Update 18 Beta #4 Release Notes & Known Issues - PRELIMINARY AND NON-FINAL - BULLROARER ONLY

[Tybur]

Please join us this weekend for our fourth and final preview of Update 18. The team has been working hard on bug fixing and polish in preparation for the planned release next Tuesday 4/12/2016. We hope you enjoy seeing the results to date and welcome your feedback.

The following release notes are for the Bullroarer public test server only and may not reflect the final list of changes or updates included at release.
These notes are not final and should be viewed as a work in progress and subject to change.

Known Issues:

1. The Eyes and Guard Tavern is open!
2. The Epic book quests for this update will not be available during open beta.

Important Note: Please be aware that the build you are seeing here is a work in progress and may not reflect the finished Update 18 product. There may also be items missing from this initial release note list, this is not intentional and will be added as we progress.

Release Notes:

• Level 105 essence recipes are available for barter on Pelennor Fields and Featured Instance Quartermasters.
• All Anfalas legendary item consumables (e.g. scrolls of empowerment, star-lit crystals) now have no max level.
• Champions now get 3 points of Block per point of Might, and 3 points of Parry per point of Might.
• Wardens now get 0 points of Tactical Mastery per point of Might, and 5 points of Physical Mastery per point of Might.
• The bleed on the Pelennor Orc-carver's Armour now deals unmitigated damage, rather than Common.
• Now you appear closer to Aragorn if you are defeated in IV.2.9, 'Even in Darkness'
• Magor will no longer sometimes get stuck during 'Return to Azanarukar'
• Several instances that were not properly giving gear to Beornings have been fixed.
• The end chests of many instances, including the Pelennor, Osgiliath, and Road to Erebor instances, now drop up to Tier 14 stat tomes.
• Minas Tirith Quests

- In Days of Youth: moved flowers aside, so they don't compete with the plaque

- Several Mendings: Lady Raenemel now has her feet firmly on the ground at all times

[maartena]

I haven't logged on since Beta 2, but was the entrance from West-Rohan to Far Anorien ever fixed? I could ride into West Rohan, (Eastfold), but I could not ride BACK into Far Anorien, it just bumped me back out.

[DiogoVP]

• Minas Tirith Quests

- In Days of Youth: moved flowers aside, so they don't compete with the plaque

- Several Mendings: Lady Raenemel now has her feet firmly on the ground at all times

Since you're at it, fix the child thief not running bug in MT and Sparring in the Training Hall (Minas Tirith) instance bug if you defeat all the soldiers at once preventing the instance from advancing.

[DiogoVP]

I haven't logged on since Beta 2, but was the entrance from West-Rohan to Far Anorien ever fixed? I could ride into West Rohan, (Eastfold), but I could not ride BACK into Far Anorien, it just bumped me back out.

Yes, it has been fixed.

[infinitewhimsy]

Wardens now get 0 points of Tactical Mastery per point of Might, and 5 points of Physical Mastery per point of Might.

This sort of thing will not fix Wardens, it just annoys people who have invested into their characters a certain way, be it Might Tomes, Virtues, Essences, etc...

The trouble with Wardens is fundamental. You need to change skills and trait trees if you don't want them to say...solo T2C content, which they will still do after the DoT nerf, the healing nerf, and now this Might nerf, because the trouble here is skills like Defiant Challenge, and their ability to DPS and heal at the same time combined with the lack of meaningful instance mechanics...which can't be easily fixed since you guys made all threat a result of damage now, and all instance mechanics essentially mobs hit very, very, hard (making heals, DC, etc... required on a Med Armor tank).

It's your own fault you can't easily address the matter and instead need to play around with these piddling, futile, and annoying decrements.




Just to listen to my own voice...what you should do is something like this...first off give Yellow line the same threat modifier as Blue. Next, change it is so that 1/2 of the Blue tree and 2/3rds of Yellow aren't total garbage (they are). Then rearrange the traits so that in Red line you can't get say...+3 HoT pulses. Then remove Defiant Challenge entirely. This skill is fundamentally game breaking, but also currently necessary...if you fix the Blue trait tree to give meaningful effects instead of totally moronic +Ratings to mitigation (that do nothing, everyone's mits are capped who wants them to be, seriously, people overcap mitigations for T2 instances based on a formula, these +Rating bonuses to mitigation are useless) to take its place, then you've seriously improved things. Change Resounding Challenge to be the Warden Force Taunt. What these new traits should do is give percent based mitigation bonuses, negate damage...maybe make Gambit Chains relevant again? Something interesting would be nice, and consider this...Warden is no longer a BPE tank with the Partial changes. Guardian BPE is extremely comparable, but they have much higher mits. If you want to fix Wardens do it, but be considerate in doing it, they are a tank after all.

