The following ability changes are going live with the nightly server restarts; European servers may be restarted slightly later than normal to accommodate these changes.

- All Classes
- Some attacks remain direct attacks. These are intended to be lower in damage, but have alternate uses and should be less expensive overall. These debuff, buff and are not intended to be used to be a main source of damage.
- Cleric
- Your finishing moves now all cost 10 endurance
- Maul of the Gods and Maul of Divinity now use a percentage of weapon damage instead of being direct attacks.
- Dread Knight
- Increased the damage of Dark Bastion, Incite, Inflame, Shield of Fear, and Scourge.
- Scythe of Doom now drains for 100% of the damage it deals
-Disciple
- Increased the damage of Falling Petal, White Lotus Strike, Soul Cutter and Lao’Jin Burst
- Monk
- Counter attacks are now cost free
- Many finishing attacks were more costly than intended. Endurance costs have been lowered.
- Many attacks have been converted over to use weapon damage directly, either flat or percent based. This will increase over all damage and give better returns when upgrading weapons and increasing strength. Affected attacks are:

* - Ashen Hand
* - Crescent Kick
* - Dragon's Rage
* - Sundering Dragon Claw
* - Fists of Transcendence
* - Legendary Fists
* - Flying Kick
* - Kick of the Heavens
* - Thousand Fists
* - Three Finger Strike
* - Thundering Fists
* - Deadly Adder Hand
* - Celestial Kick of the Master
* - Withering Palm
* - Stinging Backfist
* - Steal the Wind
* - Quivering Palm

- Paladin
- Stroke of Conviction now progresses differently to provide a more steady progression of hate. The new levels are: 20, 28, 36, 44, 50
- Maul of Valus has been added to trainers starting at level 18. This is a new line of finishing attacks that follows Hammer of Valus.
- Stroke of Fervor has been added to trainers starting at level 30. This is a new line of finishing attacks that follows Stroke of Conviction.
- Holy Strike and Blade of Vol Anari now deal their additional effects to fiendish races as well. Ulvari hunters rejoice!
- Ranger
- Increased the damage of Fleetblade
- Shaman
- Claw of Winter is now a standard attack that uses weapon damage.
- Warrior
- Increased the damage of Smash
- Increased the damage and hate portion of Overwhelm

Also each class can aparently learn new techniques off certain NPCs, which is great and all.

However, with the recent patch, the game feels like Vanguard: Saga of Moneysinks and Spellcasters.

I will give it my one month gripe review.

First let me start by saying this game has a HUGE amount of potential. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt this is the spiritual successor to Everquest. If that is what you wanted out of an MMO, then you would 110% for sure find it here if you played it seriously.

However, it is not without its huge flaws at the moment. Namely, over all the technical bullshit, class balance.

Yesterdays patch tore melee damage apart, spat it out and laughed. Total anal violation. So bad that a lot of tanks lost their ability to hold agro. So bad in fact, that a lot of people who did well against mobs the night before, found they suddenly got butchered because fights were lasting 2 or 3 mins longer.

I felt it myself. Our group makeup is a Dread Knight, Psi, Shaman with wolf totamic and a disciple. By all means not a DPS group at all but we had more than enough to drop 3 dot and 4 dot mobs at or slightly above our level with ease.

17 Dread, using a blue level 22ish 2 handed sword, i'd normally hit crits for 500-600. I'm assuming everyone else hit theirs a bit lower than this but more than enough to contribute. Tonight, if I saw a 400 I got extremely lucky. Fighting the same mobs, same levels and factors. Everyone else felt the same, that their damage was not up to par any longer and mobs were taking way too long to slay.

It got boring. Really boring. We would whack on some mobs for the better part of 4 mins, which took 1.5 to 2 if that the night before.

I can only imagine higher levels, but monks who haven't quit in and gotten that far tell tales that they send level 24 bards tells to come replace them in level 40 groups since their dps was so similar.

I'm not sure why the change even came about. The general consensus was damage for the most part was pretty spot on between the classes save a few who were understood to be reviewed and brought up to spec.

Now I don't really care about the solo game here. It should exist, but no class should be given the ability to solo content that takes an entire group of other classes to kill. Yes, balance in that instance is needed.

I'm speaking more in group content. Not only was the change to melee damage significant enough to hinder the classes, it also taints their desirability in groups.

As is stands, optimal group now is caster, caster, caster, caster, bloodmage, cleric/shaman/bloodmage.

When in a group, when you ranger leaves, you don't care. When your druid or sorcerer leaves, you feel it. Progress goes down if you dont' replace that spot with another caster.

I read the changes above and still remain very skeptical. So i'll leave it pretty much at that and hope for the best. Anyone else have throughts on recent changes?

P.S. Durability is still dumb.

I had to travel for a project so I didnt play since the patch but as far as class desirabilty goes it really seems to vary depending on level etc. I assure you pre 20 at least before the patch sorc dps was rather pathetic. Now with chaos volley even with a high mana cost on a 1 mob i can get some pretty serious dps but mana issues create some problems.

Now even with CC some of the harder 35-40 dung. areas you get 4+ mobs that have SUBSTANTIAL hps. As a sorc i go almost OOM if I burn 1 down fast which is typical because the faster we remove mobs the less chance of a mess up. So my splurt dps is great but a group also needs good sustained dps classes to finish off mobs or else you just can't clear fast enough in some of the tougher areas to have a safe group crawl, especially in drake riders.

That being said if they messed with melee dps then they need to fix it but honestly after seeing my brothers ranger dps either castors might need a tweak (my normal dps, cv is a different story) because i am limited by mana yet he can damn near keep that same dps up for the length of the fight and I am probably top 3 geared sorc on the server. Mobs die slow as shit now at times unless you have an ideal group so I really hope they didnt slow it even more.

And if you hear about sorc's ability to just smoke down mobs part of it is based off something that I know will fixed that revolves around using various CV lvl spells. Last night we took out the lead boss of all drake riders (a lvl 38 5 dot prince and his 5 dot 38 dragon pet) and the first 30 secs of the fight he had 80% of his life but I ramped up to my last 4 nukes being 20k+ each but was hitting myself for almost 2k a nuke. This will be fixed and once it does honestly i will feel that my normal dps is not = to the pre patch melee dps which doesn't make sense, and my splurt dps is pretty much limited to 1 mob which....I guess i can live with but wish the spell would be abit more mana effecient because after 1 mob i am basically useless for 3 mobs on big pulls.

Just an example of lower lvl class desirablity vs higher class would be psi's, they just dont add much value lower lvls but 30+ they are almost required for a smooth group (bard is only other replacement).

This is only from the perspective of dung. crawling the higher places. I think any way we cut it most classes have gripes and as time progresses hopefully they get a clue that good "class" balance is to not try and balance things.....thats what ruins games. Different classes have specialties, some are going to be more desired or more useful in more situaitons.....that is much better then all of us playing a cookie cutter version of the same 2 classes.

Turb
Guild Leader of Exiled