Paladin Healing Effectiveness Scaling

Due to a miscommunication pre-patch, Javelin's Holy Trail ended up with added spell damage scaling, which was not intentional. The healing effectiveness scaling from the Path of Judgement node is meant to be a replacement for added damage scaling like it is for Consecrated Ground. Having spell damage and healing effectiveness scaling means that extremely high damage can be achieved by scaling both, because they're multiplicative with each other. Despite this being a mistake, it has made damage over time paladin builds that scale healing effectiveness viable, which was one of our aims when adding Holy Trail. As such we have decided to keep the spell damage scaling, but make it stack additively with the healing effectiveness scaling.

Javelin

• Path of Judgement grants +1 adaptive spell damage per 5% increased healing effectiveness (from 1% more damage per 1% increased healing effectiveness).
• Holy Trail deals 25% more damage.
• Pilgrimage grants 25% more fire and lightning damage (from 15%).
• Fixed Pilgrimage's tooltip saying that it gave just 15% melee ignite chance and melee electrify chance (it gave 25% and still does).

Consecrated Ground

• 66% more damage.
• Now scales with increases to spell damage.
• Added spell damage now applies at 150% effectiveness per second.
• Now gains +1 adaptive spell damage per 5% increased healing effectiveness (from 1% more damage per 1% increased healing effectiveness).
• The increased healing effectiveness from Sanctified Serenity is now taken into account for Consecrated Ground's bonus damage per increased healing effectiveness.
• Lingering Force grants 12% increased duration (from 10%).
• Holy Eruption has 33% more base damage.
• Added spell damage applies to Holy Eruption at 200% effectiveness (from 100%).
• Holy Eruption restores 80 health (from 50).

Shield Bash - Kindling node

• This change is to avoid this node warping the potential power of Consecrated Ground, while giving it a wider range of uses with other builds. Nodes like this are generally intended to provide an immediate boost of power to a single instance of an attack, rather than buff a persistent effect.
• Now grants +5% crit chance and +100% ignite chance per point (from 50% more fire damage).
• Now applies to the next melee or throwing attack (from the next melee attack).
• Now excludes channelled skills.

Skills

Drain Life

• The Dark Shackles node in the Drain Life tree adds 60 mana cost (from 65).
• Drain Life's beam now attaches to the Acolyte's left hand, catalyst, or shield, rather than to a fixed point behind her.
• Drain Life's circle vfx no longer rotates when you change its angle relative to the character.

Dread Shade

• The Lone Watcher node on the Dread Shade tree grants 100% increased duration (from 50%).

Judgement

• Changed to use the same animation as Erasing Strike which better matches the vfx and fantasy of the skill (it still has the original animation if you have the Sanctification Node which removes the melee hit).
• Reduced delay until you can use another ability by 20%.
• Range now scales with weapon range.
• Sigil of Sacrifice now also grants added spell damage and no longer states incorrectly that it gives base fire damage (it gave melee fire damage, and still does alongside spell fire damage).
• Divine Destruction now also applies to damage from Consecrated Ground.
• Purifying Flame now also applies to damage from Consecrated Ground and requires 1 point in Sacred Sword (from 2).
• Destructive Impact grants 30% increased Consecrated Ground area (from 25%).
• If you have nodes to remove the melee hit and turn Consecrated Ground into an aura the Move To Attack behaviour is disabled for Judgement.

Mana Strike

• The lightning ability from Mana Strike's Mana Storm node has been named Mana Arc to help clarify that it is a subskill.
• Mana Arc is now affected by nodes on Mana Strikes skill tree.

Wandering Spirits

• Now reveals 4 spirits immediately on cast (from 1) - this does not affect the rate at which spirits are revealed afterwards.
• Deals 29% more damage.
• Spirits deal damage in a 7% larger area - reveal area has not been changed.
• Added a new node that makes the spirits shred necrotic resistance.
• Added a new node that makes the spirits inflict Damned.
• Lingering Souls grants 13% increased duration per point (from 10%), but can have 3 points allocated (from 4).
• Spirit Swarm no longer increases mana cost, can have 3 points allocated (from 2) and is now attached to the root node (from requiring 1 point in Lingering Souls). The increased cooldown recovery speed it gives is no longer multiplicative with other sources.
• Terrifying Presence no longer increases mana cost, but now requires 1 point in Spirit Swarm (from being attached to the root node).
• Harrowing Aura no longer reduces damage and now also increases the range at which Wandering Spirits apply necrotic shred and damned.
• Reap the Damned requires 1 point in Lingering Souls (from 2 points in Souls of Rage).

