Gameplay
Combat Feel
- Added when-hit and on-death visuals that emit from all enemies, corresponding to their type. For example, bugs will bleed green blood, void creatures will spew void gunk, and skeletons will lose dust and bones.
- Added a Death Flash effect to all enemies. This corresponds to the damage type of the killing damage. For example, an enemy killed by Fireball will appear to have fire spread across them, while Ice Barrage will cover the enemy in frost.
- The on-hit visuals for all player abilities now have directionality, meaning their rotation will change based on what direction the hit came from.
- Ailments on all enemies, minions, and players now properly move with their animations. When you ignite something, it won’t float in midair and will instead be attached to their body.
- Updated many enemy stun and death animations. (more to come)
- Implemented Walking Flinch animations for several enemies (more to come). This is new functionality where an enemy will react if it is walking and hit.
- Lots of sound changes– see that section for details.
- Improved how quickly the animations for player abilities start.
- Disintegrate and Maelstrom now triggers on-hit visuals/hit flash effects.
Other Changes
- Interacting with a Waypoint now requires a dedicated click. Previously, mousing over a waypoint while holding down left click would open the world map screen.
- Slightly increased the hitbox for hovering over waypoints.
- Potions now refill when you respawn.
Mechanics
Added Damage
- Weapon Implicits now grant +Melee Damage or +Bow Damage rather than +Melee Physical Damage or +Bow Physical Damage. This works the same as Adaptive Spell Damage, in that it grants damage of a type that matches the skill (e.g. +Melee Damage adds Melee Fire Damage to fire melee attacks, but Melee Void Damage to void melee attacks).
- Renamed Adaptive Spell Damage to +Spell Damage.
Grace Period
- There is now a grace period where enemies will not target you or move directly towards you whenever you go through a transition to a new zone, or a transition inside a zone.
- Grace periods were previously only granted after respawning.
- A buff icon is now shown for the duration of a grace period.
- Grace periods now end after 15 seconds (from 3 seconds).
- A grace period will end early if you move after 2 seconds or use an ability.
Damage Numbers
- If two damage number events occur within the same 0.02 second window the resulting damage number will show the combined damage rather than the later damage.
- Fixed a bug where if a DoT damage number needed to be shown in the same 0.02 second window as a hit, then it would prevent the hit flash effect from playing.
XP Gain and Zone Level Scaling
- If you are playing alone or are the highest level party member, you will gain reduced XP from enemies if you are more than 10 levels below the zone’s level, gaining xp as if the zone was your level plus 10. If you are not the highest-level player, this threshold is reduced by the level disparity between you and the highest-level player (minimum of 2).
- A system with a similar end effect existed in 0.8.5, but the threshold was 5 levels and did not apply in campaign zones.
- If you are more than 5 levels below the expected level for the start of a chapter, quests in that chapter will award proportionately less xp based on your level.
- In non-combat zones that previously scaled to the character’s level, now the UI scales (e.g. it shows the value for dodge chance depending on your character level), but the zone level itself does not change.
- Characters will no longer erroneously gain XP while dead.
Solo Challenge
- When playing Offline, the Solo challenge option is now referred to as “Character Found”. Characters with this option have a stash separate from all of your other characters.
- When playing Online, the Solo challenge option is now referred to as “Account Found”. Characters with this option share a stash with other characters of the same difficulty (softcore or hardcore) but cannot join a party or receive items from other players.
Dual Wielding
- Reduced Damage Taken penalty for dual wielding from 15% to 9%.
- This affects the Gladiator node on the Sentinel tree, Gemini node on the Spellblade tree, the Harmony of Blades node on the Primalist tree, and the Twin Blade node on the Rogue tree.
Ailments
Increased Effect for Damaging Ailments
- “Increased Effect” stats for damaging ailments have been swapped for “Penetration with” stats. For example, 8% increased Ignite Effect is now +8% Fire Penetration with Ignite.
- Previously, it was unclear that “Increased Effect” stats affects the damage of ailments multiplicatively with other damage bonuses, and it was unclear that Penetration affects ailments as this is not the case in other ARPGs.
- Cases where there has been a one-to-one swap, such as 10%, Increased Bleed Effect to +10% Physical Penetration with Bleed, have not been recorded as individual patch notes. Anything else is recorded in the Skills section for each class.
Reduced Resistance Shredding from Ailments
- Shock and the Resistance Shred Ailments, such as Fire Resistance Shred, now have a stack limit of 10 (from 20). This caused damage in boss fights to accelerate too much, strongly favored fast-hitting builds, and would have been more of a problem in multiplayer.
- Shock’s effect on stun chance has been doubled, so the same effect can be reached at max stacks. The stun aspect of Shock was not problematic in these situations and it helps Shock feel more unique compared to other shred ailments.
- All effects of increased effect for shock and resistance shred ailments have been removed to manage the power of these ailments and to avoid situations where stacks with high increased effect could be replaced by weaker ones.
