We are now beginning to test significant changes to the combat system. Our primary goal is to eliminate cases where some characters could make themselves virtually immune to attack through buff stacking. We also want to better delineate the tanking ability of the four archetypes: fighters should tank significantly better than scouts, scouts should tank better than priests, and priests should tank better than mages. In addition, we are smoothing out player and NPC progression so there are no longer sudden increases in difficulty around the class and subclass levels. Overall, the con color of your opponent should be a lot more meaningful and will better indicate the level of challenge you're about to undertake. Our intent is that the game feels and plays basically the way it always has for soloers and small group players. Groups and raid forces taking on powerful targets should find a greater level of challenge. These changes will be undergoing extensive evaluation and tweaking on Test server. Please understand that we will not release these changes to the live servers until we are confident that they have the desired effect, so they will not go to the live servers with Live Update #7. We appreciate hearing your feedback on the official forums. Avoidance - Your likelihood of avoiding an attack is now based on two primary factors: - The con color of the attacker. - The type of armor you are wearing. The heavier your armor, the lower your chances of avoiding an attack. - Increasing your Defense skill gives you a better chance of avoiding attacks, but there is now a cap on how much it can be buffed or debuffed. - Increasing your Agility improves your base chance of avoiding an attack, but it will not improve your likelihood of parrying, deflecting, or blocking with a shield. - There is now a cap on the effectiveness of Deflection buffs and debuffs. - Mages and Priests no longer receive the Parry skill. It temporarily still shows in the Skills window, but these archetypes will no longer have any chance to parry. - There is no longer any way to buff the Parry skill over your current skill cap, and there is a limit on how far it can be debuffed. - Shields now have the following base chances to Block: Tower (20%), Kite (19%), Round (5%), Buckler (3%). Your chances to Block scale up or down based on the con of your opponent. Shield buffs no longer have any effect. Mitigation - The base mitigation values of armor have been adjusted as follows: Heavy (35%), Medium (25%), Light (20%), Very Light (10%). - Mitigation values scale up or down based on the con color of your attacker. - There is now a cap on how much mitigation can be buffed or debuffed. Damage - Melee damage bonuses are now calculated based on the attacker's strength versus the defender's agility. - The damage output of both players and NPCs should now increase more smoothly rather than receiving a sharp boost at levels 10 and 20.
