Disclaimer Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.
This is the BALANCE CHANGES: ENHANCEMENT TREES/MISC portion of the release notes.
Preface
The buffs we have done to these enhancement trees were centered around two goals - to provide a boost to spellcasting ability for Bard and Artificer, and to help equalize the disparity between Vanguard's T5 selection versus Knight of the Chalice and/or Kensei. We hope that these focused changes encourage a wider variety of offensive spellcasters. Artificer in particular suffered from a lack of immunity bypass, and we think this method (tying it directly to your runearm shots) bridges an important thematic and mechanical gap.
Enhanced Spellpower causes several significant long-term gearing problems for both the casters who had elements represented and the casters who did not. Either you had access to your element, which forced you to always wear the appropriate belt, or you did not, and you were left behind by a large margin of power. This change removes a significant amount of disparity between elemental types of offensive and defensive casting, and was a necessary step to the comprehensive offensive spell pass we are doing at the same time.
The changes to Shifter are primarily bugfixes, but we also wanted to give an avenue for advancing out of the Fatigue that occurs after Shifting for Shifters that don't get Tireless Rage from Barbarian. In addition, we wanted to bump the durability of Beasthide Shifters slightly. We're keeping an eye on the overall placement of Shifters and may continue to buff Shifters in the future if needed.
Vanguard (Pal and Ftr) Tree
- Shield to the Face has been merged into Armored Strength.
- Disorienting Smash now applies 1d4 stacks of vuln instead of 1.
- New T5: Shield Specialization V: +3 to hit, damage, and Armor Class when using a shield (req Shield Specialization IV).
- New T5: Brutal Impact: You gain +1 Critical Damage Mult on a roll of a 19-20.
Arcanotech (Art) Tree
- New T5: Charged Recoil: Runearm shots now strip Electric Immunity for 10 seconds.
Spellsinger (Brd) Tree
- Advanced Magical and Advanced Musical Studies are now merged and condensed together into one 2AP single-rank Enhancement named Advanced Musical Studies. It grants +200 Spellpoints, +3 Bard Songs, and will add the spell Hold Monster, Mass, to your spellbook at level 5.
- Horn of Thunder's SLA is no longer a multiselector and is now 1AP per rank.
Shifter & Razorclaw Shifter (Racial) Tree
- The Beasthide, Wildhunt, and Razorclaw Shift feats now clearly state that their effects block things that cannot be used while Raging.
- Empowered by Nature (both Wildhunt and Beasthide versions) and Destructive Shifting now also grant "You are now immune to Fatigue, including Fatigue from Shifting" in addition to their existing effects.
- Threatening Shift now also grants +10 PRR in addition to its existing effects.
- True Hunter now properly lists its Freedom of Movement effect, and no longer lists its nonexistent Immunity to Petrification.
Misc Balance Changes
- Enhanced Spellpower from all sources is now typed as Equipment spellpower.
- Improved Martial Arts now work with all weapons you are centered with instead of just the basic ki weapons.