Fellowship Early Access Patch Notes: November 20th

With the November 20th maintenance at 7:00am CET also comes a big balance update for Fellowship. This patch will include major bug fixes, adjustments to heroes and abilities, adjustments to the Voidbringer’s Touch weapon ability, and changes to the Shadow Lord’s Trial and Malevolent Shade dungeon curses.

Quick Patch Summary

To kick off the November 20th patch notes, here is a quick summary of the changes coming this patch:

Whispers are now available for use across different stronghold instances.
Bug fix for enemies being unable to cross boss encounter barriers.
Bug fix for item level squishing when overgeared for lower level content.
Bug fix for damage calculations when “%Main Stat Bonus” was involved.
Bug fix for Sylvie’s Synchronized Fluttering talent.
Ardeos’ spirit ability, Incinerate, now has a maximum of 8 targets before having its damage reduced.
Buffs to the baseline of Meiko’s abilities to offset the bug fix for the “%Main Stat Bonus.”
Buffs to Mara’s Skittering Blades & Arachnid Assault abilities as well as her Volatile Poison talent damage.
Rime’s single target damage increased, specifically affecting her Cold Snap, Glacial Blast, and Freezing Torrent abilities.
Minor adjustments to the Earthbreaker, Chronoshift, Al’Zerac’s Shackle, and Twilight Skybolt weapon abilities.
Major adjustments to the Voidbringer’s Touch weapon ability.
The Shadow Lord’s Trial and Malevolent Spirit dungeon curses have been changed to remove the net-negative effect on dungeon timers across the board.

Below are the detailed patch notes for the November 20th patch.

Patch Notes for November 20th

In the first month after the early access launch, our focus was heavily focused on the here-and-now issues of getting players into a stable and consistent experience. A significant amount of that work has been how our back-end and servers have been configured. Now that we are seeing a more stable experience, our team is able to start shifting their focus to long-term improvements, and feature development. There are a lot of new things we are working on to get into the game, and that comes with development and testing to make sure we’re not introducing new issues as we go. While we are gaining momentum on these new features for future updates, we have a number of fixes and updates coming this week as well.

General

Added the ability to remove offline players from your friends list.
Fixed an issue where players were unable to whisper across strongholds.
Added feedback in chat when a muted player tries to speak.
The ‘Select Previous Target’ functionality was still not working as expected. This has now been fixed.
Fixed an issue where non-boss non-minion NPCs would collide with boss barriers.

UI

Added additional context (block, parry, miss etc.) on the Death Recap for 0-damage events.
Fixed an issue where player’s health numbers were being shown underneath the ‘dead’ label when a player died.
Fixed an issue where the texture on the player’s health bar was displaying incorrectly.
Fixed several issues where translated text was overrunning the buttons they were in.
Fixed an issue where Mara’s Hero HUD blocks mouse inputs.
Fixed an issue where the new active ability timers would not scale with the rest of the UI correctly.

Progression

We discovered a bug in our damage calculations this week that was causing some strange behaviors for any effects that acted as a multiplier on your Main Stat (Strength, Intellect, Agility). We have fixed the issue in this patch, and we are keeping a very close eye on any unexpected ripple effects this may have for any of the heroes. From the limited time we had to test this internally, we haven’t seen any dramatic effects – and please let us know if you notice anything out of the ordinary in this patch in regards to hero performance.

The Bug

The bug caused any % Main Stat bonuses to be added to your base damage coefficient, even though they would show up on your character sheet as expected.

Example 1, “Big Damage” abilities

We are using Elarion’s Highwind Arrow for this example.
For this example’s sake, we will ignore any other damage bonuses that may be active (no Event Horizon damage bonus, no buffs, etc). We will also pretend that Elarion has 0% Critical Strike, Expertise, and no talents.
Elarion’s Highwind Arrow deals 865% Agility damage baseline.
With 1000 Agility, that would result in an average of 8650 damage per main target hit.
With the 2-set bonus from Ransack of Drakheim you are granted 20% increased Agility for 20 seconds.
- This would result in your Agility being increased from 1000 to 1200.
- The expected result would be that your Highwind Arrow now deals an average of 865% of 1200 = 10380 damage per main target hit.
The bug instead added the 20% to the base coefficient.
- This instead resulted in your Highwind Arrow dealing an average of 865% + 20% = 885% of 1000 = 8850 damage per main target hit.
In the case of Highwind Arrow, this has caused the Ransack of Drakheim bonus specifically to increase the damage of it by approximately 2.02% – rather than the intended 20%.

Example 2, “Small Damage” abilities

We are using Mara’s Volatile Poison explosions for this example.
The explosion from Mara’s Volatile Poison deals 40% Agility damage baseline.
With 1000 Agility, that would result in an average of 400 damage per hit.
With the 2-set bonus from Ransack of Drakheim you are granted 20% increased Agility for 20 seconds.
- This would result in your Agility being increased from 1000 to 1200.
- The expected result would be that your Volatile Poison explosions now deal an average of 40% of 1200 = 480 damage per hit.
The bug instead added the 20% to the base coefficient.
- This instead resulted in your Volatile Poison explosions dealing an average of 40% + 20% = 60% of 1000 = 600 damage per cast.
In the case of Volatile Poison’s explosion, this has caused the Ransack of Drakheim bonus specifically to increase the damage of those hits by approximately 50% – rather than the intended 20%.

