THE HERALD

Relic Guard Dynamic Scaling
 

• Based on feedback and in an effort to make keeps and a small number of relics easier to defend for outnumbered populations as well as to reduce the difficulty of attacking realms that hold 5+ relics, all Elite Relic guards, relic temple guards, and the normal but high-purple con “Elder” guards will now scale their difficulty up and down depending on how many relics a realm holds.
  • Realms only holding 0-1 relics will see the highest difficulty guards defending their realms keeps and relic temples.
  • Realms with 2 relics will see little to no change from current guard difficulties.
  • Realms holding 3 or 4 relics will have slightly less powerful but still red-purple guards defending their keeps and relic temples.
  • Realms holding 5 or more relics will have significantly less powerful, orange-red guards defending their keeps and relic temples.
• Currently the number of guards spawned will not change but this is another lever we can investigate if the above changes do not go far enough in addressing these concerns.

Climbing-Spikes adjustment

• Based on feedback and in an effort to allow other class archetypes room to shine in keep sieges, the following changes have been made to heavy tank climbing spikes:
  • Hero, Warrior, and Armsmans’ climbing spikes ability has had its cooldown increased from 60 seconds to 3 minutes.
    • Additionally, a new debuff lasting 45 seconds is fired when climbing-spikes is initiated that increases damage the Hero, Warrior, or Armsman takes by 15% from all sources.

Protection Obelisk and Keep Upgrade System

• A new system’s first pass has been implemented that will enable players to upgrade specific aspects of a specific keep to better tailor its defense as well as to get more use out of keeps their realm owns.
• Each feature will be added individually so that game and siege balance can be observed with these new dynamics one at a time.
• Keep Upgrades will be purchasable at the new Master Stone Mason NPC to the left of the staircase in each realm’s inner keep.
  • Please note that this feature is only available in New Frontier keeps and is not available in any tower or Knoc Meayll’s keep.
• The first keep upgrade available is a Protection Obelisk that can be purchased for bounty points.
  • This obelisk spawns to the right of the staircase on the main floor of the inner keep. 
  • When the Protection Obelisk is spawned, keep defenders can right-click their keep lord to receive a significant damage reduction buff so long as they stay in the inner keep’s lord room or roof area.
    • Leaving those areas will result in the buff being removed though players can simply revisit their lord to get the buff again.
    • Like relic guards, the effectiveness of this buff will scale based on the number of relics your realm owns.
      • Realms with 5+ relics cannot obtain this buff.
      • Realms with 3-4 relics receive a 25% damage reduction buff when staying within the lord room or keep roof areas.
      • Realms with 2 relics receive a 50% damage reduction buff when staying within the lord room or keep roof areas.
      • Realms with 0-1 relics receive a 75% damage reduction buff when staying within the lord room or keep roof areas.
  • The aim of this upgrade is to improve the ability for defenders stuck inside the inner keep to take more risks and be less fearful of attacks by attackers in the courtyard.
  • Additionally, we hope to see more dynamic battles in and around the 1st floor of the inner keep as enemy realms will want to destroy the Protection Obelisk before advancing into the lord room and facing significant damage reduction buffs on their enemies while defenders will want to maintain this advantage.
• We very much look forward to observing how this first upgrade fares and what new tactics we may see out in the Frontiers!
  • There are several other additional keep upgrades being discussed as well as more ways to redeem the upgrades – by completing myriad gathering quests around the frontier – so stay tuned!

Relic and Keep Reset

• All of the above notes are now live but in order to facilitate these new changes and dynamics all keeps and relics will be reverted to their default state at 11 AM EST / 4 PM GMT tomorrow, December 18th.

Update: Maintenance complete! The Account Center is now available.

Update: In-game Mithril transactions are once again online. Account Center maintenance remains underway.

The Ywain server is back online after experiencing some hosting issues this morning.

The Account Center will be down for maintenance today from 10 AM EST / 3 PM GMT for an estimated 6 hours.

