[Test] Test Update Notes: Wednesday, February 18, 2009(0)

[Offical Forums]

FEATURED
Ward of Elements
A brand new level 80 two-group raid instance has been added! This zone is balanced for players without a proliferation of raid gear, and should provide an exciting challenge to any group of 12! The first six bosses can be tackled in any order, and provide fantastic fabled loot with brand new armor sets upgraded from the tier 2 void shard sets, complete with new appearances! You can find it in Lavastorm beneath the Hollow Tower and Deep Forge.
Lavastorm
Lots of brand new content has been added in this classic zone. Almost all of the population has be re-tiered for solo players, with a brand new level 45 to 55 quest line with the industrious…but rather insane Sootfoot goblins. Brand new void invaded areas also feature new level 80 solo quests. Additionally, a solo-able daily shard quest had been added as well as lots of brand new mount paths and teleporters to make traversing the zone much easier!
ACHIEVEMENTS
General

• Threat components have been added to some achievements which enhanced the new fighter taunts.

Berserker

• Cyclone will now improve threat instead of reducing resistibility.

Brawler

• Crane Flock now has a faster recast time

Cleric

• Allied Prayers will trigger properly if the cleric is casting.

Monk

• Mongoose Stance has changed to improve the trigger chance of the monk’s stances.
• Improved the damage of Combination
• Improved Meditative Healing to heal up to 40%.

Paladin

• The paladin TSO stance skill enhancements will no longer continually add every update.

Shadowknight

• Adjusted Shadowknight’s Fury to be an encounter based hate gain to better match their role. A bonus has also been added to threat while reducing the added spell damage.

Summoner

• Dimensional Storage will now describe which pet the player has stored. If none are stored then a generic message is displayed.

COMBAT STANCES
Bruiser

• The offensive stance has been adjusted to better incorporate triggered effects.

GAMEPLAY

• Pets will now inherit the critical mitigation of their owners.
• General damage and heal bonuses will no longer apply to triggered spells except with the profession spells which increase from +damage effects.
• An issue which was causing some multiple effect spells( typhoon ) to not properly add in additional damage has been fixed.
• Group members can now use the /invite command to request that the group leader invite a player to the group. Just type /invite
• Your entire group will not be zoned out of Scion of Ice when 1 person leaves.

• Auto-follow:
  • Your character will now swim up and down to follow the target underwater.
  • Characters on auto-follow will always turn to face their target when auto-attacking.
  • Players on auto-follow now follow up and down climbable walls.
  • You may now /camp (and, incidentally, sit) while on auto-follow. If the person you're following moves (causing you to follow) your camp will be interrupted.
  • The camera will now re-center on the person you're following only when you're moving.

GUILD HALLS

• Guild hall trophies can now be found on many high end raid bosses. Find them all and show off your might!
• The guild hall mender will now correctly remember the new coverage setting after it is changed.
• Paying upkeep on a house or guild hall now requires confirmation.

HARVEST SUPPLY DEPOT

• Permissions for the Harvest Supply Depot amenity have been changed as follows:
• Any player with access to the guild hall may deposit items into the depot.
• Only players with Trustee access to the hall may withdraw items directly from the depot.
• The ability to craft using items in the depot is defined using the permission level on the amenity tab.

ITEMS

• Cloak of the Burning Dead has a new appearance.
• Bonuses on the melee priest shard armor sets have been slightly upgraded.
• The misstep line of set bonuses is now a physical mitigation debuff.
• Bonuses on the raid acquired Coercer robes have been lowered to 1 additional Hostage trigger.

PVP

• You can no longer revive while your group is still engaged in pvp based combat.
• The infamy system has been adjusted. You no longer lose infamy when you die. However, your infamy will slowly decay over time. Also, a new title has been added.

SPELLS
General

• Fighter offensive spells will no longer let you apply threat or hate position gains.
• All taunts have been improved slightly.

Fighter

• Changed the primary green taunts to all be 0.5 second casting time.
• Several adjustments have been made to threat values.
• Fighter taunts in offensive stances should no longer be locked out.

Guardian/Paladin/Monk

• The primary taunt lines have been adjusted to have no recovery, quicker reuse, and lower power to improve their efficiency versus the AOE based threat classes.

Assassin

• The Shadows line has a small hate reduction component now.

Berserker

• Reduced the variance of the Whirl and Barrage lines.

Bruiser

• Bruisers can now cast the Impose line while stunned or stifled instead of the Brag line.

Guardian

• The guardian can now cast the Provoke line while stunned or stifled instead of the Shout line.

