The Repopulation Overhauls Combat in Today's Patch

The Repopulation's servers were just taken offline a few moments ago and will be down for anywhere from 4 to 8 hours. Today's patch is one I mentioned briefly in a piece I wrote on the game's new update schedule and is one that a lot of players have been waiting for as it dives into one of the free-to-play game's major systems; combat.

First, every combat skill in the game has been reviewed and altered in another balancing wave. Melee combat was impacted the most as all skills were changed to a "cone of attack" type system and the chance to trigger buffs or debuffs was increased. New stats were also added to the system, yay math!

The most interesting stat change is a reworking of the Penetration and Resistance systems and how they interact. From the patch notes:

These values have a larger effect in some cases than was previously the case. This is particularly the case when it comes to higher difficulty mobs, especially bosses and above. The result is that group encounters should be much more challenging than was previously the case. Meanwhile average and lower level mobs have had their difficulty levels slightly decreased.

To bring the system all together, combat visuals and effects have also been put through the "fix it" machine. Ranged classes and skills are ready to go but melee skills will have their visuals updated in a future patch.

There's a few other smaller system changes that impact audio performance, the auction system, and many more. Check out the full patch notes for all the details.