RIFT news » The Path Ahead – Spring Edition!
Ascended, we are so happy to have you with us, on Live and Prime. It’s been a busy year and we want to share what’s coming next! Grab a mug of ale or a cup of coffee and settle in…
ALL RIFT SERVICES:
There are a lot of causes for lag, most of which occur in the wild spaces between your system and hours. So let’s talk about a type of lag we can address internally in our services: Ability Lag. We’ve made a number of adjustments to load-heavy abilities on some classes, and load distribution on our servers, with more to come–we’ve seen a dramatic reduction in reports of Ability Lag. This doesn’t mean that we’re done yet, or that it doesn’t still occur; we continue to watch and review, and will take more action over time as we identify culprits.
Balance:
Balance is a common and repeated request, and one we take seriously. We know that souls and challenges evolve over time, along with the game. Again, we plan slow and careful adjustments over time, rather than massive, sweeping changes. You can expect more of these to come throughout the evolution of RIFT on both Live and Prime services. Here are the tweaks we are making this patch on both Live and Prime services, focused heavily on Warriors, who really needed the love… GROUP HUG! (read on below for more Warrior adjustments on Prime only)
- Warrior – Void Knight: The cooldown for Tempest has been removed. Damage has been slightly reduced but threat has been increased.
- Warrior – Void Knight: Increased the threat gain on the following abilities: Ragestorm, Unstable Reaction, and Discharge.
- Warrior – Paladin: The cooldown for Sweeping Strike has been removed. Damage has been slightly reduced but threat has been increased.
- Warrior – Paladin: Increased the threat gain on the following abilities: Light’s Vengeance, Light’s Reprisal, and Vengeful Decree.
- Rogue – Riftstalker: The cooldown for Rift Disturbance has been removed. Damage has been slightly reduced but threat has been increased.
- Mage – Frostkeeper: The threat generated from Earthen Rapport has been reduced.
- Mage – Frostkeeper: Players and pets can now only have 1 stack of a Frostkeeper barrier on them at a time.
General Content:
On the general content front, Lantern Hook has received some attention. Pyromaster Cortinald will no longer be able to ignore taunts, while Tarthak the Immolator’s health will scale more appropriately.
PVP Bolstering Adjustment
In PvP, we’re introducing an adjustment for bolstering at lower levels (10-50), wherein they use the same bolstering effect as level 50+ Warfronts. We ask that you please post feedback of any bugs you may encounter with this change. Here is the official feedback thread – we really appreciate your input AFTER the patch goes live, of course!
Guild Creation:
Creating a Guild through the game UI will now cost one platinum, to match the purchase rate of a Guild Creation Scroll.
Summer is Coming!
We’ve started work on Summerfest 2018, and hope to talk about it on this week’s Livestream! We think you’ll love the theme for this year, so tune in and have a look-see! Yes, this WILL be on Live and Prime!
Specific only to Live: NA/EU
Level Boosting potions have been examined, tested and reformulated so that they will award the proper amount of experience for the applicable level.
In the Bastion of Steel Raid, we’ve taken a wrench to Vindicator MK1’s Burning Ground ability, so that it can no longer affect players outside of the instance. It’s an edge case, but an annoying one!
Greenscale can hardly wait to taste you… (credit: RIFT Pictures)
Specific to Prime: Vigil
CONTENT UNLOCKS!
Progression is at the top of many current discussions across our many communication channels, and as the Vigil server population slowly matures (hey, not everyone is max level yet!), it’s time to plot a course for the next month!
Heads up – Greenscale is coming soon! Everyone’s favorite voracious chomper, the first Dragon to be encountered on Telara will show up in late April. Will It be wholesale slaughter, or will your guild persevere?
Meanwhile, the path to Greenscale is already opening, with the release of the Life Saga and Death Saga, just in time for the Month 2 Vigil Challenge! These will automatically unlock at 9:00 AM PDT, April 11th!
Runic Descent looks so peaceful at sunset… (credit: RIFT Pictures)
Not enough content for ya? No problem – we’re also unlocking:
- Expert Deepstrike Mines
- Expert Runic Descent
- Expert Abyssal Precipice
- Expert Charmer’s Caldera!
Speaking of the Caldera, we’ve smacked around the bosses for ya in Standard mode:
Smouldaron: Deals a bit less damage
Cyclorax: Deals slightly less damage
Ryka Dharvos: Deals moderately less damage
Caelia the Stormtouched: Deals less damage
Darkening Deeps Expert is coming around the bend, expected to open next week or slightly later!
Blighted Antechamber is anticipated in the upcoming weeks as well. In both cases, we’re making sure the QA folks get a good look at them before being released to the wilds of Vigil!
PVP Warfront: Port Scion returns to the PvP Warfront list, as part of our 2nd Monthly Prime: Vigil Challenge! We’re looking forward to feedback on this zone; in the past it’s been love it or hate it, with very little in between.
Port Scion from Stonefield… so lovely and inviting! (credit: RIFT Pictures)
BALANCE!
Prime-only balance updates focus largely on adjusting the Warrior, who needed the most help in this brave new world. As with balance adjustments on Live servers, we will watch, measure and gather both data and personal feedback, continuing to adjust over time as needed:
- Mage – Frostkeeper: Healing procced by Earthen Barrier has been reduced. Boop!
- Warrior – Paladin: Fixed an issue where when using Shield of the Hero, auto-attacks would do zero damage. Bing!
- Warrior – Champion: Slightly increased damage of Mighty Blow. Bam!
- Warrior – Champion: Moderately increased the damage of Titan’s Strike. Pow!
- Warrior – Champion: Greatly increased the damage of Bladefury. BOOM!
- Warrior – Paragon: Increased the damage of Shifting Blades. Yeah!
- Warrior – Paragon: Greatly increased the damage of Way of the Wind. Whoa!
- Warrior – Paragon: Slightly increased the damage of Deadly Parity. Take that!
So hug a Warrior today… unless you’re in PvP, in which case, smack ’em hard, then run away fast!
Prime PVP
PvP Queues taking forever? Level 50 Warfront Balance? We hear you like it when folks die. Message received!
Both damage (increased) and healing (lowered) have been adjusted pretty heavily. Please continue to post feedback and we’ll continue to tune toward fun. Thank you!
What’s NEXT for Prime?
Plenty! Now that we’ve been at this for a month, we’re getting a clearer picture of where the path leads. River of Souls is next up for scrutiny, Combat Balance continues, Dungeon Balance is under further review.
The first slivers glimmer on the horizon and are expected later this month – you can soon experience Gilded Prophecy and Drowned Halls again, for the first time!
We’re working on UI to support 20-player LFR.
Summerfest will come to Prime this year in addition to Live servers, marking the first full-on festival to run on Vigil!
And this just in… the team is starting internal testing on post-Greenscale world events! We can’t spill ALL the beans, or there will be nothing left to talk about, but hey, drop us some questions for the Livestream on Friday!
RIFT ON!
~The RIFT Team
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