Median XL - Version Log

Median XL - Σ 2.5.0

Table of Contents


Game

General

Engine

  • Fixed realm create game queue panel in realm lobby
  • Added visual response when not enough gold to buy something from vendor
  • Fix for quickcast when aiming at objects
  • Removed repair buttons from vendor screen
  • Added mouse wheel input to go through pages in gamble filter
  • Added a global avoid cap for players only, see the character section
  • Implemented hover tooltips in the stat screen that explain how each stat works

Experience

  • Experience can be earned after 150 in TSW. This allows competing in the realm leaderboards after max level is reached

Monsters

  • Lament: reduced static lance projectile lag

Endgame Quests

The Dungeon Refresh Program

What?

  • Breathe new life into the classic dungeon quests that have been a part of Median XL for many years

Why?

  • It's beneficial to all players. Veterans get new challenges, new players will have a more polished experience and have more things to look forward to, everyone can develop their characters further -- We have a nice opportunity to provide extra content, interesting rewards, and make use of advanced engine features that were not available when these old quests were first crafted

How?

  • Starting with the current patch, and every following patch until we celebrate the release of Median XL 3.0, we will refresh the oldest dungeon content
  • These refreshes can take several forms: overhauling the mechanics and/or visuals of the quests, introducing more difficult (Uber) versions, adding trophies or challenges
  • We will assess, and collect feedback on, each dungeon individually to determine the best course of action
  • For patch 2.5 this means the introduction of the Uber Butcher and an overhaul of the Death Projector
  • We hope you share our excitement for this project and will be on the journey with us to Median XL 3.0!

Nephalem Rifts

Kurast 3000 BA

  • Skeleton Warriors: physical resist now 20%, up from 10%

Tran Athulua

  • Amazon Defenders: physical resist now 50% (up from 10%)

Triune

  • Monster level is now 130, required player level is 125
  • Increased equipment drops and equipment quality
  • Lucion: reduced health to avoid prolonging boss fight too much with level increase

Duncraig

  • Necromorb: physical resist now 50% (down from 75%)

Fauztinville

  • Necrobots: physical resist now 60% (down from 75%), block now 20% (down from 41%)
  • Neon Fiends: physical resist now 20% (down from 40%), elemental resists now 60% (up from 35%)
  • Unique Mystic Orb drop chance increased by 10x
  • Black Road charm no longer requires a rune to cube a portal

Dimensional Labyrinth

  • Regular enemies physical resist now scales from 15% on floor 1 to 30% on floor 9 (down from 40-45%)
  • Regular enemies magic resist now scales from 10% on floor 1 to 20% on floor 9 (down from 30-35%)

Endgame Dungeons

Horror under Tristram

  • Horror Under Tristram (Uber)
    • New dungeon quest, requires level 125
    • Quest instructions are found on freshly dropped Butcher's Teeth

Death Projector

  • Increased health, removed untargetable mechanics
  • The projector is now attended by four officers (mini bosses) with different skills, which pose different challenges to your character:
    • The Commander: summons ranged damage minions, has an AoE slap
    • The Architect: casts damaging spells of every element
    • The Befowler: warp strikes, buffs allies and debuffs enemies
    • The Bulwark: uses Earthquake, repairs the Projector
  • For the projector to be vulnerable, you must lure at least 2 of these officers to it
  • Choose the officers which are easiest to deal with for your build
  • Fixed a bug where the projector was not considered a boss in-game

Legion of the Damned

  • Reduced non-boss monster life by 20%, reduces DPS check / alleviates lag for lower damage builds
  • Increased delay between attacks of Malevolent Spirits and Apparitions
  • Replaced laggy Phantom spinner skill with fireballs
  • Replaced Nightstalker's Frost Prince skill with Glacial Spike volley
  • Manouruk uses his skills half as often but they have increased damage
  • Increased delay between mini-boss skill usage
  • Corruption bearers ground on death effect now pulses less often. Hits slightly harder