Look at this, this is the Warden Blue trait tree. Black crosses are garbage traits, green are good traits, red are ok traits. Notice anything? The most expensive traits are the worst and the most common, the best traits are the cheapest and the most available. This is not a good system.

The bleed on the Pelennor Orc-carver's Armour now deals unmitigated damage, rather than Common.

Is this the Champion set? I hope you didn't seriously change a 50 DPS DoT to be unmitigated thinking it fixes it.

[icefriend]

Are Big battle rewards scaled to 105? Do new essences drop from BB boxes on 105? What about BB jewelry?

[XKSR95]

[*]Wardens now get 0 points of Tactical Mastery per point of Might, and 5 points of Physical Mastery per point of Might.

How about just take the rest of Physical Mastery contribution from Might away too, I think the "grace period" from the transition to Agility mainstat has gone on long enough, don't you?

Not that it'll make much difference anyway

[Spilo]

[*]Wardens now get 0 points of Tactical Mastery per point of Might, and 5 points of Physical Mastery per point of Might.[*]The bleed on the Pelennor Orc-carver's Armour now deals unmitigated damage, rather than Common.

In other news, Guardian's Thrill of Danger now heals for 2.45% per damage, rather than 2.5, and Hunters received a 0.5% damage boost on all damaging skills.


lol

[tigrjonok]

Hunters received a 0.5% damage boost on all damaging skills.

Yeah, right. Like they will ever buff Hunters... maybe increase duration of 1.5k 10 sec animation bubble.

[infinitewhimsy]

Yeah, right. Like they will ever buff Hunters... maybe increase duration of 1.5k 10 sec animation bubble.

They are showing Champions a lot of love recently, it's almost strange. Champs are incredibly underrated atm imo.


EDIT:

You fixed the Minstrel 4 set bug, but didn't adjust its actual values.

-12% Incoming Dmg with an almost 100% uptime on the entire Fellowship is fairly OP.

[witchys]

How about just take the rest of Physical Mastery contribution from Might away too, I think the "grace period" from the transition to Agility mainstat has gone on long enough, don't you?

Not that it'll make much difference anyway

+1 to this, wardens and Beorings imo shouldn't gain from both might and agi stats . Wardens especially have had plenty of time to change over to agi for the initial change years ago

[darthi]

i hope the Performance is better on the Live Server-on Bullroar i had huge Framedrops and laggs in Mt and also in the new instances.

[MikeA]

On Bullroarer my champ is getting 3 points of Block and Parry per point of Might, not the 5 for Block and 3 for Evade in the notes. I expect the notes are just a mistake, since getting Evade rather than Parry from Might makes no sense.

[Giseldah]

nvm..............

[Tybur]

On Bullroarer my champ is getting 3 points of Block and Parry per point of Might, not the 5 for Block and 3 for Evade in the notes. I expect the notes are just a mistake, since getting Evade rather than Parry from Might makes no sense.

Thank you yes - mistake in my notes.

[Aymerik]

Hi,

I'm glad you finally decided to link essences grind with real instances instead of Big battles.

But while now we know hot to get them, it doesn't seem to be less tedious than before. I'll explain why.

You can get 5 Long-lost coins per day (daily quest ) to barter one essence recipe, we need 5 for a blue essence recipe and 15 for a supreme essence recipe.

Considering we need around 42 essences. It means you need to gather 210 coins, which would take 42 days for blue essences. And 630 coins which would take 126 days for supreme essences. For one char. I thought you said the grind would be a little bit easier. And I didn't mention the fact we need to grind for violet/major essences (+ zircon shards and solvents) in order to craft those essences, which means more grind. So i really wonder how long is it gonna take to gear 3-4 alts ? :') Unless I use mithril coins to reset the daily quest....

There is three things you consider :

-Make the Long-lost coins bound to account

-Add essences (any kind ) as random loot inside the Amethyst box of Ancient Spoils (the one we get from the daily quest) (edit : apparently it's already the case for major ones)

-Add violet/major essences -box- as random loot at the end of all instances

Thank you

[infinitewhimsy]

Hi,

I'm glad you finally decided to link essences grind with real instances instead of Big battles.

But while now we know hot to get them, it doesn't seem to be less tedious than before. I'll explain why.

You can get 5 Long-lost coins per day (daily quest ) to barter one essence recipe, we need 5 for a blue essence recipe and 15 for a supreme essence recipe.

Considering we need around 42 essences. It means you need to gather 210 coins, which would take 42 days for blue essences. And 630 coins which would take 126 days for supreme essences. For one char. I thought you said the grind would be a little bit easier. And I didn't mention the fact we need to grind for violet essences (+ zircon shards and solvents) in order to craft those essences, which means more grind. So i really wonder how long is it gonna take to gear 3-4 alts ? :') Unless I use mithril coins to reset the daily quest....

