Update Notes 1.05.5 – 19th August

[Tarib]

DARK TEMPLAR

Covenants:

• The Covenant system for Dark Templars has been streamlined and a number of Covenants merged or removed. There are now a total of 4 Covenants available, 3 innate (Covenant of Pestilence, Covenant of Invulnerability and Covenant of Vengeance) and 1 feated (Covenant of Arms). All Covenants now have a 1 second cast time, so they can be swapped around in combat if needed, but share a 5 second cooldown. All Covenants now share the same stacking order so can be overwritten by another Covenant without you needing to manually remove the currently running Covenant.
• Covenant of Pestilence has been converted into a physical mitigation Covenant. It provides a bonus armor % increase, causes attackers to take damage every time they hit you, and attacks against you have a chance of triggering AOE unholy damage around you.
• Removed the inherent snare effect from Covenant of Pestilence.
• Covenant of Invulnerability has been converted into a magical mitigation Covenant. It provides a bonus protection % increases, and causes casters to take damage every time they land a hostile spell on you. A new rank has been added to this Covenant, obtained at level 35.
• Covenant of Vengeance now gives you a weapon contribution % bonus, and attacks against you have a chance of granting you additional weapon contribution % bonus. There is now only a single rank of this Covenant, obtained at level 15.
• Covenant of Arms (feated via the Desecration tree) is meant to be a feated replacement for Covenant of Vengeance. It now gives you a weapon contribution % bonus, and your attacks have a chance of inflicting additional unholy damage on the target.
• The old Covenant of Death has been removed and turned into a passive ability. Now, when you get this ability at level 80, your Covenants of Pestilence and Invulnerability will become permanently augmented to grant you additional health tap (both physical and magical), while your Covenants of Vengeance and Arms will become permanently augmented to grant you the Blood for Blood buff whenever you or your team makes a killing blow, which grants you significant unholy combat rating for your next 3 attacks.
• The Vile Pestilence feat has been replaced with Solid Pestilence. Each rank adds armor to the Covenant of Pestilence, and causes you to gain Blood Seals when you are attacked. This also grants you the new Seal of Yog spell if you don't already have it. Each feat increases the maximum number of Blood Seals you can gain by 4 (4/8/12/16/20).
• The Invulnerable Soul feat has been changed and now each rank adds extra bonus protection % to Covenant of Invulnerability. In addition, it causes you to gain 1 charge of Invulnerable Soul per feat point when Covenant of Invulnerability is running, which grants you additional protection. When you are struck with a magical attack, it consumes a charge of Invulnerable Soul, and grants you an Arcane Seal. Your Invulnerable Soul stack will reset to the full amount 10 seconds after you last lost a stack charge. The maximum number of Arcane Seals you can gain is 10. This also grants you the new Seal of Yog spell if you don't already have it.
• Seal of Yog - This is a new spell granted by the Invulnerable Soul and Solid Pestilence feats. It consumes the Blood Seal or Arcane Seal stack that you have. The more seals that are consumed when it is used, the greater the power of the Seal of Yog.
  
  • When consuming the Blood Seal stack, it increases your maximum health, and heals you for that amount.
  • When consuming the Arcane Seal stack, it increases your critical rating and causes you to regain mana whenever you perform a critical strike. Additionally, enemy spellcasters will lose mana when they land hostile spells on you, with this mana loss increasing for each hostile spell that hits you, up to a maximum of 5 increments.
• Covenant of Vengeance is now available starting at level 15.
• Covenant of Arms and Covenant of Vengeance now grant bonus Weapon Damage passively while active.
• Removed Covenant of War and Covenant of Death from the Dark Templar's spell book.
• Covenant of Death is now a passive effect on all Covenants gained at level 80. It provides the current killing blow bonus "Blood for Blood" to both Covenant of Vengeance and Covenant of Arms. It will also provide Covenant of Invulnerability and Covenant of Pestilence with a passive Life Tap bonus.
• Increased the proc chance of Covenant of Arms and Covenant of Vengeance when Improved Soul Covenants is trained.
• The following spells are now able to perform critical hits: Covenant of Arms, Approach of Death, Pact of Malacodor, Reaper of Malacodor, Aura of Dread Fury, Blighted Touch, Blighted Soul, Corrupt Weapon.

Hexes:

• Increased the cooldown of Blood Hex and Shadow Hex to 10 seconds. Their damage has been increased appropriately.
• Increased the duration of the Hexed debuff caused by Blood Hex and Shadow Hex to 18 seconds (up from 12 seconds).
• Blood Hex and Shadow Hex are now abilities instead of spells. This should allow them to be used more fluidly, but they still cost mana to use.
• Added a new 1 point feat in the Desecration Tree: Spreading Shadows. This feat causes Shadow Hex to damage up to 2 targets near the primary target.
• Changed the Sadistic Vengeance feat to "Shadowed Blade." This feat gives a passive chance for your melee attacks (1/2/3/4/5 PPM per respective feat point) to cause the damaging effect of Shadow Hex on the target.

