Greetings Talented Gamers!
Work on the 1.5 update is under way and we're building on top of the work we did with Common Talents in 1.4 to ensure they're relevant no matter how many you pick up. There's 7 different Commons that are directly affected so there's plenty to talk about!
Range Up > Piercing Up
When you have reached maximum Range, all Range Up Talents will now give Pierce Chance. Every 100% Pierce Chance you have will be a guarenteed enemy pierce, meaning you can stack this up far beyond 100%.
Our Range Up Talents were some of the earliest to lose relevance in late game Talented runs. That makes this one of the most powerful changes to dead talents thus far. As with Multifire, we're reworked the related Talents to also give the piercing stat to keep the system consistent.
Knockback Rework
Knockback is a little simpler. Instead of only effecting your Basic Attacks, the new Knockback Power stat adds a percentage modifier to all of your knockback - whether that's Basic Attacks, Abilities or even Parry and Orbitals.
Along with this change comes some improvements to knockback in the late game. Whereas enemies could have previously obtained 100% knockback reduction, making all knockback increases useless, they can now only gain 95% reduction. This means if you're able to truly max out your knockback rating you will still be able to hold back the hordes.
Parry Rework
Parry is also getting a glow up. In the past you could only have up to an 80% chance to Parry without the Guardian Unleashed Ability, and even more annoyingly Spectral Elites and enemies with 100% Knockback Reduction would ignore Parry Completely.
That is a thing of the past! Now you can gain huge amounts of Parry with each 100% giving you an additional guarenteed Parry against the same enemy. This does mean individual enemies will require more Parry to hold back, but you'll be generally a lot better at delaying those overwhelming waves.
Health Up > Shield Up
Reaching Maximum Health Points in Talented is often a breeze if you're reaching for an endless run, which makes Health Up Talents a true eye roll moment.
Shield Chance gives you a way to guard against those high damage enemies that sneak through in the late game. Every 100% Shield Chance will block a hit, but be aware that once it has blocked something it's gone for good. We're fully expecting traversing the tree for a few guarenteed blocks to be a great Night 50 strategy.
Lifesteal Rework
This combat stat has possibly the simplest change of all. You can now increase Lifesteal beyond 100% and each 100% gives you a guarenteed heal of an additional 5 Health Points. This means that if you have 300% Lifesteal, you will heal 15 Health Points. That is all!
Magic Up > Clearcast Up
We want to see some even crazier late game Ability builds with this one! The new Clearcast Chance stat allows you to use an Ability without paying any Magic Points at all!
As with Shield Chance, once it's gone - it's gone. So stack this up before the night to make sure your first few casts are completely free.
MP Regeneration Up > Spirit Up
Last, but not least, to pair nicely with Clearcast we have the new Spirit combat stat.
Spirit will bolster your Magic Point Regeneration by giving each tick a chance to give 5 additional Magic Points. Plus, you guessed it, each 100% gained is a guarenteed 5 MP boost. Given that your maximum rate of MP Regeneration is a tick per second, you can reach some truly insane levels of regeneration in a late game run.
Book of Souls has been reworked to let Summoner push this even further!
As with all of our other Talent reworks, gaining Range and MP Regen Rate during the night will convert to Pierce Chance and Spirit making all of the other Talents that grant those stats relevant too.
That... was... a lot... So thank you very much if you read the whole thing. Next devlog we'll be introducing a new feature designed to make dead ends a little more rewarding!
Stay Talented