Alright, another update. Mike got swept up with some other duties so instead you get me.
As I hinted at in yesterday's post, there's a whole other portion of the upcoming patch I haven't even touched on yet. Based on your feedback and that of a crack squad of our inhouse QA and design specialists, we decided to pursue a major
combat balance pass as a part of this patch. A handful of these are outright bug fixes but the bulk are actually subtle enhancements that really improve the feel and flow of combat and character progression, making your tactical/strategic decisions more important and your characters more responsive.
No doubt some aspects of this balance pass will prove controversial but the feedback we received from our in-house and external testers has been extremely positive. The game feels more tense, engaging, and fun as a result of these changes going in. Once again, the patch notes will cover this in greater detail but here's a summary of what you can expect:
- General Improvements - We've slowed the initial pace of enemies at the start of combat, allowing tactical positioning to play a more useful and important role. They also generally gain more health as the game progresses, they're less likely to explode into puddles of blood and gore all the time and their basic attacks are less likely to cause interruptions. Likewise, party members now resume their previous actions once interrupted so you don't have to micromanage them as much and ask them to swig that potion more than once. That said, silence effects and disruptions to stealth have been beefed up a little, making those rarer sorts of interruptions play a more critical role. Enemy commanders are also a little smarter, throwing stun grenades while encouraging their troops to concentrate on a single target. And elemental resistances actually cap out at 95% now, meaning no one can be fully immune to a given damage type.
- Warriors - Overall, warriors were a little more powerful than we wanted them to be, making combat a bit of a cakewalk for these players. The bulk of this had to do with how frequently various abilities were applying the Stagger effect so a lot of our efforts were focused on scaling that frequency back a little (we also reduced other classes' ability to take advantage of the Stagger effect as well). The costs and effectiveness of a few abilities were also tweaked and we increased the effectiveness of some of the threat generation abilities. The effectiveness of abilities like Berzerk were also made more effective.
- Rogues - Rogues, on the other hand, were still a little weaker than we wanted. They'll now regenerate stamina more quickly while performing basic attacks, we've increased the damage of some abilities, and we've made it easier for them to disorient their opponents and reduce their threat levels. We did lengthen some of the cooldowns, however.
- Mages - Mages were a bit of a mixed bag and it was very easy for them to unintentionally evolve into glass cannons - powerful but finicky and fragile. Part of this was due to disparity between their different ability chains and upgrade paths, for instance, with some being obviously underpowered and others over-powered. We wanted to make them a little more forgiving and easier to play while also achieving a more even balance between the different upgrade paths. We juggled the damage and duration of a bunch of offensive abilities up and down to achieve that balance while also making their defensive abilities a little more poweful.
Finally, some updates of what to expect next week. Thanks to the Sony Europe team pushing really hard on the patch, it looks like they'll actually be the first across the finish line. They expect the patch to launch sometime on Monday, May 30th. Microsoft has also been hard at work, and they are expecting the X360 Title Update to launch on Tuesday, May 31.
PC, Mac, and Sony North America remain unconfirmed at this time but we'll keep you posted as we learn more.
Thanks again, everyone, and enjoy your weekend!
Rob
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