Tank and Taunt Changes
Soft Taunts are now officially part of the combat system with a backend 15 second "taunt" timer on specific abilities and sets.
Abilities and item sets that pull a singular target will now also attempt to taunt the target for 15 seconds if they are not already affected by a player taunt. This applies to Beckoning Armor, Fiery Grip, Unrelenting Grip, Silver Leash and Swarm Mother.
Bar swapping while you are actively holding block (Bracing) no longer disables Block.
Overtaunting has been changed to make it significantly harder to do.
Dragonknight
Ardent Flame
Empowering Chains has been changed to Chains of Devastation which now grants Major Berserk for 4 seconds after casting rather than Empower.
Molten Whip's issue where it could fail to activate many conditional requirements that stated "when casting an ability that costs Magicka or Stamina".
Earthen Heart
Helping Hands (passive):
- This passive now requires the ability cost of what triggered it to be greater than the restored amount of Stamina, to prevent situations where you could gain more Stamina than you had spent as Magicka.
- Rank 1 of the ability now shares the same value as Rank 2, but has a cooldown of 2 seconds rather than once every cast.
- Increased the restored amount of Stamina to 1120, up from 990.
There are currently a myriad of ways to use this passive in unintended ways, allowing for situations where you can essentially get infinite Stamina. Many have cleverly paired cost reduction with Ash Cloud when we changed the ability to cost per tick, and while we appreciated this clever interaction, it's ultimately invalidating the need of Stamina resource management for the class in the tank role. We're adjusting this passive to only work when you've spent more resources than it can generate, and we're slightly bumping up the Stamina restore so this doesn't create a situation of an overall nerf.
Necromancer
Grave Lord
Skeletal Archer (morph): Fixed an issue where the damage boost from this morph would fail to apply if the damage was blocked.
Graverobber (morph): Reduced the damage of this synergy by approximately 34% to ensure it is of similar power to other synergies of its ilk, such as Conduit or Combustion.
Bone Tyrant
Death Gleaning (passive): Now restores 333/666 Magicka and Stamina when a nearby enemy dies, up from 100/200.
Sorcerer
Daedric Summoning
Conjured Ward:
- Increased the damage shield size of this ability and the Regenerative Ward morph by 10%.
- Increased the Max Health cap of these abilities to 55%, up from 50%.
- This ability and its morphs now dynamically scale between the higher of your Max Health or Magicka, rather than only Magicka.
Hardened Ward (morph): Increased the damage shield size of this morph by approximately 7% and increased the Max Health cap to 72%, up from 60%.
Empowered Ward (morph) has been changed to Regenerative Ward (morph).
Summon Unstable Familiar: Fixed an issue with this ability and its morphs if another Sorcerer's version of these abilities attacked a target, your own pet would join them and immediately become active in combat as well.
Storm Calling
Mages' Fury:
- Increased the size of the Area of Effect portion of this ability and its morphs to 5 meters, up from 4.
- Fixed an issue where the execute damage from these abilities were not properly labeled as an execute.
Mages’ Wrath (morph): This morph now deals its execute damage to all targets nearby, rather than dealing an initial hit and a smaller amount of damage to nearby targets. This will result in an approximate 129% damage increase of the Area of Effect, while also causing the ability to appear under the same ability ID for combat logs.
Overload: Fixed an issue where this Ultimate and its morphs would not remove themselves when Heavy Attacking with just enough Ultimate for 1 tick.
Conduit: Increased the damage of this synergy by 20% to ensure it stands up to other synergies' power when accounting for the fact that it also only does damage.
Templar
Aedric Spear
Empowering Sweep (morph) has been changed to Everlasting Sweep (morph), the new effects are:
- Increased the duration of the pulsing Damage over Time to 10 seconds at base, up from 6 seconds.
- This morph no longer grants Empower, as Solar Flare and its morphs already grant this buff. As such, the name has been adjusted to prevent confusion.
Dawn's Wrath
Backlash: Fixed an issue where this ability and the Purifying Light morph were considered magical melee damage, rather than magical ranged damage. Note that Power of the Light was already considered martial ranged damage and has not changed.
Living Dark (morph): Fixed an issue where this ability’s visuals could cause you to appear invisible in some cases. Also fixed an issue where this ability's visual effects would persist in place when the target that used the ability would stealth or become invisible.
Restoring Light
Purify: Fixed an issue where this synergy's healing was being truncated in some situations. This will result in a minor increase in the healing done.
Warden
Animal Companions
Cutting Dive (morph): This morph no longer requires the enemy to not be Off Balance for the Damage over Time to apply, and will now apply any time it deals damage.
Winter's Embrace
Crystallized Shield:
- This ability and the Shimmering Shield morph now grant 2 Ultimate when the shield takes damage, rather than restoring Magicka equal to 22% of the ability’s cost.
- Increased the cost of this ability and its morphs to 4320, up from 3780.
