[1.3] Patch Note preview Archmages

[AdamG_EAMythic]

Greetings,

As many of you are aware, WAR's 1.3 patch is rapidly approaching! Before we open up the Public Test Server and release the patch notes, we wanted to sit down with each career's community and give them a rough idea of what to expect from 1.3.

Patch 1.3's major balance changes focus on the balancing of direct damage vs. area-of-effect abilities. All careers should expect to see AoE effectiveness reduced across the board. This reduction can come in a change to damage/healing, AP cost, or effect radius, and will vary from ability to ability.

In 1.3, healers will get an additional focus revolving around the bonus healing granted by Willpower. We have significantly increased the amount of bonus granted to healing spells from Willpower; however, to offset this, we have reduced the base damage of many heals. The net result of this change is that healers with average or better-than-average Willpower will see an increase in their overall healing. Healers with subpar Willpower will see a decrease to their healing. It is important to note that Life taps are not affected by this change since they do not get a bonus from willpower.

Archmages will see the re-shuffled Mastery Paths in 1.3, as well as a few new abilities and revamped Tactics.

• The Path of Isha will now become the direct-healing line. Numerous abilities have been re-shuffled so this line has direct healing and debuffs that reduce incoming damage.

• The Path of Vaul will now become the hybrid healing/damage line. Numerous abilities have been re-shuffled so this line has a mix of ranged lifetaps, and survivability buffs/debuffs.

• The Path of Khaine will now become the direct-damage line. Numerous abilities have been re-shuffled so this line has direct damage and debuffs that reduce defenses.

• The new ability "Energy of Vaul" has been added to the Path of Vaul. This ability will drain life from an area around target and restore it to the caster.

• Magical Infusion will see further improvements in both healing value and trigger threshold.

Archmages will also see a number of AoE fixes including, but not limited to, the following:

• Many AoE abilities have had their effective radius reduced, returning their radius to pre-1.2.1 patch values.

• Group healing abilities have had their effective radius reduced. Healers will still be able to cast group heals from a far greater distance then AoE damage, but not from the same distance as their direct healing spells.

Finally, we are investigating the following items that will potentially be added into 1.3 during the PTS phase, or in a patch soon after.

• Continued review of effectiveness of the Archmage tactics with improvements to lesser used ones

• Continued review of Archmage mechanic with the potential introduction of proposed mechanic changes from our 1.2.1 Dev discussion.

Adam Gershowitz
Producer - Character Systems
Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning

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