Now that this is working correctly. From the two examples above you can see that this will cause “small damage abilities” to benefit less from %main stat bonuses – while “big damage abilities” will benefit more from them as this patch goes live.

As a result, we have preemptively adjusted the abilities that will get heavily affected on the negative side to compensate for this fix. Mara’s Volatile Poison damage for example, has been increased by 30% baseline as part of this compensation.

You can read the rest of these compensations as part of the hero tuning segment of the patch notes.

This fix only affects the following effects:

Hero Talents
- Helena’s Second Wind talent: When your Toughness has reduced an amount of damage equal to 30% of your Maximum Health, you gain 30% increased Strength for 8 seconds.
Set Bonuses
- Cithrel’s Fall set: Your critical strikes have a chance (0.9 PPM) to increase your Strength / Agility / Intellect by 18% for 15 seconds.
- Wraithtide Vault: +4% Main Stat
- Ransack of Drakheim: Your Spirit Ability grants you Drakheim’s Absolution, increasing your Main Stat by 20% for 20 seconds.
Gem Bonuses
- Ruby – Might of the Minotaur: +3% / +9% Main Stat while you are above 80% health.
- Sapphire – Ancestral Surge: While your Spirit of Heroism is active, your Main Stat is increased by 8% / 24%.
- All Overcap bonuses (the main stat portion of them): Every 2 “Gem” Power above 2640 grants you +0.01% Main Stat & Stamina.
Weapon Traits
- Hidden Power: Your abilities have a chance to grant you 1 stack of Hidden Power for 60 seconds. When you have 5 stacks, Hidden Power is consumed and Power Revealed is granted to you for 15 seconds, increasing your Main Stat by 7.5% / 9% / 10.5% / 12%.
- Vengeful Soul: Your critical strikes have a chance to increase your Main Stat by 4% / 4.8% / 5.6% / 6.4% for 6 seconds.
- Willful Momentum: Whenever your Spirit refunds resources for you, your Main Stat is increased by 3% / 3.6% / 4.2% / 4.8% for 4 seconds.
- Martial Initiative: Your weapon ability grants you 10% Main Stat and 15% Damage Reduction for a duration equal to 20% / 24% / 28% / 32% of your weapon ability’s default cooldown.
Any item level “Squishing”
- This was where we first discovered the initial symptom of the bug. When a player with very high item level and power played in a contender league dungeon, they would sometimes deal “1” or “2” damage with their abilities. This was happening due to an extreme interaction with this bug.
- Players should no longer be squished to unreasonably low damage numbers when wearing full, high item level gear in low league dungeons.

Heroes

Many of the adjustments to heroes below are due to the “%Main Stat Bonus” bug fix and the adjustment to Voidbringer’s Touch, in addition to a few general bug fixes and adjustments.

Meiko

Adjustments below are both to help her catch up to Helena’s damage output and to compensate for the “%Main Stat bonus” bug fix (as she has a number of “small damage abilities”)

Spirit Palm damage was increased by 12%.
Wind Kick damage was increased by 40%.
Earth Fist damage was increased by 12%.
Earthfist Barrage damage was increased by 15.1% (this does not include the final hit)
Rising Storm damage was increased by 5%.
Lashing Stormkick damage was increased by 8.9%.
Spirited Vortex damage was increased by 33%.
Stone Shield damage was increased by 7%.
Shatter Earth ticking area damage was increased by 5%.
Twin Souls: Army of One damage was increased by 6%.
Spirited Vortex now grants +15% dodge chance while active on you (was +5%).
Spirited Vortex radius was increased by 14%.
Enemies hit by Spirited Vortex now deal 10% reduced damage while they are affected by Spirited Vortex’s debuff (5 second duration).

Rime

Glacial Blast damage was increased by 20%.
Freezing Torrent damage was increased by 10%.
Cold Snap damage was increased by 20%.
Fixed an issue where Drakebreaker Claws were missing visual representation on the hero.

Elarion

Skystrider’s Grace cooldown has been reduced to 120 seconds (was 180 seconds).
Event Horizon now increases all damage you deal by 20% for the duration (was 15%).

Ardeos

In the previous week’s patch, we increased the direct damage dealt by Ardeos’ Incinerate ability by a large amount, which we felt was needed to provide impact for that ability. During the week we realized the ability had no damage scaling reduction when used on very large groups of enemies. This was an oversight, as all our hero’s area abilities that deal direct damage have some form of scaling when hitting a predetermined amount of enemies. This is needed to make sure those abilities are still relevant to your damage on single target encounters (ie: bosses).