Other Changes:

• Mind Wrack is now an innate combo given at level 40.
• Redesigned the Deadly Covenants feat. It is now called: Unholy Empowerment. This feat increases the critical bonus damage of Covenant of Arms, Aura of Dread Fury, Blighted Soul, Blighted Touch, Approach of Death, Blood Hex, Shadow Hex, Pact / Reaper of Malacodor, and Corrupted Weapon by 15/30/45/60/75% per respective feat point.
• Added a new ability at level 20: Sadistic Soul. This ability can only be used when Sadism 10 is active and deals unholy damage to enemies around the Dark Templar.
• Sadistic Soul no longer passively pulses when Sadism is active.
• Changed health thresholds for Approach of Death to 75/65/55/45% (was 70/50/30/10%).
• Increased the spell damage coefficient for Blighted Touch and Blighted Soul.
• Increased the base damage of Blighted Touch.
• Blood Pact is now instant cast.
• Reduced the cooldown of Blood Pact to 5 minutes.
• Removed the self-damaging component from Blood Pact.
• Improved Blood Pact now reduces the cooldown of Blood Pact by 30 seconds per respective feat point for a total of 2.5 minute reduction.
• Added a new spell - Drain Essence. This spell is gained at the same levels as Drain Life and modifies Stamina and Mana Tap. Only one of these spells may be active at a time.
• Removed the increased health cost of Martyrdom from the Improved Martyrdom feat.
• A new feat - Hex Marked Soul - has been added to the Depravity tree. This grants you a spell that gives you a significant amount of protection for a short period of time.
• The Vile Soul feat has been removed.
• A new 1 point feat has been added to Depravity as an offshoot of the Cabalistic Hunger feat. This causes your Zone of Gluttony to inflict continuous damage on enemies inside the zone.
• The area of effect of the Zone of Gluttony gained from the Cabalistic Hunger feat has been increased by 1m.
• Removed the mana cost from all ranks of Martyrdom.
• Martyrdom is now instant cast after casting Seal of Chaos instead of Blood Pact.
• Gore Fiend has been renamed to Fiendish Hand and is now linked to the Dark Hand feat. This feat will now cause Dark Hand to damage 3 other targets near the primary target.
• Desecrated Blood now increases the critical hit chance of the finisher on Blood for Aid instead of its old function. The critical hit chance increase is 2.5/5/7.5% per respective feat point.
• Added a new 5 point feat to the Desecration tree: Blooded Weapons. This feat provides a passive bonus to your Spell Penetration and Combat Rating (Unholy).
• Curse of Gwahlur has been changed to Ability - Curse of Gwahlur and is now a single feat. It grants you an ability that lets you enable/disable the Curse. Curse of Gwahlur now also triggers from magical attacks. It now stacks a single debuff on the target 3 times, rather than having 3 separate debuffs.
• The Pestilential Cloud feat has been removed.
• Soul Infusion has been changed to be 1 point. When it triggers, it will give you 10% of your max mana back, otherwise the feat is unchanged.
• Replaced the Ravenous Eater feat with a new feat: Shadowed Soul. This feat grants a spell that transforms the templar into a shadow. While active the templar is immune to snare, root, and fear effects, Hexes become more powerful, and attacks cause additional unholy damage.
• Soul Barrier absorb values now scale with your level. The values have been reduced at level 25 and scale up to the current value at level 80.
• Pact of Malacodor is now a stance which can be toggled and that no longer costs health to keep active. Instead, each hit performed costs mana.
• Reaper of Malacodor no longer grants a new spell, but instead modifies the Pact of Malacodor ability. The function remains the same.
• Removed the last remaining traces of Ravenous Eater buffs.
• Fixed an issue where the team heal gained from Improved Infusion was able to trigger more than once every 6 seconds.
• Pact of Malacador will no longer drop when zoning.
• Touch of Death is no longer an ability, but instead triggers a buff after performing A Soul for Our Feast combos. Using Blood For Aid after triggering this buff consumes the effect and causes damage to the primary target.
• Air of Death is now a guaranteed effect when Touch of Death is triggered. The area of effect size is limited to 4 targets.
• Mind Wrack will correctly be given at level 40 now.

DEMONOLOGIST

• An enemy can now only be affected by the damage from Intense Heat once per second, regardless of how many other enemies are nearby.
• Removed one of the particle effect components from Let Them Burn that was causing excessive lag when hitting multiple enemies.

[Tarib]

Massive PvP

• Players should no longer forget their resurrection point during a siege.

Items

• Using the fan on Guards, or near them, should no longer make them angry, leaving the player to peacefully fan themselves and anyone else around.