0.9.2 Patch Notes

This will be deployed within a few hours. Its purpose is to get most of the internal changes that occured while we were at PAX onto the Beta realm. I'm aware it doesn't address every issue in the game - that's what the major 0.9.3 patch is for :)

I'll be updating the Beta Manifesto later today hopefully.

Version 0.9.2

Features:

• Added new skill prototype - "Explosive Arrow": Fires an arrow which inflicts a short duration fuse charge on the enemy. Applying additional charges extends the duration. When the target dies or the fuses expire, the charges explode, dealing fire splash damage to nearby enemies.
• Added new skill prototype - "Temporal Chains": Curses all targets in an area, making time pass more slowly for them. They will move, attack and cast at a reduced speed and effects on them expire slower.
• Added new skill prototype - "Elemental Weakness": Curses all targets in an area, making them less resistant to elemental damage and more vulnerable to elemental status effects.
• Added new skill prototype - "Warlord's Mark": Curses all targets in an area. Attacks on the cursed targets will leech life and mana, and killing them will result in more flask charges and a chance to gain an endurance charge.
• Added new skill prototype - "Punishment": Curses all targets in an area, causing them to suffer some of the physical damage they deal with their attacks.
• Added new skill prototype - "Enfeeble": Curses all targets in an area, making their attacks less effective.
• Added new skill prototype - "Critical Weakness": Curses all targets in an area, making them more vulnerable to critical strikes.
• Added new skill prototype - "Projectile Weakness": Curses all targets in an area, making them easier for projectiles to pierce and easier to knock back, while reducing their evasion against projectiles.
• Added new skill prototype - "Vulnerability": Curses all targets in an area, making them take increased damage from physical attacks and degeneration, and easier to stun. The target's energy shield will regenerate more slowly.
• Added functionality for cut-throat leagues. We'll test this with some events in the near future!
• Added user interface elements to show the life totals of party members in your instance.
• Projectiles should only collide with chests now if they would open them.
• Further improvements to the new user interface.
• Added new Portal art.
• Enabled a lot of new music for many areas.
• The outlines around friendly entities are now green rather than red.
• Added new loading screen art/layout.
• Increased the size of the chat box.
• Many website forum improvements.
• Disabled the ability to lift flasks in the HUD version of the belt. Now you won't accidentally drop them while playing. Either mouse button can be used to drink from them now.
• Made monster description text easier to read.
• Reduced the grass in some areas of Act Two to improve performance on older hardware. This is being investigated.
• Added proper support for 1280x1024 and other similar resolutions.
• Dropping items with skill gems in them will warn you.
• Added crash dump reporting.
• The Dark Forest now has a spidery entrance to the Weaver's Chambers.
• Substantial incremental improvements to areas, environments, effects and sounds.
• Overhauls to the look and feel of many Act Two environments.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a memory leak with the shader compiler. Areas will now not become progressively slower to load. This may reduce "out of memory" errors as well.
• Fixed some bugs with monster spawning in dungeons.
• Fixed a bug where moving the client from one monitor to another would crash.
• Fixed a bug where players would receive the "Surgeon's" Flask bonus more than once per action.
• Frenzy no longer grants frenzy charges for shooting Frost Walls.
• Spell critical strike chance is now shown on the character screen.
• Fixed a crash with Frost Wall.
• Fixed some font position issues with the chat box.
• Fixed a bug where UI buttons could get stuck down.
• Fixed a bug with Shock Nova's damage calculation if the area of effect was increased.
• Fixed some issues with socket colours on ground item hovers.

Balance:

• Most important balance changes are coming in 0.9.3 (the major balance patch). There are plenty of planned balance improvements that are not addressed in this 0.9.2 patch, because we can do them better with the new balance in 0.9.3.
• Significantly reduced the mana cost scaling of most skills at higher levels
• Added a five level grace period above the player where monsters still give full experience.
• Reduced bow-monster damage by 30%.
• Removed "Spell damage %" from spawning on some types of items.
• Changed high-quality versions of "Multiple Projectiles" and "Faster Projectiles" support gems to have increased cast speed as well as attack speed.
• Reduced overall drop rate of items slightly. Also reduced drop rate of equipment slightly in favour of currency items.
• Reduced size of most direct mana passive skills by 20%.
• Doubled the stack sizes of all currency items.
• Reduced the amount of Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge from 3% to 2%.
• "Elemental" now doesn't include chaos damage any more.
• Made boss (magic/rare/unique) monsters more dangerous. 0.9.3 will further address this issue.
• Cleave now has less of a penalty when dual wielding.
• Reduced upper Shock Nova damage by 30%.
• Fireball splash damage is now centered on the monster itself, rather than the point of impact (which was in front of the monster).
• Increased Fireball's splash area of effect and increased its damage by 23%.
• Increased the damage of Sweep, Ice Nova, Ice Spear and Phase Run's melee damage bonus.
• Changed Sweep's quality bonus from knockback distance to increased attack speed.
• Massively increased Cold Snap's chill duration bonus.
• Sweep is now affected by increased area of effect stats.
• Reduced the mana cost of Elemental Hit.
• Reduced the cast time of Phase Run.
• Viper Strike, Poison Arrow, Infernal Blow and Glacial Hammer do more damage at higher levels than before.
• Reduced maximum number of Viper Strike charges to 4.
• Increased Blood Rage's life leech at low levels and decreased the damage it deals you at lower levels.
[/li]
• Reduced the number of flasks charges gained on Critical Strike for both Surgeon's and Avenger's mods.
  

(Purposefully did nothing about the evasion situation yet, that's in 0.9.3 - sorry, Rangers!)

This time we're prepared to do small incremental patches every few days to adjust stuff quickly for you guys. Expect a 0.9.2b to fix your initial problems :)

"

stakes wrote:

Love the patch notes besides 30% on nova. Overpowered yes, but 30%? Jesus.

a) If it's too much, we can just fix it tomorrow in 0.9.2b

b) 0.9.3 redoes all skill balance

c) It still pwns on our testing characters!