Patch Notes Build 13 (Oct 18, 2013)

Build 13 (v0.1.9.7) is an update that was released on October 18, 2013. It has received a hotfix, v0.1.9.9.

Among other changes, this update introduced the Nightblade mastery and reworked Burrwitch Outskirts. The hotfix was focused on fixing a major bug with the transfer stash, but also introduced many other fixes and changes.

Animation

 * All new player character run animations.
 * Player character animation set for the Nightblade mastery.
 * Slightly cut down the delay on ranged attacks before you can move again to provide a more responsive feel.

Game

 * Nightblade mastery now available!
 * Burrwitch Outskirts has been reworked to provide a more distinct environment shift from Wightmire, more of a change of enemies and more interesting and varied flow.
 * New sound effects for pistols, rifles and crossbows.
 * Probability to Hit System: Fixed legacy bug that was causing critical hits and misses not to be calculated properly, created a new equation to provide better scaling at higher levels, rebalanced player and enemy offensive and defensive ability.
 * Adjusted enemy skills to try to smooth some of the damage spikes people have been experiencing.
 * Standard skill throw speed increased 10%.
 * Physical and pierce damage bonuses from cunning slightly increased.
 * Demolitionist: Reduced Mortar Trap cooldown from 60 to 48.
 * Demolitionist: Changed Blast Shield to be self-targeting only.
 * Demolitionist: Increased damage on Fire Strike and Explosive Strike.
 * Demolitionist: Increased damage on Stun Jacks and Full Spread damage.
 * Demolitionist: Decreased cooldown on Canister Bomb and Grenado.
 * Demolitionist: Revised damages, significantly increase damage and reduced radius of Grenado and mods.
 * Demolitionist: Revised damages and increased damage on Canister Bomb and mods.
 * Demolitionist: Flashbang confusion chance now increases with skill level.
 * Demolitionist: Blast Shield cooldown reduced from 24 to 18 seconds.
 * Demolitionist: Temper modifier values rebalanced.
 * Demolitionist: Added new skills Ulzuin's Chosen, Unquenchable Flame, Vindictive Flame, and Ulzuin's Wrath, bringing Demolition up to an equivalent number of skills / points as other masteries.
 * Soldier: Blade Arc cooldown removed, mana cost reduced and damaged reduced accordingly in order to differentiate it from Blitz. Blade Arc will now provide more spammable AoE damage that is efficient against crowds but not as much against single opponents.
 * Soldier: Blitz damage reduced and cooldown slightly increased. This should reorient it a little more toward crowd control and mobility rather than straight up AoE damage.
 * Soldier: Field Command converted from duration to toggled buff. Bonuses changed from protection and attack speed to %protection, %OA and %DA.
 * Soldier: Added %Physical Damage bonus to Fighting Form.
 * Soldier: Increased %Weapon Damage on Forcewave (also fixed bug that was causing %Weapon damage not to work on this skill type).
 * Soldier: Changed Will to Live to use new %Healing plus an absolute heal value and removed regen over time.
 * Soldier: Internal Trauma skill now actually causes internal trauma damage.
 * Soldier: Adjusted Overguard to give a big boost to shield recovery and then had the block chance scale over time. The more frequent chance to block should make the skill a little more effective at lower levels.
 * Soldier: Added chance for fear to War Cry.
 * Occultist: Increased Curse of Frailty slowing effect from 33% to 50%.
 * Occultist: Added a small amount of gradually increasing % heal to the Raven's Mend ability.
 * Occultist: Increased Eye of Dreeg physical and poison damage at mid/high levels.
 * Occultist: Increased Sigil of Consumption vitality damage.
 * Occultist: Adjusted scaling on Wightfire to increase higher level damage.
 * Occultist: Added absolute elemental damage to Storm Spirit and slightly reduced %elemental.
 * Occultist: Slightly increased raven's storm orb damage scaling.
 * Adjusted Pet control modes (Aggressive, Defensive, Normal). Defensive mode now greatly favors attacking enemies that are attacking the player.
 * Dramatically increased the probability of Focus items generating a % dmg suffix, over other stats.
 * Rare Affix balance pass to selectively raise / add bonuses to some of the more underwhelming rares. This wasn't a comprehensive effort, we've been going through them as they come to our attention, so there may be more to come in the future.
 * Epic item balance pass.
 * Adjusted the level drop range of epic items and the level requirements of epics in the 1-25 range. Epics now start at a minimum level requirement of 14, stats adjusted to match. You may encounter some new epics within the Alpha that you cannot equip yet.
 * Slightly increased the % dmg values on low level armor and accessories.
 * Increased % pierce dmg on gear.
 * Rings, Amulets and Medals now have base stats. The different varieties of accessories provide different base bonuses.
 * Rings, Amulets and Medals can now drop as white quality.
 * The Warden's door now re-opens when he is defeated.
 * Removed level requirement from common armor and adjusted physique requirements to compensate. Often by the time players met the level requirement, they had already exceeded the physique requirement, such that characters with higher physique were not gaining as much benefit from their investment by being able to equip higher protection armor early then other builds since they were gated by level.