Mirror Temple

  • Required Level: 120
  • New class-specific locations in the Island of Skartara tombs
  • Defeat the Nemesis of your class and earn exclusive rewards
    • Drops Mirror of Shadows, an upgrade for the class charm
    • Rewards the ability to craft a full set for 2 Arcane Crystals per piece
    • The set is a specific set of that class which will be fixed for the entire season
    • The sets will rotate every season
    • Sets available for Season 33 are: Vasily's Following, The Snake Pit, Spirits of the Nephalem, Last King of Scosglen, Celestial Orchard, Cinadide's Craft, and Zann Esu's Secrets
    • This feature is also available in Single Player

Ghosts of Old Bremmtown

  • Necromancer reward is now 5% physical resist instead of 15% summoned minion resistances

Herald of the End

  • Pain Worms no longer spawn randomly over time
  • Instead there are 4 pre-spawned in the arena and their number is fixed, removed player collision
  • Lockout timer reduced to 13 minutes

Heart of Darkness

  • Blood of Creation: removed broken relic limit restriction
  • Nithogur:
    • Made changes to prevent Desolation from triggering instantly upon re-entry if you died to this skill
    • Added reward relics for Barbarians and Necromancers
    • Moloch now spawns randomly around the arena instead of next to the boss
    • Their spawn timer is now more random instead of being completely fixed
    • Slowed down the projectiles and increased the damage of the Eradication (cold) skill

Characters

Main

  • Avoid mechanics overhaul:
    • Avoid from all sources is now capped at 60%
    • Skills granting too much avoid have been reworked (see appropriate character sections)
    • Avoid penalties applied to players have been greatly reduced or removed:
    • Dimensional Labyrinth: floor 7+ avoid penalty is now 5%, down from 30%
    • Hell Baal: 30% avoid penalty has been removed
    • Bremmtown: 20% avoid penalty removed, replaced with -10% movement speed
    • Samael: avoid penalty is now 10%, down from 50%
    • Deimoss: avoid penalty is now 5%, down from 20%
    • Sescheron's Destroyer: Burn Nova avoid penalty is now 10%, down from 50%
    • Riftwalkers: avoid penalty removed from Lesser and Greater, reduced to 5% (down from 30%) on Ascended

Misc

  • Fixed an issue where mercenary strength, dexterity and potentially other stats were not displayed properly

Amazon

Blood

  • Eldritch Storm: damage reduced by 5%
  • Magic Missiles: damage increased by 5%

Storm

  • Askari Lightning: corrected description damage calculation

Bow

  • Rearranged tree to be a bit cleaner.
    • Dragonlore is available at level 10
    • Decoy requires Dragonlore
    • Fire at Will is available at level 25
    • Phalanx is available at level 30, requires Fire at Will
    • Elemental Command requires Barrage
  • Trinity Arrow: corrected description damage calculation
  • Barrage: fixed a bug where some arrows had less damage than intended. The arrows that are not converted to an elemental damage type should now also have 90% WDM and add the flat damage as magic.
  • Wyrmshot (and Rapid Wyrmshot):
    • Now randomly converts 25% of physical damage to fire, cold, or lightning
    • Base seek range increased by 1.66 yards (maximum range is still 18 yards)
  • Keen Sight:
    • Max level is 8 instead of 12
    • Also gives a chance to critical strike with bows and crossbows (up to 20% at max level)
  • Decoy:
    • Now has an 8 second cooldown, decreasing with base points down to 4 seconds
    • Now benefits from Specialization (to 2 second cooldown)
    • Reduced life gain per skill level to 15% (from 20%)

Assassin

Main

  • Gets only 1% life per point into Endurance again, since the reduction of avoid penalties increases her survivability in endgame.