During this downtime the Account Center and its related services as well as in-game Mithril purchases will be unavailable.

Time for this week’s Grab Bag!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue on to the questions! 

Do bonedancer pets benefit from the Leadership ML ability?

Yes, all pets benefit from the Leadership ability. The effect is hard to notice but in general the “floor” of their damage variance should be a bit higher when they have the Leadership buff than not.

How close (in terms of units) does an enchanter have to be to its pet to get the benefit of its rank 5?

The Enchanter’s pet needs to be in visible range of the Enchanter, which is around 4,000 units typically. This can also be gauged by the pet’s health bar displaying on the pet window.

Hello,
I was wondering if spell duration would work on an assassin’s poisons.
I am mainly wondering for poison mezz, snare and dot. Will 25% spell duration provide a +2sec to last mezz/snare poison? Will it provide an additional tick to the dot?

Snare, DoT, and Mezz poisons are not affected by duration bonuses at all. However the other Envenom abilities like the melee damage% debuff and weaponskill/constitution debuff are affected by +duration gear.

Does ameliorating melodies get a 25% spec bonus to the heal over time value like other hots and heals in the game?

No, since Ameliorating Melodies is a Realm Ability, it does not receive a specialization bonus. Further, like all other heal-over-time (HoTs), it also does not benefit from the +25% to healing stat bonus.

In a Grab Bag a few months ago you confirmed that when players are grouped they receive a bonus to RPs gained per kill, while solo players get no bonus i.e. if a player is worth 4k RPs solo, and they are killed by 8 grouped players, then they are worth significantly more RPs split amongst 8 players and they will receive around let’s say 700 RPs each (which would be 5600 total RPs)… As it stands now there is an incentive for grouped players to seek out and kill solo players, potentially ruining the experience of those trying to play solo and there is no “risk vs. reward” when soloing..
Would Broadsword ever consider boosting RPs for solo players?

We are currently taking a look at realm point incentives for all playstyles to try and create a more competitive atmosphere in-game where players are highly rewarded for fighting equal or greater numbers and less rewarded otherwise. We also are aiming to better encourage players who fight against the odds to continue to do so even if the odds remain stacked against them!

Enjoy the weekend all, and Happy Thanksgiving to all our American players! 🙂

Don’t forget to collect turkey legs!

Nothing to count in this Grab Bag!

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions! 

Is there a cap for crowd control decrease % from items and does it stack with the RA Determination? I have 16% in my template and was wondering how much Det. one would need to meet any caps.

Mythical Crowd Control is capped at 25% though it is unlikely to ever be able to reach 25% from the currently available items. It does stack with the Determination realm ability.

Can you debuff racial resist?

Yes, racial resists are affected by magic resist debuff spells. Resists from magic resist buffs and from item bonuses are affected by resist debuffs and racial resists count as “magic resist buffs”.

Hey guys! So my buffbot has the astral cloth legs on, which when used gives “Stars of protection” which is a 5% all magic resist buff, with 30 min duration. However when I have that buff up, and I use an 10% AoM charge, from for example Curative sash of the vigilant, the 10% overwrites the 5%, even though the 5% is 30 min duration, and the 10% is just 10 min duration, is this working as intended, or can they be made to coexist? Thx in advance.

This is working as intended as a higher delve (10% vs 5% in this case) will always overwrite a lower delve version of the same spell type.  Item-based magic resist buffs are not meant to co-exist with other item-based magic resist buffs, only other class-based ones.

Hi, is there any way to know when your account reaches its “next year” for the subscription rewards?

We have a display on the Account Center that shows which rewards your account is currently eligible to receive. In the future we will update this display to show how many months are remaining until the next threshold. For now, you may submit an email to support@darkageofcamelot.com requesting to know how many months are left until the next year’s reward is unlocked but we ask for your patience as these are not our highest priority tickets to respond to.

Would it make more sense to leave the RP/kill as is and instead of boosting the underpopulated realm, give the overpopulated realm a deficit to RPs earned? Instead of the lower realm making +40%, the higher realm would be at -40%. The timers don’t do anything for the zergs as they know when to stop when the zerg leaders log in.

