Neverwinter new pics - OH GAWD ITZ HEAVAN

[Bliblablubb]

That means blue 60s will go for niiiiice prices on the AH then. But on the other hand nobody will sell them now, because they have a better use. I wonder if salvageable gear will give enough extra refinement points to warrant not turning them into potatos. Yeah I know, those are peanuts for you, so that question doesn't apply to you.

Damn, the scrolls needed for identification are already in short supply so I don't even pick up greens anymore.

 

[Gerrard]

I can't check out any of this because the patcher refuses to update for me.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Another change for the glory of Satan:

Hey all we are making a few changes to improve Single Target feel and bringing Magic Missile up a little bit. These changes wont make it in this week, but should be in an upcoming preview push either next week or the week after.

Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.

One of the more controversial parts of the change will be the direct decrease to AoE damage given by Focused Wizardry. We wanted it to be an important choice that helps refine your role and improve your position as "focused on priority targets with single target spells" but we couldn't just put 10/20/30% in there without some kind of draw back or it became an always correct option at that tier. Therefore we have opted to give it a drawback that you can decrease as you put points into it. This means that if you take Focused Wizardry you can still use AoE powers in cases where they overtake Single Target powers (generally when they would affect 4 or more targets is this breakpoint) without losing too much of the effectiveness there while still getting a nice solid Single Target boost. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.

Everyone else:

"Wizard can have only single target spells?"

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The heat is on:

Hey all, we are making a bunch of buffs to Paragon class features that were under performing and making Eye of the Storm easier to use. Additionally we want to address player concerns about Shard of the Endless Avalanche and reinforce its intent as part of a Wizard's kit.

Control Wizard: Eye of the Storm: ICD has been reduced to 20 seconds.
Control WIzard: Eye of the Storm: Activation chance is now 100% from any power while off cooldown.
Control Wizard: Storm Spell: Activation Chance increased to 35%. Damage increased by roughly 100%.
Control Wizard: Storm Fury: Damage increased by 200%.
Control Wizard: Swath of Destruction: Damage Debuff increased to 5% per rank and Smolder Damage is increased by 15% per rank (up from 2% and 8% respectively).
Control Wizard: Combustive Action: Damage Debuff applied by Combustive action is no longer just Fire damage, but all damage. Debuff is now 6% per rank (up from 3% per rank).

These changes should make all of these class features more attractive to Wizards of all trees and improve the usage of them in most cases.

Now, Shard of the Endless Avalanche (henceforth referred to as SotEA) is an impressive and complicated power. The damage it could pump out on a single target was admirable, but it was way out of line on multiple targets. We looked at a couple options for adjusting it and finally went with an outright nerf because in too many cases in both PVP and PVE it felt pretty necessary to use it because it offered so much (Strong Damage, Chain Prone, Arcane Stacks, Explosive damage at the end, etc). We looked at letting damage divide down by number of targets but we found the same problem. It was pretty close to always a right choice and that didn't feel appropriate with one of the cornerstones of the Wizard philosophy in PNP (which is Preparing spells and being flexible with your casting choices). As such we adjusted lots of casting times and damages to provide spells with much more in line breakpoints where AoE started trumping single target damage more clearly. Before all of these adjustments that breakpoint fell somewhere around 1.6 targets. This meant, for all intents and purposes, you should generally NEVER use a single target power with some minor exceptions (MM being a major one). Given this we tuned AoE damage down and made the single target powers perform much closer to each other in terms of what they brought to the table. Given this goal we *don't* want to push SotEA back into that position of being great in all circumstances. This is why we improved the prone duration on it and why we won't be buffing the damage on it up. However we are aware of PVP wizards struggle right now, and so some of the above buffs should help bring back more single target damage opportunities (as well as some more utility for those who are working with groups).

Thank you all for your continued feedback!