Ninja

  • Perfect Being:
    • Maximum Skill Level is now 20, less points required to max
    • Now gives 36% + 1% per Base Level (Max 55%), down from 40% + 1% per Base Level

Psionic

  • Shuriken Flurry:
    • Now deals ~66% of total damage as magic, up from ~52%
    • Total damage unchanged
  • Cognition:
    • No longer gives bonus avoid to Perfect Being
    • 150 Cognition bonus is now 15% Magic Pierce
    • Points in Perfect being will now increase your Cognition bonus

Traps

  • Artifice Mastery: Claw block chance now up to 35%, down from 45%
  • Shockwave Trap:
    • Lightning bolt range reduced by 36%
    • Damage gain for skill levels 9-22 increased by ~1.8x
    • Damage gain for skill levels above 22 increased by ~3.2x
  • Negative Charge: Maximum Skill Level is now 10, allowing for 14% extra lightning pierce

Throwing

  • Lethal Incision: now reduces Scorpion Blade area of effect while active

Naginata

  • Backstab:
    • Removed cooldown and immunity effect
    • Duration is now always 1 second
    • Now adds weapon physical damage: 100% + 20% per Base Level
    • Now hits 4 times per attack, up from once
    • Maximum Base Level is now 20
  • Execution:
    • Now increases Backstab cooldown and duration by 10 seconds
    • Removes weapon physical damage bonus

Barbarian

Earthshaker

  • Earthquake: removed annoying sound effects
  • Tectonics:
    • Maximum Base Level is now 10, up from 5
    • Level 1 value is now 170% EWD per 1% proc chance, down from 200%

Windcarver

  • Gale Force:
    • Weapon damage is now 70%, down from 80%
    • Now hits 3 times per attack, up from once
  • Executioner:
    • Bonus damage increased by 57%, up to (50-60)
    • This damage now also scales with 10% of your total Strength
    • The above is multiplicative with the existing EWD scaling

Warmonger

  • Snake Bite: damage increased by 10%
  • Violence: Innate Elemental Damage synergy has been doubled
  • Stampede:
    • Physical damage synergy now 20% per Base Level, up from 10%
    • Bonus physical damage now also scales with 20% of your Strength
    • Bonus magic damage from Gladiator's Dominance doubled
    • Weapon damage now 120%, up from 110%
  • Honing:
    • Now increases Stampede weapon damage to 130%, up from 120%
    • Now increases Snake Stance damage by 40%, up from 25%
    • Clarified on tooltip that this is a poison damage specialization
    • Fixed Honing giving a small amount of poison damage to Stampede if Snake Stance was not active
  • Gladiator's Dominance: magic damage bonus to Warmonger skills increased by 20%

Druid

Seer

  • Ember Spirit:
    • Reduced hit count by 90%, damage has been increased by 11x to compensate
    • Change was made to reduce the power of the skill's interaction with Banish
    • It now deals more damage standalone and will lead to less enemy teleporting
    • Note: tooltip damage value is not comparable with 2.4

Hunter

  • Cascade:
    • Fixed an oversight which prevented Cascade from scaling with weapon physical damage modifiers
    • In addition, weapon damage procs such as: "on Kill" and "on Striking" will now work with this skill
    • Changed tooltip tag to "projectile"
    • Removed Steady Shot interaction (will always deal full bonus damage)
    • Duration increased to 4 seconds, reduced graphical effects
    • Now has a 1.8 second cooldown
  • Primal Bond: now 4% weapon physical damage per 1% minion resistance, max 800%

Werewolf

  • Werewolf Form: now gives 2% avoid at Base Level 1, down from 7%
  • Twisting Claw:
    • Small tornadoes no longer pierce
    • This change was made to prevent an interaction whereby standing just outside of melee range at certain angles could cause the skill to do 4-5x the intended damage per each use
    • Namelocking an enemy with this skill is unaffected by this change
    • Weapon damage now 180%, up from 172%

