After reviewing feedback, we have assembled a balance patch that will be installed on the servers later today. Once that is complete, a link for download will be available. A ladder reset will not be done, although you may notice some changes in your character that may encourage you to rebuild it.
Here are the details:
The mana cost of all spells has been multiplied by 5. This will encourage casters to invest more in energy.
All Act Bosses now have an unbreakable poison resistance
Boss unique charms have been rebalanced to remove physical immunity and now have increased poison resistance (see note above)
The waypoint to Frozen Tundra has been removed
The base damage on all melee weapons has been tripled to increase their power.
The monster tables have received a 40% reduction in physical resistance across the board.
Paladins now start with 400 str points to allow them to equip any gear they like and to provide a damage boost.
Various fixes to uniques, runewords, etc as identified in this post (
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2630)
The number of mana burn monsters has been significantly increased.
Iron Maiden has been introduced to several new areas (list coming shortly) and its effect increased dramatically to encourage a more difficult melee experience.
Crushing blow has been returned to items with a maximum value of 30% on 2h weapons and 15% on 1h weapons.
Life boost from shapeshifting has been removed and replaced with a mana boost.
Paladin holy shield no longer provides an increase block rate/speed and now provides only the defensive boost and a new resistance boost.
Conviction aura starts out at -50% resist and progresses to a maximum of -200% at lvl40.
Lower resist curse starts out at -10% and progresses to a maximum of -30% at lvl40
Decoy no longer receives a life boost and the cast delay has been tripled
Spell damage tables for all A3 mercs have been dramatically reduced
New quest portals introduced with additional quest flags to make it impossible to skip side quests (details to follow)
Thorns damage has been removed other than from the thorns aura or the necromancers iron maiden curse (this ensures that the new quest portals will consistently spawn).
The Countess now shares Nihlathak's rune drop rate to ensure that all members of the community can easily access high runes.
There are a new set of "El" runewords similar to the zod runewords, to encourage lower level play.
Ethereal mod removed from bows and other throwing weapons.
Zod has been moved to lvl99
Several end game uniques have been moved to lvl99 (templars, facets, griffons, crown of ages, etc, etc)
Drop rate for boss soulstone shards has been dropped by 1/3 to make it more challenging to get them.
Cow part drop rate has been dropped by 1/3 to make it more challenging to get to the cows.
Crafting recipes adjusted as follows:
- caster rings now get a maximum of 1-2% increase dmg no matter what gem type is used
- general tiers for caster items is now 1-2%, 3-4%, 5-6% rather than the current 6-12%, 8-16%, 10-20%
- blood craft rings now get a higher str boost (10-20,20-30,50-80)
- Enhanced dmg values on all wpn crafts have been increased (110-200%, 220-300%, 300-500%)
- Crushing blow added to Power crafts
(more details will be posted on blue.arimyth.com later today)
We hope that everyone enjoys these changes and that Hell Unleashed's balance is much stronger with this patch. We will do our next balance update one year from today (April 1, 2012)
Dam blue...
I am just sitting here and thinking... am not sure about changes "should i be happy, should i be sad, should i be mad?"...
Do you think this will make the game so difficult that it would be worthless to play with some characters at all?
Based on this, I think the Rabies druid will still do very good damage but will need a stronger phyisical merc to help him with immunes and bosses?