Developer Blog: Refinement Updates

Refinement and Enchantments have undergone some big changes. We read the feedback on enchantments not being meaningful enough in terms of item level and stats, and how the unslot cost was a tedious aspect of changing gear. We also had a wide variety of enchantments, but many were hardly used. We took that feedback and data, looked at the refinement system, and made changes we are excited to share with you.     No More Unslot Cost In the new refinement system there is no more unslot cost for enchantments. In fact, there are no more enchantment slots on gear. Instead, players now have an enhancement page on their character sheet. Add and remove enchants from this page with no cost. The enhancement page has the following enchantment slots: 4x Offense Enchantments 4x Defense Enchantments 1x Utility Enchantment 1x Bonus Enchantment 1x Combat Enchantment 2x Overload Enchantments And on the Companion sheet you will find a slot for a Companion Enchantment   With these new slots come all new enchantments with higher item levels and some new options. There are 5 ranks to the new enchantments. Existing enchantments can be exchanged for the new enchantments at the antiquities dealer.    Offense Defense Utility Cobalt Enchantment Critical Severity Combined Rating Deflect Severity Combined Rating Incoming Healing Combined Rating Garnet Enchantment Power Combined Rating Defense Combined Rating Forte Combined Rating Citrine Enchantment Accuracy Combined Rating Deflect Combined Rating Control Resist Combined Rating Jade Enchantment Critical Strike Combined Rating Critical Resist Combined Rating Outgoing Healing Combined Rating Amethyst Enchantment Combat Advantage Combined Rating Awareness Combined Rating Control Bonus Combined Rating     Bonus Action Bonus Action Point Gain Stamina Bonus Stamina Recharge Movement Bonus Run Speed Gold Bonus Gold Gain Recharge Bonus Recharge Speed     Combat Effect (range covers the different ranks) Soul Shield 2%-10% reduced incoming damage Resurrects you if you fall in battle. Once every 60 seconds. Restores 20%-100% of max HP. Fortified Nature 2%-10% reduced incoming damage Every incoming hit gives a stack. Each stack gives 0.5%-2.5% to Defense, Awareness, and Deflect. After 5 stacks, the stacks are used up and the player is healed for 1.5%-7.5% of their maximum hitpoints. Flash Freeze 2%-10% reduce incoming damage 10% chance on receiving damage to debuff the target for 4-20% slow and a 1-5% outgoing damage reduction. Lasts 5 seconds and stacks 3 times. Cursed Burn Increases damage by 2%-10% Your At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers burn your foe for Magnitude 1.5-7.5 damage as Fire damage 1 second for 3 seconds. If the target is already affected by Cursed Burn you have a 10% chance to make them explode, dealing Magnitude 6-30 damage as poison damage to nearby foes. This effect may occur no more than once every 10 seconds. Poisoned Thorn Increases damage by 2%-10% Your At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers cause the Target enemy to take Magnitude 5-25 damage as poison damage after 4 seconds. Target enemy movement speed is reduced by 6-30%. This effect stacks up to 3 times, and lasts for 4 seconds. Battle Tempered Increases damage by 2%-10% Your At-Will, Encounter, and Daily powers generate a shield equal to Magnitude 1-5 damage. This effect may stack up to 20 times and lasts 10 seconds.     There is only one type of companion enchant with this change. It will increase companion damage or if it is an augment companion, it will increase the value of the bonus stats from that companion.   Exchange Rates Enchant/Runestone Rank Exchange Currency 15 20 14 12 13 8 12 4 11 2 10 1     Weapon/Armor Enchants   14 120 13 80 12 50 11 30 10 20     Exchange Cost New Enchantment Choice Pack Cost All Enchantments – Rank 1 30 All Enchantments – Rank 2 60 Combat/Companion – Rank 3 90 Combat/Companion – Rank 4 120   The current item level of a rank 15 enchant on live is 200. A rank 2 enchantment in the new system is 600 Item Level which is why it takes 3 rank 15s to convert into a rank 2. Don’t have a lot of high level enchantments lying around to exchange? Not a problem! You can also buy the exchange currency directly with AD to get a head start on the new enchantments.   