Design Notes

March 09, 2018

Exalted Harbinger, Blood Sorceress and Potions!

Exalted Harbinger, Blood Sorceress/Scarlet Sorceress and Potions Update!

Welcome to the Soul Cleaver revamp! We have taken a long and hard look at what made Soul Cleaver unique and fun. We looked at feedback from all of you as well and are pleased to present this new version, The Exalted Harbinger!

Really quick though, I just wanted to go over an update to how Scarlet Sorceress is obtained and its new precurser, Blood Sorceress.

Previously, players were able to get Scarlet Sorceress at incredibly early levels by simply farming it alongside higher leveled friends. The farming ability of Scarlet Sorceress was unrivaled up to level 50 and because of that, new comers and alts were clamoring to get it ASAP and did not need any other class until hitting level 50+ content. We want to encourage players to explore the game more and try out a variety of classes, so we have made some changes.

First off the version of Scarlet Sorceress players can buy with ACs is NOT AFFECTED in any way. Your AC Scarlet Sorceress is exactly as it was.

Secondly, all versions of Scarlet Sorceress that were obtained by defeating Scarletta in towerofmirrors have been replacd with a new class, the Blood Sorceress. Blood Sorceress will now drop from Scarletta as well, and Scarlet Sorceress will not.

Thirdly any player who is level 50 or greater and who have completed all quests in towerofmirrors can trade in their Blood Sorceress, by accepting ‘Blood Sorceress to Scarlet Sorceress’ from Thief of Hearts in the first room of towerofmirrors. This class will give players their old Scarlet Sorceress in exchange for their new Blood Sorceress. Players can then go to their buyback shop and get their Blood Sorceress back if they want it, or defeat Scarletta again and get Blood Sorceress to drop.

Blood Sorceress is designed around Scarlet Sorceress. It uses similar skills but its damage output and healing have been reduced. Also, all of its stacking auras have been replaced by single stacking auras that apply a more average effect.

Unfortunately, players will have to rerank their Scarlet Sorceress so we have given everyone a 25% class boost until Monday morning. You get this boost for any class, not just Scarlet Sorceress so it's a great time to rank 10 some of those classes you've been neglecting.

Also, we have updated a large majority of consumable items so that they now stack to 99. There are a handful of consumables, notably Potion of Haste and Arcangrove daily potions that are more limited, otherwise, enjoy the increased stack limit to potion away your problems!

With that out of the way, here are the design notes for Exalted Harbinger!

(Physical/Magical) (Mage Mana Regen)

Recommended enhancement: Luck. For the Legion at any cost! Your task is to harness the souls of the enemies of the legion. Break, leech, rend and snare their will to live. Lose yourself to the power, lose yourself to the legion!

Soul Breaker: You relentlessly beat at your foe's soul. Dealing high damage based on weapon attack, but with a longer cooldown.

Mana: None

Cooldown: 3 seconds

(Physical)

Range: Close

Note:150% Weapon Damage

Right off the bat you’ll notice a slower auto attack. The trade off is that it hits much harder. The actual damage over time is the same (100% every 2 seconds = 150% every 3 seconds) but you’ll see an increase in damage over time because there is a much stronger focus on crits and crit damage in this class, which scales better on larger hits.

Soul Rend: Deals damage based on the difference between your current and maximum HP. The lower your health, the more damage you'll do.

Mana: 15

Cooldown: 6.5 seconds

(Physical/Magical)

Range: Close

Next up you’ll see a couple of changes to Soul Rend. First off, the cooldown has increased to 6.5 seconds. The reasoning here is that this skill becomes very strong when buffed by your other skills. Also, we increased the damage on this skill by 10%. With these changes, you’ll be hitting significantly harder with Exalted Harbinger then you did with Soul Cleaver. Soul Rend gets exponentially stronger with less health, so it’s worth it to risk your life total to nail those massive crits.

Soul Leech: Drain life directly from your target's soul. Deals damage and heals you.

Mana: 30

Cooldown: 6 seconds

(Magical)

Range: Between Close and Medium

Soul Leech has received a reduction in mana cost (from 40 mana to 30 mana) as well as a significant reduction in cooldown (from 17 seconds to 6 seconds). The damage and heal on it is relatively the same, although with the stronger auras on this class, it’ll actually be quite a bit better. We have also removed the damage reduction debuff, so that you have more control over how low your health is, plus it didn’t synergize with your Soul Snare in any way.

This is your last ditch saving grace when things get a bit spicy. You want your health to remain pretty low to maximize the damage on Soul Rend so you might not want to spam this. Plus, while the mana cost has been reduced, its still your most expensive skill and it will drain your mana quickly.

Soul Snare: Snare your opponents soul from afar reducing their chance to hit by 90% for 10 seconds.

Mana: 25

Cooldown: 20 seconds

(Physical/Magical)

Range: Long Range

Soul Snare no longer stuns your enemy. It now reduces their changes to hit by 90% for 10 seconds. This is a huge buff over a 4 second stun that didn’t affect many bosses. This significantly increases its survivability vs big bosses and pvp. You basically shut down any class without a hit chance buff. The mana costs and cooldown have also been significantly buffed (from 30 mana to 25 and from 35 second cooldown to 20 seconds).

Blood Price: Sacrifice your very life force to increase all damage dealt by 125% and your chance to crit by 15% for 10 seconds. Can't miss and can't crit. For the Legion!

