We are now fully migrated to our new zone server Io. If you are having any trouble getting into the game be sure to run the game through the patcher!

Enjoy the new server! There should be much less lag and things should feel much smoother.

Tonight SoD will be down while we retire our two current zoneservers (Callisto and Europa) and bring online one much more powerful superserver (Io). This should reduce lag in a pretty drastic way.

We expect the downtime to start around 8-9 EST and last between 1 and 3 hours.

Feel free to come hang out with us while the server is down in the IRC channel! If you do not have an IRC client you can use the web version here.

We decided to try out a new style of interaction between damaging spells and resistances this patch. The short version is that they'll never be fully resisted any more; instead they will be scaled. For example, if your Ice Comet spell would have had a 10% chance to be resisted by your target, it will now instead land every time you cast it, but only do 90% damage. More detailed info and discussion can be found here.

Other miscellaneous changes:

-Rogue Backstab now gains bonus damage to correct for the fact the client caps the reuse of the button at 100% haste. If you have less than 100% haste Backstab will be no different, but if you have more it will deal extra damage in proportion to it.

-Raid-level Necromancer spells have been rebalanced somewhat. Additionally, the Insidious Infection Necromancer tome has been changed to Insidious Elements, which allows their Damage over Time spells to pierce their target's resistances to an increasing degree as more different elemental types of DoTs are piled on. See here for slightly more detail.

-Enchanter's Somatic Bond and Avatar of Destruction spells have had their illusion portions changed. Instead of turning into Invisible Men or Giants or Imps, they now cause the target to turn into whatever the caster currently is, basically a reverse Shapeshift. This will allow the Enchanter to turn them into whatever they want with these spells, mostly just for fun.

-Made a fairly significant change to standard Charm spells: when an Enchanter dies while in control of a Charm pet, or within a minute or so of their pet going loose, their pet will give an emote, become inactive and unaggroable for around 30 seconds, and will attempt to walk back to their spawn point, if applicable. In other words, they won't go on a rampage against the Enchanter's remaining group or raid members, either immediately or, hopefully, at all. The idea here is to make long-duration Charm more palatable to an Enchanter's allies, particularly on difficult content or on raids. There will still be risk, of course--it will just primarily be to the Enchanter, rather than the Enchanter and everyone with them. Of course, this won't prevent you from trying to save an Enchanter when their pet goes loose, but if you do you will obviously need to deal with their pet one way or another.

-Made it so magic resist debuffs like Tashania aren't removed along with magic resist buffs like Shiritri's Ward and Psalm of the Four whenever a Charm spell fades.

Spells:

-The Druid spell Runic: Cataclysm has had its AE range reduced to make it less likely to hit the druid. The direct damage portion of the spell has also gotten a small increase.

-The Druid spell Circle of Vitality has had its cast time reduced slightly.

Enchanter Changes:

-The Enchanter spells "Gift of the Giantkin" and "Aura of Destruction" have been changed. The efficacy of both spells replacements remain the same (if not slightly higher) as the previous incarnations yet the way they work is much different.

-"Gift of the Giantkin" is now "Somatic Bond". Somatic Bond does the *exact* same damage increase as Gift of the Giantkin did except now the damage is channeled through the Enchanter. In other words, the Enchanter becomes a conduit and mirrors part of the damage caused by the castee onto the target of the castee as his or her own melee damage. It should be noted that the damage the Enchanter is now mirroring is aggro free and is equal to the damage that Gift of the Giantkin used to add to the buffed melee.

-"Aura of Destruction" is now "Avatar of Destruction". Avatar of Destruction binds the Enchanter's mind to his or her target's and allows the Enchanter to mimic mitigated versions of all spells the buffed character casts. These mimicked spells are mana free for the Enchanter, utilize all of the Enchanters focus effects and spell modifiers, and do not interrupt the Enchanters normal casting in any way. We have balanced this spell to do near the same damage as the old AoD and will continue to tweak it as needed to attain that goal.

-The Tome "True Giant" has been renamed to "Cascading Bond". It does exactly the same thing as "True Giant". We understand the name is not near as cool in any way but "True Giant" stopped making sense the moment "Gift of the Giantkin" went away.

The overall purpose of these changes is two-fold: first, to make the active DPS contribution from Enchanters much easier to gauge; second, and reciprocally, to make non-Enchanter DPS much clearer and easier to compare by removing the uneven muddling on their numbers from Giantkin and Aura of Destruction.

Spells:

-The Runic pets for both Beastlords and Mages have had their HP reduced significantly. There was a bug in how HP was calculated for pets with levels above 58 that made them have around 4-5x of their previous incarnations.

-The Druid runic spell Cataclysm has been changed from a PBAE reciprocal to a Targetted AE one. The spell is supposed to stack its 800 damage component per mob casted on up to 3 while it was allowing it up to 6. This also means the druid can cast the spell at range while still doing damage.

-The Cleric runic spell Celestial Well no longer overwrites the Beastlord spell Spiritual Bliss. The cast time on Celestial Well has also been cut in half.

Tomes:

-The Necromancer tome "Insidious Decay" has been fixed to prevent a chain reapplication of area effect diseases.

-The Necromancer tome Strands of Life has been changed so that the amount of mana/hp given to the group of the necromancer per kill scales with the level and power of the mob killed.

-The Wizard tome Forbidden Harvest no longer activates on green or low blue npcs.

-The Cleric tome Tool of the Divine is no longer activated by complete heals.

Items:

-Numerous items with very high Double Attack and Duel Wield modifiers that were overlooked when changed the modifier effect of each have been adjusted downward.

Ranger Birds:

-Rangers have received a new line of pet spells - The Rangefinders. Rangefinders are not like other pets in that they do not attack the mob in a traditional sense. Instead, whatever mob the Rangefinder is on increases all ranged accuracy and damage against it while slightly lowering the mobs armor class. This allows rangers to spot a single target with their rangefinder to increase their ranged DPS against it.

-Spells in the line have been added to levels 30, 50, 63 and as the second Ranger Runic Spell. We hope that this should put single target ranger DPS a bit closer to the other pure melees.