Reward

  • Symbiosis: avoid now capped at 15%, down from 20%

Necromancer

Deathspeaker

  • Death Pact:
    • Crossbow: now grants attack speed instead of fire pierce
  • Death Ward:
    • Chance to avoid damage is now 1% at Base Level 1, down from 6%
  • Famine:
    • Life leech is now 10% + 1% per base level, down from 10% + 2% per base level
    • Now gives 100 + 50 per base level maximum life

Crossbow

  • Ignite:
    • Level cap of 20
    • Grants 5% + 1.5% fire pierce per base level up to 35%

Reward

  • Graveyard:
    • Delay between punishers reduced by 20%
    • New synergy: +3% damage multiplier per Base Level

Paladin

Aspects

  • Clarified summon number scaling on Servants of Valor and Conclave

Incarnation

  • All the damage synergy tooltips now respect the maximum value
  • Dragon Jaws:
    • Now hits twice per cast instead of once, damage halved
    • Mana synergy max bonus now 600%, down from 700%
    • Damage gain per skill level between levels 9 and 16 increased by 60%
    • Damage gain per skill level between levels 17 and 22 increased by 100%
    • Damage gain per skill level between levels 23 and 28 increased by 150%
    • Damage gain per skill level above level 28 increased by 100%
    • The goal of these changes is to make the early-mid game progression with the skill easier (before you can stack significant mana) while reducing the effect of the buff in the late endgame
  • Dragon Breath:
    • Maximum Skill Level is now 8
    • Base Level synergy bonuses doubled
    • It now takes 7 less Base Levels to get the maximum effect
    • Now also reduces enemy lightning damage
  • Solar Flare:
    • Duration no longer scales with Base Levels
    • Duration now fixed at 30 seconds (old Base Level 23 value)
    • Base levels now increase damage synergy with increasing returns (but linear with the mana bonus)
    • This allows you to get very high damage out of this skill early on if you specialize in it
    • Now has a cooldown that starts low and increases with character level up to 6 seconds
    • Greatly increased damage scaling after level 28
    • Added graphics for the damage effect
    • Maximum Skill Level is now 20, down from 25
  • Annihilation:
    • Reduced area scaling from 90% for 0.6 yards to 110% for 0.6 yards
    • Max area is now 9 yards, down from 10
    • Updated tooltip to be clearer
    • Damage gain per skill level from levels 2-28 increased by 44%
    • Increased fire pierce gain per level significantly. Capped pierce now achieved at character level 110, down from 150
    • These change makes the skill better at single target throughout early to late game. This skill does not need as much area scaling

Sorceress

Melee

  • Reorganized the skill placements in the tree to make it more obvious you are choosing between one of two damage source paths
  • Fusillade:
    • Reworked cooldown formula: will now always have 2 seconds of downtime, regardless of skill level (note: higher skill levels will still increase uptime)
    • Change was made to promote Bladestorm as a single target filler and thematically separate the skill from Broadside
    • Weapon damage modifier now 175%, up from 110%
  • Bladestorm:
    • Weapon damage now 70%, up from 60%
    • Greatly increased sword hitbox size for better area of effect
  • Primordial Might:
    • Renamed from Paradigm Shift
    • Now requires Bladestorm instead of Mooncall
    • Added information to tooltip that this is the elemental damage specialization
    • Added melee only restriction to mirror Determination
    • Now requires level 40, to give players some time before they have to commit
  • Determination:
    • Removed unnecessary elemental damage nullification
    • Added information to tooltip that this is the physical damage specialization
    • Now requires level 40
  • Cold Blooded:
    • No longer reduces weapon physical damage and gives pierce based on Dexterity
    • Using Bladestorm while wielding a crystal sword will have a 40% chance to trigger a Glacial Volley on attack
    • NB: due to a technical limitation this skill will only work with crystal swords found in patch 2.5 and onwards
    • Glacial Volley:
    • Fires off three medium range piercing ice bolts
    • Deals damage equal to 140% of your total cold weapon damage
    • Converts your added lightning and fire weapon damage to cold
    • Checks hit chance similarly to other Melee Sorceress skills