Tech

 * Improved speed of the Lua binding layer.

Bug fixes

 * Fixed a bug resulting in incorrect lighting when there were no visible lights.
 * Fixed a bug where pathing obstacles could be placed incorrectly on animated objects located offscreen.
 * Fixed a bug in wave based attack skills where weapon damage was not taken into account correctly.

Hotfix changes
The latest update should fix stash troubles people were having with new characters and includes various other fixes and changes

Tech

 * Fixed a bug where the player transfer stash would be corrupted when created.
 * Fixed a bug where the log could be spammed by a PFX warning message.
 * Fixed a bug where it was possible to permanently mind control monsters under certain circumstances.
 * Fixed a bug where mind controlled monsters awarded incorrect faction points when killed.
 * Fixed a bug where the highlight applied to the transfer stash when attempting to add quest items was incorrect.
 * Fixed a bug where monster states would not be correctly saved when a monster was in the process of dying.
 * Fixed a bug where the player inventory could be corrupted when affected by script actions.
 * Fixed a bug where incomplete components would not be correctly removed from inventory when used.

Game

 * Retaliation damage is no longer applied when attacks miss.
 * Monsters under the effects of mind control are now attackable.
 * Fixed missing hit box on trapdoors making them hard to select.
 * Fixed Hellhound detonation skill, which sometimes wasn't hitting enemies.
 * Rebalanced Azure Matriarch.
 * Adjusted Viper Lord squall skill to hit later so there is more opportunity to dodge. Removed the slow.
 * Reduced chances of double hero spawns at lower levels.
 * Adjusted Milton Hart to be a little faster but less hard hitting.
 * Reduced damage absoprtion of Warden's low-health rally skill.
 * Reduced Devouring Swarm damage at lower levels.
 * Slightly increased drop rates on several types of enemies, primarily for champions.
 * Slightly increased breakable drop rates.
 * Small boost to rare drop rates on chests.
 * Reduced jewelry drop rates in favor of more armor drops.
 * Lowered base offensive ability on heroes.
 * Increased attribute bonus for pierce and magical damages.
 * Reduced travel speed of raptor sonic screech so that it can be dodged.
 * Increased damage but reduced attack intervals of mosquito and bone rat projectile attacks.
 * Occultist: Increased Dreeg's Evil Eye poison damage.
 * Occultist: Increased poison and acid bonus from Terrifying Gaze.
 * Occultist: Reduced energy cost of various skills.
 * Occultist: Updated hellhound and raven bios with OA / DA values appropriate for the combat system changes.
 * Reduced normal mode reflection aura on heroes from 100% to 33%.
 * Removed reflection aura from Gethrand and replaced it with ring of flame.
 * Added 1-time special chest to Warden's room for new characters. Unfortunately, won't appear for those that have already killed the Warden once.