- Reduced the shield strength of this ability and the Shimmering Shield morph by approximately 33%
Crystallized Slab (morph):
- This morph no longer grants Magicka or the new Ultimate restore when the shield takes damage, in exchange for the damage done and stun. This morph does retain the original size of the damage shield.
- Reduced the damage per hit of this morph by approximately 33%.
Currently, this ability and its morphs are enabling too much defensive power for the Warden against ranged opponents, while simultaneously allowing them to keep the ability up with next to no cost. In order to peel back some of the power in those regards, we’re increasing the cost and removing the self-sustaining portion, while also trying to give some love back with Ultimate generation. While doing this, we’re also trying to differentiate the morph power you pick from, where Slab is more about shaking off ranged builds and being more defensive, while Shimmering doubles down on the juicy Ultimate generation.
Weapons
Destruction Staff
Tri Focus: Fixed an issue where the block cost override from this passive could persist when using the Armory System, creating situations where your Magicka Recovery could become disabled.
Ancient Knowledge: Fixed multiple issues where the Inferno and Lightning Staff components were applying to incorrect attack types.
Elemental Susceptibility: This morph’s secondary effects are now tracked separately, rather than being linked to Major Breach. This will allow the status effects from the ability to continue while multiple applications are active, or when other sources of Major Breach apply and override this. Reduced the tick frequency to 7.5 seconds, down from 6.
Wall of Elements: All versions of this ability and its morphs will now display a hostile telegraph to enemies. Wall of Frost and its morphs will now apply Minor Breach and reduce the movement speed of enemies by 40% for 4 seconds when damaging a Chilled target, rather than Immobilized them for 4 seconds.
Two Handed
Uppercut: Fixed an issue where this ability's visual effects would persist in place when the target that used the ability would stealth or become invisible.
Wrecking Blow (morph): Now grants Major Berserk for 5 seconds after casting.
Cleave: Fixed an issue where the visuals and sound effects from this ability and its morphs could fail to play properly in some cases.
Stampede (morph): Fixed an issue where the initial hit of this morph would only guarantee its Critical Strike against the first target hit, rather than all targets hit. Note that this guaranteed Critical still does not apply to the Damage over Time portion of the ability, which is by design.
Dual Wield
Flurry: Fixed an issue with this ability and its morphs where the damage and audio impacts appeared delayed and out of sync with its animation.
Vampire
Mist Form:
- This ability and its morphs are no longer a toggled ability that reduce your damage taken from players or grant crowd control immunity while active. Instead, they now teleport you to the position of your cursor, up to a maximum of 15 meters away, and reduce your damage taken from the next 3 projectiles by 100% while teleporting. Casting any of these abilities will increase the cost of the ability by 33% for 4 seconds. The base cost is now 4050 per cast, which reduces to 3780 at rank IV of the base ability.
Elusive Mist (morph): This morph now grants Major Expedition and Major Evasion for 4 seconds after reappearing, rather than just Major Expedition.
Blood Mist (morph): This morph now causes you to deal damage around you and heal for the damage caused once every 2 seconds over 20 seconds after activating the ability, rather than once every second while active. Also increased the damage per tick by approximately 9% but reduced the healing of this morph to 45% of the damage done, down from the original 100%.
This skill has been a wild ride for the past 8 years and while we tried to preserve the original skill as much as we could with the rework, we've run into far too many issues with how the skill was used and how it operated, and its current iteration doesn’t have enough use between all gameplay types. While it was a widely used skill and could be a lot of fun to play with, it was creating many unhealthy gameplay implications in both PvE and PvP and was being used in ways that didn't feel very Vampiric in nature. We've decided to go back to the drawing board to hit on what the original skill was trying to evoke in terms of feel and use.
To try and retain the element of slipping into mist and evading attacks, we've shifted the skill into more of a movement-oriented ability, rather than a pure utility and defensive one, causing you to slip into mist temporarily to evade projectiles and make a hasty retreat or engage. The morphs still focus on the same options as well, where Elusive Mist doubles down on the slippery nature of the skill with bonuses and mitigation, while Blood Mist continues to reward those blood thirsty play styles with life steal. Also be wary of those pesky Fighters Guild attackers! They know how to get around all of these nasty new tricks.
Mist Form: Issues where this ability and its morph could lock you out from jumping until you activated a different ability and where they also gave you aftereffects even when the ability fails to go off have been fixed.
Werewolf
Feeding Frenzy (morph): This synergy now grants Minor Force and Empower for 10 seconds, rather than only Empower for 5 seconds.
Howl of Despair (morph): This morph now allows the caster to self-synergize Feeding Frenzy.
Guilds and Alliance War
Trap Beast: This ability and its morphs will now only trigger ability timers after they’ve hit a target, rather than after placing and after hitting a target.
Concentrated Barrier: Fixed an issue where this passive's shield could become stuck after swapping to a bar that did not have a Psijic Order ability slotted.
Guard: Fixed an issue where this ability and morphs’ transferred damage was able to trigger other conditional requirements.
For more information in regards to hybridized enchantments and trait changes, check this article.