Fellowship has its first balance patch right around the corner, with a focus on some small fixes and closing the gap between the tanks and their legendaries. We can also see that the tanks are getting a small damage boost and threat increase to help with those pesky Rimes ripping aggro with their burst.
Please see below for the full Fellowship patch notes due this Wednesday.
Patch Notes
General
- The AFK timer has been increased to 10 minutes (was 5 minutes).
- The “Self”- and “Target unit frames” will no longer cause the portraits to be zoomed in over time.
- Fixed an issue where players would “Time out” once they get to 0 in the queue.
UI
- Added UI Settings for the “Self”- and “Target unit frame” sizes.
- Added UI Settings to hide the player’s name on the “self unit frame”.
Relics
- The relic that provides you a resurrect ability no longer causes a hitch upon respawning.
Gem Powers
- Sealed Fate (amethyst) now increases critical strike chance by 10% / 30% on targets above 50% health (was “above 80% health”).
Weapon Traits
- The major trait Diamond Strike now correctly increases the healing with each stack (was only affecting damage).
- Updated major trait Diamond Strike tooltip to show correct damage / healing increase applied per stack.
Heroes
- Fixed an issue causing movement abilities with charges to sometimes end up having a negative number of charges.
Meiko
- Meiko’s threat modifier was increased by 20%.
- The damage of Meiko’s abilities have been increased by 12%.
- The legendary Shattering Obelisk Drape now increases the health and duration of Earth Sibling by 50% (was 20%), in addition to it’s other effect.
- Fixed an issue causing Meiko to sometimes get locked out of her abilities permanently if she dies during her Shatter Earth leap.
Helena
- Helena’s threat modifier was increased by 20%.
- The damage of Helena’s abilities have been increased by 12%.
- Helena’s percentual damage reduction when blocking an attack has been increased to 20% (was 15%).
- Helena’s Shield Slam now applies a stacking debuff (Lingering Concussion) to the main target that lasts for 12 seconds, causing that target to deal 3% reduced damage to Helena, stacking up to 5 times.
- Grand Melee can now be cast during Global Cooldown.
- Fixed an issue with the legendary Warboots of the Blackened Vanguard. The free Shockwave now triggers Veteran of the War.
- The legendary Masochistic Razor Necklace now causes enemies hit to deal 20% reduced damage to Helena (was 10%).
- The legendary Unscarred Vigilante’s Cape now reduces all damage taken by 25% while Hold the Line is active on Helena (was 20%).
Tank Changes
At high levels of play and higher difficulties where DPS gear is stronger, DPS bursts can rip aggro from tanks quite easily. This has been a particular problem for Meiko who has to use cooldowns or sometimes even Stone Shield, a defensive resource, just to get some of the aggro back.
The damage increase is non-negligible too. Tanks deal anywhere from 10% to 20% of the damage in an entire dungeon so this will be a decent change, not to mention another assist with the aggro changes.
Most importantly, there has been a large disparity between the two tanks for Early Access. Due to the additional 20% DR and Toughness / Stone Shield changes that the game launched with, Helena got the short end of the stick and has been falling behind in the average, median, and top-end as seen on Fellowship Logs.
Meiko’s Legendary Cape
The legendary cape that buffs the “Dave” sibling from Meiko is getting a substantial buff. At Eternal difficulties, the sibling would pop quite quickly and didn’t have quite as much impact as the other two legendaries. Still, it was very strong when used effectively with Earthbourne, and we’ll see of Meiko players come up with some interesting strategies with it.
Helena’s Buffs
Helena players are going to rejoice when this patch hits, greatly increasing her survivability by reducing outgoing damage to her. Despite being the sword-and-board damage-resistance tank, she has been taking as much damage as Meiko but without all of her self-sustain. The block buff and new stacking debuff are separate damage reduction modifiers which will stack together and greatly reduce her incoming damage.
The legendaries were buffed cross the board – the boots will give a huge amount of Shields Up CDR, and the other two greatly reducing incoming damage. These will help her late game as this is where the gap between Meiko and Helena is felt the most.
In particular, Helena struggled in bosses and forced the healer to split their attention between her and the party more than with a Meiko.
Update Schedule
The update has been scheduled for about 10:00AM Sweden time this Wednesday, here’s an approximate time for common timezones:
- PDT: 1AM
- EDT: 4AM
- CEST: 10AM
- AEDT: 7PM
