Hi Everyone,

We have rolled out all of the major changes described in the Upcoming changes post today.

Level Effectiveness - Players, Companions, and Enemies now have an effectiveness level. The delta between combatants effectiveness levels is used to increase damage done by higher level combatants facing lower level combatants and to increase the chance to critical hit.



Improved Battle Rating - The battle rating is now heavily weighted to how much damage you can do. This should make it a much more accurate measure of combat potential. To account for this change, the Battle Rating rankings have been cleared.



Companion Gear - Companions can now equip any gear that they meet the class requirements for. This includes found gear, gear from the Hall of Trials, Paragon Brotherhood, and the new Crafting System.






Improved Item Comparisons - The change to your battle rating is now calculated for each item comparison. This should make it significantly easier to see which items are better for you to equip. They are also indicated with a green up arrow on the inventory screen itself so you don't have to mouseover to see if it will be better or not.



Improved Item Drop Rates - We have increased the drop rate of uncommon and rare equipment to provide more items to salvage at the blacksmith to provide for crafting and levelling up the blacksmith.


-David

ETA:

Also, you can now turn off friend invites and guild invites in the Settings tab.

As well, the Skill book now shows the costs for the skills.

Hi Dasonage,

You may be correct, I will take a closer look at the numbers and if they are off in that way I will adjust the battle rating score.

-David

Hi Tsukasa,

Your Effectiveness Rating is calculated as the average of the levels of the equipment you have on and your level.

In battle difference in Effectiveness Level changes damage/taken and received.

This is calculated on a curve that maxes out at 10 levels difference.

At a delta of +10 you do 50% more damage and take 95% less damage, you also crit more often.

For example lets say you were facing a monster that was level 25 and you are level 30, and your equipment averages to say 26 so your Effectiveness level is 28.

That gives you a delta of +3. Without doing the math exactly, that works out to you doing about 18% more damage when you attack the monster and you taking about 25% less damage.

Now lets say you put on a really old piece of gear for your level, something say level 20. And it pulled your average equipment down to 23, making your effectiveness level 26.5. Now in that same battle your delta is +1.5 and you would do about 10% more damage, and take 15% less...

With that example you should be able to see why the equipment level is just as important as the stats now - in fact sometimes more so if the level difference is high enough.

-David

Yes, that is the explicit writing of the implied brackets that result from applying the correct order of operations.

Hi Andaho,

Yeah there are a lot of different ratings that get calculated and its not perfectly straight forward. Sometimes I am hesitant to give out the formulas because they become a rabbit hole of explaining :P