There is three things you consider :

-Make the Long-lost coins bound to account

-Add essences (any kind ) as random loot inside the Amethyst box of Ancient Spoils (the one we get from the daily quest)

-Add violet essences -box- as random loot at the end of all instances

Thank you

There's a 2nd barter that accepts Morgul Crests for recipes, 2/6 for the greater/supreme. I presume Crests will drop in the new instances?

[Laurelinarien]

Here’s some of the most relevant answers (imo) +Loft offered in BR World Chat about the U18:

About Featured Instances

• 'The featured instance gear all drops from tier 1 as well as tier 2. So while it is from group content, it is meant to be friendly to all types of players.'
• 'You can do featured instance as many times as you want, but the extra featured quest is daily. 'Only featured instance quest box drops the long-lost coins.' (Coins are bound to char)
• 'I think there are 5 long-lost coins per box?' 'The box is a quest reward - so everyone gets it (as long as they have the quest when they go into the instance.)'

Mini Instruments
'Sadly - there are way too many minstrel instruments, and they can't really get better because they use percent based improvements. So I don't think new instruments are planned any time soon.'

New Essences & Recipes (bartered for Morgul Crests & Coins from Featured Instance)

• 'The T8 majors will come from - select epic book quests, featured instance daily quest reward boxes, and the new pelennor fields instances.'
• 'Yes - Morgul crests come from those 2 instance clusters.' (Osgiliath and Far Anorien clusters)

About Imbued LIs
'Imbued weapons will not increase anymore based on level - 100 is it. There won't be new tiers with this update, but I suspect there will be more tiers either with raid dot update, or in U19.''

About BBs

• 'Epic battles won't scale to 105 for U18. I think they might scale with a future update. It might depend on how players feel about it.'
• 'No new level 105 epic battle jewellery for now. The level 105 jewellery comes from featured instance boxes or maybe skirmish barter for rare as well?' 'I think Epic Battles will continue to drop level 100 items.'

[Aymerik]

There's a 2nd barter that accepts Morgul Crests for recipes, 2/6 for the greater/supreme. I presume Crests will drop in the new instances?

Nope, it's only for people enjoying RCT2 so much, they are ready to farm it for years

Not for me I guess.

Adding crests in the new instances ! Good idea

[infinitewhimsy]

Nope, it's only for people enjoying RCT2 so much, they are ready to farm it for years

Not for me I guess.

Adding crests in the new instances ! Good idea

If they can't fix people skipping mobs they should just seriously increase the rewards from SL and DoS, or the rewards for the non CM quest.

[Eruceninde]

If they can't fix people skipping mobs they should just seriously increase the rewards from SL and DoS, or the rewards for the non CM quest.

You can skip 90% of DoS as well. SL is the only one that you can't skip and is harder to get challenge.

[Phindecano]

About Featured Instances

• 'The featured instance gear all drops from tier 1 as well as tier 2. So while it is from group content, it is meant to be friendly to all types of players.'
• 'You can do featured instance as many times as you want, but the extra featured quest is daily. 'Only featured instance quest box drops the long-lost coins.' (Coins are bound to char)
• 'I think there are 5 long-lost coins per box?' 'The box is a quest reward - so everyone gets it (as long as they have the quest when they go into the instance.)'

I asked +Loft about gear drop and got the following answer:

Phindecano: Hey. Does featured instances gear drop only from the daily boxes or from the chests as well?
+Loft: I know it drops from the boxes, and not from the boss chests. But it might drop from the challenge chests?

I don't understand what he meant. Did he mean it actually drops from the challenge chests or that he assumes it does? If it doesn't than we can finally tell that Turbine sells end-game gear for real money. There are totally 10 featured instances items and at the moment it seems impossible to get items you need without spending many many many MCs.

[Hallandil]

I asked +Loft about gear drop and got the following answer:



I don't understand what he meant. Did he mean it actually drops from the challenge chests or that he assumes it does? If it doesn't than we can finally tell that Turbine sells end-game gear for real money. There are totally 10 featured instances items and at the moment it seems impossible to get items you need without spending many many many MCs.

+Loft is assuming that it does.

[Krindel]

Will be currency reset? If so, what conversion rate? I have 351 Morgul Crests, should I barter my Morgul Crests for empowerments before update 18 launch?

[Dorri_Hammerfist]

Will be currency reset? If so, what conversion rate? I have 351 Morgul Crests, should I barter my Morgul Crests for empowerments before update 18 launch?

when we moved from Rohan into Gondor there was no seal reset. I assume that this time there will be no reset either