December 18, 2015

Updates to Blademaster Assassin and Shaman

BladeMaster Assassin Changes

Iaijutsu: Lowered cooldown from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.
Death's Dance: Increased Dodge from 20% to 30%.
Simple Solution: Lowered cooldown from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.                     
Slicing Winds effect duration lowered from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
Umbral Shuriken: Lowered mana costs from 32 to 30                        
Lowered initial DoT by 25% (this helps balance out the lower cooldown cost)
Lowered Decay, Cannot Heal! effect duration from 6 seconds to 5 seconds.

Evolved Shaman and Shaman Class Changes

Elemental Embrace: 100% chance to hit
Elemental Grasp: 100% chance to hit
Hydrophobia: added 6 second Heal over Time and damage doubled
Ancestor: damage doubled

Why Did You Change the Class Skills?

Good question, faceless-internet-person! We experienced several issues during the release of the Blademaster Assassin Class during our Black Friday shop (where certain skill values released with higher-than-intended values). When those issues were corrected, we got a lot of feedback from fans of the class saying it was not as fun to use.

When we update classes, that's never our intention - we never want to make something less fun to play, or make things worse in order to make something else better. So there was only one real solution - re-fix Blademaster Assassin in a way that kept its balance but brought its power level back up in line with what the class owners wanted. Finding a middle ground can be pretty tricky, but Sync, Arklen, and our other class designers and testers found a way to make it happen:

Buff Blademaster Assassin AND make sure there were classes that couple compare to it. That is why the Evolved Shaman and Shaman Classes got some pretty sweet buffs this week, too!

Click here to read more about why these buffs happened.