Remiem's Weekly Community Update | March 11th, 2015

[Remiem]

Feeling Lucky?

Greetings Legends, and welcome to your weekly community update!

In This Week's News

+ The Leprechoblin event will return this weekend with a new addition: Leaderboards! Now, players who kill the most leprechoblins over the course of the event will have a chance to win a special Lucky Leprechoblin Banner and some platinum. Keep an eye out for tomorrow's announcement with more details on that. Leprechoblins will also have a chance to drop vanities when they are defeated. These vanities aren't tradeable, but based on your feedback from the Love Crafting event, we have added a liquidation value of 1500g for each piece. Want a sneak peak?



But you'll have to check back tomorrow for all of the details.

+ We were so glad you enjoyed the frog egg crate sale! We're keeping the party going this weekend with a new Toucan crate, which includes a chance at a brand new, never before seen Legendary Toucan! Full details on this newcomer in tomorrow's announcement.



+ Carapace has been hard at work squashing some bugs that you guys mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which will appear in tomorrow's regularly scheduled update:
- Bloodhammer's strongest attacks have been dialed back in difficulty to be more balanced and his red zone has been tweaked for accuracy.
- After some complaints about Sorrax's difficulty and ridiculous shield ability in the Planar Tombs he has been adjusted to better match the difficulty of the other tombs bosses.
- Ancient Planar Pendant Warrior Crystal proc now heals for 10% in PvP, down from 25% in PvE, and each tick of the regen now heals for 2% health per tick in PvP, down from 5% in PvE. (The PvE version of the proc is unaffected.)

Coming Soon

Full steam ahead!!
The development team is full steam ahead working on the new expansion! Productor's March Producer's Letter will go out next week featuring your very first peek into what to expect in the next expansion.

PvE Class Balance
As promised, we would like to keep you as up-to-date as possible regarding our ongoing efforts toward class balance in Arlor. This week, I sat down with Fibus to talk in a little more detail about our efforts toward PvE balance as we move into the next expansion. For the sake of this discussion we are only discussing PvE balance in new content.

From the desk of Fibus

Like many of you, we (the AL team) feel that the class balance that currently exists in AL could be improved. In the upcoming Rage of the Ren’gol expansion, we are taking our first stab at improving PVE class balance.

For this expansion, we spent a great deal of time reassessing how we design and create content. You’ll find that the content in this expansion will present you with new challenges you haven’t seen before in AL. Our goal with these challenges is to encourage all classes to work together, using their unique abilities, to overcome these challenges. And we will continue to refine the content until it accomplishes this goal.

To go into further detail, this is how we feel each class will fit into this vision.

Rogues are the ultimate single-target damage dealers, defined by abilities such as Aimed Shot and Shadow Piercer. They are at their best when they need to take down a specific mob as quickly as possible. Their other abilities support this role by either inhibiting the enemy so the Rogue can do her job better, or allowing the Rogue to stay alive to do her job longer. The rogue has never really had an issue finding a place in solo or group AL content, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t considering them with designing expansion content. Let’s say there is a mob that buffs his damage and defense increasingly over time. The longer you leave him alive, the tougher he gets. You’ll want to take him out first, and quickly, so he doesn’t have time to gain all those buffs. The Rogue is the perfect class to do that.

Next, we have the Sorcerer, who is the master of area effect damage. No other class can deal as much damage to multiple mobs in a short period of time as the Sorcerer. Every one of the Sorcerer’s offensive abilities has an area-effect component either in its base, or is added as part of an upgrade. Sorcerer’s also have extremely powerful utility abilities. The crowd control power of Time Stop and Gale Force should never be overlooked. How does this play into the content in the expansion? Well, let’s say your group is about to encounter a large group of mobs. None of the mobs are really represent such a threat individually that one of them really needs to die before the others. They are just a really mean and nasty group that need to go down before the rest of your group gets eaten alive. In comes the Sorcerer. He can place down a Time Stop on the group, Curse the quickest attacking mob which is, hopefully, attacking the warrior, then start unleashing a barrage of Fireballs and Lightning Strikes.

Last, but not least, are Warriors. We feel that the role of a Warrior should be similar to that of a tank archetype players of MMORPGs are familiar with. He is responsible for grabbing the attention of the mobs and taking the damage for his team, allowing his groupmates to stay alive and do their roles. He can do this by corralling mobs using taunts and debuffing the mobs, while also doing some damage himself. This is enforced with abilities such as Horn of Renew, Juggernaut, and the multiple upgrades on his abilities which grant a taunt effect. Much of the content in the upcoming Rage of the Ren’gol expansion will support this design philosophy. You may see mobs with heavy-hitting abilities such that you’ll want the warrior to not only absorb damage, but also wrangle specific mobs allowing party members to successfully fulfill their roles. You may also see mobs using abilities where it will beneficial, perhaps even necessarily, to move the mobs out of, which is most easily accomplished with a Warrior taunting the mobs.

Hopefully this provides you with a good idea of where we are heading.

Bugs and Suggestions
We will continue to collect your bug reports and suggestions each week and get as many as we can into the schedule. Don't forget to post in the comments below to help guide us to what you want to see the most. Always keep in mind that some things are much bigger in scope than others. For example, class balance won't be done overnight, but we will always keep it in mind.

In Other News

Skill System
With all this content coming soon we’ve set aside work on the skills system. We’ve heard and appreciate your feedback on this topic and we’re not going to rush changes that will have wide-reaching impact on the game. We may revisit skills in some way down the road, but right now we’re focused on delivering an exciting new expansion to you as soon as possible.

Smart Chat Toggle
This feature is still in its planning stages but is still on our minds. I will update you when there is more to say about it. Thanks for all of the patience!


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What's Next?

What do you want to see next, folks? Let us know in the comments what you would like to see us put our attention on next and share your most brilliant ideas. I'll see you in next week's update!