Spell Defenses
A quick reminder: Between 2017 and 2019 none of the spell mitigation effects worked and all existing content that had been killed was continually killed.
Throughout the game’s history, spell damage mitigation has evolved. Initially, resistances were a binary pass/fail mechanic—either you resisted a spell and took no damage, or you didn’t and took full damage. To mitigate this, the original Relic: Melody of the Shield was introduced. Over the years, these mechanics have shifted multiple times.
In 2012, spell resistances were changed from a chance-based system to providing flat damage reduction when a resist was possible. This significantly altered raid healing dynamics: instead of only healing unresisted damage, healers now dealt with reduced damage across the board, making damage more predictable and reducing the amount of healing players needed.
In the original system, if two people in your group did not resist the damage, you would have to group heal for those two players. In the new system, every player instead took a portion of the damage. This made damage much more predictable, and reduced the amount of healing players needed.
As players advanced, resistances increased, and additional spell damage reduction effects were introduced. Spellward was buffed repeatedly, and various classes gained new ways to reduce spell damage. These changes led to content where resistances were either irrelevant or spells had such high resistance adjustments that players assumed them to be unresistable. This shifted the balance towards spell damage reduction as the only reasonable way for players to reduce damage, sidelining resistances and limiting both developer’s design choices and gear choices for players.
We aim to refocus on resistances as the primary spell defense, with better distribution of resistance bonuses to make this happen. Some sources of spell damage reduction will remain, but they will be more targeted, with smaller bonuses or associated costs. We also plan to extend spell damage reduction effects similar to the Paladin’s Runic: Protective Lustration to other classes. Ongoing adjustments will be made as needed to remaining forms of spell damage reduction.
Changes to spell damage reduction
- Melody of the Shield has been removed
- Dampening Curse has been removed
- Spellward now caps at 10%
- PAL(AA) Protection of the Lady now lasts 4 ticks, provides 20% spell damage reduction and has a 15 minute cooldown. See previous.
- Mage’s Elemental Embodiment AA has been replaced.
Changes to resistance buffs
- The weakest resistance single target buff lines (Endure Fire, Endure Disease, etc) now scale up to provide a max of 30 to a resistance.
- The larger single target resistance buff lines such as Resist Fire, Resist Cold, etc, now provide 1 resistance per level capping at 65.
- All casted group resistance buffs (This includes the strongest versions such as Shroud of Seasons, Shiritri’s Ward, Talisman of the Niklothar and the weaker versions such as Circle of Summer, Group Resist Magic, and Talisman of the Shadoo etc) now provide 35 additional resistances each.
- Buffs that incidentally provide resistance buffs but are not primarily a resistance buff (Mage’s Damage Shield, Necromancer’s Dead Men Floating) remain unchanged.
- Bard’s Elemental Rhythms, Purifying Rhythms, and Guardian Rhythms now cap at 20 resistance before instrument scaling.
- Bard’s Elemental Chorus and Purifying Chorus now provide 25 resistances before instrument scaling.
- Bard’s Psalm of the Four now provides 30 all resistances before instrument scaling.
With these changes low tier characters will actually have slightly more resistances from buffs (somewhere in the range of 5 to a resist) as the strong scaling from Bard instrument modifiers have not yet kicked in fully. At the highest tiers, you will have slightly less resistances (approximately 15) due to the loss from instrument modifier scaling.
To be clear, we are not trying to go back to fights like the original Eyes of the Father where every player needs a full set of resist gear to beat some developer’s fever dream of a fight. We just want the spell damage you take to be based on gear or buffs that more classes can provide, rather than bard songs or a single enchanter debuff. We will be adjust fights as necessary to account for these changes.