Friday Grab Bag - 05/05/2017

Welcome to another fabulous Friday Grab Bag to launch us into the weekend!

Thanks as always to everyone for sending in your questions, keep 'em coming! You can send in your questions through our Grab Bag submission form. Please note this is for game questions, feedback should be sent in through our feedback form.

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Now, on to the questions!



What is the difference between a Frigg, Mending Pot, or Cleric Health Regen?  How do they work?  Do they stack? And which one is better?

These 3 abilities are all the same form of health regen. The Shaman Frigg and Cleric Health Regens each stack with mending potions but do not stack or co-exist with each other (only applicable on Gaheris).

The differences are essentially just how they are cast, their durations, and their delves:

-Shaman Friggs are single or group-targeted spell casts that last 30s and range in delves from 30 hp/tick at the lowest single-targeted buff to 132 hp/tick at the highest.
-Cleric health regen buffs are single-target, concentration-based buffs. It delves from 3 to 9 hp/tick.
-The mending and omni-regen potions are self-only and last 10 minutes. They also delve from 2 to 8 hp/tick.

The form of health regen used with all three of these abilities works so that each time your character’s health regen “ticks” naturally, its regen value is boosted by the above delves.

In addition to the stated delves, the Shaman and Cleric buffs’ have their effectiveness increased with higher specializations in Mending or Enhancements, respectively.

How do the different buff spells affect pets? I buff my chanter's pets with a druid, but I'm not sure what buffs are useful and what the buffs actually do for each pet. Thanks

Strength buffs increase a pet’s melee damage.

Constitution buffs decrease damage done to a pet.

Dexterity buffs reduce a pet’s spell cast timer, decrease damage done to the pet and increase its chance to hit with archery and bolts.

Quickness buffs reduce a pet’s melee attack timer.

No other concentration buffs affect pets.

If arrogance absorb MELEE damage, and archery shots, though coded like bolts, absorb MELEE ablatives, why doesn't arrogance work against archery shots?

The distinction for archery in regards to ablatives is that archery shots, while spells, still count as melee in some ways (a hold over from the old archery mechanics). This is why the shots can still be blocked and why bladeturn affects them. However, they *are* categorized as spells in most other ways. Arrogance is simply making a more specific check for damage from melee type weapons (excepting style spell proc damage) which doesn't include archery shots. It’s a fine distinction but that’s the technical reason as to why the two are treated differently. For consistency’s sake, both arrogance and melee ablatives should likely affect the same damage types in the same way, but doing so isn’t a simple fix and this is rather far down the list of priorities.

Is it intended that Animist has constitution as secondary attribute (+23 at lvl 50) and dexterity as tertiary attribute (+15 at lvl 50)? Even the classic caster classes have quickness as tertiary attribute. Do you see the possibility that all casters get dexterity as secondary and constitution as tertiary attribute?

Animists and Warlocks are both set this way, which is as designed. Unfortunately, there are some steep technical hurdles preventing the changing of rising stats across all classes in addition to the very many abilities being balanced around the existing rising stat values.

I really enjoyed the content in the Catacombs expansion, especially the PvE quests that span all level ranges. I was wondering if we will ever be able to access the old quests and zones in Catacombs again.

The zones, yes! The quests will depend. We will likely keep some of them but most will be changed or replaced. Stay tuned for the completion of A Dragon’s Curse campaign for the full details on the Catacombs expansion’s areas. In the meantime, it’s disabled for several reasons:

1. With the campaign, we’ve re-introduced the aurulite currency and are strictly controlling its economy going forward and so want to limit access to Catacombs areas that dropped it until we’re ready for players to venture into those areas again.
2. While some players do enjoy the low level content in the expansion, it had become redundant with the New User Journey and dungeon revamps in the classic-world zones.
3. Not only was the content redundant but it spread out the population a bit too much, especially at low levels, which is not good for the health of the game. This is mostly the case for new and lower level players who we want to funnel into shared areas. It’s also true for the number of instances that Catacombs introduced (at all levels) which provide too many options, further diluting the population, while also not being high-quality, engaging encounters due to their sheer number.
4. Closing the zones to players allows us to more actively and comprehensively develop and revamp them behind the scenes so that we can provide fewer, but more engaging instances, quests, and world content in the Catacombs expansion areas. Again, stay tuned for more details later this year!

Community note: with Chapter 2 of the Campaign, there are several legacy Catacombs items for sale on the aurulite merchant to alleviate the closing of these zones.

That's it for this week, enjoy the weekend!