Fire

  • Pyroblast:
    • Reduced hit count by 89%, damage has been increased by 11x to compensate
    • Change was made to reduce the power of the skill's interaction with Banish
    • It now deals more damage standalone and will lead to less enemy teleporting
    • Note: tooltip damage value is not comparable with 2.4

Lightning

  • Superposition: no longer restricts summoning

Reward

  • Baneblade:
    • Removed 1% Base Block
    • Now adds 2% Innate Elemental Damage bonus per Base Level

Item Only Skills

  • Weapon damage of Arrow, Bolt, Knife Throw, Javelin procs standardized to 100% (most were 50%).
  • Lava Pit:
    • Fixed a bug that made you immobile if you triggered this skill while using Whirlwind
    • Due to a technical limitation it will only apply to freshly found items
  • Guard Tower: now 100% weapon damage, down from 140%
    • In the Dimensional Labyrinth, this change is mostly compensated for by resist changes

Items

General Changes

  • Non-class bows now get 13% weapon physical damage per 100 dexterity (up from 11%)
  • Repeating Crossbow: rebalanced to shoot faster, but less damage
  • Heavy Crossbow: increased damage
  • Trebuchet: increased damage
  • Balanced Axe:
    • Reduced throwing damage variance to make it more consistent
    • Sacred throwing damage increased by ~20%, Strength scaling is now 14% (up from 11%)
    • T2 - T4 throwing damage increased by ~33%
    • T1 throwing damage increased by 100%

Mastercrafted Items

  • New type of base items with the following properties:
    • Always spawn rare with max sockets
    • Cannot use with Oil of Renewal
    • Have unique implicit modifiers
  • These items can be crafted and are designed to be interesting options for builds as well as to promote farming less popular areas
  • Currently only items of this type are the Maiden Bow and the Kukri, but more will be added in the future
  • Maiden Bow:
    • Bow: 77-85 damage, 20 speed, 13% Dexterity scaling
    • Adds 2% EWD per 3% attack speed
    • Low chance to drop from Amazon Defenders in Hell Tran Athulua
  • Kukri:
    • Dagger: 45-50 damage, 0 speed, 14% Dexterity scaling
    • Gives +1 Lightning Damage per 1% Total Physical Weapon Damage Bonus (includes bonus from dexterity)
    • Gives +1 Lightning Damage per 1% Bonus to Defense
    • Drops in storyline side areas on Hell difficulty

Item Affixes

  • Resist affixes on armor, shields, and weapons can now also grant max resists
    • 50-60% resist rolls on body armor, staff, bow, scepter, and amazon spears always give +1% max res of the same type
    • 35-40% resist rolls on other weapons, armor, and shields gives (0-1)% max res of the same type
  • Arrow quivers no longer roll + to Necromancer Skills
  • Quivers no longer roll + to Mana
  • Quivers can now roll up to 20% Magic Find
  • Quivers can roll +1 life on striking or rarely +2
  • Rings can roll +1 life on striking or rarely +1 mana on striking

Mystic Orbs

  • All Unique Mystic Orbs are now limited to 2 per item from 5
  • Solitude:
    • Now gives 1 Life on Striking instead of Life Spark proc
    • Reduced to 2% strength
  • Ten Pin Striker: added 5% strength
  • Zayl's Soul Orb:
    • Moved to armor only
    • Increased energy bonus to 2%
    • Reduced mana from 150 to 100
  • Farnham's Lost Marble:
    • Moved to jewelry only
    • Reduced move speed penalty from 4% to 2%
  • Vizjun's Ball Bearing: increased dexterity to 25
  • Eye of Malic: no longer drops
  • Eye of the Storm: new weapon UMO
    • +5% lightning spell damage
    • +12 energy
    • 1% ctc level 50 Supernova on melee attack
  • Crystal of Tears:
    • Reduced level requirement from +20 to +10
    • Reduced damage from 5-8 to 3-6
  • Warbringer:
    • Increased proc chance to 3%
    • Reduced maximum damage slightly and added minimum damage
  • Moon Crystal:
    • Increased regenerate mana stat slightly
  • New Unique Mystic Orb: Invisible (Armor)
    • 1% Chance to Avoid Damage
    • 12% Faster Hit Recovery
    • 12% Faster Block Recovery
    • Limit: 1