Duration of Damaging Ailments
- Many damaging ailments now have higher DPS but lower duration to lessen the disparity in their effectiveness against bosses compared to clearing packs of smaller enemies that would often die before the ailment’s duration expired. This should also mitigate the issue where DoT builds sometimes feel like they have to rush ahead of dying packs to be efficient, missing out on the loot they drop.
Frostbite
- Frostbite’s debuff effect has been totally changed to make its effects more easily understood and more useful. Removing Increased Frostbite Effect (since it deals damage) would have caused its freeze avoidance reduction stat to be quickly outscaled by enemy health. Regardless, the impact of this stat was hard to understand and it was especially affected by enemy health scaling from sources like Monolith mods.
Individual Ailment Changes
- Poison
- Only the first 30 stacks on a target reduce poison resistance (from every stack)
- Deals 28 base damage (from 20)
- Sources of increased Poison Effect have been replaced by Poison Penetration with Poison
- Frostbite
- No longer reduces Freeze Avoidance by 200 per stack
- The first 30 stacks now increase Chance to be Frozen by 20% each (e.g. if a hit had a base 10% freeze chance, 2 stacks of Frostbite would give it a 14% chance)
- Lasts 3 seconds (from 4)
- Deals 36 total damage (from 35)
- Approximate Frostbite Damage is now shown in the character sheet
- Sources of Increased Frostbite Effect have been replaced by Cold Penetration with Frostbite
- Shock
- Limited to 10 stacks (from 20)
- Increases chance of being stunned by 20% per stack (from 10%)
- It is no longer possible to increase shock effect
- Resistance Shred Ailments (such as Fire Resistance Shred, but not Armour Shred)
- Limited to 10 stacks (from 20)
- Armour Shred has not been changed and can still have unlimited stacks
- Ignite
- Lasts 2.5 seconds (from 3)
- Deals 40 base damage over its full duration (from 39)
- Sources of increased Ignite Effect have been replaced by Fire Penetration with Ignite
- Bleed
- Lasts 3 seconds (from 4) - has the same total damage, so this results in 33% more DPS from a single instance
- Sources of increased Bleed Effect have been replaced by Physical Penetration with Bleed
- Damned
- Lasts 2.5 seconds (from 3)
- Deals 35 base damage (from 25)
- Sources of increased Damned Effect have been replaced by Necrotic Penetration with Damned
- Electrify
- Lasts 2.5 seconds (from 3)
- Deals 44 base damage (from 42)
- Sources of increased Electrify Effect have been replaced by Lightning Penetration with Electrify
- Time Rot
- Deals 55 base damage (from 45)
- Sources of increased Time Rot Effect have been replaced by Void Penetration with Time Rot
- Critical Vulnerability
- Is now limited to 10 stacks
- Adds 2% chance to be crit per stack (from 5%)
Other Changes
- There is no longer a limit of 15 on the number of stacks that can be shown on the icon for each ailment. This was made possible by changing how the data for ailment stacks is sent between the server and clients in multiplayer.
- Improved how the expected DPS impact of damaging ailments is calculated (generally lower than before, but more accurate to real scenarios).
- Ailment modifying stats such as “Increased Melee Chill Duration” are now formatted like “Increased Chill Duration with Melee Attacks”.
- Improved clarity of chill and slow descriptions, specifically making it clearer that stacks are multiplicative with each other and the 50% less effect against players results in each stack reducing speed by 6% and 10%, respectively.
- Abyssal Decay, Future Strike, and Spreading Flames are now shown under health bars when hovering over enemies.
General Skills
Skill Aiming Improvements
- Melee aim assist now chooses a target mostly based on the angle from the original target direction rather than distance. This prevents extreme aim corrections that are unintuitive.
- Added a minor aiming assist for Fireball, Marrow Shards, Bow Basic Attack, Bow Flurry, Bow Puncture, Bow Cinder Strike, and Detonating Arrow.
- A similar effect already existed on Shurikens. The effect is more minor for these skills and is sometimes disabled based on skill tree choices.
- Hungering Souls and the homing version of fireball no longer home towards targets that have been hit by projectiles from the same cast (unless the projectiles are fired in sequence and can hit the same target).
- Fixed a bug where Firebrand’s increased range from its stacks was not taken into account for melee auto-aim.
- Fixed a bug resulting in the system underestimating the range of Firebrand and the melee version of Puncture.
- Fixed a bug where using projectile abilities while aiming off a cliff would shoot the projectiles down instead of forwards. This change does not affect aiming up or down ramps.
Projectile Fixes
- Fixed a bug where abilities procced by fast-moving projectiles, such as Puncture, would sometimes not hit enemies. Symptoms included the shadow daggers proc sometimes not hitting when the fourth dagger was applied by such an ability.
- Fixed some projectile skills going too far at baseline. These projectiles will still reach the edge of the screen, but won’t go as far beyond it.
- Arrow Nova (from Assemble Abomination) lasts 1.1 seconds (from 5 seconds)
- Bow flurry lasts 0.35 seconds (from 1.1 seconds)
- Multishot lasts 0.45 seconds (from 0.55 seconds)
- Icicles from Reign of Winter last 0.7 seconds (from 3 seconds)
- Axes from Riverbend Grasp and Sentinel’s Axe Thrower passive last 2.2 seconds (from 4 seconds)
Damage Effectiveness
- The alt text for all player abilities and sub-abilities now state their damage effectiveness even if it is 100%. The effectiveness was previously never stated if it was 100%.