Monk

• Tsunami will now parry frontal attacks if you are not actively fighting.

Necromancer

• Grim Lifetap will now do poison damage instead of heat.

Paladin

• The paladin’s heal spells will now generate additional hate for the paladin.
• Divine Favor has been adjusted to no longer have any penalties and to better help the paladin after almost dying.
• Paladins can now cast the Incite line while stunned or stifled.
• Redemption now has a 15m range like their other taunts.
• The recast of the Redemption line of skills has been reduced.

Ranger

• The Blame Arrow line has had its hate gain modifiers reduced but they now improve with the tier of the spell.

Rogue

• Lie Low line is now faster casting.

Shadowknight

• Shadowknights can now cast the Decree line while stunned or stifled.
• Adjusted the damage of the Doom Judgment, Sickening Decay, Cruel Intent, and Tap Veins spell lines.

Swashbuckler

• The Blame Blade line has had its hate gain modifiers reduced but they now improve with the tier of the spell.

TRADESKILLS

• Representative Purrla from the Far Seas Trading Company is seeking help from the cities' tradeskill societies! Tradeskillers level 40+ may wish to assist.
• Armorers, woodworkers, and jewelers have improved their recipes, and can now make improved versions of tradeskilled shields and secondary items. Old shields and secondary items that already exist will not be affected, only new ones created henceforth.
• The Far Seas Supply Division has learned of another mission where a group of talented tradeskillers may be sorely needed. Madria Varas will have details of the new mission once they are available.
• Tradeskillers with their epic earrings may soon find more red collectibles if they look in the right areas…

USER INTERFACE

• You can now drag equipment from your appearance slots to the macro window.
• Fixed a bug where damage reduction info was not displayed correctly in the mitigation tooltip.
• The raid window has a new ‘Advanced’ mode that will display effect icons for all members of the raid. Right-click the raid window to switch views.
• Fixed a bug in the raid window sometimes causing users to not be drag-able.
• The carat in text boxes will no longer render if the EQII client doesn’t have focus.
• The threat meter will no longer report zero threat when soloing a mob and using deaggro abilities.
• UI Settings files are now stored in a new XML format. Existing INI files will be converted the first time a character is logged in.
• Appearance slots for primary, secondary and ranged weapon slots have now been activated! In addition to the requirement that you must be able to use the item, it must also use the same skill as the item equipped in your normal slot. For example, you may only use a Great Axe in your appearance slot if you are also wielding a Great Axe in your equipment slot.
• The following modifications were made to UIScripting / UI Builder and are mainly of interest to the modding community:
  • UIScript now supports the following functions: int(), abs(), floor(), ceil()
  • Results of math operations in UIScript now only return the required precision instead of always forcing 3 decimal places.
  • Fixed a bug parsing negative floating-point numbers.
  • New Scripting events added: OnMove, OnSize, OnTextChanged.
  • The BackgroundEmpty image of a UIProgressbar will no longer render unless the progress value is zero.
  • Support has been added for a new UIColorStyle object. Any object property that accepts a color will now accept a reference to a UIColorStyle object.
  • You can now press F2 to edit the name of an object in the TreeView
  • You can press Enter or Escape while editing an object name to commit or cancel editing.

More...

[gm9]

Originally Posted by Offical Forums

• UI Settings files are now stored in a new XML format. Existing INI files will be converted the first time a character is logged in.

Hurray for Rothgar.

[lordebon]

Ohh, GU51 (Mk 2) is looking to be a tasty update indeed!

I do wish they'd stop tinkering with the guild ammenities. How about instead of unilaterally deciding what they think is best for certain things just give us more control in permissions for them. I'm glad I didn't dump all my resources in the guild box... if I did I'd have nothing left for my alts without pestering a Trustee, heh.

[gm9]

Oh nice, this patch already includes the POI filtering dialog.

[lordebon]

Originally Posted by gm9

Oh nice, this patch already includes the POI filtering dialog.

Wow, that was quick.

[Drumstix42]

Cheers! Gm9 beat me to the "yay for XML settings". Awesome-sauce.
Also hurray for the new functions. I think I'll have to log on Test server tonight for sure.

Thanks devs.

[dragowulf]

Wow our devs are really kicking it up a notch this year. POI filtering already? Wow thanks Rothgar and friends!

Why is this xml settings so significant?

PvP change looks promising. It's a huge change and I'm interested in where it's going.

[Drumstix42]

Originally Posted by dragowulf

Why is this xml settings so significant?

Because now we can see/edit our settings in plain text, easily. Plus I remember talk about saving custom windows, and eventually saving custom data.