Occult Effigies

  • Arcane Hunger: can now be used with runewords once more

Tiered Uniques

  • Locust Hive: reworked
    • 4% ctc arrow on striking
    • adds (2-3) to (8-10) magic damage
    • +1 life on striking
  • Plague Gland: reworked
    • adds 2 to 4 physical damage
    • +(50-200) attack rating
    • 15% attack speed
    • 25 life regenerated per second
  • Herr Donner: magic find rolls are now positive
  • Shadow Vortex: replaced curse length reduction with 50% Weapon Physical Damage bonus

Sacred Uniques

  • Etrayu: proc chance increased to 33%, max damage rolls up to 300 (was 25%, 250)
  • Gjallarhorn: flat damage increased to 50-125 (was 40-100)
  • Stormstrike: now rolls 5-20% innate elemental damage instead of 5-20% lightning pierce
  • Fleshstinger: added an extra 100% damage to demons
  • Hellreach: flat damage increased to 50 (was 0 min, 50 max), now has 250-500 flat life
  • Windforce: max damage per character level increased to 3.75 (was 2.5)
  • Chasmstriker: now rolls up to 175 max damage, 200 strength, 200 dexterity (was 150, 150, 150)
  • Nymyr's Shadow: now grants +4 to Necromancer skills
  • Dacana's Fist: minimum magic find roll is now 0
  • Eye of the Storm (Viper Bow): renamed to Storm Arc
  • Dark Pact: now also grants 5% maximum avoid (new stat)
  • Auriel's Robe: removed buggy Wolf Stance. Now gives 50% movement speed and 100% Enhanced Weapon Damage. Defense roll is now (140-200)%

New Sacred Uniques

  • Breath of Fire: new Stinger Crossbow
  • Athulua's Blessing: new Amazon-only Heavy Gloves

Sets

  • Achilio's Wake: full set bonus now grants 50% to strength
  • Curse of the Zakarum:
    • Removed the Wolf Stance aura on the 3 piece bonus, due to it constantly glitching with other items
    • 3 piece bonus now just gives the straight basic stats as the aura would
    • Namely: 70% Attack Speed and Hit Recovery, 40% Movement Speed, 10% Crushing Blow, 20% EWD

Runewords

  • Mirage:
    • Bonus damage from deadly strike now caps when deadly strike caps (100%)
    • Bonus damage per deadly strike reduced from 140 to 95 (this change is a ~10% nerf in the Dimensional Labyrinth)
    • Maximum block bonus reduced from 25% to 10%
  • Maenad: new amazon helmet runeword (Shaen Loz Yst)
    • Ecstatic Frenzy: +300% Total Damage
    • Fire, Cold, and Lightning Pierce Reduced by 100
    • +3-4 to All Skills
    • +40-45% Cast Speed
    • +25-30% Move Speed
    • Adds 20-30 Damage
    • Maximum Elemental Resists +1%
  • Black Cat: removed negative magic find
  • Talon: new barbarian sword runeword (Nef)
    • Area Effect Attack
    • 20% Attack Speed
    • +24-35% Enhanced Damage
    • +4 Minimum Damage
    • +6-10 Dexterity

Relics

  • Fusillade:
    • No longer reduces the skill cooldown
    • Dexterity bonus now 10%, up from 6%

Previous Patches