer.
- Added Mystic Crystal Lore, Raging Power, Wild Power, and Wild Arcana to the Valewalker RA list.
- Many Valewalker spells had inconsistent icons. These have been fixed.
Animist Changes
- Animist pets will no longer attempt to attack monsters that are set as "no kill" - merchants, gatekeepers, etc.
- Animist pets will now target all enemy players. Previously they would not attack gray or purple enemy players.
- The line of sight check for ground target turret summon spells should now be done before the spell is cast. This should prevent animists from losing power when they attempt to cast a turret in an area they can't see.
- The "In Air" check on turret casts has been removed because all turrets should be created on the nearest point of ground. The "You can't cast this spell in the air!" message will not be seen as much now. However, there are still some (vastly reduced) situations where this message will erroneously appear. We will continue to work on this problem in future patches.
- Animist pets will target purple monsters. Previously they would not attack any monsters higher than red.
- Corrected an AI bug in the Essence of the Tree, Guardian Emissary, and Woodspirit Sheath bombers that was causing problems with buffing other targets.
- The Constraining Spirit line has had its range increased to 1500.
- The Grove's Assailant line will now display correct information when delved.
- Animist Turrets should no longer attempt to target things which are not in their line of sight.
- Many Animist spells had inconsistent icons. These have been fixed.
- Increased range of the Animist Dancing Spark line to 1500.
- The Ligneous Sheath line of turrets should now properly buff realm-mates within range of their melee buffer spell.
- The turrets summoned by the Vent of Elemental Resistance and Vent of Physical Resistance spell lines now must be killed normally. Previously, they would always die on the first instance of damage taken by an enemy.
- Please note that we are aware of additional Animist line of sight issues that have not been addressed in 1.62. These problems still affect, in some cases, pet and caster line of sight. We'll keep working on these issues in future Camelot versions.
Bard Changes
- Ameliorating Melodies now heals twice as much (its tick frequency was halved from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds).
- Rhythm of Hibernia, Rhyme of Earth, and Chant of Healing have all had their ranges increased to 2000.
- Added Dodger to the Bard RA list to give them the option of boosting their evasion chance while playing instruments.
- Bard Pulses on the PvP server should now work while their PvP immunity timer is up whether they're targeting themselves or not.
Warden Changes
- Added Mastery of Blocking, Wild Healing, and Mastery of Healing to the Warden's RA list.
- Increased the heal values on the Solar Conversion line, and increased the fatigue cost reduction on the Attack Unfading line. This is to give a reasonable reward for sacrificing martial skills for spec in Regrowth.
Eldritch Changes
- The Lesser Mana Ripple line has had its cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds, making it similar to PBAEs in the other realms.
- The spells Blank, Obliterate, and Extinguish Coordination have had a radius component added to them, making them similar to the Lesser Health Dispersal line.
- Reduced cast time of the Ethereal Concussion line to 2.6 seconds; this brings it in line with the Gleam Ray line.
- Added a baseline single-target strength debuff shout in Way of the Eclipse:
8 Cancel Strength
15 Negate Strength
21 Unmake Strength
29 Abrogate Strength
35 Void Strength
43 Vitiate Strength
50 Null Strength
- Added a baseline single-target dexterity debuff shout in Way of the Eclipse:
11 Void Snare
19 Void Net
25 Void Web
33 Void Clamp
40 Void Lock
48 Void Chains
- The Lesser Kinetic Dispersal line has had its attack speed debuff component replaced with a snare component.
- Eldritch class special RA Negative Maelstrom has had a cold resist debuff component added (and its base damage slightly reduced to compensate).
Enchanter Changes
- Tuned pet AI to allow pets to melee better while on the run.
- Raised threshold at which the underhill ally will heal.
- Changed underhill zealot AI so that it will no longer charge opponents instead of casting.
- Fixed underhill zealot's resist debuffing spell to properly debuff heat damage.
- Changed Dazzling Flash line to be a single target melee damage debuff.
Mentalist Changes
- Halved the round cost of the Illusory Enemy line.
- Decreased the cast time of the Delusion line to 3 seconds and increased the range to 1500.
- Changed the Curative Trance line to be a true Heal-over-time. It lasts 10 seconds, has a 2 second frequency, and has had its cost and healing amounts adjusted accordingly.
- Adjusted the costs of the Curative Trance. The new costs are:
10 Curative Trance 18
21 Restorative Trance 34
32 Healing Trance 47
43 Sanative Trance 58
Hero Change
- Stag Form ability is no longer usable while sitting. Hopefully this should eliminate some "misfires". It also now has an appropriate icon.
ARCHER NOTES
It's time to give Archer classes a bump in ability, as they have been somewhat left behind by the addition of many new abilities and spells in other classes. In this version, we attempt to bring the Archer back in line to be a fun to play class. However, it is not our intention to ever return the Archer to the sniping overpowered force that he was at Camelot's launch. These changes should make the Archer useful and fun, but not make him overpowered.
By "Archer", we are referring to the Hunter, Ranger, and Scout.
General Archer Notes
- We've adjusted the way we calculate fumbles for Archery. Archery attacks have always had fumbles calculated differently than regular melee attacks. We've reworked this part of the Archery fumble calculation to be more in line with the way melee fumbles work, meaning Archers should notice a substantial decrease in their fumble rates, somewhere on the order of 1/4 what they were.
- Camouflage timers will no longer be reset by PvE attacks. Only an attack by the Archer on another player or a pet or turret controlled by another player will reset the timer. Camouflage is designed to let the Archer scout in PvP situations, so PvE interactions should not affect its timer.
- We have seen complaints that Archers miss their targets at a higher rate then melee fighters. Please be aware that we have run extensive tests as well as looked at the formulas and have found the miss rates for Archers and melee are the same. We will continue to look into this as more reports and logs are generated by Archers, but for now there are no miss fixes.
- We have modified how the See Hidden ability interacts with Archer classes. We've varied the range that an assassin can see a non camouflaged hidden archer anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of the current range depending on the archer's stealth spec vs the assassin's level. On average this means that an assassin will have to be within about 1/2 the range that he can see the archer from compared to how the system works currently on the live servers.
Critical Shot Notes
- We've changed the way that aggression is calculated when Archers use Critical Shot against monsters. Now, aggro generated from damage done by a Critical Shot is divided among all group members of the Archer. Please note that the Archer will still get a fraction more damage than any other group member, but it will now be much easier to pull the monster off the Archer once it has been hit by a Critical Shot. This should make Archers one of the better monster "pull331d
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