Player's Handbook

• General: Players are now granted 2 seconds of damage immunity when revived by an ally.
• Control Wizard: Shield: Now diminishes to 25% of maximum effectiveness (down from 50%)
• Great Weapon Fighter
  • Frontline Surge: Base stun increased to 3 seconds (up from 2 seconds).
  • Frontline Surge: This power no longer improperly Prones players.
  • Mark: Marks applied by Great Weapon Fighters are no longer removed upon taking damage.
  • Takedown: Base stun increased to 3 seconds (up from 2 seconds).
• Guardian Fighter
  • Frontline Surge: Base stun increased to 3 seconds (up from 2 seconds).
  • Frontline Surge: This power no longer improperly Prones players.
  • Knight's Valor: This power can no longer critically hit and cause the Guardian to take far more damage than was intended.
• Hunter Ranger: Wilds Medicine: Now has a 1 second ICD.
• Scourge Warlock
  • Creeping Death: This feat will no longer incorrectly activate on non necrotic sources of damage.
  • Devastating Critical: No longer improperly gives Warlocks 100/200/300% Critical Severity.
  • Falling animation now properly cycles to better simulate falling to your death.
  • Ghastly Commander: No longer improperly gives double its stated bonus.

 

[Bliblablubb]

I just opened 16 godboxes. Guess how many coals i got!

Spoiler

None of course. Most of them contained lvl 4 chants. Screw this shit

 

[Gerrard]

16 is nothing. I had nothing for months until getting 3 wards in 3 weeks last month.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

4 wards in the last three (or two?) weeks for me.

EDIT: Also, you still need those Artificing 100% chance tools on loan? I finished work on the Fallen Dragon Orb last weekend.

 

[eklektyk]

soooo anyone knows what those monkeys fucked up now that :sheduled maintenance: was needed so urgently ?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Some exploit was discovered.

 

[Gerrard]

Just another economy-destroying exploit that will be swept under the rug.

 

[Bliblablubb]

People made near unlimited amounts of potatos with buggy rifts for months, but aside from a stealthfix nothing will happen? It shouldn't be a big deal to check the database for abnormal high incomes, but nope. If I were paying a monthly fee for this game I would quit now.
Somehow I doubt this will stabilize the ZAX, considering that THIS exploit only got fixed when everyone and their dog bragged about it.
Let's just concentrate on flooding the boards how leadership breaks the economy until craptic nerfs it, right?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Some people have spoken of an AH meltdown. Since I don't keep track of price trends outside of when I'm saving up for something, I can't really say much, but it seems that at least the Dread and 'Bog crafting materials are unaffected. What seems to be affected the most is dragon balls, which are just plain out as far as Gateway tells me. Besides that, Black Ice crafting gauntlets are almost gone.

One piece of info you guys might wanna use ASAP if you need it: Ancient weapons for GFs have crashed in price, with main hand going for below 200k AD (off hand below 200k AD buyout as well).

EDIT: Personally, one thing that I can always take relief in is that the ZAX cap of 1:500 will always keep a lid on the very worst hyperinflation.

Also, someone on the forums just posted a two day old note from a gold seller site which said that Cryptic had permabanned just about all gold seller suppliers in "the biggest ban wave since Beta."

 

[Bliblablubb]

Banning gold sellers isn't a big deal; those are throw-away accounts with low level chars, easily replaced and off to farming the next exploit. Considering how many different accounts have invited me to be their friend or sent a mail (and get reported), they are probably not expected to last longer than a few weeks. A one-time banhammer isn't enough, they would need assign someone to constantly monitor the situation. That costs real moneyz, moneyz PWE is not willing to spend I wager. They will just ban a bunch of small fishes every now and then to get good publicity before going back to normal.
But you're right, the hardcap of 500 doesn't make it a HUGE problem since they constantly put fresh zen into circulation. It sucks for people like me to catch up with the prices, but it's not that there is much I really NEED to buy. I will continue to improve my farms and save potatos for a pony acc unlock, no need to get agitated about it.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Not sure if they went after the friend/mail spam alts tho, since the post said "suppliers". If I were to set up a gold selling operation, my farm alts would definately not be the ones sending those invites, since that would expose them. The spam alts are probably just generated en masse and not used at all otherwise, since unlike farms they need no investment and cause no casualty from banning.

