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The Anvil of Crom: Of stealth nerfs and feature removal
Sigh. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the spectacularly epic fail that Funcom pushed to the live servers last week. If you subscribe to any sort of yin/yang theory, whether it be balance in the Force or simply the law of averages, you had to expect some sort of mini-debacle, given the amount of good news flowing from the Age of Conan developers regarding new content as of late. In case you haven't heard, last week Funcom decided to remove the ability to PvP in the Underhalls and White Sands portion of Tortage. If this isn't enough to irritate you in and of itself, how does the fact that the nerf "managed to sneak itself into [an] update" grab you? While my initial thought on the stealth removal was basically an eye-roll at the thought of more PvP-focused whining, upon further reflection it occurred to me that in this case said whining is entirely justified. Turn the page for pigs flying, honest politicians, and yours truly taking up for PvPers.
[1.Local]: Questions, answers from our readers
Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.The comments section is usually a cacophony of voices seeking to agree or disagree with the main post, discredit previous commentors or make some pointless point ("first" -- /facepalm). This week, readers pulled together in a more truly interactive relationship, offering up questions, tips, insights and well thought-out suggestions and ideas. Take a trip through the pickings this week on ways to make professions more interesting, more Star Trek Easter eggs, getting real about DPS, copyright issues, snappier headlines ... and even a post devoted exclusively to guild and player recruitment notices.
Arcane Barrage nerfed stealthily
For about five shining minutes, Mages were over-powered. Arcane Mages, to be precise. Or so everyone tells me. All I know is that for the first time in a long time, I felt the kind of power I always assumed Mages were meant to wield.Patch 3.0.9 has brought Arcane Mages back down to earth, though, and only some of the bad stuff was actually in the patch notes. You see, along with the incredibly clunky and obtuse changes to Arcane Power and Presence of Mind (effectively ending PoM-Pyro specs as we knew them), and the nerf to Slow, this briefly mighty spec has also received a bonus undocumented nerf to our signature spell: Arcane Barrage.After a whole lot of us noticed we simply weren't doing the same damage post-patch that we were pre-patch, the official forums lit up with Mages contending that Arcane Barrage simply wasn't packing the punch it used to. Though the tooltip hadn't changed, the damage had fallen off considerably. Last night, Eyonix responded with a post explaining the change and letting us know that its effects would be monitored. I always thought the PTR was a good place to monitor changes, but what do I know?Before we discuss this any further, let me just put it up front that I'm setting the over-under on "QQ MOAR" comments following this post at 45. I'm taking the over.
Patch report for Age of Conan's July 17th update
Yes, it's time again for another edition of undocumented Age of Conan patch notes. We briefly mentioned them in the invisible hotfix edition that took place shortly after the latest Age of Conan patch. The list maintained on the official Age of Conan forums has grown since then. We know some of our reader's favorite Age of Conan moments were canceling their accounts (very funny guys) but not everyone is a quitter, and this time around there are a lot more fixes reported. There are two forum threads that players maintaining the undocumented changes from the latest patch. One on the US player forums and a bug thread on the EU player forums. We took a little heat last time we reported on the last undocumented changes so please keep in mind that Massively can not confirm or deny the submissions reported in the undocumented patch note threads. The reports and feedback presented are done by the Age of Conan playerbase and their intentions are their own. The full list from the US player forums continues after the cut. General Custom-made saddle listed in the patch notes did not make it in. 1 Update: Saddle in game GUI Right clicking to someone's name on chat will result in 5-6 duplicate system spam, including the info about that person. 1 Mouse autowalk with mounts doesn't enable other controls. 1
Patch report for Age of Conan's July 10th update
The never-ending quest and struggle to improve Age of Conan continues. Yesterday's patch introduced a multitude of changes including partial remedies to the female avatar DPS bug. Age of Conan players are well aware that not every patch goes according to plan. In fact, after a new patch goes live, players create and maintain a thread detailing the undocumented changes and also report on its aftermath. This is a great service performed by Age of Conan players, and it keeps everyone informed of the unintended changes and mishaps.The latest dissection is underway and on the surface it's not looking very good for Funcom. There are two threads representing the latest changes and issues on both the US player forums and the EU player forums. The patch builds are identical thus the results from each report mirror each other. Listed below are some of the more significant items present. It's important to note that both lists are continuously updated as more changes, bugs, and yes even fixes not listed in the official patch notes are uncovered. Invisible walls everywhere Mapping keys seems to no longer work. [Example: Can't change W to Y] Stances getting stuck Stamina regeneration decreased Rare resource drops increased
Undocumented changes for AoC 26th of June patch
In keeping with tradition, Age of Conan players have found some changes that did not make it on to the official patch notes for today's update. The community's findings have been compiled into one handy forum thread, and here are some of the more significant items on the list (although the thread will likely have more added to it later on): Barbarian talent "Cyclone of Razors" has had its damage lowered from 28% to 10% at 5 points. Necromancers can no longer send pets to attack while hidden. Assassin ability "From the Darkness" animation changed and damage after charge reduced by up to 70%. Rangers mez shot seems to not be working properly. Dark Templar's magic damage coefficient is bugged. A bug with casting from your mount, a feature reintroduced today on the official notes. Casters can begin casting a spell while standing still on their mount, and are then free to run around while casting it without interruption, leading to easy kiting. Still to be verified: Variety of loot from epic Kheshatta bosses increased, and new blues dropping.
What this morning's AoC patch notes didn't mention
It's very busy over at FunCom, what with two patches a week coming out for Age of Conan. We understand. We know that sometimes stuff gets missed off the patch notes. Of course, sometimes stuff gets purposefully left off patch notes, and it can be hard to tell whether this was by accident or design.What's certain is that when something changes, players will eventually find out. The more players, the sooner they find out; and AoC has rather a lot of players right now. Between them, with cross-referencing going on between European and American forums (always nice to see), the players have put together an unofficial list of what else changed with this morning's patch.
Stealth Nerfs: Spirit
Whenever a patch is released, there are cries of "nerf" on all sides - because regardless of the change, it's probably negative to some. And while some so-called nerfs will be found in the patch notes, others are conspicuously absent, leaving players in the dark about whether new game behavior is an intentional change or a mistake of some sort. While many of these complaints spring up before and after every patch, one in particular has caught my eye. The recent revamp of priest talents includes a new talent called Spiritual Guidance - which can increase damage and healing spells by up to 25% of the priest's total spirit. This sounds like a nice buff to spirit for a priest, but in patch 1.10, spirit itemization seems to have been changed. A number of high spirit items have had their spirit stat significantly reduced while the devout set has had its spirit bonus removed. As priests copy over to the test server, they're realizing that their total spirit has dropped significantly - and thinking Spiritual Guidance might not be as good as they thought. Hopefully this is a mistaken case of Blizzard's itemization department not talking to the class department. Or perhaps there are new spirit items to replace the ones that are about to become not so good. We'll only know for certain when 1.10 hits the live servers.