We’ll certainly take this under consideration. In general we would prefer to always positively incentivize actions instead of punish players for wanting to play a certain way or on a certain realm. That said, we also want the game to be as fun as possible for all players, playstyles, and realms and look forward to hearing and discussing more of this sort of feedback from the entire playerbase!

Enjoy the weekend everyone 🙂
 

Welcome to the Grab Bag!

Reminder! For the day before, of, and after Halloween itself, costume potions will work in the frontiers! I hope everyone has their RvR costumes planned 🙂 

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions! 

Does the Dread Lord AF debuff stack with the Warlocks AF Debuff? plus the dread commander is doing more damage then the dread lord with 2h axe and the dread lords af debuff is not working.

The Bonedancer’s Dread Lord pet does not have an Armor Factor debuff ability but fossil guardian sub-pets do. Their AF does not stack with the Warlock AF debuff; the highest AF debuff delve will remain or overwrite the lower version if both are applied.

As for damage comparisons between different pets and different weapons, each pet has its pros and cons. A dread lord automatically fully-buffs itself, can control more sub-pets, and takes less damage than a dread commander due to its higher level while the dread commander deals more in melee damage if fully buffed.

What is crossbow damaged based off of?

The Armsman’s dexterity stat, the crossbow’s damage and weapon speed values, and the crossbow bolt’s damage type.

How do minstrel timered songs (celerity, magic resists, range) and insta “buffs” (siege damage reduction, ablative) interact with pet charm, flute mezz, and other songs?

In terms of the number of pulsing chants or songs up at once, the timered songs and instant chants same cap of 8 concurrent pulsing abilities with the normal songs like movement speed, health regen, etc. Only 8 of them can be active at once, with the oldest-cast song or chant dropping when an 8th song or chant is newly cast.

In terms of interacting with each other, instant chants like the pet charm, siege damage reduction, and ablative do not require an instrument to cast and therefore do not interfere with any of the pulsing songs. A minstrel can start or stop a chant and swap weapons without the chant dropping. Casting a chant will also not cause any songs to cease (unless the chant puts them over the limit of 8 concurrent pulses).

However, songs (timered songs or normal ones) like the magic resistances, mezz, or movement speed buff all act the same way in that they require an instrument to cast.

Swapping away from an instrument to a weapon will cause all *normal* songs to stop (not chants or timered songs) and need to be re-initiated unless the minstrel swaps back to their instrument before the song refreshes (very hard to do most of the time). The reason timered songs do not stop when swapping to a weapon is simply because timered songs do not automatically refresh and only require the instrument to be equipped on initial cast.

Years ago it was rumored that mastery of pain RA increases the floor percentages for crits while in zerk mode (thereby critting for more damage), is this true?

Mastery of pain simply increases the chance to critical hit; it does not influence the damage dealt by a critical hit in any way.

Berserk mode does two things:

1. It guarantees critical hits on every swing.
2. It raises the ceiling of critical hits’ damage up to a potential 100% of the damage dealt by the melee swing, instead of the normal 50% cap.

The floor for all critical melee hits’ damage is 10% of the original damage, which you will still see in Berserk.

Is parry affected by multiple attackers and by how much? What about evade? How does the number of attackers blocked for large/medium/small shield come into play? For example, for a large shield, is it 3 attackers able to be blocked per attack round? every single second? How do additional attackers reduce block?

Combat checks are done from the attacker’s perspective not the defender’s. The order checks are done is as follows:  the target’s Evade, Parry, then Block (and Guard if they are guarded) chance, then the attacker’s fumble then miss chances, and finally the target’s bladeturn. The chance to block is capped at 60% and the chances to evade and parry are capped at 50%.

In RvR combat…

Multiple attackers do not penalize a target’s chance to parry OR evade so long as the attackers are in the frontal arc for parry and standard evades. The caveat to this with evade is that dual-wield attackers will halve their chance to be evaded (not the chance for other attackers).

