Update 1.6.1 - May 23, 2013

[Darkhorse]

There will be a server maintenance on Thursday, May 23 at 11 AM EST/3 PM GMT. This maintenance is expected to last approximately 3 hours. This maintenance will be used to deploy game update 1.6.1!

Shadow Walker

• Riposte now has a 20/40/60% chance to complete your current action after dodging (up from 20/35%/50%)
• Critical Eye now also grants +10/20/30% physical crit power along with the +10/15/20% increase in physical crit chance
• Runes will no longer proc corrosive blades

Justicar

• Bleeds will now do 100% weapon damage over 5 seconds (up from 75%)
• Frenzy now grants +10/20/30% physical damage to targets affected by Bleeding (up from +5/10/15%)
• All ranks of Stagger will now increase the damage bonus of your next attack by 75% (up from 50%)
• Each stack of Vengeance now increases damage by 10% (up from 5%)
• Runes will no longer proc Rend

War Mage

• Snap cast can no longer be procced by instant cast abilities (ex: Runes, Any snap casted spell)
• The ability text for Deep Freeze 2 and 3 has been fixed. Originally, they mistakenly stated that they increased slows by 10% and 15%. However, all ranks of Deep Freeze only ever increased slows by 5%. The ability text has been fixed to reflect this.

Guilds

• Added a guild objective for defeating Karnak 100 times
• Added a guild objective for unlocking Karnak's Final Stand (You must defeat War of Fellmarsh 10 times)
• Some guild objectives have been deprecated (see raids)
• Players will now lose 50% of their guild loyalty when joining a new guild (lowered from 100%)

Raids

• The raid cap for all raids has been raised to 100 members!
• With the change to all raid caps, some raids have had their number of waves adjusted. Here is the approximate number of raiders we have balanced each raid around (regardless of the targeted balance number, the raid cap will still be 100 guild members for each raid):
  
  • 10 Raiders: Gobblin' Goblins
  • 20 Raiders: The Plaguerider, Lockbolt's Reign
  • 25 Raiders: Wrath of the Overseer
  • 30 Raiders: Risen from the Depths, Crypt of Corruption, Attack at Dawn, Dark Lord Helion
  • 35 Raiders: Cursed Keep, Vale of the Ice Dragon, War of Fellmarsh
  • 40 Raiders: Horde of the Goblin King, Karnak's Final Stand, Battle of the Vile Gate
• All raids have had the number of mercenaries capped at 10 (with the exception of Gobblin' Goblins which is set to 5)
• The Shadow Comes and Forgotten Sentinels have been removed from the game!
• The might requirement for War of Fellmarsh has been lowered to 9150 might to accomodate the might gap left by the removal of Forgotten Sentinels
• Phase 3 of War of Fellmarsh has been changed to include everyone's favorite queen...
• Raid finder will now display all raids, not just those with open mercenary slots. However, only raids with mercenary slots open will be joinable
• The valor and hero token reward pool for Karnak's Final Stand has been raised
• Raids will now show up on the raid finder 3 minutes after the raid has started (down from 10 minutes)
• The raid introduction quest line has been redone

Dungeons

• The icon for Karnak's dungeon is now correct

Items

• Karnak's Ring and the Broken Ring have updated graphics

Feats

• A feat for killing Karnak in his dungeon 5 times has been added

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug in the particle engine that would cause an application crash
• Fixed a bug that caused haste to affect knockback
• Fixed a bug that would cause the casting bar to behave incorrectly when your casting time gets knocked back
• Fixed a bug that would cause the first tick of combat in onslaught to improperly decrement cooldowns
• Fixed a bug that would prevent crit resistance from working on periodic damage
• Fixed a bug with the featured offer that would cause an application crash
• Fixed some bugs that would cause other guilds' chat channels to not disappear from their list after mercing
• Fixed a bug affecting whispers from the guild member list
• Fixed a bug that would not allow you to inspect or whisper someone by tapping on their name
• Fixed a bug that caused the energy popup to close unexpectedly
• Fixed a bug that would cause guild objectives to not sort properly
• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to become locked up after accessing Game Center from the leaderboard
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the raid cooldown from being immediately displayed after cancelling a raid
• Fixed a bug that would cause the chat screen to not refresh properly if too many messages were sent to a channel within a short time period
• Fixed a bug that would cause spacing issues with certain special text characters
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Smithy's Forge and Old Library to overlap
• Major Frost Rune now applies an 18% reduction of haste and dodge via Chilled

