Undocumented Patch Notes - 23rd of June

[jungle]

News | June 24, 2008 (5 hours, 47 minutes ago) | by Zyuu | via forums.ageofconan.com | Filed in Age of Conan

As usual with a new patch, there will be undocumented patch notes. I've waited awhile before posting todays undocumented changes, so as much as possible will get discovered. Now awhile has passed and krazymagic's list of undocumented notes should be fairly complete.

A couple of noteworthy things is that "some" Battle Keeps which didn't have ladders, now do. Improvements to performance overall has been reported, and that is to be expected, considering the official patch notes mention that improvements was made to the client.

You can use rest in combat now, obviously while not taking damage. Disliked the long respawn rate in Purple Lotus? It has been increased greatly.

One of the major things in this patch was all changes to the necromancer. There's many, many unlisted changes/adjustments and they've been collected in these undocumented notes. Also, a developer later replied to clarify the changes.


General

* Heroic Defense Rating has been renamed to "Defense Rating (Heroic)"
* Tooltips for several classes abilities and items have been improved to give better information on Mouse over.
* Many reports of Improved performance across the board.
* Some Battle Keeps which had no levers previously now have them.
* You can no longer jump around some of the walls on certain keeps where it was an issue (not all fixed)
* All battle Keeps have been re-named.
* Rest ability can now be used in combat, as long as you are not taking damage.


Quests

* Captives quest chain in Fields of the dead Outpost is now working

Items

* Additional bags are now available from the general Merchants.
* You can no longer insert higher quality gems into lower quality items. (IE: Lv. 75 Gem into Lv. 70 or lower Armor)
* A few more nameless items have recieved Names.

World

* Respawn rate of mobs in purple lotus has greatly increased

Classes

Necromancer

* Vile Insight moved from a Friendly Spell to a Hostile Spell, possibly also not working now.
* DTS changed from a % to +magical damage, also possibly not working now.
* Necro's have been given a free feat respec in light of all the adjustments.

see quote below for dev response to the huge necromancer changes.

New Confirmed Bugs/Issues:

* Storm Field will only damage the first 3 mobs it hits. If those 3 die, any of the others in the AoE will still not take damage.
* Alchemist do not open your Tradeskill Book- You will crash to desktop. This is a known bug and funcom is tracking it down already.
* Champion of the Honorguard has been nearly granted God Mode aparantly. Reports of him being impossible to kill now.

Ongoing Concerns/Bug status

* Instance cool downs are still bugged
* Socketed items still bugged, subtracting stats if you zone or login with them equipped
* Gem's and silk, etc are still not showing up on the Trader.
* Female Attack speed is still untouched.(Devs have posted today that an official responce on this issue will be posted this week. Look for it.)
* Noble District Arena entrance quest still bugged.


Dev Responds to Necromancer Changes:

As there are many threads and it seems that comments can easily be lost in the many threads.

AoE Damage Modifications

Parasitic Soul Swarm and Unholy Hands were dealing significantly more damage than similar spells and rebalanced to do the correct damage for AoE-based spells.

Similarly, the Archmagus pet was dealing roughly 25% higher base damage than intended and was lowered. This was a decrease of roughly 25% without feats, and 20% with feats. This is also in line with other AoE effects in the game.

Despoil the Soul

As was mentioned previously, the change made is an increase to the effectiveness of this spell compared to the previous mechanic. The decreases in damage mentioned above and from other sources are not due to this change, but due to other changes or issues. This mechanic will not change as it more accurately reflects the intended DPS increase of the feat when compared to DPS from each pet point.

However, we will be looking at the duration of Despoil the Soul in order to make it less of a burden to keep active.

Siphon Unlife Issues

We are aware of a code issue that is causing Siphon Unlife damage dealt to pets to scale with bonus magical damage. This is unintended and will be fixed soon.

Damage Coefficients

There was a data issue that has resulted in some spells, specifically Lifestrike and Flesh to Worms, not gaining the new damage bonus from +magical damage. This will be corrected in the next patch. (Lifestrike will gain 65% of your bonus magical damage instead of 11% as currently being used.)

Other Adjustments Coming

We will continue to review the damage to make sure that Necromancers are doing the target DPS at given levels. It is intended for Necromancers to be a competitive damage class at the top levels of DPS. Spells will continue to be adjusted until this the class is performing at the correct levels.

Additionally, melee pets will deal splash damage very much like normal melee attacks. This change will come in the one of the next couple code updates.

Future Updates

In addition to the pet splash damage and above mentioned fixes coming soon, the next data update should have the following Necromancer changes. Many of these were intended to be in today's patch, but did not make it in.

Necromancer

* The bonus gained from +magical damage has been substantially increased on all damage over time spells
* Despoil the Soul duration has been substantially increased
* Despoil the Soul is no longer removed on death
* Frost Blast's area of effect has been changed to be a 90 degree cone in front of the caster
* Shatter now additionally works on targets affected by Frost Blast and Ice Shackle
* Dark Knowledge and Vile Insight will no longer appear as Hostile spells. (They will still persist after death.)

Mage General

* The bonus magical damage granted from Mystical Attunement has been doubled