WAR Item Design Lead Sean Bosshardt provided us with a specific example of how the new item mechanics will work, which you can view below:
The following is a completely hypothetical situation (but it showcases how item trading now works):
Big Bad PQ
In the purple bag, the following careers get the associated items: Sorcerer - Robe - Body - Int/Wou Zealot - Robe - Body - Wou/Tou/Wil
Those two body robe items are now Bind on Equip rather than Bind on Pickup. What does this mean? If the Zealot wanted an offensive DPS piece of armor they could trade/buy it from the Sorcerer (and vice-versa if the Sorcerer wanted a defensive piece of armor).
For those of you out there who haven't played WAR in a while, I asked Carrie about 1.3.5's requisite balance changes, and wondered what, if anything, players who haven't played in awhile might be interested to know has changed in their favorite class. To that end, we received some examples from WAR's Combat and Careers Lead Nate Levy on what's changed for a number of the game's classes in the past few months as well as in 1.3.5:
- A big one for 1.3.4 was the introduction of the RvR weapons - they're some of the best weapons in the game, availably entirely through RvR activity, and have options tailored to suit every Mastery build.
- Runepriests and Zealots saw bug fixes to their "jumping" heals (Rune of Serenity and Leaping Alteration) in 1.3.4 which made them much more reliable, and those abilities will soon see further balance improvements in 1.3.5 which will greatly increase their healing values. These changes make the Runepriest and Zealot much more flexible when it comes to healing large clumps of players, no matter whether they're within the player's group or outside of it, which will help in large multi-group battles.
- Shadow Warriors had a long-standing bug with Enchanted Arrows fixed in 1.3.4, which finally allows Flame Arrow and Festering Arrow to correctly bypass resistances. Additionally, 1.3.5 will be bringing a fix to both the Shadow Warrior's Assault Stance as well as the Squig Herder's Gas Squig - they will now correctly double the players' armor from gear, without having any undesirable effects on debuffs.
- White Lions had numerous improvements in 1.3.4, including: Fang And Claw dealing more damage, Lion's Fury dealing more damage, Cleave Limb costing fewer action points, Coordinated Strike becoming more reliable, and of course, Pounce dealing more damage, and costing fewer action points, and no longer doing AE "splash" damage so that it can be used for true battlefield mobility without breaking Staggers unintentionally.
Some players might have also noticed and might be miffed that Mythic is moving many of the game's trainers, crafting trainers, etc to their realms' respective capital cities in 1.3.5 due to something called the "red plague." I just had to ask Carrie about this, wondering if this was merely a change being made for an upcoming event, a design decision, or both. Carrie explained that the decision was made as a bit of both. As far as the red plague goes, all I was able to find out was that the "red plague is coming," and that "people are going missing." Sorry, folks! When asked about the design motivations behind the change, Carrie revealed that the decision stemmed from a desire to both improve the economy and socialization in WAR, and it's Mythic's hope that by consolidating these key NPCs and functions to the capital cities that both these aspects of the game will be improved as the cities will serve as a bit of a "rallying point." Speaking of rallying points, Carrie noted that rally masters have been added to the capital city so that players can get to the city easier in 1.3.5, which should help players adjust to the change.
We closed out the interview with two brief questions unrelated to 1.3.5, as I was curious to know if there were any updates on the armor overhaul that Mythic has been teasing for the last few months. Much to my surprise, Carrie revealed that many players both hated and loved the proposed changes, and that players often get attached to their particular look, and so the issue has been more complicated than simply getting the work done, as they are looking for a solution that allows for both sides of the argument to be happy. Mythic has a plan in mind, which they are aiming to test out in the near future, but unfortunately I couldn't find out exactly what that plan is. However, Carrie assured me that if everything goes to plan players should see the new armor changes in 1.3.6.
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Finally, Carrie recently released a new Producer's Letter that looked ahead a bit to patch 1.3.6. One of the big reveals in Carrie's letter was that Mythic would be opening servers to players creating characters on both realms on the same server, and she forgot to mention an added bonus that will be coming with the relaxed server rules: additional character slots! Currently, players can only create 10 characters per server, which doesn't allow for players to create one of each class per server. Carrie assured me that the additional slots will make this possible, and then some, hopefully. You'll definitely have at least 12 slots to play with come 1.3.6, though Mythic is aiming for about 20 slots per server.