EDIT: One thing that endlessly amuses/frustrates me about when Cryptic devs talk about how HEs are supposed to be about teamwork is that they don't seem to get that the current scoring system is by definition ANTI-teamwork. The only thing you want to do is sabotage the score of every other player as much as possible and just get the RIGHT kind of crew so you can score highest and there isn't a huge crowd of them. If the HE reward system were to award teamwork, then the rewards would be calculated team wide, and granted in tiers based on for how many phases the player was present (so if someone earns BIce gear, EVERYONE who was in from the start earns BIce gear; though naturally it'd be better to just remove gear from the loot tables altogether and put them in the BIce store).

 

[Bliblablubb]

You are starting to frighten me with your HE obsession... Let it go man, it can't be healthy for you! The next mod will bring better stuffz anyway and nobody will give a rat's ass about BI crap anymore. Save your energy for ranting about HEs in THAT mod!

 

[Gerrard]

ITZ coming tomorrow.


The last nail in the coffin probably.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, here's my final theory on how the new Wizard deeps will be:

Storm Spell and Evocation/double feature MoF + Mastery Conduit + Icy Terrain + Assailing Force + Elemental Empowerment 2/5 or higher + Destructive Wizardry + Elemental Empowerment. The key is that last thing they changed was make the paragon class features related to damage super-bamf (Storm Spell proc chance raised to 35% and damage by 100%; similar buffs to all MoF features), so Conduit's new faster ticks mean you want Mastery Conduit to give some of dem procs.

Shard of the Endless Avalanche might still be useful if you slot Evocation and 5/5 Transcended Master. Otherwise one should take Icy Terrain instead to freeze niggas and have even more ticks.

Maelstrom of Chaos is now genuinely viable as a secondary Daily. Oppressive Force is the #1 daily you don't leave home without. Arcane Singularity sucks now due to target limit. Feated Furious Immolation is the replacement for Arcane Singularity.

 

[eklektyk]

wow 5 gb for their newest brainfart .....

who knew that one dungeon one skirmish and few copypaste shitfests is so big ...

next patch will prob be 10 gb of broken code and hopeful wishes ...

btw anyone knows if they finally fixed brokenass dungeon chests ?? or is it still nonesential content that does not need fixin ?

 

[Bliblablubb]

Haven't bothered with dungeons for a while since they stealthfixed the normal diffculty chests, because we never get 5 people for epics.

The Whorelock is a little underwhelming so far, but that may be because casters aren't really my type of char. They should fix the green spheres keeping you in permanent combat animation, I like having them up all the time and running looks loving retarded that way.
I did not check out the new campaign yet, but I am curious as well were all those gb come from. Then again, SWTOR downloaded 20gb worth of patches I have no idea what they did...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I've gotten to (almost) level 25 myself with the Warlock, and so far the class has been straightforward in gameplay. Tab to Curse up to three enemies, use spell, re-Curse if Curse is consumed and target is still alive, etc. Dreadtheft makes clearing mooks easy though, so it's pretty pleasant extended tutorial. Planning on using the Fury Tree.

On a different note, running sideways while using Dreadtheft looks hilarious, but Brood of Hadar is one of the nicest looking Dailies in the game.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Since I made the smart move of using the tomes before learning to play, I just pressed random buttons until everyone was dead. Felt a little like buying a lvl50 toon but having no idea about the mechanics. Don't do that kids!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I used my tomes once I was done with Blacklake, since I had little interest in redoing Tower District without a Mount.

 

[Gerrard]

Personally I'd use the tomes to skip the fucking Plague Tower and the escort mission.

 

[eklektyk]

i love how every time when im thinking they simply cant fuck anything so simple that its foolproof they go and amaze me ...

so profesion timers ...fuck that ...who needs those ....
now when i log in char i need to open profesion window and wait for task to "cook-off" before i can even do anything .... becouse fuck professions right?
now my rotation is like half as long as before coz everyfuckingtime i need to wait for cooking ...

its almost like cryptic doesnt want anybody to play their games ...shocking i say dear sirs ... simply shocking

and if one thread on forums is to be belived they finaly "fixed" their "fix" to chests so theyre supposedly no longer fucked up ...who knows it may even be true this time

 

[Gerrard]

Just use the gateway for professions, you can use backspace to quickly repeat the same task too which makes it much faster.