Rift: Starfall Prophecy #HG

RIFT 2.8: MADNESS WAKES 8/6/14

NA: 8/6/14 @ 7:30 AM PDT
EU: 8/7/14 @ 1 AM GMT

== FEATURES ==

3.0 PRELUDE: MADNESS WAKES STORY QUESTS
Cyril Kalmar and Kira Thanos have been dreaming darkly in the city of Tempest Bay. Help them put these Dark Dreams to rest...

NEW DUNGEON: NIGHTMARE COAST
The Infinity Gate has been set adrift by a sinister force has sailed across the world to Fortune's Shore with an army of fanatic cultists called themselves the Dream Coven in tow. The city defenses have fallen and now the clock is ticking as the cultists begin a ritual to open a portal to another world. Will the ascended be able to thwart this diabolical plot or will a new age of darkness descend upon Telara? Join together with four other brave Telarans and find out!

The Nightmare Coast is a new 5 man dungeon for players at level 60 that offers powerful new items, quests, challenging new encounters and the answers to the mystery of the Sinister Presence. The entrance can be found in Shimmersand near Fortune’s Shore.

PYROMANCER REBORN
The Pyromancer soul has received a large update. More instant Cinder Burst casts, no more Combust stack management and deadlier Fireballs are just a few of the changes waiting for you. Come check out the updated abilities and talents now available.

For more information and a detailed list of changes, check out the thread here!

REVAMPED AUCTION HOUSE!
The auction house has been overhauled and is now vastly improved!

• Improved searching
• Recommended prices
• Buy individual items from a stack
• Item previewing
• Price history
• Buy orders
• Relist auctions through your mailbox
• Search by stats
• Replaced arbitrary durations of short, medium, and long with real times, such as 23h, 51m
• Read all about the auction house improvements here!

UPGRADED INSPECT
Inspecting gear on other players just got more detailed! You can now tell if an item comes from a mob or an achievement, and which one it is!

ACTION BARS: SHAREABLE ACROSS ROLES

• You can now toggle any of your Secondary Action bars to be shared across all Roles for a character. Open options/interface/action bars and click any of the shared action bar toggles. Action bars that you toggle to shared will keep the same abilities on them when you switch to a different Role.
• The first time you turn on a shared action bar, it will make a copy of the buttons from the bar it is replacing.

GENERAL

• You can now dive while swimming! The default key for this is X. To change this, look for it in the movement portion of the key bindings menu. Sheath weapon, which previously defaulted to X, has been moved to Shift+Z.
• During a celebration, dungeon token increases will now be an overall percentage increase, instead of a chance to receive extra tokens.
• Haters to the left: players can now add people who are offline to their ignore list.
• Players using Cast on Target's Target will now have their auto attack target updated to match their target's target more often.
• Players in Warfronts can no longer queue for Chronicles.
• No longer will you be teleported by a mystery player! When using friend summon on a friend not in your raid, party, or zone, it will properly display your name for them.
• Multi-lingual players wishing to join multi-word official channel names will no longer have to encase the channel name in quotes. For example, the following should join your server's German language level 30-49 channel: /join Stufe 30-49
• Improve performance for people who keep items on their action bars that they don't have in their bags.
• Abilities in the action bar will now grey out more accurately if the ability can not be cast on the selected target.
• Fixed an issue with some abilities failing to queue when cast from a macro.
• When Rift crashes due to Mumble, we now properly inform the player that mumble crashed.
• New slash commands:
• /setwaypoint x z – Sets a waypoint on your map with the two specified coordinates.
• /clearwaypoint – Clears your current waypoint.
• Guild Perks - Fixed an issue with the Planar Knowledge. It should now increase experience as expected.

RIFT STORE AND SERVICES

• Patron Fast Pass will no longer dismount players when activated.
• Added items to the Store that allow players to open random Great Hunt 1-3 and 4-5 rifts, without achievement requirement and at a slightly cheaper price. Note that essences from chests are random and not based on the plane type of the rift.
• Bonus Dungeon Charges Patron ability can now be used if the player is below cap for any dungeon tier, not just max tier.

UI AND SETTINGS

• Stat values in the character sheet dialog no longer change color based on if the stat is buffed/debuffed.
• Key bindings text no longer references Deeps' Depot.
• Players with lots of achievements no longer have to wait quite so long when opening their achievements window.
• We now display more soul presets, improved the sorting within the UI, and added a shortcut to the Rift Store when an expansion soul pack is required.
• Instant cast purges and cleanses will show in the combat log as [person] begins casting [spell].
• Purgeable buffs now show up with a blue border.
• The artifact turn in window no longer auto-closes if you have more artifact sets to turn in.

GRAPHICS AND RENDERING

• Significant improvements to the shadow code! We've drastically boosted shadow performance – if you had shadows turned off because they were slow, give it another shot.
• Significantly reduce shadow shimmering.
• Improved framerate when not staring directly at the sun. Don't look at the sun, kids.
• The water collision camera now works properly. Additionally, it also now ignores water collision by default.
• Fixed occasional terrain lighting seams.
• Fixed an issue with the incorrect player model appearing briefly during a polymorph transition.
• Fix black flickering rendering errors.

SOULS

• Updated the Flamecaller and Fire Hunter presets to reflect the updated Pyromancer soul.

CLERIC

SENTINEL

• Faith Rewarded:
• Now has a 1 hour duration and is no longer a toggled buff.
• It will not persist through death.
• Vigilance:
• Now has a 1 minute duration.
• Increased the healing of Vigilance.
• Divine Call: Increased healing done.
• Light of Redemption: Reduced mana cost by 50%.

