Protection Devblog | Archetype Changes
Protection Spell Tree
Active Spells
Banner of Justice and Banner of Virtue
Banner of Justice and Banner of Virtue will be moving out of the spell tree of the Protection Archetype. Since the Archetype is meant to follow the “tank” fantasy, we decided to remove the offensive and healing banners for now. We have put our minds to think about something equally, if not even more fun than both of them for you! We created two new spells for Protection: Revenge and Shield Throw! Continue to read this post to learn more about them 一 and for those who will miss these banners, we promise you will hear about them soon!
Banner of Justice and Banner of Virtue will now be replaced with new spells: Revenge and Shield Throw.
Shield Throw
Replacing Banner of Virtue in the spell tree, Shield Throw is not only meant to be a ranged tool for Protection builds, but a disruption one too, since Shield Throw comes with interrupt on its usability. We decided to put it really early on the Archetype tree so players who build a healer do not feel they have to commit to the Protection Archetype tree, but still get some kind of offensive utility. Doing it, we added flexibility for offensive builds, being more attractive to choose Protection as a filler Archetype.
Shield Throw will replace Banner of Virtue.
Shield Throw: Throws your shield that deals (70% Weapon Power) weapon damage and interrupts the target.
Casting: Instant | Aether: Generate 20 Aether | Range: 4 | Cooldown: 20s
Revenge
Replacing Banner of Justice in the spell tree, Revenge is meant to be an important damage ability for the Archetype. Trying to give this ability more character, we decided to put an additional feature on it: if you get hit too hard on a single hit, for the next few seconds this spell will deal more damage without additional costs to do so.
Revenge will replace Banner of Justice.
Revenge: Deals (150% Weapon Power) weapon damage to the target. Adjacent creatures will receive 25% of the damage dealt to the target. Increase the damage by (40% Weapon Power) to the target creature and increase the damage dealt to adjacent creatures by 15% per 10 Aether. Whenever you get hit for 10% or more of your health by a spell or attack this ability will cost no Aether and behave as if you spent 50 Aethers for the next 5 seconds.
Casting: Instant | Aether: Consume | Range: 4 | Cooldown: 30s
Spirit Shield
Spirit Shield is now a Tier 3 spell to offer an early strong defensive option for players that choose Protection as a filler Archetype.
Ability moved from tier 5 to tier 3 in Protection Archetype Spell Tree.
Blessed Earth
Blessed Earth is a reliable Damage over Time that also offers some heal to the party. We decided to pull it up so players that choose Protection as a filler role can have access to this important tool to their arsenal early, making it less of a tricky choice at tier 4 if they are playing a support build.
Damage scale changed from Spell Power to Defense Power.
Ability moved from tier 4 to tier 3 in the Protection Archetype Spell Tree.
(New) Blessed Earth: Deals (10% Defense Power) spell damage per second in a medium area, restoring (3% Healing Power) health per second for every target hit for 6s. Damage is increased by (5% Defense Power) spell damage and healing is increased by (2% Healing Power) per 10 Aether consumed.
Banner of Protection
Some banners get way too much value in PvP situations. Because of that, we decided to make them have some HP. Now, the players have an option to counter-play this spell by destroying the banner. However, doing it would open some possibilities to PvE abuse as an “extra body” to tank hits on your party, and that's why monsters can't target it.
The banner now can be destroyed, but it will still be walkable.
The Health and Defense of the banner is based on the caster.
Monsters cannot target a banner, but it can receive damage from monsters AoE spells.
Buffs provided from the same banner will not stack from multiple banners.
Provoke
The passive that used to reduce Provoke cooldown got changed, so we decided to reduce its cooldown, since it will not be the only source of taunt the player will have in the Archetype. In addition to that, now the creatures will stay on the target that provoked them for some time, reducing the amount of times that you would use Provoke.
Cooldown reduced from 20 to 15 seconds.
Area increased from 5x5 to 7x7.
Now creatures affected by Provoke will not be able to change their target for 6 seconds.
Targets affected by provoke will be Threatened now.
Threatened targets become immune to any other source of taunt for 15s.
Unchained
A simple solution to a complex problem. We designed a new element that will prevent players from being permanently immune to crowd control effects.
This ability now will add an “Unchained” status to the player.
“Unchained” makes it so you are unable to be Unchained again for 12 seconds.
Safeguard
We expect Safeguard to be a powerful tool not only on PvP, but also PvE. We have moved Safeguard next to Unchained and Unbreakable, so players will often have to make a decision depending on their build ー if they want an offensive buff (Unchained), a defensive cooldown (Unbreakable) or a party oriented spell (Safeguard).
Ability moved from tier 4 to tier 5 in Protection Archetype Spell Tree.
Passive Spells
Reinforced Shield
We are raising the values of Reinforced Shield for players that want to be more bulky using a shield. Although this amount of tankiness has its price with AP cost, the new offensive spells Revenge and Shield Throw turns it into a a win-win situation for tank and support players.
(New) Reinforced Shield: Increase your shield DP by 100%, but at the cost of 25% AP from your shield.
Battle General → Undying Will
Since we will be designing all Archetype oriented passives to be more versatile between builds, Battle General had to be changed. Undying Will is one of the new passives for Protection, and will offer to players that moment for you to make a backup plan to turn the tides of a battle.
(New) Undying Will: Whenever your health goes below 10%, raise your Defense Power by 200% for 6s. This effect can occur once every 5 minutes.
Guardian
Guardian now will fit any type of build in the game. The old Guardian passive used to improve abilities of the Archetype itself and not your character in general, so we decided to make this passive give survivability to any build involving the Protection Archetype.
(New) Guardian: When below 80% health, any damage received has a 5% chance to trigger this passive. You will regenerate 1% of your total health every second for 10s. The effect can occur once every 30s.
We hope you enjoy the changes coming to Protection. We still have 6 more Archetype Dev Blogs to be released before the Closed Beta!
The Ravendawn Team