The 1.2 patch is immense, At over 55 pages of official notes, there’s a lot of ground to cover. As the article is titled, however, this posting is a “what you need to know” article so that people who don’t want to read through them all (and I’m sure that’s a lot of people!) can get up to speed on the most important stuff.
New Classes: Slayer and Choppa!
The two new classes coming in with this patch are the Dwarf Slayer for Order, and the Orc Choppa for Destruction. They both share the same mechanic, which I will refer to as “Rage” to keep things easy to track. These are Melee DPS classes, meaning they are medium armor, lower survivability, but high damage up-close attackers. They can put out some amazing damage, but if you let their mechanic go too far, you end up losing half of your armor and hitpoints while in that state. You can get “early access” to these classes by completing the Bitter Rivals live event which runs from March 3rd through March 10th, unlocking them for play on the 11th, while anyone who has not finished the event cannot play them until several days later. Completing the event on one character unlocks the Slayer/Choppa for your game account on all servers and both Order/Destruction.
As a Slayer or Choppa fights, they gain five Rage points per second. At 25 Rage (five seconds into combat) they reach a Furious state, and at 75 Rage they go into a Berserk mode. There are several tactics that affect their states, including one that makes it so you cannot dispose of your Rage, and for the Slayer, one that increases autoattack speed 25% while Furious or 50% while Berserk, allowing you to make different takes on the Slayer/Choppa (more survivable, or fragile but insane damage).
While in the Furious state, you unlock Exhaustive attacks, which cause you to lose all of your Rage but have high damage and special effects, as well as adding a 25% damage bonus for normal attacks made while Furious. The Exhaustive attacks will deal a 75% damage bonus if you use them while Furious, but without the Power Through tactic for the Slayer, for example, that lets you keep your Rage, they will only do the 50% Berserk mode damage bonus if you use them while in that later mode (i.e. if you wait too long to use them while Furious). These attacks are the core utility ones for them, such as knockdowns (stuns), large damage, and whatnot. While in Furious mode you have no defensive penalties, but once you tick over to Berserk, you lose half of your armor value and resistance points (NOTE: this is a numerical reduction, so if you have 800 resist in one area and lose 50% of that, you go down to 400, which is not a direct halving of the percent damage mitigated from magical attacks, rather more like 43% vs. 32%. This is contrary to what it may appear at first glance).
Overall, these classes are packed with damage, have good utility, and are overall plain fun brawlers! Make sure to check out my more in-depth examination of the Slayer and its abilities, which will be posted soon!
Class Balance Changes
With 1.2, another class balance pass has been made to virtually every career. Globally, all absorption “bubbles” have been increased in potency by roughly 50-60% of their values, making them effective again. Also, resistances have been “soft-capped” at 40%, meaning it takes a lot more resistance points after that amount (roughly 620) to gain 1% mitigation against magic. This leaves extra as being effective against debuffs, but only granting a nominal amount of mitigation when not debuffed. The previous cap was a 75% hard-cap with no diminishing returns, so magic users should see a large damage increase in general. Most procs (i.e. Flames of Rhuin or Witch Elf/Hunter Kisses/Bullets) have been changed to a resistance type that can be mitigated. Finally, all disorients have been changed to a percentage of your ability’s cast timer, meaning instant spells/attacks will no longer be given cast times while disoriented (50% more of zero is still zero!). Additionally, taunts and challenges no longer change a pet’s target, and armor debuffs are now flat values instead of percentage-based.