To clarify, this damage scaling will still cause your overall damage dealt with an ability to increase as you add more targets – but you will deal slightly less damage to each individual enemy the more enemies you add in – to avoid linear scaling (ie: hitting 32 enemies should not to 32x damage – or it would need to be tuned down until it had no impact on single target encounters).

Incinerate’s direct damage while channeling now deals reduced damage when hitting more than 8 targets (was not being reduced).

Mara

Adjustments below are to compensate for the “%Main Stat bonus” bug fix (as she has a number of “small damage abilities”)

Skittering Blades damage has been increased by 12%.
Arachnid Assault damage has been increased by 10%.
Volatile Poison damage has been increased by 30%.

Vigour

Rune of Renewal’s direct healing has been increased by 16%.

Sylvie

Fixed an issue where the Synchronized Fluttering talent caused overcharged Fluttercall: Heal casts to deduct the mana cost twice. This fix results in it now correctly costing 200% of its base cost on overcharged casts (down from 400%).

Weapons

The big update of this patch is the adjustment we are making to Voidbringer’s Touch, in addition to some tuning to a few other weapons.

Voidbringer’s Touch (Ranged DPS and Melee DPS)

We have made adjustments to Voidbringer’s Touch to address the extreme peaks the weapon was able to produce in regards to damage. This change also reduces the overall damage Voidbringer’s Touch will deal – as it was intended to be a weapon that does not have the highest overall damage in a dungeon, but rather sacrificing some overall to gain access to an important tool (being able to focus down one specific dangerous enemy in a pack).

With this change, we also granted Voidbringer’s Touch +100% critical strike chance. This means the weapon will always deal grievous critical strikes – causing it to have less extreme scaling with critical strikes than it did before, while not removing the value of critical strike chance (grievous critical strikes gain an increase to the base damage equal to your hero’s critical strike chance). This change also makes it more reliable in its performance, as those huge critical strikes for double damage – while fun – would also lead to very anticlimactic “non-crits”.

With this adjustment to Voidbringer’s Touch, we also made some positive adjustments to hero’s base kits to compensate.

Voidbringer’s Touch now accumulates 10% of all damage you deal (was 20%).
Voidbringer’s Touch can now accumulate a maximum of 4250% main stat before self triggering (was 8500% main stat).
Voidbringer’s Touch cooldown was increased to 90 seconds (was 60 seconds).

Chronoshift (Ranged DPS)

Due to the amount of “hidden damage output” Chronoshift grants players through its Cooldown Acceleration mechanic, we decided to tone down the damage slightly to make it more in line with the other weapon choices.

The damage of Chronoshift has been reduced by 10%.

Earthbreaker (Melee DPS)

Earthbreaker’s initial hit damage has been increased by 10%.
Earthbreaker’s ticking area damage has been increased by 20%.

Al’Zerac’s Shackle (Tank)

Al’Zerac’s Shackle’s damage over time effect applied by the eruption was increased by 20%.
Al’Zerac’s Shackle now reduces the Attack Speed of afflicted enemies by 40% (was 35%).

Twilight Skybolt (Healer)

Twilight Skybolt’s healing was increased by 20%.

Curses

We heard feedback that two of the curses in particular were causing a net-negative on the dungeon timer to deal with and have made some changes to address that in these cases.

Shadow Lord’s Trial

The Shadow Lord now has a 400 Spirit Point Value (was 0).
- Spirit Point Value is the amount of Spirit Points you and your allies gain as you are reducing its health. An enemy with 10 Spirit Point Value will generate 1 Spirit Point for your party for every 1% health your damage deals to it. The Spirit Point Value is then divided among the players (4).
- This change causes the Shadow Lord to generate a total of 400 Spirit Points for your party (100 each), causing players to be able to use their Spirit Abilities as the Shadow Lord spawns, and then have their Spirit Abilities fully charged again by the time the Shadow Lord reaches 0% health.
The health of the Shadow Lord has been increased by 10%.
- With the above change, we expect players to be using their Spirit Abilities in most cases to deal with the Shadow Lord. As such we increased the health of it slightly. We will keep an eye on how this affects the timer on a whole and will adjust accordingly moving forward if the gain is too small or large.
  To further clarify because we’ve seen some confusion around the Spirit stat and how it interacts with Spirit Point generation. If you have 20% Spirit on your hero, you will get 20% more Spirit Points, as a personal bonus, of the resulting share (ie: for Spirit Lord, you would generate 120 Spirit Points, rather than 100 with 0% Spirit).

Malevolent Shade

Malevolent Shade’s health has been reduced by 40%.
Upon defeating a Malevolent Shade, players are now healed for 85% of their max health (was 30%) and gain 50% of their maximum mana (was 20%).

Dungeons

This patch is fixing some issues with the “Boss Encounter Barriers”.

All Dungeons

Boss “Encounter Barriers” now only affect players. All enemies can now use abilities and run through the barriers at any time.

Wraithtide Vault

Bael’Aurum’s (boss) encounter barrier has been adjusted. This change fixes an issue causing the Treasure Ball to sometimes be spawned outside the Encounter Barrier – and then disappearing.