Breeze and Undead Vials

[Carapace]

Hello all,

So as you know we're taking steps to be more proactive in issues the community wants us to address, and these are two that are presently on the docket. I'm going to explore some them in more detail and then propose the changes, along with any necessary explanations as to why certain things are being changed the way they are.

Without further ado, let's dive in to Breeze!
(Undead Vials further down)

This one has been a hot topic. There have been many threads, some very long, with information regarding how he's being used, misused, and generally wreaking havoc on PvP in the game. The gist of the issue is that his freeze abilities are overpowered, and Mages feel slighted that they don't get what this pet does! It's a big deal, and we recognize that. We've had quite a few internal discussions on pros and cons to different approaches and proposed adjustments, in addition to community feedback on what you would like to see change.

Here's what we've come up with:

Breeze!

Breeze General
- Breeze's Movement speed has been increased about 10% to help him stay closer to his owner when playing catchup. This felt like a good way to boost him a little bit after the adjustments that are being made to his other abilities

Breeze Passive Attacks
- Maximum freeze time has been reduced from 4.0 seconds to 2.5 seconds, this applies to PvE and PvP

• Four seconds feels long enough thinking about it, but when you're actually in the heat of battle it's just too long even with a chance every 1 second to remove itself

- During this freeze in PvP, there is a 25% chance every .75 seconds that the freeze will remove itself early, that's 3 chances to break early

• This makes it consistent with other stuns in PvP. You may get lucky and be able to shrug off that freeze early, or have to struggle through the full 2.5s

- After the passive freeze has been removed it will apply a freeze immunity independent of the stun immunity. This immunity will last either 7.5s or 10s. It will always be at least 7.5s, and at 7.5s it will have a 50/50 chance to stay on for another 2.5s or fall off at that 2.5s

• This is a separate immunity in order to maintain Breeze being a bit more special given the amount of time he has been available with his present overpowered stats. We didn't have to do this, but it feels like a good middle ground. The length of the stun immunity is also a bit longer on average than normal stun immunities.

- Damage remains the same, as does it's ability to reduce movement speed

• The only components of this to change are the ones causing the problems basically

Breeze Activated Ability
- Upon cast, there is a 50% chance to apply the 1s stun instead of 100% chance

• Every time it was cast, it was getting a guaranteed

- The ice pool left on the ground now has a 50% chance to apply the same stun every tick instead of 100%

• Subject to the same rules as the original cast, in lesser intervals. If you get away from the danger zone in a timely manner it won't catch you

- The stun effect applied in this ability is now subject to the 7.5s stun immunity shared by other pet abilities and skills like Fireball Knockdown

• This prevents "stun lock" scenarios once the ice well goes down

- The initial damage caused by this ability has been increased to help compensate for the freeze and stun changes.This can crit

• This should help compensate for the removal of stun locks, by giving a bit more damage on the front end

These changes are close to moving to QA and going through the process of getting out to everyone, but since it's a focal point we want to make sure the community can voice opinions or concerns with these proposed changes. Please keep in mind that we are always striving to keep the game fun and balanced, and often times we must do what is good for the game in such circumstances. We believe this accomplishes this at this time.

There are skill changes planned for the future of Arcane Legends, so we're taking a bit of caution in what decisions we make now. We're keeping PvP in mind for skills and want to make the appropriate adjustments at that time.

Undead Vials
This is an element we have played with before, but are not seeing the gains we would like too. The community has also voiced this opinion and so there are some potential changes coming. It should be noted that this is a delicate thing to play with because on one hand the Vials are very rare, which means they have real value in the secondary market of the game when you acquire one. They also can be used for creation of an Arcane Pet which we don't want to accidentally flood the market with and make abundant.

In the past Vials were incredibly rare. They were of Epic rarity which made them rarer in their respective loot tables, in addition to their location of relevant drops. When the change was made to make them of rare quality, this helped boost the drop rate quite a bit, but still not in a "tangible" way for the most part. Everyone recalls the Archon Ring fiasco where they were dropping like flies? This pushes into a similar scenario. We can't "push" it to drop more because the act of doing so may displace the drop rates of everything else in the loot tables in an undesirable way.

With this in mind, here's what we're considering changing for Undead Vials.

Drop Rate
We don't want to touch the drop rate, however we would propagate the Vial drop to also be available from Planar Tombs Elite content. Currently it only drops from Shuyal and Tindirin Elites, and this would keep it in line with where we want to see it. The other benefit is that it would now potentially drop in addition to the Planar goodies that are being actively farmed, and not explicitly the reason for doing Elite Shuyal content we hope. Player's already farm Planar, this would just get added to the mix!

Ultimately this results in more relevant mobs with a chance to drop the vial, which should help pad the Vial population in a healthy way.

Recipe Change
Currently the recipe requires 15 Undead Vials and the Arcane Fossil to craft a Nekro egg. The proposed change would reduce this number to 10.

In addition to these changes, I'm actively discussing with the community about Frost Touched weapons, and I encourage you to join the discussion over here: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...=1#post1999111

Thanks all,
Carapace