Warpath

• Path of Heavens grants +8 adaptive spell damage (from 50% increased spell damage).
• Winds of Justice grants 25% Smite chance per point (from 15%) and can have 4 points allocated (from 5).
• Amended Warpath's description to clarify that the movement speed modifier is multiplicative.

Tooltips

• Added alt text to Javelins Siege Barrage and Divine Fury nodes to state that they are incompatible.
• Added alt text to Summon Wraiths Twin Souls and Covenant of Souls to state that they are incompatible.
• Fixed Static Orbs Scatter Blast node stating the small orb did less damage, and clarified that only the small orbs cant pull or explode.
• Clarified Divine Essences tooltip to state that it excludes healing over time effects.

Enemies

• Echoes that contain a Spine Hunter Alpha that is not the boss contain 50% fewer of them.
• Enemy types that are rarer in Echoes are now even rarer in Arena Echoes.
• Immortal Chimeras no longer spawn in the arena.
• Reduced the pack size in the area of Spine Hunters, Scalebane Rogues, Crystal Elementals, Ascendant Embermages, Emerald Nagasa, and Osprix Zealots.
• Ascendant Embermages now move around 10% closer to their target before attacking and have 11% less health.
• Diamond Nagasa have 5% less health.
• Crystal Elementals deal 7% less damage.
• Crystal Elementals have a 20% longer delay before releasing projectiles when they spin and 80% of them only use their spin attack when damaged (from 40%).
• Crystal Elementals' spin attack deals 10% less damage.
• Crystal Golems' Beam ability locks in a target direction 20% sooner and has a 25% longer cast time.
• Crystal Golems' Punch ability locks in a target direction 30% sooner.
• Emerald Nagasa deal 10% less damage.
• Gold Elementals' Punch ability locks in a target direction 30% sooner.
• Scalebane Rogues deal 12% less damage.
• Scarab Riders deal 30% less damage with their ranged attacks.
• Spine Hunters' on death effect deals 40% less damage.
• Spine Hunter Alphas deal 5% less damage.

Items

• The Oblivion Wave from Anchor of Oblivion now has 100% increased base damage and gains +2 spell void damage per point of Vitality.
• Magma Shards from Volcanus deal 20% more damage.

Chat

• Added chat language filter options. You can now hide chat messages which contain characters from other languages/scripts.
  • English/Latin, Chinese, and Russian are the current options.
  • A default setting will be picked according to your system language, but you can change it at any time in the Social tab of the settings window.
  • We still plan to offer multiple global chat channels and implement chat reporting features in the future, but they are not quick to implement (and are out of scope for a hotfix).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where using Ice Barrage with the Wintry Blast and Brittle Fragments nodes would degrade performance each time you used the skill until you moved to a new zone.
• Fixed the visuals for Tail Swipe, Flame Reave, and Voidfused Armoury (enemy abilities) being invisible.
• Fixed many player and enemy abilities having missing sound effects.
• Fixed the Lichs Harvested Legions passive not working.
• Fixed a bug where Aberrant Call did not provide additional max wraiths if you had taken Summon Wraith's Echoes Inside node.
• Fixed a bug where Dark Forging Ornate Solar Idols did not provide their listed increase to Void Cleave's area of effect.
• Fixed a bug where Riposte was classified as a Spell rather than a Melee Attack. This caused it to consume when you cast a spell effects, etc.
• Fixed Punctures Scalebane node having unreadable text.
• Fixed a bug where Mana Arc (Lightning) could not trigger if you were distant from the enemy due to Mana Strike's Teleporting Strikes node.
• Fixed a visual bug where Mana Strike's VFX did not increase with increased area of effect.
• Fixed the Game Guide entry for Time Rot stating it stacks 3 times (it stacks 12 times).
• Fixed a bug where the Ruby Fang Cleaver item would float behind the player.
• Fixed a bug where Gorgons left behind a dust devil vfx on death.
• Consecrated Ground
  • Fixed a bug where the visuals disappeared at the end of the normal duration, even if you had increased duration.
  • Fixed a bug where the visuals didn't scale with increased area.
  • When you have the Anointed node turning Consecrated Ground into an aura the visuals no longer rotate with the character.
• Drain Life
  • Fixed a bug where some of Drain Life's sounds would fail to play when you took the Lay Waste node.
  • Fixed a bug where taking the Virulence node did not convert the circle vfx to the poison variant.
  • Fixed a bug where taking the Dark Shackles node resulted in the circle vfx floating too far above the target location.