The frontal arc is defined as 120 degrees for parries and standard evades and 180 degrees for blocks; with advanced evade working in a 360 degree arc.

For block, the number of attackers in the frontal arc does not directly reduce the block rate either, with the caveat that the target’s shield size limits how many of the attackers will face a block check at all.

Small shields can block up to 1, medium shields 2, and large shields up to 3 attackers.

For example, if 5 attackers are swinging in the frontal arc of a target wielding a large shield, each attacker will calculate through those combat checks separately at the time of their melee swing. 3 of the 5 attackers will have a chance to be blocked while 2 of the 5 will never be blocked. Which 3 attackers are blocked and which 2 are not is not always the same, but if a target wielding a large shield blocks 3 attackers in the same combat round (defined by the defender’s swing speed), subsequent attackers will not be blocked in that same combat round.

Enjoy the weekend, all 🙂

Time for the Grab Bag!

October is choc full of events! Bonuses, costumes, trophies, pumpkins, and all things spooky with our 19th anniversary celebrations and Halloween event – make sure you don’t miss out! 🙂

Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Continue reading for the questions! 

Is magic damage from CL styles affected by MoM and Wild Power?

Yes, Champion Level (or any type of) styles that have a magic damage style proc will have their damage increased by the Mastery of Magery realm ability. However, style procs cannot critical hit so Wild Power will not affect them.

Can Pendragon Bracer buffs be stripped ?  Can CL buffs that you put on yourself? Is there any type of buff that is not shearable?

First,  there are two types of shears.

The primary version of shearing is casted buff shears by Clerics, Druids, or Shaman that target specific stat buffs. These buff shears only target their specific stat buff and only shear stat buffs that were not cast (by normal cast or equipped item) directly by their owner.

This means that stat buffs cast onto other characters or cast by items in your pack (like potions) will always be shearable while any self-casted stat buffs, Champion Level concentration buffs, and any equipped item-based buff charges such as Pendragon Bracer that are cast on yourself will not be shearable by these stat buff shears.

However, Cleric, Druid, and Shaman buff shears WILL be able to shear these if your character has zoned out or relogged since casting or putting the buff-charge up (which breaks the ownership of the buff).

The second type of shear is the random buff shear.

These shears, like the Battlemaster Master Level style, do not target any specific buff type and so have the ability to shear anything that isn’t specifically flagged to never be shearable. This means this type of shear can remove the self-casted buffs mentioned above!

Here are the only abilities that are never shearable by any type of shear even after zoning or relogging:

• XP, BP, and RP potions purchased with Mithril
• XP/RP off buff purchased with Mithril
• Folley Lake, The Trellebourg, and Moydruim Castle teleport buffs

Do all freezing chest pieces have the same proc rate?

Yes, they should have a 10% proc chance.

Is the proc on traders dagger a life tap pet, and what is the base damage for the pet, is there any way to make it more effective  ie mastery  of focus and mastery of magery. I noticed the blade of illusion proc on my skald was doing poler rift sword style, is the proc damage dependent on weapons skill, or spec.  Sorry for the long question, I’m sure at least part of this question has been asked before but I could not find it thx in advance.

Traitor’s Dagger procs a monster/pet that lifetaps for you. Since the monster or pet is the one directly dealing the damage, there is nothing your character can do to increase its damage. The same can be said for any ability or proc that is fired directly from a monster or pet: the damage is entirely controlled by the ability itself and the pet’s stats, equipment, or bonuses. So the Blade of Illusion also falls in this category.

Certain abilities are cast by the character through their pets, such as the Verdant Animist PBAoE ability, which is affected by the character’s stats and bonuses since the character is the one directly casting the spell.

I’ve been trying to find an official statement regarding whether or not items degrade faster when they are lower than 90% condition and I’m having trouble. Could you clear that up please?

No, items degrade at the same rate regardless of their condition.

Thanks everyone, and enjoy the weekend! 🙂