[EricM]

Raids

• The raid cap for all raids has been raised to 100 members!
• With the change to all raid caps, some raids have had their number of waves adjusted. Here is the approximate number of raiders we have balanced each raid around (regardless of the targeted balance number, the raid cap will still be 100 guild members for each raid):
  
  • 10 Raiders: Gobblin' Goblins
  • 20 Raiders: The Plaguerider, Lockbolt's Reign
  • 25 Raiders: Wrath of the Overseer
  • 30 Raiders: Risen from the Depths, Crypt of Corruption, Attack at Dawn, Dark Lord Helion
  • 35 Raiders: Cursed Keep, Vale of the Ice Dragon, War of Fellmarsh
  • 40 Raiders: Horde of the Goblin King, Karnak's Final Stand, Battle of the Vile Gate

[*]All raids have had the number of mercenaries capped at 10 (with the exception of Gobblin' Goblins which is set to 5)
[*]The Shadow Comes and Forgotten Sentinels have been removed from the game!

Couple comments/questions:
1. So this means raids like CoC/GK will have more waves, correct?
2. Why cap mercenaries at 10? Are we moving towards the end of mercing/ guild-guild interactions for good?
3. What prompted the removal of SC and FS from the game? And what does this mean for the challenge? Will it be disappearing as well? or will it remain as a trophy from the past?
4. Not super pressing, but if Snap Cast is being nerfed so much, why not just remove it and replace it with a different skill?

Outside that, interesting direction.

[Darkhorse]

Couple comments/questions:
1. So this means raids like CoC/GK will have more waves, correct?
2. Why cap mercenaries at 10? Are we moving towards the end of mercing/ guild-guild interactions for good?
3. What prompted the removal of SC and FS from the game? And what does this mean for the challenge? Will it be disappearing as well? or will it remain as a trophy from the past?
4. Not super pressing, but if Snap Cast is being nerfed so much, why not just remove it and replace it with a different skill?

Outside that, interesting direction.

1. Yes. They should be in line with our new target numbers.
2. We'll be evaluating this number, but initially we want to limit the number of mercenaries to prevent easy exploits of the raid finder system.
3. These were 2 of the 3 most "unpopular" raids in the games based purely based on our metrics and number of raids run. We want to offer a more focused knights valor experience for newer players in that tier. The challenges associated with these two raids will disappear but guilds who have already completed the challenges will keep their prestige earned.
4. We're continuing to evaluate this and will likely make more class changes and tweaks as we get closer to PvP.

[Legacy_of_Zaringoth]

Everything looks realy good but I disagree with FS removal. FS is a good raid so why would you need to remove it??

[Darkhorse]

Before someone asks, because I know it will come up. Yes we are aware there are some players who preferred the new capped raids for a challenge. We will most likely revisit this idea in the future, but in a much more limited capacity and not in a "broad game sweeping changes" way . Think "challenge raids". Again no promises, just being a bit more transparent about our thought process.

[Click]

What does this mean for mercs in KV/CV? If raid caps are so high, what CV guild is going to open up their raid for mercs if they lose the bonus of having it all in house?

[Mikedr]

Couple comments/questions:
1. So this means raids like CoC/GK will have more waves, correct?
2. Why cap mercenaries at 10? Are we moving towards the end of mercing/ guild-guild interactions for good?
3. What prompted the removal of SC and FS from the game? And what does this mean for the challenge? Will it be disappearing as well? or will it remain as a trophy from the past?
4. Not super pressing, but if Snap Cast is being nerfed so much, why not just remove it and replace it with a different skill?

Outside that, interesting direction.

1. Yes. They should be in line with our new target numbers.
2. We'll be evaluating this number, but initially we want to limit the number of mercenaries to prevent easy exploits of the raid finder system.
3. These were 2 of the 3 most "unpopular" raids in the games based purely based on our metrics and number of raids run. We want to offer a more focused knights valor experience for newer players in that tier. The challenges associated with these two raids will disappear but guilds who have already completed the challenges will keep their prestige earned.
4. We're continuing to evaluate this and will likely make more class changes and tweaks as we get closer to PvP.

Ok but I'm worried on this not all guild have 100 members and much fewer that can raid in All raids how is this going to help smaller guilds finish raids not looking for gold every time but it would be nice to be able to finish

[Bronc]

Here are the preview patch notes for game update 1.6.1. We are currently targeting a release by the end of next week (Week of 5/19-5/25). As always, this date, and any notes below are subject to change for the final release.

