The Crusade Milestone Updates:
As you know we have been working behind the scenes on all things melee, paladin, archery, and overall just classes that are not sampire or tamer to elevate them up to the right level so players have more choice in how they play on UOAlive. We feel OSI dropped the ball by letting these other builds fall to the side of the "meta".
That being said, we are still quite a long way out from "finishing" this type of an update. So we have decided to release the milestone in increments! Not only does this allow us to get you truly game changing updates faster, but lets you get accustomed to the changes a little at a time.
So with that being said, today we introduce the Healing Update. And while this change may seem very insignificant, through much testing(JC did contributed a significant amount of time and knowledge here), we have determined this to be the most IMPACTFUL change we could make that brings a pure Paladin/Chivalry build toe to toe with Sampires, each with their different benefits and weaknesses.
- When healing yourself, the time delay is much slower, which is why the Paladin can't compete on the same level as a Sampire. The way it is prior to this patch, the max speed of healing yourself is 4 seconds and that's assuming a VERY high dex of around 140ish...which is hard to keep, especially when cursed. That's simply too much time to keep up with high-end mob damage.
So what we did was take the formula used for healing other players (which is max speed of 2 seconds) and use it also for healing yourself. We also changed the formula for dex required so what you need is _(can't tell ya everything)_ dex to have that speed. That's a much more realistic number for players to have after they're cursed.
We were able to take on pretty much all the same end-game situations at a level that easily competed with sampires. There are differences, of course, which we think is good. Depending on the exact situation, a sampire might sustain better when they can life drain multiple creatures all at once but a sampire requires you to actually HIT. If you miss, you die. Sampire also is built on the idea of doing maxed out damage so you can get the best healing. The Paladin with the healing build is freed of both those limitations.
So what we get is a different, but competitive way to elevate the Paladin.
This approach, at the same time, allows players all the flexibility of customizing their armor suits for what matches them best and to make slight variations in their Paladin build which means players who want to be Paladins will be able to perform at levels comparable to sampires while getting the fun of chasing and acquiring their end-game gear (from Shadowguard, Doom, etc.) like everyone else does.
This also aligns with our goal of making more melee builds viable while not benefitting the already-powerful sampires and tamers. Healing is not a free skill, and effective sampires are heavily pressed making their skills fit within 720 points. They don't have room for Healing while remaining effective.
How about tamers? Keep in mind that for healing to be actually really effective, you need anatomy too. So, for tamers, that means adding both healing and anatomy to their builds. Again, they don't have room. Nor do they have a need as pets act as their "shield".
Mages? Pure mages (like pure Paladins) could actually use some love and help too...but that's another discussion. In any case, theoretically, a pure mage (meaning no taming skill) would have room for both anatomy and healing. But also keep in mind we're using a formula for healing based on dex. Super rare is the pure mage who runs around with high dex (got to have dex way beyond _(can't tell ya everything)_ to plan ahead for curses). So while it is possible, it's pretty unlikely...at least the way it is right now.
For us, changing self-healing rates is the first and most important way to start making a greater variety of melee-focused fields viable at high levels without also inflating other already-powerful classes.
And there you have it, the first small but impactful step in our Consecration Milestone! We hope you will take the time to really try out these changes and get accustomed to them before you hate us lol. We honestly feel this is going to be a great change but we look to you as always, to guide us after we make big leaps forward. Obviously if 50000 people start playing paladins we have gone too far, but a nice balance means we did well. So let us know either way! We look forward to your feedback once this has been out in the wild for a bit.
And now for our regularly scheduled patch notes:
General
- Added a custom title reward to be added later.
- Void Spawn in Ter Mur has been added.
- This will add void spawns in Ter Mur. They spawn at pre-defined locations and it will check roughly every minute or so to spawn/despawn as needed.
This is cool, simple, and much-needed control to the Void spawns in Ter Mur to keep them from getting out of control and still allowing them their default "morph" mechanic where they absorb one another and change over time.
- This will add void spawns in Ter Mur. They spawn at pre-defined locations and it will check roughly every minute or so to spawn/despawn as needed.
- Necromancy:
- Resurrect slayed Players as Reanimated Zombie Minion followers.
Collect the body parts of fallen players "head, arms, torso, legs" along with five arcane gems. Use the Book of The Dead to reanimate the corpse.(found as a special drop from the Monthly Luna Invasion)
- Resurrect slayed Players as Reanimated Zombie Minion followers.
- Added Item to Event Stone - Book of Dead
- Added item to Gold Stone - Bank Capacity Increase
- Gaman Special Moves adjusted to match training from OSI
- Gold Dupe resolved before it was used. Thank you to SpiroTris who got a nice pair of Blessed Bug Squashing Sandals.
- Lodestone now has the proper graphic in trade.
- Invasions are now tweaked to give more rewards to everyone who tags(does damage to) a monster/boss of the event. We want people to work together to kill creatures, especially difficult ones and get rewarded for that co-op play.
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It is an easy thing to adjust. If we see millions of Sampires using healing suddenly, we will resolve it. 