This is a post by Nino on the FOH website (
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/27495-vanguard-patch-notes-update-1-a-4.html). For those who don't know, Nino is a dev that posts pretty frequently on that forum. Not sure how I feel about this yet:
General Update
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as a quick general update:
As with all things on message boards, much of the percevied issues are hyperbole or exaggerations. There are several concerns raised and they are being addressed as we speak and an 'official' post will be made on the affiliate sites.
We actually have a very strong ethical policy of being very upfront with our patch notes, and this time around a few notes were accidentally left off. They were not purposefully excluded with the intention to deceive. Changes get sent via email and compiled by a single person. As this patch contains changes over the course of almost an entire month, he missed a few. They will be immediately posted and I will personally find a way that it does not happen again. It isn't the end of the world, just slightly aggravating.
The primary change affecting people was made to 'direct damage' abilities. A list of those abilities by class is being drafted and will get posted. Nobody was nerfed 50%, likewise, nobody was bumped 50% either; these are gross exaggerations and speculative hyperbole. This issue has gone unfixed for a solid month now, and waiting this long to finally get it addressed is understandably aggravating. Don't quote me exactly, but these abilities were doing almost 2x the damage they should have because they were adding in auto-attack damage when they weren't supposed to. Some classes have several of these direct damage abilties, other classes have only one. Either way, it is a perceived 'nerf' but it was done under the auspice of maintaining the balance of the game.
Anyway, the things I have verified so far:
1. Several art packages did not get pushed properly. Themnwar's Shield - the giant dam outside of Bordinar's Cleft is gone. So are many hand held items and apparently the new spell effects. These will get patched in once we track down what went wrong.
2. Direct damage abilities had part of their damage commponent reduced. We will clarify this later in the afternoon to help players better understand what changed.
3. A quest went in prematurely that did not have proper preconditions which allowed a handful of people to exploit a good deal of experience that is getting removed from these players. The quest NPC has been eliminated, or the quest made inactive for now.
4. There was a problem with a diplomacy quest that allowed players to obtain tier 3 equipment that they should not have access to yet. This has been hot fixed.
If I find more I will let you know, until then take a deep breath and relax.
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