- Fixed many skills with a damage effectiveness other than 100% not listing it on their alt text.
- Erasing Strike’s tooltip now states the correct damage effectiveness of 450% (from 400%).
- Earthquake’s tooltip now states the correct damage effectiveness of 350% (from 300%).
Damage Conversion
- All cases of full damage conversion have been changed to base damage conversion, and most cases of ailment-only conversion now also convert base damage (previously, weapon skills tended to use full damage conversion or ailment-only conversion, while non-weapon skills tended to use base damage conversion).
- All cases that converted visuals and tags by adding damage now convert base damage.
- Details for individual skills are in the skills section for each class
Area Scaling
• All skills that have an area of effect now have an Area tag and their area can be scaled with new Increased Area Stats.
• Added a new Increased Area for Area Skills prefix for gloves and amulets.
• Added a new Increased Area for Melee Area Skills suffix for 2h maces, 2h axes, 2h swords and 2h spears.
• Several new base types and uniques also grant Increased Area for certain groups of skills.
Traversal Skills
Traversal skills are a subset of movement skills. Using a traversal skill will put all other traversal skills on cooldown and while you are using a traversal skill, traversal skills’ cooldowns will not recover.
The following skills are now Traversal skills:
- Shield Rush
- Lunge
- Shift
- Transplant
- Teleport
- Surge
- Fury Leap
- Reap (from Reaper Form)
- Rampage (from Werebear Form)
- Dive (from Swarmblade Form)
The following skills can become Traversal skills if you use certain nodes or uniques:
- Smite
- Focus
- Glacier
- Crowstorm (the companion ability of Storm Crows)
- Summon Skeletal Mage
- Summon Vines (from Spriggan Form)
- Void Cleave
Cooldown Changes
We want the feel and pace of gameplay to change more over the course of the game and for items to feel like they play a bigger role in that change. This isn’t a goal that’s going to be achieved through a single silver bullet, but as part of achieving it, we’ve decided to increase the availability of stats that impact gameplay feel. Increased cooldown recovery speed is one such stat, but one of the barriers to increasing its availability is the potential for gameplay to become too rapid and zoomy due to movement skills’ cooldowns becoming too short.
To prevent this from becoming a problem, we’ve changed traversal skills not to recover their cooldowns during use, as mentioned above, and are also increasing the base cooldown duration of many common traversal skills. These changes allow us to be more confident in greatly increasing the availability of increased cooldown recovery speed on items without it speeding up the gameplay too much.
With these changes if you have no increased cooldown recovery speed from items, but full investment into relevant passives and skill nodes, most basic movement skill cooldowns will be around 0.3 seconds longer, and with full investment on items (up to T5 affixes) their cooldowns will be around 0.3 seconds shorter.
Specific cooldown changes:
- Shift has a 3.5 second cooldown (from 3 seconds).
- Transplant has a 5 second cooldown (from 4 seconds).
- Teleport has a 5 second cooldown (from 4 seconds).
- Shield Rush has a 4.5 second cooldown (from 4 seconds).
- Rampage (from Werebear Form) has a 4.5 second cooldown (from 4 seconds).
- Dive (from Swarmblade Form) has a 3.2 second cooldown (from 3 seconds)
Cooldown Recovery Speed Affix Changes
- Is now a suffix (from a prefix).
- Now rolls on boots and belts (from helmets).
- Now gives up to 20% increased cooldown recovery speed at T5 (from 14%) and up to 32% at T7 (from 20%).
Other Cooldown Item Changes:
- Added a new ring base type, Opal Ring, which grants up to 10% increased cooldown recovery speed.
- Some of the new body armor and helmet base types grant increased cooldown recovery speed.
Other Changes
- The Fire Burst subskill’s base damage increased to 20 (from 7) and added damage effectiveness to 100% (from 35%). This is used by the skills Infernal Shade, Smite, Enchant Weapon, Disintegrate, Forge Strike, and Rive.
- Fixed the special tags of implicits not being taken into account for several effects that depended on the stats of specific items (e.g. this fixes implicit ailment chances not working for Forged Weapons).
- Fixed a bug where if an ability with a guaranteed stun hit a player, but a normal stun due to damage occurred, the duration of the damage stun would be used instead (shorter than the intended stun).
Skill Bug Fixes
Since so many skills received design/balance changes and bug fixes in this update, we’ve put bug fixes for individual skills in the section for each class. This means there are fewer places to look for changes affecting skills you’re interested in.
Skill Balancing
For Beta 0.9, we have implemented reworks and balance changes for many skills in each class. However, there are still more skills that we want to update in the future and some skills that we want to update beyond the changes you see below.
We’re eager to hear feedback about the changes so far. Just keep in mind that a skill being unchanged or only mildly changed in this update doesn’t mean we have no plans to change it later.