Preservation and Coal Wards Preservation wards in the new system are the same items they’ve always been, but they are used slightly differently than before which we will discuss in the next section. Coalescent Wards have a new icon and are now called Coalescent Motes, but are also the same items they were before and work in the same way. There are new Motes as well which when used will add their percentage bonus to the chance of success. These motes increase the chance by 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%. The lowest tier can be bought in the refinement sage shop in PE. The other tiers can drop in dungeon end chests.     New Upgrade UI With these changes we also reworked the upgrade UI. In the past we had several different upgrade UIs depending on the item being upgraded and what items it turned into. We have combined all of this into a single UI that is universal to all items.     Each upgrade will have up to 3 components, each of which can be protected by a preservation ward. If the upgrade fails, 1 of the components is chosen at random to be destroyed, unless it is protected by a preservation ward which will get destroyed instead. There is a percentage chance of success and a mote can be slotted to increase that chance, with a coalescent mote still raising the chance to 100%. With this system there is no longer partial refinement point filling of an item. All of the refinement points are needed upfront and it goes directly into a chance to upgrade. Existing items with partial refinement points in them will have the refinement points refunded to the owner on login with these changes. If you are at max refinement points of 50,000,000 then you will need to spend some of that ahead of the update to receive the refunds.   Artifacts/Artifact Equipment If every item is now using the same refinement window, what does that mean for artifacts and artifact equipment? These items are no longer upgraded by ranks and instead are upgraded in full quality tiers each time. Some items received an item level increase during this change over.   Weapon/Armor Enchant Effects With these changes we have separated weapon and armor enchant effects from the enchantments. Instead we have added new slots to the appearance tab where you can slot both a weapon and an armor visual effect. Exchanging existing armor and weapon enchantments will also give you one of these matching effect items so you both have the visuals you had access to before and have new flexibility in how your character looks.   Will I have to figure this all out before I can play again? We realize changes of this size can be disruptive and may even feel overwhelming at first. To help with this and to let people play as they normally would when the update goes live, characters will get temporary enchantments equipped automatically.  These enchantment have the item level of rank 4 in the new system and give a range of balanced stats. They last 7 days before disappearing, at which point you’d want to have exchanged your old enchants for new ones to take their place.   Jared “NoWorries” Sears Lead Systems Designer   .share-link a { margin: 0 10px 0 0; background: url(https://pwimages-a.akamaihd.net/arcportal_static/images/global/icon-social.png) no-repeat 0 0; display: inline-block; height: 30px; width: 30px; -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(255,255,255,.9); -moz-box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(255,255,255,.9); box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(255,255,255,.9); -webkit-border-radius: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 2px; border-radius: 2px; padding: 0; border: 1px solid transparent; } .share-link .youtube { background-position: -60px 0; } .share-link .twitter { background-position: -30px 0; } .share-footer a { margin: 20px 10px 10px 0; background: url(https://pwimages-a.akamaihd.net/arc/78/37/7837b2f61b4e186e6e19241cd6fe43491466535696.png) no-repeat 0 0; opacity: .5; display: inline-block; height: 60px; width: 60px; padding: 0; border: 1px solid transparent; -webkit-transition: opacity .3s; transition: opacity .3s; } .share-footer .TI { background-position: 0 20%; } .share-footer .YT { background-position: 0 40%; } .share-footer .YT { background-position: 0 40%; } .share-footer .TW { background-position: 0 60%; } .share-footer .FO { background-position: 0 80%; } .FB:hover { background-position: 100% 0%; } .TI:hover { background-position: 100% 20%; } .YT:hover { background-position: 100% 40%; } .TW:hover { background-position: 100% 60%; } .FO:hover { background-position: 100% 80%; } .share-footer a:hover { opacity: 1; -webkit-transition: opacity .3s; transition: opacity .3s; }