Mana: 0

Cooldown: 10 seconds

(Physical/Magical)

Range: Close

Notes: Deals (333% attack power + 333% spell power / 2) in damage to yourself.

Your final skill is Blood Price. The cooldown has been dramatically reduced, from 45 seconds to a mere 10! The buff is also better. From 75% increased damage to 125%. The trade off is that it does around 10% more damage to you, compared to Soul Cleaver.

Blood Price accomplishes two things. It gets your health low quick so that your Soul Rend becomes more effective. It also gives you a huuuuuge damage buff, increasing all your skills power. You can refresh it before it runs out if you want to chunk your health down to super high risk levels. This will get your Soul Rend to demoralizing damage levels, but a light wind could kill you so watch out!

Rank 4 Passives

Might of the Legion: Increases Damage Done by 15%

No Pain No Gain: Increases Damage Taken by 15%

Rank 10 Passive

For the Legion: Increases Endurance by 20%

Finally, we have increased the damage on both damage passive (by 5%) so you take more damage but also deal more. We have also completely removed the old rank 10 passive, so players won’t have to stop leveling the class at rank 5. The new passive gives you a nice Endurance buff, increasing the effectiveness of your Soul Rend and improving survivability.

Special thanks to our amazing testing and contribution team! Pisces, Yoshino, Eht Cetera, Brittney and Apus!

October 02, 2013

Battlemage Breakdown

Mages! Swordhaven Needs Your Help!

What do you do when your entire city has become chaorrupted, and your spellcasters just aren't sturdy enough to handle the fight? You train them to cast spells while encased in solid steel, of course!

How to Become a Battlemage

Only the most loyal defenders of Swordhaven can train to be Battlemages! Once you have reached rank 10 in Swordhaven rep, you'll be able to buy this class from the Swordhaven rep shop - talk to Sir Vival in /castle or Roald in /ceremony. You can also buy this class by talking to Ragnar in Battleon for 2000 ACs. This is not a member-only class.

Built like a tank, but mana-friendly!

Battlemage Skills Breakdown

The Battlemage focuses on taking down his opponents as quickly as possible. He is capable of focusing greater amounts of mana into each spell for the maximum effect. He specializes in wearing heavy armor for defense in order to spend all of his mana on offensive spells.

Battlemages excel at taking down multiple enemies at once with their devastating AOE attacks, but can also focus their damage on a single target when fighting tougher enemies.

ARCANE STRIKE

2 second cooldown

Battlemages are rejuvenated by their Arcane Strike granting them bonus mana with every successful blow.

This ability replaces auto-attack. It functions similarly, except that as a Battlemage it also restores some of your mana.

ENCHANTED BLADE

15 mana, 12 second cooldown. Requires rank 1.

Removes the explosion (AOE) effect from the Battlemage's attacks but increases all spell damage and accuracy by 50% for 12 seconds.

Use this whenever you want to focus on one enemy at a time. Awesome for boss fights due to its damage and accuracy increases, and imperative for those times when you want to avoid pulling more than one enemy.

ARCANE FIRE

45 mana, 15 second cooldown. Requires rank 2.

Summon an explosive fire ball burning with arcane energies on up to 3 targets.

Just a nice boost of extra damage. Unless you have Enchanted Blade up, this will aggro enemies that you're not currently fighting if you're standing next to them.

EXPLOSIVE SHIELD

29 mana, 45 second cooldown. Requires rank 3.

Break apart surrounding raw mana and form it into an Arcane Shield transfering most incoming damage to the Battlemage's MP instead of HP, as well as reducing mana costs for 10 seconds. The initial break explodes damaging up to 3 enemies.

This is a pretty sweet shield. While it's up, you'll mostly take damage to your mana pool instead of your health. And to make up for it, your spells will cost less mana. As a bonus, you'll do a burst of AOE damage when you first cast it. Again, you will aggro nearby enemies with this unless you're using Enchanted Blade.

HEAVY ARMOR EXPERTISE

Passive. Requires rank 4.

Physical Damage received reduced by 30%.

BATTLE HARDENED MAGE

Passive. Requires rank 4.

Wisdom increased by 20%.

ARCANE DEVASTATION

62 mana, 18 second cooldown. Requires rank 5.

Conjure a powerful, explosive, arcane blast damaging up to 3 targets. If Enchanted Blade is active, your target will be weakened and take 30% more damage from all sources.

When you're fighting multiple enemies, this serves up a nasty chunk of AOE damage. In a boss fight, this attack is even stronger, as it will cause your target to take extra damage from anything and anyone that hits it while the effect is up. The effect lasts slightly past the cooldown, so if you use this ability every time it becomes available you'll be doing 30% more damage for the entire fight.
 

Oh, and once more: you will aggro nearby enemies with this unless you're using Enchanted Blade.

In summary: This is a great class for boss fights, just make sure you use both Enchanted Blade and Arcane Devastation every time they cool down if you want to be at your most effective. It's also a strong class for farming/questing, since you can use your AOE abilities to smash several enemies at once.

EDIT: The following changes have been made to this class!

• Arcane Fire mana cost increased from 40 to 45
• Explosive Shield mana cost increased from 23 to 29
• Arcane Devastation mana cost decreased from 65 to 62
• Arcane Devastation's Enchanted Blade buff now lasts past its cooldown. This means subsequent uses of Arcane Devastation can do 30% more damage if you time it right.
• To make up for increased mana costs, Arcane strike returns more mana per hit.