SHAMAN

• Dauntless Courage: Now increases Spell Power by 2/4/6/8/10%.
• Frozen Wrath: Now only increases the damage of Vengeance of the Winter Storm and no longer affects damage from Vengeance of the Primal North.

MAGE

• Charge now regenerates while out of combat.

ARCHON

• Earthen Barrage, Volcanic Bomb, Spark Shower and Surging Flare are now categorized as Raid Support abilities.

DOMINATOR

• Transference:
• Updated ability description to correctly indicate that it increases mana costs by 125% and power and energy costs by 50%.
• This is an ability tooltip update only and does not affect how the ability functions.

PYROMANCER

• The Pyromancer soul has received a large update. More instant Cinder Burst casts, no more Combust stack management and deadlier Fireballs are just a few of the changes waiting for you. Come check out the updated abilities and talents now available. For more information and a detailed list of changes, check out the thread here!

STORMCALLER

• Conductive Medium:
• Now has a max stack size of 3.
• Now awards a stack of Conductive Medium every 4/2s while out of combat.
• Conductive Medium: Damage bonus from this ability no longer buffs damage procs, such as damage from Lightning Blade or Warlock Armor.
• Spontaneous Charge: Talent has been removed.
• Static Charge: Updated ability description to indicate it only increases Air and Water damage.
• New Talent: Superconductor:
• This replaces the Spontaneous Charge talent.
• Increases the maximum number of Conductive Medium stacks you can have by 1/ 2.
• Voltaic Strength:
• Now causes Electrified stacks to increase the damage of Stormcaller single target Air and Water abilities by 1/2/3/4/5/6% per stack.
• Now causes Electrified stacks to increase damage of all other Air and Water abilities by 0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5/3% per stack.
• Damage bonus from this ability no longer buffs damage procs, such as damage from Lightning Blade or Warlock Armor.
• Living Storm: Stormcallers can no longer have this buff active on multiple targets at once.

ROGUE

NIGHTBLADE

• Ebon Fury: Increased duration by 2s.

TACTICIAN

• Curative Engine: Reduced the healing done in PVP by 50%. PVE remains unchanged.

WARRIOR

PARAGON

• Shifting Blades: Damage reduced to 20/40/60% based on combo points used.

TEMPEST

• Arc:
• Damage reduced to 20/40/60% based on combo points used.
• Removed the 50% damage reduction in PVP.

RIFTS AND ZONES

HUNT RIFTS

• Reduced Hunt rift invasion stage timers from 2min to 1.5min.
• Reduced Great Hunt rift invasion stage timer from 5min to 3min.
• Increased the frequency of invasions at higher population levels in both Hunt and Great Hunt rifts.
• Changed the Great Hunt rift boss ability “Burgeoning Power” to apply slightly less damage reduction. However, it now also increases the boss's outgoing damage if not removed by turrets.
• Reduced the weight of upgradeables (turrets) when determining Great Hunt rift invasion strength/quantity.
• Slightly reduced the base damage done by Great Hunt 1-3 bosses.
• Slightly increased the health of the Great Hunt rift population scaling buff.
• Removed the Planarch Quoras flight phase and buffed his damage slightly.

EMPYREAL STRONGHOLDS - DENDROME

• Reduced health and damage of all Empyreal Stronghold mobs and bosses by up to 50%.
• Doubled the chance of rare and epic loot drops from Empyreal Stronghold bosses.
• Reduced the Empyreal Stronghold player population scaling buff.
• Increased Torvan notoriety on Empyreal Stronghold boss kills.
• Added Empyreal Alliance notoriety on Empyreal Stronghold boss kills.
• The summoned Empyreal Mech will cut through the Stronghold's shield faster.

DUNGEONS AND INSTANCES

• Fixed missing geometry in Infinity Gate and Grim Awakening.

BINDINGS OF BLOOD: MAELFORGE

• To account for raid DPS changes with this patch, the cooldown for Dark Cabal has been adjusted from 240 seconds to 210 seconds. The duration has also been increased, from 10 seconds to 12 seconds.
• Burning Convinction now cleanses any effect that it currently blocks from being applied.
• Fusion now occurs less frequently, and also uses the correct damage calculation type.

FROZEN TEMPEST

• Artifex Zaviel now enrages more reliably when pulled out of her room.

INFINITY GATE

• Mordan and Viktus:
• Obsidian Scarabs now attack slower, and don't attack immediately.

PLANEBREAKER BASTION

• Warden Thrax:
• Chain Gang's damage has been reduced.
• Greater Tectonic Transference now has a slight delay before it deals AoE damage.
• Inyr'Kta
• The final silicon Sandstorm when Inyr'Kta uses Shard Swarm for the second time has been removed.

REALM OF TWISTED DREAMS

• Adjusted the luggos in the Realm of Twisted Dreams to be more responsive to approaching players.

PVP AND WARFRONTS

• Players will no longer be stuck in spirit form if they join Conquest while dead.
• Players who die in warfronts after leveling past the warfront's level cap will no longer be stuck in spirit form.
• Players from PVP shards who were away from home are warned when a teleport returns them home.

ITEMS

• Fixed an issue with the essence Voice of the Undead King. It will now affect pets summoned after equipping the essence.
• The Sands of Time now procs off of damaging Archon Raid Support abilities.