Justicar

• To be updated after the preview

Shadow Walker

• To be updated after the preview

War Mage

• Snap cast can no longer be procced by instant cast abilities (ex: Runes, Any snap casted spell)
• To be updated further after the preview

Guilds

• Added a guild objective for defeating Karnak 100 times
• Added a guild objective for unlocking Karnak's Final Stand (You must defeat War of Fellmarsh 10 times)
• Some guild objectives have been deprecated (see raids)
• Players will now lose 50% of their guild loyalty when joining a new guild (lowered from 100%)

Raids

• The raid cap for all raids has been raised to 100 members!
• With the change to all raid caps, some raids have had their number of waves adjusted. Here is the approximate number of raiders we have balanced each raid around (regardless of the targeted balance number, the raid cap will still be 100 guild members for each raid):
  
  • 10 Raiders: Gobblin' Goblins
  • 20 Raiders: The Plaguerider, Lockbolt's Reign
  • 25 Raiders: Wrath of the Overseer
  • 30 Raiders: Risen from the Depths, Crypt of Corruption, Attack at Dawn, Dark Lord Helion
  • 35 Raiders: Cursed Keep, Vale of the Ice Dragon, War of Fellmarsh
  • 40 Raiders: Horde of the Goblin King, Karnak's Final Stand, Battle of the Vile Gate
• All raids have had the number of mercenaries capped at 10 (with the exception of Gobblin' Goblins which is set to 5)
• The Shadow Comes and Forgotten Sentinels have been removed from the game!
• The might requirement for War of Fellmarsh has been lowered to 9150 might to accomodate the might gap left by the removal of Forgotten Sentinels
• The cooldown on all raids has been reduced to 30 minutes (after completion of the raid)
• Raid finder will now display all raids, not just those with open mercenary slots. However, only raids with mercenary slots open will be joinable
• The valor and hero token reward pool for Karnak's Final Stand has been raised

Dungeons

• The icon for Karnak's dungeon is now correct

Items

• Karnak's Ring and the Broken Ring have updated graphics

Feats

• A feat for killing Karnak in his dungeon 5 times has been added

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug in the particle engine that would cause an application crash
• Fixed a bug that caused haste to affect knockback
• Fixed a bug that would cause the casting bar to behave incorrectly when your casting time gets knocked back
• Fixed a bug that would cause the first tick of combat in onslaught to improperly decrement cooldowns
• Fixed a bug that would prevent crit resistance from working on periodic damage
• Fixed a bug with the featured offer that would cause an application crash
• Fixed some bugs that would cause other guilds' chat channels to not disappear from their list after mercing
• Fixed a bug affecting whispers from the guild member list
• Fixed a bug that would not allow you to inspect or whisper someone by tapping on their name
• Fixed a bug that caused the energy popup to close unexpectedly
• Fixed a bug that would cause guild objectives to not sort properly
• Fixed a bug that would cause the game to become locked up after accessing Game Center from the leaderboard
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the raid cooldown from being immediately displayed after cancelling a raid
• Fixed a bug that would cause the chat screen to not refresh properly if too many messages were sent to a channel within a short time period
• Fixed a bug that would cause spacing issues with certain special text characters
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Smithy's Forge and Old Library to overlap
• Major Frost Rune now applies an 18% reduction of haste and dodge via Chilled

I think I like it.

[Little_Mike]

Everything looks realy good but I disagree with FS removal. FS is a good raid so why would you need to remove it??

There are a few reasons why this was removed:

1) We felt 5 KV raids were too many and wanted to reduce this number to 3. Moving forward, expect to see at a max 3 raids per tier. As DH said, we want to provide a more focused KV raiding experience.
2) FS is the only raid where there is not a corresponding dungeon. CK, Vallus, and Trask all have their own dungeon versions so it made sense to keep those.

[Little_Mike]

Ok but I'm worried on this not all guild have 100 members and much fewer that can raid in All raids how is this going to help smaller guilds finish raids not looking for gold every time but it would be nice to be able to finish

As we stated in the notes, each raid is balanced for a number of raiders far less than 100. You should still be able to complete The Plaguerider with only 20 people. The cap was increased to 100 so that casual raiders in your guild don't have to worry about taking up a spot in your raid.

Keep in mind, there is still a finite number of rewards per raid and if you zerg a raid with 100 people, everyone will be getting less rewards in general.