Hi folks,

Thank you for all your feedback. We definitely do appreciate it. I want to clear up a few things and let you know what we've got planned for additional changes.

1) My example of Warriors and Wizards at 5000 AD/AP being equivalent to Rangers at 2500 AD/AP is correct. The base stats and gear are balanced such that those numbers will occur. Rangers at an equal level and equal gear should always have their AD+AP be equal to a Warrior/Wizard's AD or AP only. Warrior's AD and Wizard's AP is not a factor in these calculations.

2) Some people have latched onto the patch notes about Rangers being better at Single Target and Wizards being better at AOE. As I said in the notes, these differences are SLIGHT. The difference between Rangers and Wizards is around 5% (for example, at 5000 class power, a ranger's piercing arrow hits for 24400, while a wizard's flame laser hits for 23060.) It would take around 20 of those attacks (600 energy/mana!) before a ranger would have done one attack's worth of additional damage.

3) I know some people are sad that we nerfed auto attack, but this was a design decision that is best for the game moving forward and we're sticking with it. We really don't want the best build in the game to be one where you just sit there and watch the battle unfold without taking any action. We want combat to be more dynamic and interactive than that.

4) We didn't really make any major changes to the wizard secondary effects in the balance pass and in retrospect there are some quality of life improvements we could do there:

4a) For the "Freeze" secondary effect the stun doesn't have a graphic to show it has proc'd, so we're going to make sure that gets in to make it more obvious. The Troll in the HoT also does a stun (with his "Bop" skill), and it also doesn't have a graphic, which is why it can sometimes seem like you just stand there while the troll beats you up. Impale also has a small stun chance at higher levels as well, which likewise doesn't have a graphic.

4b) Shock's secondary effect could use some work. Most enemies don't actually have very much armor or magic resistance, which is why players weren't noticing a damage boost from using this spell. We may just turn this into a flat damage increase from your next couple of attacks. That would make this spell function similarly to Pincushion, except the damage bonus would apply to all mage spells instead of just Pincushion (and piercing arrow @ ranks 5+).

4c) Likewise with Phase Shift, Wizards just don't have enough armor or MR to make the increase terribly noticeable. We're planning to change this into a flat damage reduction bonus, which should make this skill very desirable. Ironically, it may turn mages into the most tanky class with the least burst potential (due to the lack of a furious/aim type skill), so in the long run it may make sense to swap this skill with furious and let warriors be tanky but less bursty and give mages some better burst potential. Let me know what you guys think about that kind of potential change.

Overall, I'm fairly happy with the changes and (although it may seem counter-intuitive), very happy to see the debate and discussion in this thread. It shows that you're all just as passionate about this game as we are. Ideally we'd like to get to a point where all classes feel powerful in their own way.

Defiar - Yes, it likely suffers from similar problems, however it's random proc effect instead of a primary affect (like with shock), so it's of secondary concern to us at the moment.